Nuthin’ exciting or interesting has happened to me this week. So, I have to resort to telling a true “it happened to me recently” story. This story proves that an innocent action can have not-so-innocent unintended consequences.
First, let me establish the fact that I am so sophisticated, selective and discerning in my tastes that I refuse to buy and pour my daily small glass of “medicinal red wine for my heart” from a common one-quart glass bottle.
My refined, carefully cultured, discriminating sense of taste requires that I purchase said wine from a highly decorated and colorful cardboard box that has an internal plastic bladder full of red wine. It’s not more expensive, but that’s not the point. It’s just prettier. Plus, I have to exert more energy to access the wine and all the medical experts say senior citizens like me need more exercise for both our brains and our bodies. Boxed wine requires both.
Opening my boxed wine necessitates something more than mundanely twisting open the metal top or extracting a plain ol’ ordinary cork. Nope, my boxed wine requires a sophisticated, complicated action to punch out the opening in the box so that the “twist nozzle” for emptying the bladder can be extracted and meticulously placed into its proper position.
Well, recently, that innocent little “twist nozzle into place” action led to an innocent big mess. Something happened during the extraction process that created a tiny crack between the hard-plastic nozzle and the soft plastic bladder.
Hence, when I innocently placed the box of wine on its customary and convenient place on the second shelf of the pantry in the kitchen, it started to drip. And, I didn’t notice the drip.
It wuzn’t until a couple of hours later that ol’ Nevah opened the pantry door and discovered to her dismay that the red wine had slowly dripped all over the bottom two shelves of the pantry, and their contents, down onto the pantry floor — including onto her vacuum cleaner.
Of course, she wuzn’t happy, but happily for me she realized it wuz an accident and didn’t blame me. However, it did fall to her to clean up the mess while I wuz salvaging the remainder of the red wine from the box and bladder.
Happily, I did manage to salvage three quart jars of wine. I’ll add that I didn’t even attempt to lick up the spilled wine. That’s not sophisticated. But, you can bet that I will test my next sophisticated box of wine for a leak before it goes into the pantry.
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I’ve got both good and bad news about the first hen-hatching of baby chicks this year. The good news is that I ended up with 11 healthy baby chicks. The bad news is that I started off with 16 eggs, so the percentage of chicks is not good.
And, I’m mostly to blame. The eggs were hatching last Saturday when Nevah and I went to Manhattan to see our great-grandson and the rest of the family. I left the doors on the hatching crates open because normally the hen and chicks don’t come out until the next day.
But, when I got home something had made the hens switch hatching boxes and some of the eggs must have gotten fatally cool in the process. So, I ended up with 10 yellow/brown baby chicks imprinted on the dark grey Auracauna hen and one black chick imprinted on the red and white Speckled Sussex hen.
The good news is the hens seem to get along and they are foraging together and the chicks are doing fine, but 10 chicks don’t fit well under one hen at night.
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One of the happiest days of summer happened yesterday. We got our first ripe tomato from the garden and Nevah and I enjoyed our first bacon, lettuce, cheese and tomato sandwich for supper last night. Our “maters” are not putting on many fruit so it will be a while until we have our next sandwich.
In fact, I’m not sure I’ll have any veggies to enter at the Chase County Fair this summer. Everything is maturing late. Even the spuds aren’t very big, although we do have plenty of potatoes for storage.
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Here’s a cute story I heard this week. Picture this. A gnarled, ill-tempered widow lady is living in a rural ramshackled home. One day she answered a knock on the door only to be met by a well-dressed young man carrying a vacuum cleaner.
“Good morning,” said the young man. “I would like to demonstrate in your living room the very latest in high-powered vacuum cleaners.”
“Go away!” said the old lady. “I haven’t got any money!” And, she proceeded to close the door.
Quick as a flash, the young man wedged his foot in the door and pushed it wide open. “Don’t be too hasty!” he said. “Not until you have at least seen my demonstration.” And with that, he emptied a bucket of horse manure onto her living room carpet. “If this vacuum cleaner does not remove all traces of this fresh horse manure from your carpet, Madam, I will personally eat the remainder.”
The old lady stepped back and snapped, “Well I hope you’ve got a danged good appetite because they cut off my electricity this morning!”
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Words of wisdom for the week: “Gray hair is a small price to pay for wisdom.” Have a good ‘un.
