In case you missed it.

Just in case you were one of the 5 people who missed this last year, I bring you the literal version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart". And if you saw it, watch it again and laugh. Especially if you're of a "certain age". I'm still trying to figure out why my driveway was covered with worms this morning. Maybe I'll have photos tomorrow.

What's in a name?

My little sister-in-law drove down from her home on Saturday afternoon so we could all pile into one car and drive another two hours to my mother-in-law’s house the next day for Easter. As we sat around Saturday evening, each with a glass of wine, my SIL gave a relaxed sigh and said, “This is the house of wine and bacon. That’s what we (she and her boyfriend) call it.”


“The House of Wine and Bacon.”

What a lovely compliment. And where was she when I was looking for a name for this blog?

Foxhunting

When I was in grade school, I was absolutely besotted with horses. I spent a year earning money to take a set of riding lessons. $100 for 10 lessons - this was about 35 years ago, and that was a lot of money. I managed to wrangle a job at that stable, working one afternoon/evening after school and one Sunday each week (totalling about 13 hours) in exchange for a one hour lesson.

Foxhunting was something I never had the opportunity to try. While I loved horses, I was clearly not of the "horsey set", if you know what I mean. And while I've always thought foxhunting was one of those wonderful traditons found in Virginia, I may have to agree the with following e-mail I received, and work to ban foxhunting .

WARNING - Graphic photo below the jump!

So, that event I was talking about …

Our first event of the season took place at Jamestown Settlement. Military Thorough the Ages is a timeline event, and it is judged. We wrangled ourselves an invitation last year to see what it was all about, and we got hooked. The participants are divided into three time periods: Cold Steel, Black Powder and Modern. Since we portray a British Hospital during the American War for Independence, we were part of the Black Powder group. There are three judged categories for each time period, Best Camp Cooking, Best Camp (Material Culture and Interpretation), and Best Uniform/Clothing Impression. There is also an overall Best Unit Demonstration for battlefield interpretation and a Reenactor’s Choice award.

It all makes for a crazy weekend. We didn’t have as much space to set up as we would have liked so we crammed ourselves into our space with the aid of Vaseline (Oh! Not period correct. Maybe I should say lard) and a shoe-horn. The firewood was green and wouldn’t burn (thank goodness for those who packed the period correct charcoal). There wasn’t any room for the kids to spread out and just be kids so we put them to work. The 11-year-old boy was up interpreting dentistry with the men when we weren’t making him haul water. The 9-year-old girl was helping the cook chop vegetables, and Sweet Daughter took over the coffee display solo when her sidekick was helping in the kitchen.

“These are coffee beans. (Points to green beans.) These are done (roasted) coffee beans. This is how you grind them. (She counts out four beans and places them into the copper hopper of coffee mill.) Be very careful not to get your fingers down there (pointing) or you’ll get hurt. (She gives the handle a couple of rotations.) They look like this (shows drawer of ground coffee.) Then she (points to the 9-year-old) puts them in here (points to Turkish burr grinder) and then they look all runny (??) (points to a bowl of finely powdered, burr-ground coffee.) Yeah, I’m biased, but for “teaching” for the first time at age 4 ½, I think she did a great job.

There were over 2.500 visitors on Saturday alone. Our guys that portray doctors and dentists and surgeons (Oh, my!) love this kind of thing. They can, and do, talk all day long. We’ve got a teacher representing one of the women who followed the army and worked for the hospital. We’ve got our cook. They love to teach. Me? Not so much, and I guess I’m still puzzling out why I love this event so much. The amount of time and effort I put into the planning the minutia of this event drives me close to insane. I think it’s because while our medical staff is the undisputed star of our show, it gives us support-types a chance to shine. The public comes to watch Dr. Mike make suppositories (they were a huge hit), or see The Bone, or hear the details of an amputation. Few really care about how to make covered buttons or how to do a prick-stitched lining in a jacket where the edges of the wool are left raw, or how a hand-rolled hem looks on a cap, or what rice and beans grown in the Carolinas in the 18th century look like. These are all really small, nit-picky details, but they all add up to a better impression. And I like this event because it drives me to better my impression.

