Soggy Saturday odds and ends

 This is life around here at the moment.

According to our local weather guy, Ed Piotrowski, out of 44 days in this year so far, our area has had at least some rain on 29 of them. It's pouring today and the forecast doesn't call for any dry weather until next Wednesday or Thursday! Ed says that we're above average in actual rainfall but nowhere near records, so for the moment at least we're not having any substantial flooding problems. Everyone is longing to see some sunshine, though. A couple hours' drive to the north and you'd run into a lot of snow and ice. I suppose you could say that we're lucky in just having cold rain to contend with, but it's disappointing to not even get a little bit of snow with all this precipitation. At least snow is a pretty novelty in these parts, whereas rain is just messy and cold and yuck. 

I've also noticed that nothing is blooming early this year. Normally if we have lots of sun and plenty of rain in February trees will start to flower prematurely, and then we worry about a hard freeze ruining them. There are buds swelling, but no signs of blooming yet. (That's a good thing). I'm looking forward to my next door neighbor's magnificent tulip magnolia coming into flower, and the redbuds off in the woods turning pink. At this point I'd just be satisfied to see a little sun, though!

Poor George. He hates going out in the rain to pee and poop. For that matter, he hates going out when the ground is wet even if it's stopped raining for a while. He'll hold it and hold it until I get worried and put a leash on him and make him go out. Such a prissy way for a big giant half pit bull to act! Ginger never was that finicky, but then she spent her first three years living the life of a carefree country dog. She loved being outdoors in all kinds of weather. George came straight from the shelter to a suburban neighborhood home and he definitely wants to be an inside dog. 

                                                               Rain is for suckers.

There's nothing much to blog about today. 

Oh, wait, I remember something I wanted to tell you about from last night! It's pretty gross and it made me so mad! On Wednesday I bought a pre-seasoned pork roast that is meant to be made into pulled pork. You put this brand of roast in the crockpot on high heat for 4 hours and then shred it up when it's done. We've had one before and it was yummy. So I bought one on Wednesday to be cooked Friday afternoon. I got off work early yesterday (and it's a long weekend, yay!) so I dashed home and put it on to cook so we could eat at a reasonable time. When the roast slid out of the packaging I noticed it had a kind of  odd, almost slimy texture. I thought that was probably because of all the spices and sauce rubbed into the meat, and again, I was hurrying to get the 4 hour cooking time started so I didn't stop to look closely. Mistake. At 7:30, when it was time to eat, I shredded the meat and noted it had a kind of weird smell. So I sampled a small bite. And it was most definitely off. It tasted kind of sour, and not in a good vinegar-based sauce kind of way. By now alarm bells were ringing in my head, so I dug in the trash.....

Then I flipped the package over and had a look at the expiration date. 

I nearly threw up. I had swallowed a small bite of pork that had been expired for a month.

I'll be going to the Food Lion down the road and finding the manager today to complain. This particular store has been going downhill lately but this is a bit too much. A person could get seriously ill from expired pork! Last week I was in the other Food Lion a couple miles away (the one I shopped at before we moved to this house) and I was stunned at how much cleaner, brighter, and well stocked it was compared to the one I've been using. After I go complain today, I think I resume shopping at the other location even though it's a tiny bit less convenient to get to. And you can bet I'll be checking dates on food a lot more closely from now on.

I didn't realize it was a long weekend until late last week. Monday is President's Day. I wish there was somewhere to go, or something different to do, but there just isn't. It's wet, it's February, and there's still a pandemic. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, but I don't imagine many people are feeling very romantic this year. It's never a big deal in this house, but I'll be glad for the chance to buy discounted chocolates on Monday. And for the extra day off, of course, even if I spend it at home, sitting inside...again. 

What about you, dear reader? What's going on in your world this weekend? I hope you all find small ways to treat yourself to something you enjoy over the next couple of days. Goodness knows we all can use it right now!

Long weekend

It's a three day weekend (Martin Luther King Jr. Day is tomorrow, for my friends outside of the USA) and the extra day off is very welcome. I know we've only been back in school for two weeks, but my job is a lot more demanding than I used to give myself credit for. After hundreds of interactions with people every day, all of whom need something from me, plenty of downtown feels essential for my mental health.

