Pisces Moon Studio

I remember reading somewhere that INTPs have the remarkable ability to walk around something for years and simply not see it. Put an item down on a flat surface, and there it stays unremarked, unnoticed, and invisible until the owner has some occasion to notice it again.

This is true.

The occasion is that I need to rearrange furniture in my studio to make room for a new piece of equipment, which means I need to get rid of some stuff and find more efficient ways to store other stuff. All of which is fair notice: I’m going to post some of the stuff-going-out-the-door in the next few days and hope that you, Gentle Reader, will decide that my stuff just has to come snuggle up with your stuff.

You’ve been warned. Check back.

This burning question arose as a result of a discussion today on the QuiltArt list. As often happens, my mind took a left turn and I started to wonder about the two terms for the dish.

I’ve always called it dressing unless it’s Stove Top in a box; I’ve lived all my life in Alabama but my parents are from Ohio. My in-laws, from Tennessee, always called it stuffing, which still sounds weird to me after 32 years. One of the QA responses noted that it’s “stuffing when cooked in the bird and dressing when it’s cooked in a separate dish.” Although this makes a lot of sense, I’d never heard it — but then I don’t watch Bobby Flay or Alton Brown, who appear to be the authoritative sources for this information.

So I went to Google and found this interesting little article from a newspaper in Missouri:

Pecans? Rice?? Never heard of them used in dressing in this part of the South. Oysters and chestnuts, yes. And there are some really outré recipes out there calling for everything from oranges to pumpkin, although none of them would pass the horrified lips of any member of either of my families.

In the ultimate compromise between my family’s Midwestern white-bread recipes and my in-laws’ cornbread recipes, I always make mine with half white bread and half cornbread. Then both camps are moderately unhappy — except me. And I’m the chef.

Yesterday I found a recipe for a dressing baked in the crockpot instead of the oven. This sounded like a good idea, because there are so many other things that need to go into the oven today. So I cut and pasted it into WordPerfect to print out without all the flashing ads and pretty little logos and such. WP immediately insisted that “crockpot” was not a word.

Its suggested correction?

I guess they thought I was flying by the seat of my pants, or something. I’m easily amused.

Not yet eaten, but today is the day for preparing much of the gluttonous feast for tomorrow.

I enjoy the repetitive, meditative motions of chopping vegetables, of stirring together the cornmeal and other ingredients to make cornbread for the dressing. I like the warm, steamy fragrance of summer squash and onion simmering to form the basis for squash casserole. I even like cleaning up (although I wouldn’t like it nearly as much without my trusty dishwasher, I admit).

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Saturday is referred to at our house as “Old Fogey Day” because it consists of utterly mundane errands and yet it’s very pleasant to go and do these things together.

• post office (I had a check! Yes!)
• cleaners to drop off DH’s shirts and pick up the clean ones
• Costco
• lunch at a local place called Lloyd’s, which serves traditional Southern food in enormous quantities. Your drink is served in a 32-ounce glass and the hamburger steak with gravy is 16 ounces. (I did not have a hamburger steak.)
• Hobby Lobby because the iron-on Swarovski crystals are on sale half price and you can never have too many crystals. Ooooh look – over there – shiny!
• grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner and fight the pre-game crowd who only came to buy beer and chips and hot wings from the deli.
• home and a nap.

Because it’s been cloudy and chilly all day, I’m making a generic potato cheese chowder for dinner that can be gussied up as desired. I’m putting broccoli in mine; DH will most likely go for ham and bacon bits in his. #1 Son is at a friend’s house watching The Big Game (Alabama/Auburn) and probably filling up on beer, chips, and hot wings from the deli.

A typically pleasant Fogey Day.

As you may have noticed, The Elephant’s Child went into limbo for a couple of days. The server on which it resides had one of its hard drives fail, taking down the entire server. Fortunately, I had everything except the blog backed up locally. We lost the lima bean post. :( Fortunately, that was the only post that was lost.

(Note to self: Back up more frequently, nimrod.)

While all this was going on, and I had no email, I had another tragedy: I broke a foot. The good news is that it was attached to my machine; I have a spare; and they aren’t terribly expensive (thank you, Janome!).

Yes, that’s a needle imbedded in the side of the broken free-motion foot. I have no idea how I managed to jerk things around like that. Don’t know my own strength, I guess.

Today the house painter is here and should be finishing up the final stuff. He’s using something completely toxic in the kitchen to stain the quarter-round molding, so I’ve retreated to the studio downstairs. Still smells funky down here, but not as bad.

We are also having a minor plumbing crisis which means that at the moment the water is shut off to the house. I need to do laundry. I need to cook. I need to do dishes.

Forget that, I need to pee!

Ah, well. This, too, shall pass. And in the meantime, back to the sewing machine with me.
Update because all I’ve done lately is complain: the plumbing crisis appears to be solved and solved inexpensively. The water is back on. I have taken advantage of the situation and flushed, even if the dishes aren’t done yet. The painter is done and the kitchen is airing out.

I found and ordered two sets of bedsheets in the discontinued peach color that I prefer (why are all the bedding colors very dark right now? forest green, navy, cranberry, gray?). And ribeye steaks are on sale this week, so I am grilling them for dinner.

Debra asked whether I ever got the car done right? Not yet, but after the blistering evaluation I gave to the insurance company about the body shop, they are not only willing to fix the second broken piece on the door, they even offered to fix the gouge in the bumper even if I couldn’t prove that it happened on their lot. Now I just have to gather up enough courage to go deal with them one more time.

Sadie commented that I left out the most shocking thing about me.

Shocking? I thought about this for quite a while, wondering what in the world I had confessed in late night conversation that I couldn’t remember, and finally broke down and asked.

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Liz of the Beautiful Veil tagged me on this, and my immediate reaction was “But there aren’t twenty interesting things to say about me!”

She insisted, pointing out that she had to come up with twenty things, so here goes.

1. I hate talking about myself, because I think I’m the most boring person on the face of the planet. Or perhaps I come across as the most narcissistic. Maybe both at the same time. Either way it can’t be entertaining for someone else to read.

2. I’ve never had beer or smoked cigarettes (or any other tobaccoish substances) in my life. Never even been tempted. I allow myself one margarita a year when we go to New Mexico.

3. I save a lot of money on booze.

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Gabrielle posted that color aura thing several days ago. Now I am reasonably resistant to taking all the silly quizzes that go around, but I did go to that one because I can (occasionally) see colors relating to people. Not always, and it isn’t an “aura” per se — it’s more a feeling like “Gee, she’s in a yellow mood today.”

Anyway.

I took the test, and I came out “Sensitive Tan.” Good grief. The only thing worse would have been “Donna Reed Beige.”

I am officially refusing to participate in any more of these quizzes.

I can’t see photographs on any Blogger site. In some cases there is a little box that I can click on, which brings up the photograph all by itself. In some cases I have to wave the cursor around until it changes to a little hand so I know where the invisible pic is; then I can click on it and bring it up in a window all by itself.

This is all blogger blogs, not just the Art Quilters ones. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the pics are in Picasa or Hello or just stored on Blogger itself. I haven’t changed any settings in my browser and I’m seeing the same results in both Firefox and IE.

Anybody have any idea what gives?