Well that, and comparatively speaking, every other event of the season will seem like a cinch to plan.

Six degrees of separation

Remember that Continental regimental I altered for Eric? The one he wanted to wear to IGOLD? Well, wear it he did. As a matter of fact, he was asked to be the Color bearer at the head of the parade.











But wait. It gets better. Eric got to meet Otis. Yes, that Otis. According to Eric, the Illinois State Rifle Association wanted pictures of the two of them together as they were both “revolutionaries”. Eric said Mr. McDonald was a class act and all around nice, nice guy.

Yeah. That’s Otis McDonald next to the regimental I altered. So it’s really only two degrees of separation. I’m such a geek.

Bayonets and Bullets

While getting ready for our first event of the season (another post for another day), one of our members, who portrays a civilian following the army, asked if we could run a bayonet through a piece of shirt linen so she’d have a example of the kind of mending that she might be doing in camp. A chance to pull out the pointy bits? Sure thing! Even better if we put a hunk of meat behind the linen to … well you can probably figure that part out yourself.

A piece of shirt-weight linen was dug up, an inexpensive roast was acquired in the name of science, and my British reproduction bayonet was affixed to the end of my lovely reproduction Spanish musket. The roast was place on a mostly rotted stump, and stabbity!

Note the bayonet *and* shirt went through the roast.

The bayonet went right through the roast and into the dirt. And I do mean right *through* the roast. The bayonet was removed, and the shirt fabric remained in the hole. When the fabric was removed, a surprisingly small hole was left in the fabric.
 

Okay. Time to crank it up to the next level. What were the chances of someone getting bayoneted in his sleep when all he was wearing was a shirt? It was much more likely that one would get run through on the battlefield. So I dug into my giant tub of scraps and pulled out piece of wool left over from making a regimental, some linen lining fabric, wool flannel used for a waistcoat, more linen lining fabric, and shirt-weight linen. I stitched around the outside to hold the layers in place and viola! A cross-section of clothing.

It was duly stabbed. Notice how the fabric was also shoved into the roast when it hit the tree stump. The British bayonet, being a reproduction and not properly heat treated, bent. Time for the Spanish bayonet. It had a much smaller diameter – about as big around as my finger, and was rounded instead of having three sides. After about three stabs, it also being a reproduction (and not properly tempered), snapped. It left an even smaller hole.

This is the British bayonet.

But then, if you’re being bayoneted, the guy on the other end of the pointy bit is probably under the influence of a wee bit of adrenaline, and you will meet your end as the result of being folded, spindled and mutilated. The true power of the bayonet is that people don't tend to stick around to get stuck. That's how the Brits managed to break to Continental line often early in the war - it's a terror weapon. The 18th century Spanish musket drill even has a step where your brandish your shiny, pointy bayonet at the enemy before affixing it to the end of your musket.

Three bayonet holes - one from the British bayonet, and two from the Spanish.

Next step? Why shoot a lead ball through it, of course!
 

 

About .65 caliber. Unlike the bayonet holes, notice the difference between the entry and exit openings.
 

 
See how the fabric is frayed? Guess where all that fabric ended up? That’s right. In the wound. It was believed that the resulting infection was there in part to clean the foreign objects out of the wound. When that didn’t go as planned, amputation was the next step. No pre-op medication because the only thing that would take away the pain would also take away your ability to breathe, and alcohol makes you bleed faster, the only option was speed. An average of 3 – 5 minutes from slice to thump. And no. No hot pitch applied to the stump. What are you, a savage? A torso wound? Sucks to be you.

I'm not dead.

I’m not just resting, either. Lots of projects going on to prepare for our first big living history event of the season. I’ve been doing lots of sewing … so much so (hahahah) that repeatedly pushing the needle through the fabric and into my finger has given me a tattoo of sorts. And a heck of a callous.

