Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

Over the years I seem to have a horrible track record of keeping up with this blog.  Life gets busy and in the way of blogging, the old laptop was cantankerous, and blogging from a cell phone is a bore, especially since it won't import photos very well.  I am not sure how well I will be able to get photos into this blog from this new laptop, but I am going to try.  Copy and paste does not seem to work well from the laptop into this blog, so I am not sure what to do to streamline the operation.   Anyway.  It has been since January that I have made an entry here.  I do have a draft post from late January, but I haven't gone back to read it.   Many things have happened, as they have a way of doing, over the course of a few months.  Ellen had a great first year of college.  She has now signed up to be a leader during Welcome Week at the college in August. She always did that in high school and I expect she will have a blast doing so in ...

 It is a new year here for the House of Howard; as it is all over the world.  We, any of us here, rarely make resolutions.  It is just another year to live and love.  I usually set a few goals; center my life around my faith more, write more, both on here and for my writing group, declutter some more, buy less.  That is pretty much it. We do have a few plans for the new year.  Ellen will go back to uni here in a few days; I think her first day back is the 12th. I am going to concentrate, as I said, on writing, managing my alpha gal and histamine intolerance issues, and on gardening.  Last summer I pretty much failed at gardening for several different reasons, I just felt so awful from this syndrome. This year I am on a med for it, plus I am learning how to manage it.  I am also going to garden a bit differently...  But I digress.  Ellen and I are planning on going to California to visit family over Memorial Day weekend. We are hoping to ...

 Back in the days of my youth and naivety, I used to think when I reached my 50s life would be slow and staid and not much going on.  I figured I would spend my days sitting in my rocking chair and thinking about days gone by.  My 50s are rapidly running out and so far that hasn't happened.  For one thing, I don't even own a rocking chair.   I realize my parents, particularly my mother, had quite a deal to do with my earlier perceptions of my future.  My parents kept to themselves for the most part. We had extended family that would visit off and on, but we didn't entertain anyone aside from family members. My parents didn't belong to any organizations or clubs or suchlike.  It just wasn't how either of them were raised.  As a family in my younger years we would on occasion go to the beach. When my uncles would visit they and my dad would go surf fishing. My dad had been a lumberjack back in the day, but by the time I came along he worked as ...

 It has been a mild fall this year.  We had a brief skiff of snow here a couple of weeks ago, maybe an inch.  It didn't stick around long.  It fell on a Monday afternoon.  Ellen went to college, then stayed overnight with a couple of friends out there.   Ellen:  This past year has been a big one for Ellen. She graduated from high school and started college.  She is majoring in psychology with the end goal of high school counselor.   She is doing well in college.  I think she has realized that indeed she did NOT in fact "peak" in high school.  She is having fun in her UAC group, University Activities Committee.  They have planned a couple of Bingo nights.  There was the Grocery Bingo night; in which a couple/three of the members, Ellen was one, went grocery shopping at Walmart and bought over $500 worth of groceries; both food and cleaning products.  Then that evening they played Bingo and if they won they go...

This is Chica. We figure Chica must be a bit over a year old now. We added her to our family the day before Thanksgiving last fall, which was about Nov 27th, I believe. We figured she wasn’t quite 8 weeks old so she would have been born in early October.  She wasn’t blessed with a great deal of brains, which is how she was separated from her Mama. Or at least that is my theory   Since she got herself stranded up a tree two different times, I have not let her go outside alone since last winter.  She does go to the cat habitat, as we refer to it.  She likes to go out there in the mornings after her breakfast  I bring her back in about mid day.   She is stretched out on my lap on the sofa at this very moment.  I’m glad she likes to curl up on my lap  I missed that when Matilda died.  Smudge isn’t a lap cat   This is Smudge. Smudge has one interest in life. Eating.  You can’t really tell from these pictures, but Smudgie is about 16 poun...

 This is a grilled cheese sammy I made for Ellen a couple of days ago. It’s on keto bread, so low carb. But it has real cheese on it, which I can no longer indulge in.   Apparently I truly have become histamine intolerant or something. On the way to the Paul McCartney concert my “new” pants I got at a local thrift store set off my histamine alarm bells and my ears buzzed for the next 12+ hours; tinnitus I believe. In the thrift stores they don’t wash donated clothes but spray or steam them with some sort of solution. Even after I’d washed them the smell was super strong. I put a throw over my lap when I realized what was going on, but the damage was done. I’ve washed both pair of jeans twice since we came home and they still smell!  They must have really doused them. Anyway.  The point being. I’ve had to get new pants because I’ve lost about 20 lbs so far. I probably could lose more weight  but my “safe” foods include too many carbs; including oatmeal, rice, pot...

Yesterday we took a long drive to Tulsa to catch a concert from a living legend!  Yes. Paul McCartney!  He is going pretty strong for a guy in his 80s!   We stayed in a motel just a bit on the edge of the city. Then Gary drove us downtown. The traffic wasn’t all that bad. Not half as bad as Portland Oregon, that’s for sure! We had an absolute blast and I don’t regret one minute of it!  

