Home for Christmas

One last task before we left.  Every morning while we were there, Gary went across the road to the barn to break the ice in the water tank for the cows who congregated every morning after an evening spent in the creek pasture.

The farmer's father did the same thing but it was cold and the tank kept icing over. Twice a day was better for the cattle. This was the last weekend that the ice had to be cracked.  On Monday, the cows will be hauled away to winter quarters.

We made it back home around 3:00 pm.  We pronounced Thanksgiving over and started thinking about Christmas.  I had a head start with the string of colored lights in my office. They were left over from last Christmas.  I had forgotten all about them. Now they are lit up along the top shelf above my computer monitor, looking festive.

One of the advantages to not being a good housekeeper, I guess.

Tomorrow Gary plans on putting up a Christmas tree.  Last year, he was in Illinois during the Christmas season so I put the tree up myself and then took it down in January. It will be much nicer to do that together.  

Last Day in Illinois

We leave this Illinois farmhouse early tomorrow morning to return to Seymour. We could have left today but there are still some people we want to see, plus Gary and I know better than trying to brave Black Friday traffic combined with a Wisconsin snowstorm.

 

I consider these trips to Illinois as a mini-vacation, but I still managed to get a few things done while here.

First, I put all the depressing Christmas stories together into a manuscript. I am still missing two stories I forgot to bring with me, plus Wade will be adding in some of his short stories. In the end, we will have twelve of these sad tales, so I now am considering Twelve Horrible Days of Christmas as a title.

I put all my addresses into a small address book that I can carry in my purse.

I wrote a post for this blog every day and somehow found places to post them. I didn't think that would happen yesterday since almost everything was closed. However, the Galena Steak House, where we had our Thanksgiving meal, did have wi fi. Today we will go to the Sterling library late this afternoon after all the shoppers have tired themselves out. I will post this story and talk about coming here for a book chat in January.

I wrote a generic Christmas letter. I am not fond of them but this was a crazy year so I put all the writing, travels, camping and possible changes to come in a two page missive and made 30 copies. After I updated my Christmas card list, I addressed and stamped 39 Christmas cards. I still need to write one long letter to a friend and locate two addresses then the whole batch will be mailed on Monday.

With all that, I still had time to relax. I read five books while here. The last one was A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, a Wisconsin author. I kept telling Gary so much of it sounded familiar and later told him the author must have been reading Wisconsin Death Trip, by Michael Lesy. It's a book that makes my short stories tame because it is a collection of newspaper clippings and photos of Wisconsin at the end of the 19^th century. It is a litany of suicide, epidemics, and murder. I have the book somewhere around my house.

Sure enough, at the end of the book Goolrick give's credit to Lesy's work. It was not the kind of book one should be reading in a farmhouse in the middle of a Midwestern winter. I will pick up something more cheerful for my next read.

We'll be in Wisconsin for another month, then it's back here to Illinois for another week. I'm organizing book talks here.

 

 

Thanksgiving

No big family party today. Instead, Gary and I are going to a dinner buffet at a Dixon, Illinois supper club. It is much simpler this way. As we grow older, fuss and bother are too much for us. We simplify each holiday now.

Gary found an 18 inch Christmas tree somewhere in the farmhouse, something that had been stored away for years. Wonder of wonders, the lights still work. He bought a couple of electronic candles for the front windows, too. Odd how happy the tree and the candles have made me this week. It is the season of darkness and every bit of light helps.

Later I'll take a turkey induced nap as Gary watches some football game. Then I will go back to working on the collection of depressing Christmas stories.

Will this post go out today? Will there be computer access anywhere on Thanksgiving? And will I manage one tomorrow? I avoid Black Friday.

So dear readers, spend these holidays as you wish, be it extravagant or simple. Take time to be happy.

Breakfast in the Farmhouse

I pride myself on getting meals from stove to table piping hot. It isn't that easy in a strange kitchen and this farmhouse kitchen is definitely strange.

This morning Gary demanded a big breakfast. We had half a pound of bacon and half a dozen eggs to use up. There was a potato, too, and Gary dearly loves fried potatoes.

Warning: this is not a heart healthy menu, but we only eat a breakfast like this about four times a year.

The first problem was the bacon. I laid out the pieces in the big frying pan which I put on the big burner on the electric stove. I peeled and sliced the big russet potato and looked for some cooking oil to put in the smaller frying pan. There wasn't any oil. I wound up using butter. As it melted, I noticed the bacon was still raw on the big burner. The burner didn't work. This required moving a coffee maker from a burner on the right side of the stove. That one heated up right away but only when set on high.

Now the butter was melted in the other pan. I threw in the sliced potatoes but set the burner low because the potatoes couldn't be done before the bacon.

The next step was to chop onions to fry with the potatoes. That was when I found out there weren't any onions nor were there any dried onions in the spice cabinet. Gary said he had thrown out all the spices in a fit of clearing. Clearing, after all, is why we are here in Illinois in the first place.

