For such a time as this

Insomnia – It’s BAAAACK!  Grrrrrr.

So rather than laying in bed trying to figure which patio light across the lake is causing which light pattern on my wall, I decided to just get up.  Been up for a while now.  Fire’s going, all is quiet, except for the clickety clicket of my keyboard, and all is dark, but for the warm orange glow of the fire and the cool blue glow of my monitor.

It’s nice having a wood stove in one’s office.  Gives a lovely ambience.  Not to mention warmth.

We have had some wicked weather in the Northwest.  I know the midwest and east are getting hammered by snow and ice, but so are we.  We don’t have major news corporations headquartered here, so the rest of the country doesn’t hear much about it.  Weve had snow storms like I remember when I was a kid – 8-12 inches in a day, over several days.  Yeah, I buy global warming.  Uh-huh.

We had snow at the coast, too, for several days, but that huge furnace known as the Mighty Pacific finally warmed things up.  Now we have rain while folks 60 miles from us are knee deep in snow and ice.  Hwy 18 from Salem to Lincoln City was closed Saturday night and Sunday because of bad roads.  I must have been the last person to drive over the Coast Range on Saturday.  That was EXCITING!  Let’s hear it for trail rated Jeep 4×4!  Good little Liberty.

I am Oregonian.  I have Jeep.  Ugh Ugh!

I thought of my grandson Jack through all of this.  His mom told me he loves cool weather and she just can’t figure out why.  He’s an Oregonian too, just like his daddy.  It’s genetic.  Don’t fight it.  Just come visit.

It’s almost Christmas.  Our little fake tree (I know, I know.  Oregon is the Christmas tree growing capital of the world, and I have a fake tree.  I also have asthma and allergies, okay?) has been up since Thanksgiving.  It is now as decorated as it’s going to be – candy canes, gingerbread cookies, antiquey ornaments – the gifts are stacked high under it, and it looks Christmas-y.  But there’s a dark side to all this.  The gingerbread men keep losing their heads and committing suicide. 

No really!  Everyday now, at least one gingerbread man will take the leap of death onto my, fortunately, newly shampooed carpet.  Upon discovery, it is promptly eaten and all evidence of this macabre pattern is eliminated, except for the occasional ornamentless rafia bow still on the tree.  They say the holidays are the most depressing time of the year.

Ho Ho Ho!

I’ve been quite impressed with myself lately, at least in my cognitive functioning, and you have to understand that’s not pride, it’s RELIEF!  I haven’t had a brain for two years!  So the fact that I’ve been able to keep up with the paperwork my husband/business partner is producing as he crams to meet a year-end deadline, help my daughter learn functions and logarithms as she crams to meet a college term deadline, complete grant applications on time and participate in various community initiatives, and still maintain a household and do everything I normally do as mom/wife/administrator/etc, is really quite extraordinary.  And unusual, quite frankly. 

Anyway, a few mornings ago, as I was making breakfast for my family, I looked into my messy post-Thanksgiving fridge and realized I had all these little containers taking up space, one of which was a half-full quart of whipping cream.  Since I wasn’t baking a pie and I had no use for more whipped cream, I thought instead I’d make some homemade herb butter.  I’ve done it before and it’s quite rich and delicious.

Normally, I make butter in a mixer.  Set it on whip, get it to whipped cream, and then whip it just a little more until it turns to butter.  Easy, but time consuming.  This time I tried something new.  Our vintage-looking blender exploded (Tim was making a smoothie but the pieces of the pitcher part hadn’t been put together properly – not his fault.  Short story:  gasket wrapped around the blade, motor locked up, sparks, smoke, no more blender) and my mother, ever in the give-away-my-old-stuff-to-my-daughter mode, gave us her old blender.  The new old blender has lots of settings where our old old blender had just high and low.  Since WHIP was one of the settings I thought, “why not whip cream in the blender?”

You’re already getting ahead of me, aren’t you?  Follow the logic here:  mixer – effective, but very slow.  Blender – very fast, but…

Okay, so as cream thickens in the blender, little air pockets are created that keep it from blending further, so of course, I had to take the lid off occasionally and adjust things with a rubber spatula.  And as it got thicker still, I just took the lid off entirely because I was scraping the sides so much.

Note to self:  When blades are turning that fast, there is a lot of power and, even more significant, VELOCITY!  And when something happens, it happens really fast………

Who turned out the lights?

Why does everything smell like cream?

Oh, there you are?

hee hee hee hee hee hee