The closest think to a tattoo that I'll ever have.

This next event is very hands-on for the public, so I picked up a coffee grinder that had an 18th-century look to it. It also looked like the bicentennial threw up on it, but I figured I could always repaint it as a last resort. It’s not an original, but then, I won’t have aneurysm if someone drops it.

Before - with a stunning color scheme.

I think it cleaned up rather well – much better than I had hoped. The stain color was achieved by mixing together about 3 different sample packets I had. It kind of looks like cherry.

More posts next week - including what happens when you run an 18th century bayonet through a shirt and into a pot roast. Try to contain your excitement.

Want.

Really, really want.

The iPod/mp3 player can be connected on the outside of the A-BOX as well as the inside so you can listen to your tunes while running around with the A-BOX for example or just protecting your iPod from bullets and stuff.

But at these prices, I may have much better luck asking the office engineering genius if he’d like to build one.

Reworking a Regimental

I lurk on a Yahoo group that focuses on the American Revolution. A guy – let’s call him Eric, because, well, that’s his name – asked for some help in shortening the length of a Lottery Coat he’d picked up. He simply wanted to know how far above the knees the skirts should be as this coat wasn’t custom made and was too long. Now this group takes its research seriously, and for the most part they honestly just want to help others avoid mistakes they’ve made. In this case though, it felt like Eric was taken to task for buying suboptimal coat. Sort of like a school of piranhas descending upon a cow carcass. In defense of his acquisition (he bartered for it) Eric mentioned that he simply wanted to wear it to IGOLD and not look like an idiot. Or words to that effect.

At that point, I contacted Eric, told him to mark the alterations and send the coat to me and I’d take care of it. This was a completely selfish move on my part – I didn’t want an ill-fitting regimental reflecting poorly on reenactors or to have him show up on the 6:00 news in that story about those wacky gun-rights advocates looking like he dressed up in a costume from the community theater.

The coat arrived and I was … not impressed. Not only had the seams not been pressed during (or after) construction, the fabric didn’t appear to be pressed – ever. The lining was cheap cotton osnaburg. So, I cut out the lining from the waist down and replaced it with linen. I left the wool edges raw, and turned under the linen. I shortened the cuffs. I replaced the hooks that held it together at the front. I added the missing pleats in the skirts. I just wish I’d had time to rework all the button holes and make the pockets bigger. Eric will be replacing the brushed aluminum (!!) buttons with something appropriate in pewter.

New linen lining on the skirts.

And more pictures later - they're not downloading tonight.

So, if you’re at IGOLD next week on the 10th, and if you see a gentleman in a Continental uniform waving a Gadsden flag, please go up and complement him on his turnbacks. He's promised to take lots of pictures.

Thanks, Eric, for letting me use your pictures and your story!

Time to get rolling.

It’s that time of year. Time to get ready for the next reenacting season. Time to decide if I’m going to mend the shift with the shredded sleeves (when you buy $6/yard linen, you get what you pay for), or make a new one. Time to try on Sweet Daughter’s event clothes and heave a sigh of relief that the gowns will fit another year, but just sigh when I realize that she needs new shifts worse than I do. Pat myself on the back for picking up new “good enough” event shoes for her in a bigger size last month when I wasn’t under a time crunch. Time to start churning out the stuff I haven’t been working on for the past 6 months because I was tired of looking at all of it.


It’s also time to start working on the details to improve our impression for the year – like edible hornbooks! The mold is an 18th century reproduction from Trier, Germany. The receipt is from Hannah Glasse’s 1774 The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy.

To make ginger-bread cakes.

TAKE three pounds of flour, one pound of sugar, one pound of butter rubbed in very fine, two ounces of ginger beat fine, a large nutmeg grated; then take a pound of treacle, a quarter of a pint of cream, make them warm together, and make up the bread stiff; roll it out, and make it up into thin cakes, cut them out with a tea-cup, or small glass, or roll them round like nuts, and bake them on tin plates in a slack oven.

