Still frozen in on our little farm - that freezing rain over all of it made it so difficult. We are low on dog food, and propane - and really no way to get out or for anyone to get in. Hopefully we have a break tomorrow - it is supposed to get up to 31 degrees.. and they still think they have me scheduled for early in the morning on Monday. That is yet to be seen.
Anyway, working on my French language. DuoLingo says I have now gotten to B1 level - so I went and found an hour long plus French detective movie (with Lea Thompson, Miss Detective, it was good!) and watched it with just the French subtitles on for clarification of what I was hearing. I understood a lot - not all, but a lot. I can think of French translations for most, but not all, of the sentences I am thinking in English. It gives me a good idea what I need to learn still (besides spelling, which I am still not great at).
I finished the crochet rug for in front of the stove, and started another one as the original one I took for the sink side of the kitchen had been in the bathroom where I put on my shoes.
Mark wants to make dog cookies with pumpkin, flour, eggs and bacon grease for the dogs to tide them over. They're not out of dog food yet, but they can see the bin emptying and they all have expressed concern. That is what you get with Catahoulas - they are such conversationalists. They've been talking with the cats about being in front of the propane heater and etc etc.. as well. I can just sit in that room and watch the air currents from the heat sources and the lights and watch the animals communicate and almost feel like I'm relating to some ancient yurt scene of ancient times. All while I take yarn and form it into cloth, and drink hot fluids.
I asked Esme if she wanted to go sledding out there in this - the hills are perfectly slick, and she sounded just like Mark and I combined: 'I'd rather not. Let's just say we stay in here and be warm, ok?' Ha. I'm still remembering her swearing when she heard I had just walked home from where I abandoned the truck the other day - and then she gave me a big teenager hug, and said she was glad I was safe. She doesn't want out in this : and I understand. She has been feeding and watering the chickens, though, and getting their eggs - which is no small task when they are all in the house together. We use the empty water pitcher to ford the way to the nest, and then grab the eggs and put them in the collector basket.
We do have plenty of chicken feed to make us to the warm spell -- and I need to remind myself to stock up on feeds if at all possible in case we get a repeat of this for February. I don't want one. But I want to be even better prepared for one. I thought I was fairly well prepared for this one, but then it lasted longer than expected, AND I was asked to go out to town more often than originally scheduled BUT did not feel safe enough or have enough money to bring much more resources home in between it all. I could have bought more propane one of those days, but I was already worried about going in the ditch and in the ditch with a full canister of propane in the back of the vehicle is just 500% more No-Fun-At-All, enough to make me not even try. Gah. At least if I had bought more dog food though, I could have went back to the truck with the sled and brought it home. Things to Think About. Things I wish we didn't have to think about.
I do think Esme will help us bake, if we choose to do that in a bit.
She tried to boil some eggs last night to go with her dinner - she didn't like the freezer meals we were using up and she wanted to make something of her own. But she didn't boil them long enough in this cold temperature. I do that sometimes, too.
crochet rug, 27 by 16, scrap yarns and stash yarn (the blue-grey stuff) that was leftover from making my huge shawl a few years back - still using that to keep warm, as it wraps all the way around me and ties in the back or at the side. Minion cat has said the shawl is wonderful, because she can lay on my lap and rub her chin against the fuzzy part and feel like she is being held by a mama cat.
Blue Shawl, from 2018, with two kinds of yarn
Going through part of my yarn ends and scraps to make sure I have enough to finish the second kitchen rug I'm working on. I do. I only got halfway through my collection and started sneezing and said 'yep, there's enough, put this all away and go make tomato sauce'.
Making tomato sauce with garden tomatoes in the freezer, and black olives, and frozen meatballs from a few weeks ago - and Esme and I are having that for dinner tonight. Mark is also making more Brazil Nut cookies... every year he gets on a habit for Brazil Nuts, and the last two years I've asked him to watch the House episode where the guy gets Selenium poisoning from 'chestnuts of peru' (brazil nuts) just because it reminds me of that. Ha.
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