So I progressed to the eggs which cracked nicely and went into a bowl. With only the two pans already on the stove, I figured scrambled was the way the eggs could be fried. I whipped them up with salt and pepper. Usually I would add some mustard, onions and green pepper for a little added zing. We didn't have any of those.

Meanwhile, I kept adjusting the burners under the potatoes and bacon. It was quite some balancing act getting everything cooked properly in the right time span. The bacon was done first but that worked out because I whisked the bacon out of the pan and threw the scrambled eggs into the remaining grease. (Remember, no cooking oil.)

In the end, I managed to get breakfast on the table piping hot and delicious. Now I understand that stove, though I suspect the next big breakfast will be at a campground where I will be cooking over a camp stove. That, at least, I am used to.

The Rug

A decade or so ago, a neighbor spotted a rug in an Oriental motif curbside. She got rid of the smell of cat urine, cleaned it up, then discovered she had no use for it. I did because the dining room carpet had been there for so long it had worn down to the rubber backing. It was already old when I moved in and I never had the money to buy anything to replace it. I put down the Oriental rug to cover the worst of of the spots.

Later, Gary and his nephew painted the dining room, tore up the old carpeting and replaced it with a bigger rug from his home in Menasha with linoleum tiles along the edge.

He moved the Oriental-like rug into my office and for a while, it was under my rolling chair. That constant wear didn't seem to be a good idea to Gary so he replaced the rug with a sheet of plastic to protect the floor. The rug went into my bedroom.

Rugs are one of the dangers to the elderly. I found myself tripping over that rug and after a couple of tumbles decided it was time to put it curbside. It didn't stay there for even an hour before packrat Gary rescued it. He would put it in the storage unit he said.

Last night, I went into the bathroom here in this Illinois farmhouse and tripped over the rug. He had brought the darned thing all the way from Wisconsin.

The idea of these trips to the farmhouse was to get it ready to sell. I took a look around and realized that Gary is throwing things out but he is bringing as many things in. I now understand that selling this place next year may not be possible.

The hoarding continues. I can't win. I may have to rent a storage unit of my own and move in.

Early Morning, Dixon, Illinois

I wake up to sunrise during these days in Illinois. In my Central Wisconsin, I come down to the kitchen for my breakfast in the dark at 6:00 am. Here in Illinois the sun is beginning to come up. I can watch the sun rise as I pot around making tea and toast. There are three reasons for that.

First, we are farther south. By coming here, we've gained at least an extra half hour of sunlight.

Second, the sunrise is not obstructed here. My Wisconsin home is surrounded by houses and trees. I don't see the sun come up until it gets past the obstructions. Illinois has fewer trees and we are out in the country. There are no farm buildings to the east of us.

Finally, the land is flat. Gary informed me yesterday that this farmhouse is on the highest point in Rock County. I laughed at that. In Wisconsin, the highest point in any county is on a high hill or even a mountain. This farmhouse is only on an almost imperceptible slope that comes up from the Rock River. The far away trees along the river are the only indication that there is a change. The treetops are just a fringe in the prairie scenery.

Gary says we can see the lights of Dixon from the farmhouse, but we have to climb up to the second floor to see them.

My mother, who grew up in North Dakota, would love this place. When she moved to Wisconsin she felt claustrophobic. Too many trees, she told me once. That is not a problem here, but I do miss my forests.

***

We have no Internet access in the farmhouse. To post on this blog, I must drive into Sterling or Dixon and do my best to find a hot wi fi spot. Yesterday, a Sunday, I spent half an hour struggling with the McDonald's connection before I could post and I never got around to getting my e-mail or checking on Facebook. Today I will try the library.

First Day - Dixon

This Illinois farmhouse kitchen is not that much different than the one in the house I grew up in. The kitchen cabinets are even older than the ones I knew in Wisconsin, but the wainscoting is the same with the same dark varnish. I expect it was that color to hide the stains of countless toddlers dragging their jam covered hands along the wood. I imagine some of that jam is still in the crevices. At least the painted walls above were kept clean until the children grew tall enough to leave marks there as well.

This morning I sit at the kitchen table writing a post on this notebook computer, though it will not be until later, when we go into town, that I will search out some place with Internet access.

Being here means hours without getting e-mail, without posting on Twitter, without Facebook, without the news, without being able to check my publishing account. I am going through withdrawal.

At least I have books to read, plenty of them, and when I tire of reading, I will go into the dining room to lay out my supplies: stamps, pens, and Christmas cards. By the time we leave here next Saturday, I will have the cards ready to go, save for the ones that will need a Christmas letter or photo inserted. Those will be done back in Seymour.

I brought along my address book which I have not updated, save for crossing names off, since the last century. By Saturday, I will have a new address book, much smaller than the present one.

Before we left yesterday, I put all my Christmas stories on a memory card. I hope to have them all edited by next Saturday.

Once a day, we'll be in Dixon or Sterling so that I can use the Internet. And meanwhile, I will be using this little computer non stop.

I think I will survive until I am home once again with my PC.