WHERE IS MY MOULI????

Besides a couple of boxes of books, winter clothes and a box of small and basically useless electric kitchen appliances, we're all unpacked. But I've got a missing object to report. I can't find my Mouli. It looks like this bad boy:

I got it about 15 years ago for $1 at an auction still in its original box and I loved him with all my might. He made the trip to Hawaii with us and came back up when we returned to Wisconsin, though one of his blades got a little bent up in the move. I used it for shredding cheese, zuchinni, and Fels Naptha soap (I make my own laundry detergent). I love that little guy. But, I've turned my house inside out and upside down and I can't find it. I last used it right before we moved, so probably the end of June. I noticed it was missing on Saturday when I had a bunch of zuchinni that needed shredding and I couldn't find it. I've also run out of laundry detergent and have had to resort to using store-bought stuff, because my MOULI HAS DISAPPEARED!! I've re-searched all the unpacked boxes, crawled through the grainery, barn, attic and garage looking for it. I'm at my wit's end and it's not pretty people. So, if you've seen my Mouli wandering around looking lost, please send him home, I miss him.

In non-disappearing Mouli news, Saturday we went to a beautiful wedding. A girl we've known since before she was born got married in her parents backyard on a beautiful sunny day. Sarah looked gorgeous and it was hard to reconcile that beautiful young woman to the little girl who used to play with Angel #1. I think #1 was really missing being here to watch his lifelong friend get married, but those are the breaks when you join the military, I guess. Anyway, around 3:30pm, just when the bride and groom were saying their goodbyes, they had a little surprise in store for them. There's a small, grass airstrip on her parents farm and the bride's grandpa hired someone to land his plane there and pick up the bride and groom. We all stood off to the side and waved as they flew off to start their life together. It was almost like a movie.

My mom's side of the family had a reunion on Saturday as well, but we'd had a busy couple of days and were really just wanting to go home and chill after the wedding. My refrigerator died on Wednesday night and at 10pm, the girls and I were hauling our refrigerated stuff outside and to the garage refrigerator. We went out of town early Thursday morning to work at the day camp for the mentally handicapped that we like volunteering at and spend the night at Rent-a-Grandma's house so we could go there again on Friday (the camp is a 2 hour drive from our house). We got home late Friday night, left early in the morning for the 2 hour drive to get to the wedding and finally got around to taking the old fridge out and putting the garage fridge into the kitchen on Saturday night. That was a bit chaotic since I was also trying to make a zuchinni cake for my dish to pass for the family reunion for my dad's side of the family, which was on Sunday. A lot of that time was spent looking for my Mouli so I could shred the zuchinni. Our doorways are really narrow, so hubs had to take all the doors and hinges off the fridge to get it into the kitchen. Things were a bit crazy.

The girls and I went to the reunion right after church on Sunday and, since something happened and my cake turned out looking awful, I didn't put my name on my cake pan and had one of the girls quietly slip it onto the dessert table so no one knew it was mine. :p I also found out how much I adore my cousin Theresa when she told me the story of how one of her roosters attacked her and she took out a gun and shot it. I think she's my hero. My family also has a 50/50 raffle every year. In case you don't know, a 50/50 raffle means that whoever holds the winning ticket gets half of the proceeds of the raffle, the other half goes to a charity. In my family's case, the charity is one my cousin's disabled daughter takes part in. It never fails though, every year, whoever wins the raffle ends up donating their winnings to the charity as well. How can you not love a family like that? This year, the winner was a young 4th generation relative who is getting married soon. I'm sure he could have found a use for that $100+, but didn't think twice about not accepting the winnings, even when someone brought up the fact that he was kind of broke. It gives me the warm fuzzies. So you don't think that my family is just a bunch of boring do-gooders, they also got out the water balloon launcher. In another family tradition, a whole bunch of kids stand out in the yard and try to catch the water balloons as they come whizzing through the air. By the time they run out of balloons, they're all covered with welts and bruises. So yeah, we're all a bit warped as well as altruistic. After a few ears of grill roasted corn and some hugs from a couple of awesome aunts, the girls and I headed home. I think this was our busiest weekend of the summer and it's all downhill from here. I don't even want to think about frost and cold, but, since this is Wisconsin, things will be getting downright chilly here in the next month or so. I miss summer already and it's not even over yet.

