The City Mouse in the Country

     Earlier in the week, I finally managed to get most of the house pressure washed.   This has been something that I’ve wanted to do for some time and kept getting put off due to weather, other commitments and God knows what else. Getting the green off!      Notice I said “ most” of the house.   I was only able to reach about seven or eight feet into the air.   So nearly all the second floor of the home is still in need of a good cleaning, I didn’t have the right tools to go any higher.          To do that, I would need a steady ladder and a longer hose.   Two things I don’t currently have but will be resolved shortly (probably by the time I publish this).   It’s just two more things to add to my growing collection of things.    The accumulation of things is something I'm trying to avoid but that's another post for another time.      I’ve owned homes before, both here In Pennsylvania and in Florida.    Over time I have managed to build a nice collection of hammers, wrenche

       When you own a home or any piece of property, you realize how much you don’t really know.    You become a plumber, an electrician, a landscaper and a painter.   You become, or are forced to become, a lot of little things as part of being a homeowner.   It’s in the fine print of that contract you signed.        I thought about that and 1001 little things during the last few days.  Recently my riding lawnmower needed a blade replaced, which I replaced with mulching blades, only for me to hit a hidden root with it again – on a tree that was scheduled to come down this weekend.   Now the mower assembly will not engage at all; shutting down the whole machine.   We have to have it repaired for the second time within a week.       I thought about how the summer thunderstorms moving through our area all this week were turning our “dry creek bed” project into a very wet, very muddy issue.   I’m also realizing that this is why I should have put a landscape barrier down (to help preve

           What makes you fall in love with a house?  Is it the layout, the square footage, the way the sunlight dapples the floor?  Susan and I fell in love with our house for a lot of different reasons.   We loved the wood burning stove and hard wood floors.  We loved that we had roughly 2.5 acres of mostly wooded land.  Sue loved that the kitchen, although small, had original Amish handcrafted wooden cupboards.   However I fell in love with the house when I was walking through the backyard and realized that the small "creek" that flowed between two hills and away from our house was not a natural feature at all.   It was a drainage ditch that looked natural and drained the water into the sewer system out by the road..     It was man made, I could see where the cut for it began at the top of the hill and had been obscured by some underbrush.   I would trace its path down along the hill and how closely it followed the lay of the land.        Someone long ago dug it to keep th

   You, lucky reader, are in for a treat today.    The post was actually written before the Easter Holiday and varied in length, detail and focus.   While not a Christian, I felt that going into the pagan origins of tthe Holiday would upset some people for example.   However at the end of day you have to post something, even if your nat happy with it.  This post deals mainly with my disappointment in not getting to power the house with my generator even once so far since buying the damn thing.   That post is below. Although we did starts remodeling the bathroom over the Easter weekend by ripping out the ugly blue carpet that was in it.    We discovered mostly neutral linoleum under that which, surprise, is in good shape. It’s still ugly and will still get replaced, but it will work for now.    Happy belated Easter, and you can read a bit more about my holiday here .     "Oh Bother" said Sue, looking outside.  "I'm afraid my Easter decorations will blow al

      I'm going to keep this simple.   One of the reasons why Sue and I moved back to Western Pennsylvania was due to our desire for healthier living.       Sue has had some various health problems through the years and has managed to fight them all.  She's a strong resilient woman and one of the many reasons I love her is that she is a fighter.   Many people would have given up, but she keeps on keeping on.  For privacy, I will not go into what ails her.      I, on the other hand, have a pretty strong constitution and want to keep it that way.  So when my doctor starts telling me he's worried about "cholesterol" and "high blood pressure" I can't help but pay attention.  Both my parents have heart disease and it's something that I've been aware of my whole life.  Both Sue and I actually try to maintain a low salt diet for example.       That's tough to do when your a hedonist and a foodie at heart.  Living out here in the country does lea

      I was thinking about something that I posted on my companion Facebook page as I drove home my brother's house in Pittsburgh the other night.   I was also thinking about how in the previous week or so I had submitted some previous things that I wrote for review with a paying publisher.        A few years ago, I wrote a short story because it demanded to be written.  I was up every day for several months at 5 AM, writing for two or 3 or 4 hours.   The short story become a novella...then a novel.  I edited it and reedited it in the months since, then a published author friend of mine gave me an "in" with her publisher.  I submitted my work.   It was  rejected, which is not that uncommon.  I took the rejection letter in stride...and took their advice to heart as well.   They pointed out a few strengths and weakness's in my writing as well as giving me the tools to improve my work.  When I resubmitted the piece, it was still rejected but my overall score was higher

    Hey everyone!  Did you know that this page now has a companion Facebook page?    It will have articles, memes and such that interest me that relate to this page but don't really apply.  Be sure to check it o ut!     OK...I hate cliche's.  Those terms and expressions that have been so overused that they lost meaning.       As I tried to write this blog entry, I found myself using more and more of them.  That's not creative, that's not even that interesting.  There is absolutely no reason that I should be boring myself...AND I AM THE FREAKING AUTHOR!       The problem is that Susan and I got into a little bit of discussion the other day.   It was over my current hobby of making cheese.   I was planning on making an Amish cheese that required the buttermilk to basically "spoil" before using it.  The correct way to do this is to use uncultured buttermilk and "culture" for 24 hours before making the cheese.     I let me "cultured" buttermi

      I'm slowly but surely moving ahead with my cheese hobby. Recently I found some Facebook groups and other resources that are helpful in how to make cheese and what equipment I need,  including how to build a cheese press and make a cheese "cave."   Although I swear they are all hiring professional photographers to take pictures of their cheese!     I'm still trying to keep it simple, however after the success of the Insta Pot Paneer cheese , I could not help but wonder what other cheeses I could make in an Insta Pot.   I found three different types of cheeses actually.   Cottage Cheese, which frankly I never really liked the taste of and wasn't interested in making.  Mozzarella and Ricotta were the other two.  I picked the recipes that I did simply because they didn't require any rennet or starters like many of the other recipes I found.     I was unsure if I was ready for Mozzarella yet.       Out of all the cheese's this is probably the one that

       Hey everyone!  Did you know that this page now has a companion Facebook page?    It will have articles, memes and such that interest me that relate to this page but don't really apply.  Be sure to check it o ut!        I have to be honest, at no time did I ever think I would want to make cheese.   My first effort , done more as an experiment than anything else, turned out very well.  So well in fact, that I wondered what else I could make.   I wanted to keep it simple. My first Cheese, misshapen and all      Keeping it simple means different things to different people of course.   I was hooked when I started to look up exactly what rennet was.  Which brings up the whole question of what the hell primitive man was thinking when they decided to put the milk back into the intestines of a dead animal or what lead to that discovery...and moving on.     The earliest cheeses are probably similar to the Farmer's cheese that I made earlier (see link above) and that got me looki