December 01, 2011

Only one more month to go in 2011! I should probably go ahead and start practicing writing 2012; that always trips me up when a new year comes along. Up until now, it's been a fairly balmy fall. We've had a couple of cold days, and even some flurries, but they'll be followed by a week of sunshine and temperatures in the 70's. Thanksgiving week was especially warm. I usually like to decorate my Christmas/winter window just after Thanksgiving, but the warm weather had me thinking I should be working in the garden instead. I waited 'til we had a gray, rainy day, which made it seem more wintery, and forged ahead with the window dressing. That gray rain turned out to be quite a nor'easter! (I've labeled it a nor'easter because the eastern window on our house was covered with raindrops, blown with great force almost completely horizontally, while the western windows were completely clear - quite the opposite of our normal pattern of storms/fronts.) When the rainclouds cleared away, they left behind them much colder temperatures. Looks like I decked my halls at the perfect time!

Okay, now for a total change of subject. Several weeks ago, Joe and I had serious pressure cooker incident. Joe put some black beans on to cook, and then we both went outside and completely forgot all about them. I think they were supposed to cook for 15-20 minutes, but it was over an hour before Joe suddenly remembered them. By that point, our entire compound smelled like burnt beans (we'd been hanging out in the yurt, and the smell hadn't quite penetrated that far yet), and Joe ran back to the house, only to find it full of black smoke. The good news is, our house was not burnt down. The bad news is, we did not have beans for dinner, and a VERY strong burnt bean odor had permeated every square inch of our house. Thankfully, Joe tackled the pressure cooker clean up, a task that is ongoing as every time we have used it since, it still gives off a burnt bean smell and dark black juices come oozing out of hidden crevices. Whenever weather permitted, we opened windows and doors to air out the house, but weeks later, it still smelled like we were a household of smokers. Then, yesterday, I accidentally stumbled upon an antidote! It did indeed involve stumbling, of sorts, as I clumsily knocked over a bottle of tea tree oil, which broke and spilled all over the floor. With tea tree oil, a little goes a long way! Even after mopping it up, the house still exudes a delightfully mild essence of tea tree oil - MUCH nicer than stale burnt bean smoke.


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