First up, was to cut the recipe in half so it would fit in my mixing bowl. I decided to cut the amount of ginger in half so it wouldn’t be so hot, and substitute black-strap molasses for the treacle as it is more common on this side of the pond. That, and I couldn’t find treacle in the regional upscale grocery store, much less in the local Food Lion.


I threw two sticks of butter in mixing bowl, weighed the sugar, and creamed the two together. I added the spices and about half the flour. Then I weighed and added the molasses, some more flour, the cream, and the rest of the flour. The consistency was perfect. Not to stiff to roll out, but not so sticky that it clung to my cookie mold. I rolled the dough to a scant ¼” thick, pressed the mold into the dough, lifted it off, cut around the resulting design and put it on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. I baked them at about 325 degrees for about 20 minutes. I think I’ll cut the baking time back a little next time as these were a little dry. I don’t know why I was thinking they had to be baked to the consistency of hard-tack. Still, they were good – a very robust flavor, a little chewy, and not too sweet.

Who knew?

Way, way back, in a previous life, the last time unemployment AND interest rates were in the double-digits, I was making maps for a living. Considering my B.A. was a double major in American Studies with an Emphasis in Heritage Preservation and Geography, I was thrilled to have a job that justified my student loans and paid the rent. AutoCAD was a rarity in the private sector, and so topographic maps were edited by hand. The resulting image was digitized on a giant light table (again, by hand – Click. Click. Click.) that fed into a VAX system. Numbers were assigned to elevations manually using a temperamental stylus jabbing somewhat futilely at a crappy monochrome monitor while the other hand keyed in elevations. The resulting product was used to guide cruise missiles.

So boy was I surprised when I found out via an interview with Shaun White that I was culpable for the war in Iraq.

"It works well if you think about the Tomahawk missile, and that's what created the whole Iraqi War."
-- Kyra Phillips, CNN

Boom.

Shorter Half (who was born after man walked on the moon) and I were watching curling the other night as I was sewing away. They broke for a commercial and I heard SH ranting about “selfish, greedy, narcissists”. I glanced up to see the commercial for Tom Brokaw’s special on the baby boomers.
“What?” I asked.
“Baby Boomers, he said.”
“WHAT did you call me?”
“You’re not a boomer!

“I was alive when Kennedy was shot. I’m a boomer.”

You’d think the reading glasses would have clued him in.

The Bone

Or, “What Happens when a Rocket Scientist/EMT starts thinking about 18th Century Gunshot Wounds”.

You may have noticed a reference or two to 18th century living history on this blog. I’m a member of group that portrays a British Detached Hospital in North America. Most of the members are medical types and/or engineers. The Narrator of this tale, a member of our group and a Gentleman Engineer, who is also an EMT in Real Life, begins:

So the other day I was sitting around with my .50 caliber muzzleloader – great way to start a story, huh?


I had been hunting with it, but hadn't shot it in about a week. It was going to be awhile before I went again, and as you know, even with the modern synthetic powders, it's not a good idea to leave it in the guns for too long. So I needed to unload the gun. While there are other methods, the most expeditious procedure for unloading the gun is 1) point gun, 2) pull trigger. But it seemed like such a shame to just “waste” it. I needed something to shoot at. The butternut squash that got pushed to the back of the fridge and now needed to be thrown out was a tempting target, but oh look, the dog's old bone. A long time ago, someone had given her one of those really large cow bones that you see in the grocery store. She never had any interest in it, and I kept forgetting to throw it out.


My little mind started working – you know, I have to shoot a .50 cal bullet. If I shot it at the bone, I could be cool and have a bone with a bullet hole for medical demonstrations like Dr. Mike. So I got out my gun rest to make sure the hole would be nice and centered and, having heard them say they shot their bone at 6-8 feet, set up at a range of about 15 feet. Okay – when I say the bone exploded, I don't mean fell apart or pieces flying off. Think Wylie Coyote shoving a stick of dynamite into the marrow hole kind of explosion. Now while REALLY cool, and prompting a mystified eight-year-old to say, “Whoa …”, it did not produce the desired effect.