So Gary is progressing right along with the house across the road.  He got the gross sink, fridge and range torn out of the kitchen and a new sink put in.  He put in new dry wall pieces and plywood around the bathtub area, then he painted the bathroom.  All of the flooring had been ripped out of the house by the ex-wife.  So Gary went around pulling out all of the staples and sanding down the plywood to smooth it out. A Lowe's rep came out this morning to measure the house for new flooring.  It came out to a total of 568 feet.  That includes the two bedrooms, the mini laundry room, kitchen, bathroom and living room. She put on her report that the subflooring looked like new.   Gary got a call from the store stating that since the subflooring was so bad they were going to have to put down new plywood and padding under the linoleum.  And to top it off they were going to charge us for 1000 square feet of the flooring, for a grand total of $5800 ...

Oh look. I’ve figured out how to get pictures into a blog post from my phone. Hooray!   Well. This will help me out tremendously because I don’t always have the time, patience, or access to blog from the laptop. Not to mention our internet is horribly spotty. Up and down all day long. Gary says if we weren’t getting it for free we would be looking for a different provider. Hmph! **** At the moment, after midnight on this Friday night waiting on pins and needles for my child to get home from a trip to Springfield with friends, I cannot remember if I have talked about this in here before or not.  But this Alpha Gal Syndrome, while my case is supposedly mild, has morphed my system into some sort of histamine intolerance, or mast cell activation syndrome. This is not uncommon, according to what I read in the various AGS groups on Facebook. In a nutshell it means that every strong smell, from food to household cleaners and soaps, lotions, deodorants…whatever… gives me an allergic r...

 A month after my mother passed away in December 2021, our neighbor passed away in his truck in his driveway.  That there is a long story in and of itself, but we will save that for later.  Though...well...on with the story.  After he passed we decided that we would attempt to purchase the property; not necessarily because we wanted it for ourselves per se, but because we didn't want anyone else to have it.  We wanted to be able to control who lives there.  From hence forth I shall refer to the neighbor as "Tuna" because that is what he wanted everyone to call him, something about his having been in the Navy when he was younger.  (He was in his 70s when he passed.) Gary always referred to him as Fish.  Haha..  Tuna did not have any children of his own.  And he was divorced.  He and his ex, Betty (not her real name) had moved to Missouri from Massachusetts in the mid 90s, I believe.  They bought this place together, mostly using...

  "It seems hard to believe" is the somewhat tired phrase that all parents use as their children grow up.  I remember twelve years ago driving by the high school and thinking; "Wow, someday Ellen is going to be going here." It seemed like it would be forever 'til she got there. But now for real it seems hard to believe that high school is behind her and she is rocketing along in time toward her adult life and career. This past weekend was Welcome Week at the university, so she has been there meeting people and learning the ropes, as it were, already.  She is still nervous about making friends and I know the first few days are going to be awkward. I am sure, though, that she will soon find her "place" and make plenty of friends. She was worried that she won't get the full college experience because she will be living at home, but she was reassured because this past weekend she met many other commuters who live in different communities around the uni...

 One of the great joys of summer are the melons!   On Friday a neighbor messaged me and said they had a bunch of watermelons and did we want any.  Yes!  Of course!  Ha!  Who can turn down a free watermelon? They also had a pile of cantaloupe too, so I got a couple of those.  Both Gary and I have lots of fun memories surrounding melons. Back when we were kids there was no such thing as seedless watermelon, so almost invariably as kids we ended up outside with a wedge of watermelon so we could spit the seeds out into the yard. We of course would have to listen to our parents telling us to be careful and not swallow the seeds or else we'd grow vines out of our ears! I distinctly remember that my mom would give my dad a large round slice from the center of the melon in a plate and he would sit and eat it with a spoon.  Now, cantaloupe was a different story of course. The ones we got back then weren't huge. I vaguely remember that half of one was ...

 Today I've nothing really much to say, but just wanted to start posting pictures again. For some reason my iPhone photos aren't linked to my Google account, so it won't post pictures on here when I try to blog from the phone. But here I am on the laptop, where my Google account and the accompanying photos on it, are linked to my old Android. Strange, but true.   Ellen will probably flip if she ever sees this photo, but I'm posting it anyway because it brings up many of my own childhood memories.   Where I grew up our lives in the summer centered around gardening; weeding, hoeing, tilling, harvesting, shelling peas, snapping green beans, shucking corn, and watering with garden hoses. There on the North Coast of California, in Humboldt County, it rarely got up to 80 degrees in the summer. I didn't even know what air conditioning was back then. During the summers back then it didn't rain.  Humboldt County is known for being quite wet in the fall and winter, b...

 Happenings from the House of Howard  Ellen has resumed pursuing her interest in playing drums.  Since she has been working this summer she saved up enough money and bought herself an electronic (I think that's what they call them) drum set.  She is faithful to practice every day.  I'm glad she has this outlet because I think it helps with her anxiety and general stress to get in there and whack away at the drums.  She has always loved music, it helps her deal with stress. Since I posted about it on Facebook there have been several people who have mentioned that they had always fancied playing drums, but had never followed through with it. I'm glad Ellen has followed through. It will give her something to occupy her, and something to strive for.   Gary has been super busy working on well repairs the past couple of weeks; seems like almost every day last week he went out to one job or another. I'm thankful he has Doug to help him. They enjoy going ...

