the little wild kingdom

flowerbug

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the key parts are to dress enough in layers, to not to have things tight that cut off circulation and don't get wet.

like this morning when i went out to shovel i had my hat, scarf and gloves on and a coat and two layers on my legs. socks and then my crocs as there wasn't enough snow to worry about it getting in my crocs. i wasn't cold at all because the scarf warms up the air so it doesn't mess up my lungs or sinuses and i was moving to shovel a tiny bit of snow and my feet were warm from being moved and the blood circulating.

it may have been 15-20F but i wasn't cold at all.

i have pretty good boots for snow that is deeper, i've used them to walk in blizzards through a few feet of snow for many years. the coldest part of that is taking them off when i get back in.
 

flowerbug

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Mom has her new mixer out (she fried the old one after many years of use - the replacement is the same brand but i can tell it isn't as well made so i suggested to her to not overload it - she probably will ignore my suggestions but i tried) to make cookies.

i have 8hrs of music on. it's early. i'm going back to sleep. it's all background noise to me at this point. by the end of the day there will be a lot of cookies to eat and if i can sleep for a while that would be good as it will keep me out of the cookie dough. i will probably have one cookie and some milk eventually but it won't be anytime in the next few moments. :)

i do cleanup when she's done and sometimes i also help with packaging or frosting if we're doing any of that.

pretty much expect it will be chocolate chip, shortbread, and chocolate chip shortbread and perhaps some molasses with seedless raspberry jam on them.
 

frustratedearthmother

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pretty much expect it will be chocolate chip, shortbread, and chocolate chip shortbread and perhaps some molasses with seedless raspberry jam on them.

! I haven't decided on holiday baking yet. It won't be much, just a few nibbles to take to our Christmas Eve gathering.
 

flowerbug

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this isn't really holiday baking, it is a part of her normal routine baking. as i have not heard any cursing and haven't smelled smoke or the smoke detector going off she is doing ok. when i woke up i checked with her to make sure things were going ok and it was.

as i am one of those people who uses all of my senses and tries to remember details... the new mixer does sound lighter or higher pitched in running and much of it is made what i would consider cheaper - the question in my mind becomes did the engineers actually do their job properly or not? thus i'm going to be surprised if we get past year 3 with this one and don't experience issues.

i wanted to keep the bowl and some of the attachments from the old one but Mom was pissy and so to make her happy i did get rid of it all. now after seeing the new bowl is cheaper and has a handle that may come off too easily i'd really like that old bowl back. :( plus the attachments that i would have kept were more substantially made and so would likely not fail as easily as the new ones, but we don't really use them that often so perhaps it won't matter, but the analytical me says "ugh!" :) :) :) just me... i don't say any of this to Mom, she doesn't care until things break and then i have to deal with the results... oy... just life as it goes... :)
 

flowerbug

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it snowed a lot yesterday evening and into the morning (the wet heavy kind). and then this morning the power went out for a few hours. threw off my entire morning routine and schedule. we fired up the propane fireplace and had breakfast of hot chicken soup (we needed the can to warm up the water for coffee and hot chocolate which was dessert).

having turned the heat down to 65F overnight we woke up to a chilly morning but the fireplace did what it was supposed to do and we were warm enough until the power came back on. right when i was making the hot chocolate Mom says to me "What's that light doing on?" i had my back to it so i didn't notice. it was some trees that came down on the power lines. my brother said that our area was the only one in the state without power for our power company so that was a surprise to me. i figured with all the wet heavy snow that there would have been more troubles than us.

i waited to go out shovelling until 1pm and did an hour and took a break and had lunch then went back out to finish which took another hour and twenty minutes.

not as easy as it has been up to this point with the lighter snowfalls. i got a workout for sure today. i will probably sleep pretty good. :)

i've not been able to work on a few things i'd like to get to but made a bit of progress the other night when i could not get back to sleep. i'm not going to try to work on it tonight because i know better. sometimes it is better to wait and take a break than to make something worse or bad quality.
 
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