A Sweet Kind of Hodgepodge…

 

Y’all, it feels like 110 degrees, outside, ( it’s actually only 96) so I’m relaxing with the Wednesday Hodgepodge, inside, with the air conditioning on the low 70’s!  As they sometimes say here in the south, “My mama didn’t raise a fool!”

With all that being said, in the absence of a pool, I’m going to dive right into today’s Hodgepodge!  Today’s meme is based on the theme of “sweet”.

If you’d like to join in the fun, simply click Joyce’s button at the top of this post!

1. The sweetness of summer…where have you found it recently? If you’re in the Southern hemisphere, feel free to tell us about the sweetness you’re finding in winter.

For the past two Saturdays I’ve found sweetness in spending time with the entire family and getting to see some place different!  Both weekends, our son, Brad, and his wife, Jennifer, graciously offered to host everyone at their home in the country. (It was the first time any of us had been there since they moved in.) 

The first weekend we celebrated the Fourth of July, and the second weekend we celebrated Brad’s thirty-fifth birthday.  Of course, in these days of covid 19, we celebrated outside, socially distanced, with many fans blowing on us, but it was very sweet, none-the-less.  The grand kids all had a great idea, and celebrated with a water sprinkler underneath Evan’s trampoline!  I can’t believe how big they’ve all gotten!

2. Take your sweet time, sweet tooth, home sweet home, short but sweet, the sweet smell of success, sweet talk…choose a sweet idiom and tell us how it fits your life currently?

I’ll have to say “home sweet home” since that’s where we’ve been for the majority of the past four and one-half months!  I can count, on one hand, the number of “outings” we’ve had!

3. Sweet as honey, sweet as sugar, or sweet as pie, which phrase do you use when a sweet phrase is called for? What’s the last sweet treat you indulged in?

I don’t think I really use any of these phrases, but I’ll choose “sweet as sugar”.

The last sweet treat I indulged in [yesterday] was strawberry shortcake.  I made one, and it was delicious!

4. First thing that comes to mind when you hear the word fidget?

I think of those silly little “fidget spinners” that were all the rage a few years back.  I have a red one that lights up, somewhere…

None of my children were fidgety, but Brad was what I always called “a diddler”.  He was always touching things.  Now Brad has a little “diddler” of his own, now.  Isn’t Evan cute with his two front teeth missing?

(photo borrowed from Jennifer’s FB page)

5. Share with us one of your favorite childhood travel memories.

Sometimes, during the summer, my parents would let me go to Jacksonville, Florida to spend a week with my brother and his wife, who were nine years older than me.  I think I may have been about ten or eleven when this summer tradition began.  I loved the feeling of “independence” and always enjoyed the activities that my sister-in-law planned for me. (It might have been a trip to the beach, shopping, or something as simple as playing a board game.)  I haven’t thought about those trips in a long time, but I have fond memories of those days!

Random:

As of this week, our vegetable canning season has ended. I can’t tell you how happy I am about that!  I also can’t tell you how horrified we were when one of our freezers broke in the middle of canning season!  Do you realize there are NO new freezers to buy, at this time?  (There are no swimming pools either, but I don’t want one of those anyway.)

Fortunately, we’d kept a very old freezer that had belonged to Ed’s parents.  We plugged it up and it still worked.  A major crisis was averted, at least for now.

In the meantime, we called a repairman to see if our 46 year-old, broken freezer could be repaired since there are no new freezers to buy, at this time.  It turned out to be a simple fix, but not really a cheap one. ($147)  So far, so good, the freezer’s doing its job. Would you believe we’ve been through FOUR new freezers during the life cycle of this little 46 year-old freezer.  Crazy, is it not?  They don’t make stuff like they used to!

 

 

What A Weekend!

Wow!  What a weekend.  If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought it was Friday the 13th!

Our unbelievable weekend began on Friday morning, when Ed took the day off to do some repairs on our bedroom door.  This particular door leads to a small terrace outside, and it had been damaged from exposure.  Ed was planning to repair the damage, then install a storm door over the door, to protect it from the weather.    You know, it’s never a good thing when an outside door needs repairing, but it’s even worse when the door is located in the bedroom!

Unfortunately, Friday was also the day we discovered that one of our freezers was on the fritz!  Keep in mind, we have two freezers sitting beside each other in the laundry room.  One is 38 years old, while the other is less than 5 years old, and both are full of food.  I constantly keep a watchful eye on the old freezer, but was caught totally off-guard when  the newest freezer went on the fritz, by refusing to cut off.  It ran non-stop for at least 3 days, before I actually noticed!

Ed suggested that I unload the freezer, let it thaw for a while, then reload it and see if it worked any better.  I did as he suggested, even though the freezer is a frost-free freezer.  It didn’t help!   It was about this time that I realized we had a serious problem.  This freezer was not going to cycle off!

Meanwhile, Ed had begun repairs on the bedroom door–by removing it from its hinges!  Nothing was separating my bedroom from the 90 degree weather outside except an old vinyl tablecloth!  No door and a freezer on the brink of disaster…  It was about this time that I developed a headache–that lasted through most of the weekend!

By Friday night, Ed had the door back on the hinges, but it was crooked, and had a huge crack at the top!  We also had a fan blowing cold air on our over-heating freezer!   I went to bed with a heavy heart and a headache!  We’d decided that we’d have to purchase another freezer first thing the next morning, or we’d end up losing our food.  The freezer temperature was only 22 degrees, and the motor just kept on running.  I didn’t get much sleep that night…

On Saturday morning we drove 30 miles (one way)  in Ed’s daddy’s old truck to search for a new freezer.  Grandpa’s truck is over twenty years old, and has no working air conditioner!  Did I mention that it was in the nineties all weekend???  The truck is old and has a few “quirks”.  I prayed that we’d make it there and back without any problems.  Ed and I both took our cell phones–just in case!

We quickly discovered that the cost of freezers has greatly increased in five years–along with everything else!  We also quickly discovered there weren’t going to be many freezers to choose from because we didn’t have much time to shop.  Time was of the essence!   We picked one out, and were told it was in stock–only to discover it had been damaged by a forklift!  We doubled back to the previous store we’d visited, where we purchased our second choice, which unfortunately cost us eighty dollars more.  The store personel loaded the freezer into the back of Grandpa’s old truck, and we headed home.  The Lord answered my prayers, and we made it home without incident!

By Saturday night, we had the old freezer unloaded (for the second time) and removed from the laundry room.  The new freezer was in its place, and the frozen food was transferred into it.  We were also several hundred dollars poorer…  In spite of the freezer fiasco, Ed managed to get the bedroom door repaired and re-hung, and it was actually straight this time!  Unfortunately, when he went to install the storm door, he discovered that the store had given him the wrong color hinges and handle–and the store was closed by then!

It was also very unfortunate that Ed’s mom’s birthday fell on Saturday.  We’d planned to take her out to eat, in celebration of her 90th birthday.  Those plans had to be post-poned while we were dealing with crooked doors and failing freezers.  Hopefully, we can take her out to lunch soon.

If all of this wasn’t enough to be dealing with, the temperature reached 95 degrees on Saturday–which happened to be a record-breaking high!  Sunday’s temperatures were more of the same!  The extreme heat took a heavy toll on our garden, and by Sunday evening many of our plants, especially the squash and cucumbers,  looked like I’m feeling–beaten!

Happy Monday, everybody!  I hope your weekend was less stressful than mine…