Hot Chocolate

I've just made hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream on the top.

I used to have occasional insomnia, maybe once or twice a month.  It was no big problem.  If I couldn't sleep I just got up and worked or read a book and felt I was making good use of my time.  One of the advantages of being a freelancer is that my time is my own and can include naps during the day as needed.

But then my insomnia got a little worse, finally happening once a week with occasional nights with perhaps three hours of sleep in all.  Gary suggested a sleep aid. That would work for a couple of nights, then the third night, it was insomnia all night.  Then I tried melatonin and the result was the same.  I finally started changing sleep medications every third night.  In time, even that didn't work.

Then one cold winter night, Gary made us cups of hot chocolate as a treat.I thought the caffeine in the chocolate would have an adverse effect, but I went to sleep in twenty minutes and slept through the night.  I tried it again the second night and again it worked.  It's been working for two months now.

From what I've read, drinking warm milk isn't supposed to work as a sleep aid, but it does for me, that's all that counts. It is now part of my nightly ritual.

I'm sleepy right now, so will end this post.  

Thirty two stories

Wade and I began work this week on a collection of our Black Coffee Fiction short stories.  Between us we have 32 stories, quite a collection for two people to accumulate in only seven months.  We've picked out the pieces we want to include in our book.  (We're excluding our depressing Christmas stories which will be another collection later on.)

In some cases, we think the stories are fine as we published them on our blog, but others need some work.  To get the job done, we've set up a schedule.

We meet once a week at the Copper Rock Coffee House, on Thursdays.  On Friday, one of us must post a new story, so we critique it while drinking our coffee and tea.  The writer with the week off will re-edit a previous story.  Following this schedule, we should have eighteen stories completed and re-edited by September and at that point we will be ready to self-publish our book in e-book and paperback.

I think I may include the Love through the decades stories, like the one I published last week.  Wade is doing some interesting short stories about two odd superheroes, Michael and Corncob. He published one of them today at http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

We are proud of what we've accomplished. By setting strict deadlines, we have produced quite a body of work while continuing to write our personal blogs and working on novels.   

Turkey, Turkey, Turkey

Everything seems to come down to camping around here.

Last night, I made a turkey dinner for the three of us,  Gary, Rascal and me. Gary bought the twelve pound turkey before Christmas and it had to be used up and a cold day was the perfect time to have the oven on. Rascal began caterwauling two hours into the process. He loves turkey. 

The turkey was good, but Gary had post-dinner plans for it.  Of course, the carcass went into the freezer for soup, which will be made on the next cold day.  Some of it will be taken along on our camping trips  

After putting some meat aside for sandwiches and leftovers, we got out my food chopper and began to grind up the turkey. 

 First was a big container of ground turkey that Gary will make into turkey tacos tomorrow and divide into separate containers to take along on our camping trips. 

Finally, we ground up turkey to put into tiny containers for Rascal's cat snacks.  When we've been gone for a few nights, he is an unhappy feline, but if we pull out a container of his favorite turkey snacks, he will forgive us. 

Like I said, it all comes down to camping.  

Downton Abbey

Gary and I don't share a lot of television programs.  He likes documentaries about crab fishermen, crime shows, and British mystery series.  I like some medical shows, public television documentaries, and history series like "The American Experience."  We watch our shows in our separate offices. 

When we find shows we both like, we meet in the living room to watch them on the big screen.  We've had a regular Monday night date to watch "House."  Over the winter, we watched the public television series "Downton Abbey", a British series, which follows the inhabitants (both upstairs and downstairs) of a manor house from the sinking of the Titanic through WWI.  The series is being extended through a third year so we know what some of our winter viewing will be.  ("House", however, is in its final season.)   

Ever the history buff, I found an e-book: Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey:  The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle, written by the seventh Countess of Carnorvan.  Highclere Castle is the site used for the filming of the Downton Abbey series. During WWI, Lady Almina, the Fifth Countess of Carnorvan, ran a hospital in the castle, just as the countess does in the series. Her husband, the Earl of Carnorvan, married Alvina for her fortune, to keep the estate from going to ruin.  She was the illegitimate daughter of a Rothschild, the richest family in Europe.  It took only a marriage to an Earl to make her respectable.  With her money, he was able to continue his hobby, Egyptian archaeology.  His team, led by Howard Carter, discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen (King Tut). 

The Seventh Countess has all the records of the family and interviewed the people who worked "downstairs" at Highclere. So many of them died in World War I and the Spanish flu. The book includes photos that mirror  Downton Abbey and show how well researched the series is. 

Tonight, there are no shows worth watching on television, but a good book is so much better anyhow.   

Another Trip to Plan

Summer is coming on fast.  In another week or so, Gary and will start our camping season at Laura Lake. We usually start and end the season there.  Over the course of the summer, we'll be at least five different campgrounds, each with its own pristine lake, in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. Those five will be in addition to the Circle Tour around Lake Superior.