And just when I think it's over

The crazy continues. Saturday afternoon, the car broke. Literally broke. It was an old car, older than all my kids, and it was definitely showing its age, but when it decided to give up the ghost, it made its plans totally clear. Angel #2 was driving down the road, thankfully through town, so she was going slow, when the steering went out. The car started pulling to the left and she steered to the right and the steering wheel just spun, like a kiddie car in the carnival. She crossed a lane of traffic, thankfully there were no oncoming cars, and came to a stop at the side of the road facing the wrong direction. One of the first cars that went past her was a cop, so she flagged him down for help, since the rear of the car was sticking out into traffic, and he directed traffic until the tow truck came to take our old faithful car away. The tow truck driver took one look at it and said it couldn't be saved, the entire sub-frame broke off, which apparently, is something that helps hold the car together. So the car headed off to the junk and Sunday, we scrambled to find a cheap vehicle fast. Our only remaining vehicle was our pickup truck, which only holds 3 people and is stick, which Angel #2 isn't very proficient at. Fortunately, we've got wonderful friends and by Sunday afternoon, we were driving home with a 1996 Taurus. It's not perfect, but it's much better than what we had, besides, the a/c works, which it didn't in the old car, so we're coming out ahead. Considering we paid $600 for our old car and it lasted us a year, we came out ahead all over the place. Hopefully, this new one will hang on for a long while as well.

Now are we done with the crazy?

I think we've finally hit the end of the pet parade. WE came home last night with a year old black lab mix named Diesel. Diesel is a pretty good dog, but it'll take a little while for him to learn the rules at our house, like no going on the furniture, no licking and no begging - apparently those things were all allowed at his last house. He's slowing figuring it out, he's already learned to stay out of Angel #2's bedroom - his presence there causes all sorts of ruckus since she's got 2 birds in there, along with a very freaked out kitten.

I was a canning whirlwind today. I started out doing 5 quarts of green beans, then the girls and I went on to the bushel of peaches sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor. The three of us got an assembly line going (or as Angel #2 referred to it 'a sweatshop') and got the peeled, pitted and turned into pie filling and jam. At the end of the day we ended up with 7 quarts of pie filling, 15 pints of peach jam and 3 additional quarts of plain peaches. I love hearing the 'ping' of jars sealing. Such a feeling of accomplishment. I don't have a few key pieces of canning equipment and couldn't find them at our local store, so instead of a canning funnel I had to cut off the bottom of a plastic McDonalds iced coffee cup and use that. It didn't work nearly as well as an actual funnel would, but beggars can't be choosers. I also found out that I only have 3 wide-mouthed jar rings, so I had to use regular jars, which made the whole funneling thing an even bigger challenge.

Why yes, I DO need more crazy in my life. Why do you ask?

Angel #2 got a kitten a few weeks ago. I think it was the runt of the litter, it's really tiny. Then her boyfriend brought a cat over, a 7 month old that really dwarfs the little one, but doesn't stop the little guy from trying to attack. Angel #4 took over ownership of Muse, the big cat. But now, Pepper, the little guy, is no longer the little guy. Angel #2 got a call from the vets office where she helps out, someone had a tiny kitten abandoned by its mother, did #2 want to bottle feed a 2 week old kitten? What a silly question. So now we've got this tiny little thing mewing and bottles and formula lying around. WE is still on the lookout for the perfect dog.