 Actually, let's do the vaguely funny first.   Last week Gary and his sister Gail went on a driving tour to Kentucky and West Virginia and a loop around back home.  I didn't want to go this time, I don't do well on driving tours, Ellen had to work, and it just didn't work this year for all of us to go.  So Ellen and I stayed home and had the care of the chickens and Gail's cat. Princess, the cat, stayed in our little cat "habitat" that Gary had made several years ago for this purpose. We parked it in the shade and I made sure to take her frozen 2 liter bottles of ice and place on her shelf to cool her off if she needed it.  She did great.  I kept her food and treats in the house, of course.  One morning I got up and found the bag of cat treats on the laundry room floor; torn open with only 2 remaining.   I had wondered why Smudge hadn't been in to wake me up for her breakfast! Crazy pudgy cat. ************************** This past week, t...

 Life is not all gloom and doom in the House of Howard.  About a year and a half ago in the fall my sister-in-law planted 4 little thornless blackberry starts she'd ordered from a plant/seed company.  She wasn't sure if they were going to survive, but she plunked them into the ground and prayed for the best.  She had to make sure they were covered with netting to protect them from the deer and the ground hogs that wander through.   Last year she got quite a bit off of them, enough to take up some room in her freezer and provide her with a few berry pies over the course of the year.   Those 4 little canes went crazy, put off all sorts of shoots and they are bearing like they are on fire. Her freezer is as full as it can get and I have over a gallon of them in my fridge that I am going to work up into jelly or jam or preserves of some kind this week. Ha! Two weeks ago I'd put up a couple pints of freezer jam with them. They are starting to slow down...

Reading and writing are in my blood, you know.  My mom always told the story of the first night she and my dad brought me home from the hospital after I was born; my dad propped me in his lap and read the daily newspaper to me.  And this continued to be the theme of my early life; being read to. As far back as I can remember we always had kids books in the house, and my mom would read them to me. After I reached a certain age I am sure I wasn't interested in listening to my dad read the newspaper, but my mom read any number of books to me. I can't remember them all, but I do remember every year in school during the book fair I would order a pile of books. One series I remember from elementary school was Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books.  I remember a couple different series by Beverly Cleary; Ramona Quimby and all of her adventures, and Henry Huggins. The Encyclopedia Brown series about a boy detective, those were fun books.  Oh, oh, and I remember my b...

 It is funny/aggravating that my android gave me no trouble in downloading pictures to this blog.  My iphone is giving me fits.  It won't download them, I wait and wait and wait for a picture to download, then it tells me it can't and just quits.  Argh! So here's another quit post without a picture.  A post about pretty much nothing at all.  We have been busy running around back and forth and doing this and that; as most families are. Ellen has been enjoying her job at the resort on the river.  The drunk people test her patience, but they tend to tip pretty well.  Ha!  Gary has been delivering gravel, working on wells, and working around the place here.  There is always something for him to do.  He has made a flatbed out of the blue farm truck.  Yesterday we went to Lebanon and stopped by a garage sale where he found a long truck toolbox to put along one side of the flatbed.  It looks really good.  At that same garage...

 This is is a picture of my father; Lawrence Corley Davis.  I am not sure how old he was here, but he was a very handsome man, with bright blue eyes and very decided dietary ideas.   I won't go too much into the back story, because in light of my recent alpha-gal syndrome diagnosis my focus here is going to be on food, but to set the scene; when I came into being we lived on a 5 acre farm in N. Calif.  There were two houses on the property, my dad, mom, brother and I lived in one, and my dad's mother lived in the other. They were very much farmers; had a milk cow, raised a large garden every year, preserved by canning or freezing...etc.  My Grandmother Davis passed when I was about a year old, but my dad continued with the farming; with cow and garden and even a pony.  When the cow had a bull calf it would be butchered at a certain age and put in the freezer.   When I got about 5 years old my dad was in his 50s (he was 46 when I was born) and...

 The first thing I've learned that I think is really the most important is that calling AGS a "red meat allergy" is almost a misnomer; it barely touches the tip of the ice berg.   It's actually an allergy to the carbohydrate "galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose" found in the cells tissues and fluids of non-primate mammals..even cats and dogs.  However upon researching it, I have found that I am probably already conditioned to be used to the alpha-gal present in my cats/dogs, so they do not cause an allergic reaction when I am around them.  This doesn't make sense to me, but I have read online that some people DO become allergic to their pets.  I guess it depends on the severity of a person's sensitivity.  I supposedly have a moderate sensitivity. This alpha-gal carb is also present in pretty much every mammal byproduct and also in all dairy products. I have to scan labels for the following ingredients; gelatin, glycerin, lactose, casein, whey, stearic acid...