I have three thoughts as to what went wrong.


1. I think I remember the vet telling me that those kinds of bone have been hardened for the dogs. I can see how this could cause the bone to resist being punched through, but instead have all of the fibers act as a whole.


2. There was no meat on the bone. I supposed this could affect the velocity some and may even help hold the bone together.


3. (and I think the real problem) While my projectile had an appropriate diameter, it was not a ball. It was a 335 grain, conical hollow-point. I now have a new appreciation for what happens to the deer when it is struck by such a thing.


Okay – new plan.I have a friend who runs a family operated grocery store. They do all their own butcher work. We were in there Sunday, and I mentioned the kind of bone, with some meat, that I needed. She said she would find me something. I picked it up yesterday. Not wanting to reproduce my previous effort (at least not at this time!!) I thought I would call an expert.

So they called us. Shorter Half for his weapons expertise, and me for my reproduction flintlock pistol and digital camera. The cow leg was propped up. About 3 feet away (good 18th century pistol range) the pistol was primed and loaded with a single ball. The trigger was pulled, and “Click! fffft”. Misfire. The pan was re-primed, and “Click! Bang!” Direct hit. 

Powder burns and entry wound. Renmber, the muzzle was about 3 feet away.

Fragments from the lead ball.

Entry hole with the meat cleared away.

Exit wound

Follow up from our Gentleman Engineer:

I just came back from The Bone's inaugural demonstration at (Local Elementary School). Actually it was the same presentation for 8 separate groups. Now I have to tell you, it turns out, the bone shape you see in the picture is being accomplished by the cohesion of the surrounding tissue. When said tissue was removed, I now had a life-size 3-D bone puzzle. At first I was a little disappointed, but then I thought, “Why not show the true destructive power. This is supposed to be a demonstration.” So with the help of some industrial strength ceramic glue (which comes with the warning “only use outdoors or in extremely well ventilated areas” – no seriously, I feel fine) I had reconstructed Frankenstein's bone. The 4th graders' most common comment was “WHOA!!!

Frankenbone: Entrance

Frankenbone: Exit

Can you say "amputation"?

Happy Birthday, Michael!

Go wish Michael W. (a.k.a. as Mike, Dr. Mike, and probably some nicknames I don't want to know about) a happy birthday. He deserves one! Or leave a comment here for him. He usually drops by to check things out.

Knit Cap

While checking out some wonderful information on 18th century knit caps, I came across these two pictures.

I wanted to reproduce that striped cap, and the cook in our reenacting group graciously volunteered to be the recipient of the finished cap, even though I’ve never seen anyone in the hobby wear a striped cap. Besides what we dubbed the “rasta” cap, I found a striped cap in Hogarth’s Industry and Idleness series. The same guy with the eye patch shows up in several plates.

I started by knitting a swatch on my needles of choice. Then using Mara Riley’s pattern, I scaled my pattern up since I was using a finer yarn, and cast on the navy wool. I knit about 30 rows and realized that my scale was way off. I also noticed that in both paintings, the knit cap was worn over a linen workman’s cap. So … I ripped out all 3 inches, knit a bigger swatch, recalculated how many stitches to cast on (remembering THIS time that it had to go over another cap) and started again.

 I used the "Porter" painting to try to gauge the scale. I looked at how much of the ear the navy yarn covered, and went from there. The stripes looked like they were a finger and a half wide. I kept knitting until I had what looked like was going to be that distinctive “bell” shape and started decreasing. I didn’t like the way the top looked, so I ripped that out, pulled out my copies of Mark Tully’s “The Packet” series until I found the directions for his knit cap and tried again.