In other exciting news, hubs got my oven working correctly finally. It had been sooting everything up and making a real mess of my pans and my kitchen in general. After working on it and being completely stumped, he went against all his good manly judgement and read the instructions printed on a big metal tag attached to the inside of the cooktop. After following the instructions, things are now soot-free and cooking nicely, though hubs IS in danger of being kicked out of the he-man club for stooping so low as to read instructions.

My garden is starting to produce something other than weeds finally. Saturday I canned up 7 quarts of green beans. I should have some yellow summer squash and some zuchinni within a week as well. Yay for fresh veggies! I also painted the entryway by the back door on Saturday. We bought the paint for the kitchen & dining room a couple days ago, but I don't really have time to do it right now, but I really wanted to get something on the wall. Since the entryway is going to be the same color as the kitchen, I figured I'l slap a coat on those walls so I felt like I accomplished something. It's a gorgeous turquoise color and really pops out with the white trim. Now I'm really antsy to get the rest painted. Oh, to find the time.

A day of Lowes stalkers and crazy cat ladies

Hubs and I went to Lowes yesterday. One thing we've noticed since the economy is taking a nosedive and people are losing their jobs left and right, is that in many places, especially those mega building supply stores like Lowes and Home Depot, employees are trying desperately to be invaluable. This was especially evident in Hawaii, when, at the height of the building boom there, store employees acted more like you were an interruption than a paying customer. But now, things have changed, they're falling over themselves trying to help you so they don't get discovered standing around, doing nothing, and getting downsized. Hubs and I were standing in the middle of an aisle, discussing something non-hardware related, at Lowes yesterday, when an employees asked if he could help us find something. I told him no and we moved on, but hubby started complaining to me about being constantly pestered by sales clerks. He goes to these stores all the time for work, and is sick of having his shopping constantly interrupted, especially since you can never find any of these people when you actually need help. As we were escaping the first employees, a 2nd one was right behind us, talking on the phone with a customer. In an effort to dodge her, we went down a different aisle, only to have her follow us, still yakking away. We ended up going outside in the garden department, hubs saying that there shouldn't be any employees out there since they prefer to stay inside in the air conditioning than be in the 95 degree heat. We split up and hubs was a few aisles away when I heard someone ask if he was finding everything okay. I was standing there, all by myself, when I burst out laughing so hard I started to snort. Anyone watching me had to think I was deranged. Which leads me to my next adventure.

Since, as I mentioned before, it was really hot and humid outside, I just wanted to do a quick scan of the reduced plants to see if they had any interesting veggies I could stick out into the garden at this late stage in the game. A lady standing next to me started up a conversation about flowers. She said she just wanted to buy them all because she hated the thought of leaving them there to die. I wanted to remind her that these were begonias at Lowes, not puppies at the animal shelter, but just smiled nicely and said I was looking for vegetables. She said that with only the two of them, she didn't bother planting veggies and I said I was feeding a houseful of teens and needed all the help I could get. Then she said she didn't have any two legged kids, only the four legged kind, and I knew I was in trouble. I said I wasn't much of an animal lover, hoping to deflect what I knew was going to come, but it didn't work. I got to hear all about her 9 cats and 2 dogs, her troubles finding a vet and about the cat that she's had for 11 years that won't let her pick it up. I was polite, but kept wandering away, hoping to get out of the garden department and back inside where it was cool and critter-free, but she kept following me around and chatting away. I know she was lonely and I should have spent more time with her than I did, but I figure that 10 minutes in the sun and heat was about the limit of my good deed for the day. It was hard looking at her when she was talking anyway. She had pure white hair, but no eyebrows, so they were drawn in with brown eyebrow pencil. But they were only about half an inch long, so were only little dashes above her eyes, and they kept moving up and down when she talked. I could not resist looking at her bouncing eyebrows, it was like I was hypnotized. Eventually, I made my excuses and escaped to the coolness and safety of the store. I found hubs and we picked out some linoleum for our new upstairs bathroom and paint for the kitchen and dining room. Now I've just got to find the time and ambition to paint those rooms. As much as I want to get going on it, it may have to wait until winter. I got my first big batch of green beans today and will have to start canning them up within the next couple days. I've got fresh peas to shell and the battle of me vs. potato bug still wages on.