Then there is the plan to do a Circle Tour around Lake Superior.  I will be performing at two Ontario libraries plus several nursing homes, still to be arranged.  On the US side, I'll likely find work in Minnesota and Upper Michigan as we work around the lake. We've heard the scenery around the big lake is wonderful, with inlets and bays, lighthouses, forests, animals, and birds we may not have seen before.

We'll find ourselves in Dixon, Illinois at least once, if not twice, to visit his aunt. 

In mid-October, I'll meet my friends Sue and Norma at Pere Marquette State Park in Illinois.  We'll be celebrating our fiftieth reunion from high school where we were best friends.  There will be a reunion here in Seymour, but none of us can make that, so we thought we would like to talk over old times, just the three of us.  Norma and Sue will be sharing a room in the lodge at the park but weather permitting I plan on being in my tent at the campground to watch the sun rise at the Illinois River. They will treat me to a meal at the lodge, and I will make them breakfast at my camp site on my old camp stove.  Pancakes anyone?

(Though I've never been to Pere Marquette Park, it seems like an old acquaintance, for it was Father Marquette and Nicolas Joliet who explored Wisconsin.  The name Marquette shows up all over during our travels. Gary and I will stop at Marquette Michigan on our way around Lake Superior.  Marquette University is one of Wisconsin's best colleges.)

Then in late October, it will be back to Laura Lake for a few more nights in a Wisconsin forest.

In 2011, Gary spent 74 nights at campgrounds, and my count was very close to that.  We hope to do even better in 2012. 

Phenology in the Garden

Seventeen different flowers are in bloom in my gardens. I keep track of them on a calendar my English friend Nancy sent me in the New Year.  I liked the long format and thought it would be good for a gardening diary.

Using colored felt pens, I mark strips, each one another flower species, showing when it begins to bloom and when it finishes.  

My gardening records show that last year eleven species bloomed in April. 

As of today, eighteen are in bloom and five more came and went earlier in the month.  Several more species are in bud, including blue monarda and some irises.  The garden is so busy I am running out of room on the calendar.

Temperatures have been cold at night, yet never cold enough to stop the flowers from blooming. There's slight frost damage on the hosta leaves but everything else is as it should be. 

My concern is that with everything coming along so fast, there will be no color left come June.  I will have to fill in with annuals, and that gets expensive if I have to buy sets from greenhouses. I bought some potting soil and seeds yesterday but where to put all the pots?  The windowsills are already filled with plants. 

Earth Day, 2012

It's not that I ever have a big Earth Day celebration, figuring we should celebrate our world every day, but today was a bit of a disappointment when I considered my original plans.

We were supposed to be camping this weekend.  The United Methodist chancel choir didn't sing today so I had the day off.  Gary had the camper ready, and even if it weren't, I have a tent.  It was Boulder Lake for me!

Instead, we've had a week of rain and cold.  The camper stayed at the Manzke farm and my tent is still in my car, waiting.  No celebrating Earth Day watching the sun rise over a national forest lake.

This morning, Rascal woke me at 4:00 a.m., not to greet the dawn but to complain about the cat food and the cold.  The furnace had gone out again.  I fought him until 5:30 then got up and faced the day.  It was 53 degrees F. in the office.  I lit some candles. I don't know that that gives me much heat, but it gives me the illusion of heat.

Next I turned on the oven and went about making a double batch of banana bread.  By the time Gary got up, the temperature had risen to 58 degrees and suddenly at 8:00 a.m. the furnace kicked in and soon it was warm. We're thinking there's nothing wrong with the furnace just with the thermostat controls.

Because our plans were upset, Gary said we could have an outing.  We took off in his van and that's when I remembered that Gary's idea of an outing is to go to Menards to look for hardware and gossip with the guys he used to work with there. I consider shopping as one of the circles of hell, but I had a Menards rebate I'd been holding on for a couple of months, so I used it to buy some annuals.  Most of the flowers wouldn't be safe in my garden but dianthus and pansies will be fine down to 24 degrees.  One of the signs of our mellow winter is that the dianthus in a planter on my deck survived.

There were plenty of dianthus at Menards but only four pansy sets (six plants to the set) left. Six plants time four was twenty four, enough for the planters I had in mind.  As I left the store with my purchases, a woman came running up to me.  "Where did you get the pansies?"   I felt lucky to have them.

When we got home, I thought I would do some Earth Day gardening, but it was cold and windy, so after a few minutes I gave up on that idea as well as taking a hike down the trail.  I thought to drive out on a birding expedition, but I didn't like the idea of using more fossil fuel by taking my car out.  Besides, I hadn't had all that much sleep.

So I took a nap that went on for over three hours.

I woke up feeling better, knowing that in another week or so we will be camping and celebrating every day as Earth Day.