I was happy with it, so I wet it, blocked it, and put it over a "bouncy ball" to dry.

I’ll get pictures of it on our cook, complete with black felt hat, at our next event.

UPDATED to add: Another knit cap here.

Oh, rats!

Our friend, Mike, delights in spoiling Sweet Daughter. He also does his best to, um, cultivate her sense of humor and develop her appreciation of the absurd. (Like I’m not doing a fine job on my own, thank-you-very-much. *grin*) When SD was two, he sent her a stuffed toy for Easter. It was a ‘possum. Yes, he sent her an Easter Possum. She was nonplussed at the time, but we managed to have fun with it. We'd startle Shorter Half on a regular basis by leaving it hanging from unexpected places. The shower curtain rod, for example.

Sweet Daughter has an affection for cats. She likes to pretend to be a kitty, complete with her own cat language, which I don’t understand. “Honey, I don’t understand ‘cat’. Please use real words!” This is handy for her, because I suspect she has cussed me out in cat language once or twice. Anyhow …

Mike decided that a proper kitten like Sweet Daughter needed her own rat for Valentine’s Day. He sent about 9 gummi rats in shades of red and orange. On the morning of V-day, I said, “Hey Sweetie! Mike sent you a Valentine’s present!”

She responded by stopping, taking a deep breath as if to resign herself to the inevitable, and said “What is it?”

I said brightly, “Here honey! It’s a gummi rat! He says a kitty needs her own rat! You like gummi bears, right? This is just a big gummi candy.”

She held the package, not sure she liked the way it quivered. The rat was removed from the package and she refused to touch it as it trembled gently.

“Ew, mommy! It feels likes REAL rat! Take it take it take it take it!"

(Note: We have friends with a marvelous pet rat named Cornwallis. She knows what a real rat feels like, and that it does not feel like gummi candy.)

The rat is placed on a plate. She contemplates her options. She swallows her disappointment.

 

“Momma, may I have some chocolate now?”

And I wonder why she has bad dreams.

For the record, she got her chocolate, and her bad dreams have never featured marsupials, rats or candy. Only the big, bad wolf. And I'm pretty sure she won't hold this against Mike.

Perspective

Just to put all the whining, sniveling, teeth gnashing, and hair-pulling into perspective, the mid-Atlantic has had a hell of a winter, at least by local standards. We don’t a snowmobile tucked away in the back of the garage for inclement weather. Heck, a lot of people didn’t even have snow shovels 10 days ago. The belief is that if Mother Nature put it there, she can darn well clean up after herself and take it away. For those who have never lived north of the Sweet Tea Line*, there really is no frame of reference.

December 19-20, 2009: Snowpocalypse
February 5-6, 2010: Snowmageddon
February 10-11, 2010: Snoverkill

Check out the amounts so far this winter:

Washington D.C. National Airport - 55.9”
Old record: 54.4", Winter of 1898-1899
Average: 16.6”

Washington D.C. Dulles Airport, VA - 75.0"
Old record: 61.9", Winter of 1995-1996
Average: 22.3”

Baltimore, MD - 79.9"
Old record: 62.5", Winter of 1995-1996
Average: 20.8”

Wilmington, DE - 66.7"
Old record: 55.9", Winter of 1995-1996
Average: 20.5”

Philadelphia, PA - 71.6"
Old record: 65.5", Winter of 1995-1996
Average: 20.5”

Atlantic City, NJ, 49.9"
Old record: 46.9", Winter of 1966-1967
Average: 15.7”

Compare to these annual averages:

Barrow, AK - 29.7”
Colorado Springs, CO - 42.4”
Bridgeport, CT - 26.2”
Chicago, IL - 38.5”
Boston, MA - 42.2”
Detroit, MI - 41.1”
Minneapolis-St. Paul - 49.9”
Central Park, NY - 28.4”
Fargo, ND - 40.8”
Pittsburgh, PA – 43”
Green Bay, WI - 47.7”


And yeah. It’s supposed to snow again on Monday.