I did have Marla and Martina over for drinks last night. It had been a while, and Martina had texted me earlier in the week wondering if we could get together and catch up. I made whiskey sours, which were a hit, if the level of whiskey in the bottle the next morning was any indication.

Yes, that was a brand new bottle at the start of the evening. Martina only had a drink or two, since she had to drive, but Marla's husband had dropped her off and was coming back to collect her when she was ready to leave, so the two of us drank the majority of it. I'd made a nice large batch of guacamole and had two kinds of chips to go with it, plus homemade black bean chili and crackers, so there was plenty of food to soak up the alcohol! Ahem.

Gregg and I have a day off together tomorrow! Just by chance, tomorrow was supposed to be his day to service his school aquariums, and of course schools are all closed for the MLK holiday. Brace yourselves for our exciting plans!! We're going to...………….trim tree branches and shrubs around our house and do some serious yard maintenance! Exciting, eh?! Haha. But. It's hard to tackle big jobs together given how much Gregg works and so we're taking advantage of the opportunity. It should be a great time to prune: a serious cold snap is upon us and we're to have temperatures well below freezing every night this week. I'm glad to see winter making a small comeback. It's been warm and rainy and humid, very unseasonable for January. So anyway, tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and cold, perfect. We've also discovered that right around the corner from our house (seriously, less than a block from the entrance to our neighborhood) is an access point for the Florence County Rail trail. It has paths and bridges over our local creek, Jeffries Creek, and from portions of the trail you can see our chimney and our neighbors' back yards. We'll probably take the dogs for a good walk there tomorrow, too. It should be a nice day.

What are you up to this weekend? Happy MLK day to my American friends!

Long weekend!!

Today is the start of a four-day weekend for me! I'm almost beside myself with joy. I never, ever get even a "normal" weekend off, but this was time off I requested a couple of months ago. Written requests are the only way to get weekends off at our store, unless you're one of the favored, "popular" employees (and I'm certainly not one of those!). So I am very happy to have a little stretch of days to do as I please.

The first order of business today is housework. We've fallen behind on it, and the house is too messy for me to enjoy myself unless I do something about it. Also, Ginger the dog needs a good bath, and her bedding needs to be laundered. She's kind of smelly! Hee hee. But after I spend a few hours today catching up on cleaning and pet care, I'll have the next three days to do whatever I like!

Tomorrow I plan to go to the farmer's market early in the day, and then in the afternoon a friend and her fiancee will be coming over for margaritas and hot dogs cooked on the grill. Sunday will be a quiet day spent at home, reading and relaxing by myself, and then on Monday my friend and I are taking a girl's day trip to Huntington Beach state park for beach combing and bird watching!

Huntington Beach is one of my favorite spots in our whole state. There are miles of clean beach, a saltwater marsh, a long jetty stretching out into the ocean, the remains of a nineteenth century "castle" called Atalaya on the beach that was built by a sculptress and her husband as their summer home, and across the highway there is one of the Southeast's great little-known treasures...Brookgreen Gardens. Brookgreen is a huge sculpture garden/wildlife preserve that is absolutely beautiful. I'm not sure if we'll be going there, since we're mostly planning a beach day, but if we do I'll take lots of pictures to share. Meanwhile, here are some links with nice pictures.

Huntington beach state park

Brookgreen Gardens

Atalaya Castle

Happy weekend, everyone!

Long weekend

I am about to have three days off in a row. I haven't had a three day weekend since before the holidays, unless you count the week I took off in January when my husband had surgery. I don't think time spent in the ICU with a seriously ill loved one really counts as any sort of holiday, though.

I requested this weekend off months ago to attend the wedding of one of my dearest friends. The wedding, I'm sad to report, was cancelled a few weeks ago. This has left me with a three day weekend, and no real plans. I would love to get away, but it's a bad time for it. GB has one more chemotherapy treatment (next week) and is not feeling well enough to do much. Money is also tight, and we don't have extra cash for frivolous things like weekend trips. I'm thinking of spending the free time spring cleaning, and doing some of the chores I kept putting off all winter. I don't really want to do chores for three days, but I know I would love the end result!

 Maybe I'll do just do chores in between taking naps and reading in the hammock. To keep everything in balance, of course.