Angel #4 got home safe and sound yesterday. She had some really good flights, so she landed early in Chicago, which helped her catch her final flight home, which also landed 15 minutes early. She met a friendly man on the first leg of the journey and had a pleasant time chatting with him. She said the flight attendant thought they were together until they explained that they were just flight buddies. That's a great thing about my youngest, she makes friends wherever she goes. She worked hard in the garden this morning pulling weeds and squishing bugs, so things are starting to get caught up in the weeding department also. Summer is So busy.

Hitchcock Revisited

We had another bird-y morning the other day. They were pecking at the screen and dive bombing the window. I went outside to see what was going on and about 30 birds flew off my roof. I don't know what the big attraction is in my shingles, but I wish it would stop. After the mosquitofest we had the night before, I was really wanting my sleep. I bet I killed about 25 of the blood suckers before we finally got enough silence that we could sleep. The mosquitoes are big here too, like B-52 bombers, which is helpful in a way, they make an easier target when you slap your hands together to get them in midair. The day after the great mosquito massacre, hubs fixed the screens on some of the windows. With this being an old house, some of the screens are in pretty bad shape.

Screens aren't much of an issue at the moment, though. It's so hot that we turned on the air conditioning. Hubs got the ductwork and the inside of the furnace all cleaned out first before turning it on, who knows how many years of dust and crude were in there. But, things are working fine now, which is nice. The temps have been in the 90's and it's really humid. No one likes this kind of weather but corn and Jeanie C. Fortunately, with our house being perched on a hill, we usually get somewhat of a breeze, which helps a little, even though our breeze feels like someone opened a hot, wet oven.

Angel #4 comes home from her Virginia trip tomorrow afternoon. She's a little nervous about flying by herself, mainly it's the plane change in Chicago that's making her nervous. We've given her instructions on what to do, and even if she misses her connection, another flight leaves for the same airport an hour and a half later, so she'll get home eventually. Then, we'll have to deprogram her after all the spoiling I'm sure she got while she was out there. It's nothing an hour or two out weeding in the garden won't take care of.

a weird way to wake up

I woke up this morning at 6am to the scritchy-scratching of little feet over my head. I lay there, eyes wide open, wondering if we had rats or mice in our attic, then wondering how they could make scritchy-scratchy noises while walking on the insulation in the attic. I heard banging on something metal on the outside of the house and deduced with a sigh of relief that there must be birds doing some kind of tango on my roof. I crawled across the bed to look out the window and suddenly, a bird landed right on the window sill about 2 feet from my face, then just sat there looking at me. I was thinking "what the heck???" when I heard WE voice verbalize my exact thought from his bedroom. I asked him what was going on, and apparently he had a bird on his windowsill trying to get into his room. I looked back at MY bird, who decided to fly away. He wasn't gone for long though, a few minutes later, he came back with a friend, they each took a window and started pecking at them. Especially weird since they weren't even woodpeckers. WE said his bird was now next door at Angel #4's bedroom window, pecking at that. It was like an audition for an Alfred Hitchcock movie or something.

Finally, all the psychotic little tweeters left to find somebody else's window to peck at. After lying in bed for a little while, I realized I wasn't going to get back to sleep and got out of bed. It was then that I realized that my marathon weeding session on Monday had come back to haunt me. My neck was so sore that I could barely move my head to the right and the joints in my right hand felt the same way those red glowing hands did in those arthritis commercials Patricia Neal did back when I was a little kid. I put stinky muscle relaxer stuff on my neck and hand, but I'm still pretty sore. A hot shower didn't do much either. I think I'm going to lay in bed with a heating pad tonight and hope for the best tomorrow. This must be what getting old is like. It sucks.