* The Mason-Dixon Line is not the dividing line between the North and the South, it’s the Sweet Tea Line. McDonald’s not withstanding, you know you’re in the South when restaurants have sweet tea ready made.

Always chamber check

We were watching TV the other night and saw this State Farm commercial.



The commercial wasn't even over before Shorter Half emphatically stated, "And THAT'S why you always chamber check your pistol!"

Guilt

I got up this morning and went to check on the results of the overnight storm. It looked like I’d been stood up. Maybe a half inch of fluff on top of a quarter inch of icy slush. This wasn’t a bad thing, as I’d left my snow boots in the car. I shoveled off the steps, retrieved my boots, and contemplated the fact that I’d forgotten to pick up bird seed yesterday. I had a Red-bellied Woodpecker, a Blue Jay, two Cardinals and a Cedar Waxwing looking pointedly back-and-forth from the empty bird feeding to me. I’ve got thistle seed coming out of my ears (no finches this year, for some reason), but I only had a little songbird mix left. I pried off the frozen roof of the feeder and dumped the last of the birdseed in. And I felt bad because I was sure they were counting on me.

This is all rather ironic considering I have little bit of a phobia of things that flutter.* Flapping wings whether they’re birds, bats, or butterflies instantly puts me in fight-or-flight mode. It’s a challenge not teaching this response to Sweet Daughter, but I try. So I feed the birds because it seems like the right thing to do, and I do like watching them from the other side of the glass, and for some bizarre reason, we don’t have a squirrel problem. It could be that the starling and crow problem we have (greedy buggers) keeps the squirrels away, but whatever.

Then I went inside to fix breakfast. Sweet Daughter requested waffles, and since the guilt quotient wasn’t high enough for the morning, I made these. From the 1961 Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cookbook, I bring you:

Richer Waffles

3 eggs
1 ½ cups buttermilk or soured milk
1 teaspoon soda
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup soft shortening (fresh bacon fat is good)

Heat waffle iron while mixing batter. Beat eggs well. Beat in remaining ingredients with a rotary beater until smooth. Cook according to whatever works best for your iron, but I find I don't have to grease the iron first with this batter. (Ya THINK?)

Perfect fuel for shoveling out the driveway. Especially when the weather wienies are calling for another couple of inches of white stuff and 30 – 40 mph winds. Sorry, birds. Maybe I'll toss the leftovers your way.

*While looking here for whatever “flutterphobia” is called, I found this.

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - Fear of long words.

That's just mean.

Son of the Snowpocalypse: The Return of Snowmageddon

So, our first snowfall of the season occurred at the end of Autumn. We got about 18” or so and the weather gods were kind enough to dump it on the weekend. It was novel. It was fun. We still had enough snow at Christmas to build a snowman. It was perfect.

Sweet Daugher and "Mr. Shivers". Yes, that's a belly-button.

Then, the last weekend in January, another little storm swept through. Probably about 7” when all was said and done, it was light and fluffy, and shoveled easily. The roads were passable by the next day, and our road had so much salt on it, it looked like the rim of a margarita glass. The novelty had not yet worn off

Then, a mere seven days later, it hit again. Snow. Then a layer of sleet. Then another layer of snow. We got a good solid 18” – 20” layer of winter, depending on where you measured. That, to put it mildly, was a bitch to shovel. Roads took longer to plow (due, no doubt to all the downed trees), and there was a dearth of salt and sand.







Now, a mere three days later, it’s sleeting. It’s supposed to switch to snow, and snow all day tomorrow. It’s not a weekend and I’m not amused. I got enough snow when I lived in Minnesota (13 years, and 2 weeks) to last me the rest of my life.

The bright spots? Sweet Daughter LOVES playing in the snow, and we have an awesome neighbor with a tractor and a blade who scrapes the end of our driveway for us. And I can think of worse things than spending a day at home with SD. I’m actually looking forward to it.