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Melanie Fletcher

~ Mutterings of a Tired Mind

Melanie Fletcher

Category Archives: Personal

Ice Cream!

30 Thursday Mar 2023

Posted by Melanie Fletcher in Personal

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In addition to meat, fowl, and certain kinds of fish, our local butcher shop (Hirsch’s Meat Market, and they are AWESOME) also sells things like eggs and locally made ice cream (they used to sell milk from a local dairy, and God I miss that stuff). Despite having a Kitchenaid stand mixer with an ice cream maker attachment and lots of experience in making my own cold, sweet stuff, I decided a few weeks ago to try the LMIC’s marshmallow and graham cracker ice cream (mainly because it meant I didn’t have to make it myself).

It was certainly tasty, as you might expect. But I did wonder why they didn’t go just a little further and make S’mores ice cream. Which led me to wonder—what would go into homemade S’mores ice cream? Graham crackers, obviously, and marshmallows but ones that had been toasted to get that lovely caramelization, and some kind of chocolate ribbon would work, I thought.

So tonight I have toasted mini marshmallows in the oven (spread a cup of them over a parchment paper-lined cookie tray and put them under the broiler for 2.5 minutes), crushed up graham crackers, and whipped up a plain custard ice cream (mainly because we ran out of vanilla—need to add that to the shopping list). When the ice cream was ready I decanted some into a quart container, sprinkled on some crushed Grahams and marshmallows, and dotted it with fudge topping, mixed it a bit, then put in more ice cream and repeated the process. It’s currently in the freezer chilling, but judging by the spoonful I had earlier this is going to be some damn fine ice cream.

Welp, Y’all Are Stuck With Me

29 Wednesday Mar 2023

Posted by Melanie Fletcher in Arts and Crafts, Personal

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Got the results of my blood and pee tests on Monday and all my numbers look good, so it seems like I’ll be around for a little while longer to make stuff, take care of the J Crew, and annoy the bigoted. So I have that going for me.

I’m also about 3/4 done on one of the throw quilts I’m making for a friend (sorry, no pictures—it’s a surprise gift for someone and I don’t want to risk spoiling that) and it looks spectacular. I should have the center finished by tomorrow and the border put on by Friday, then I can layer the top with the backing and batting and quilt it over the weekend.

Then I get to start on the second throw quilt, which is also using a Log Cabin block but in a different format from the first one. Looking forward to seeing how both of them turn out!

I Have Successfully Adulted Today

28 Tuesday Mar 2023

Posted by Melanie Fletcher in Personal, Writing

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Look upon me in awe, mortals, for I have doing All the Adulting. I have:

  • Mailed off a baby quilt
  • Bought food and supplements
  • Paid the bills
  • Trimmed my toenails
  • Swept the kitchen/breakfast nook/dining room/library
  • Made a hair appointment for tomorrow
  • Made a TikTok promo video
  • Watered the garden and said hello to J.J., Jordan, and Sandy
  • Called the health insurance and in my sweetest Southern Church Lady voice asked them to approve refills at Walgreen’s, which they agreed to do

And now I’m upstairs writing, of all things. I’m genuinely impressed with myself. Tomorrow I shall tackle cancelling the cable and bundling our cell phone accounts together (might as well give them 24 hours to process the payments), get my hair cut for the first time since my sister visited back in 2021, and deep clean the downstairs and upstairs bathrooms as well as write.

Keeping busy helps.

Off to the Vampires

27 Monday Mar 2023

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Or as others call it, my yearly physical. Apart from the fact that I had to fast until 3:00 PM it was pretty painless—talked to the doc, everything was normal, he renewed my scrips, went down to the lab to drop off some blood and pee, cool cool cool.

Only to get home and find out from my pharmacy that there’s a problem with our new medical insurance and they won’t approve the scrip renewals. The tech explained that they probably want us to use mail order, which I will be damned if I do so I get to call United Healthcare tomorrow and explain that no, we will not be signing up for any med mail order system they have and to approve the scrips at the pharmacy.

Since I’ll be playing phone tag with them anyway I’ll go ahead and cancel the cable as well, then switch our cell phone plans over to the 55+ plan. I hate making these kind of phone calls, but if I have a cluster of them I may as well get them all knocked out in one big batch.

Cleaning and Sewing

26 Sunday Mar 2023

Posted by Melanie Fletcher in Arts and Crafts, Personal

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I don’t know how many people do this, but my particular reaction to grief, apart from crying, is cleaning. When Jordan died I gave the master bath a deep clean, finished recaulking the shower enclosure, and did a bunch of other tasks to get it in shape.

After J.J.’s death I’ve been organizing the house, vacuuming and sweeping the downstairs daily (yeah, yeah, I know I should have been doing that already, don’t @ me), planting the new lantana to replace the old ones that got killed in the frost (at least, I had assumed so until I dug up one monster and found little green leaves sprouting on the underside. I also learned that lantana have big-ass taproots so next year I’ll just cut everything WAY back and wait until the end of March for it to start blooming again), mailing stuff that needs to be mailed off, putting a bunch of stuff away, and making a master list of what I’ll need to deep clean each room. I think the J Crew are a little confused at Mom bustling around all the time.

Until I go upstairs and start sewing. I was commissioned by a friend to make two Log Cabin throw quilts, one in the Asexual flag colors and one in black, white, and grey, and I’ve started the Ace quilt first. The border will be black, white, grey, and purple stripes like the Ace flag with purple corner squares; so far this is turning out to be really pretty. I hope the recipient enjoys it.

It’s definitely been theraputic for me. Log Cabin blocks lend themselves to chain piecing so putting together the actual blocks is nicely repetitious and goes quickly. I should have the entire center section done by Thursday, the borders added on Friday, and I’ll put the backing/batting/top sandwich together over the weekend and quilt it. Even better, Joann Fabrics is running their Daffodil Dash weekend sale so I’ve been able to pick up the bulk of the fabric at a discount, which gives me more $$$ for quality cotton thread, batting, and borders. I’ll post pics once the entire quilt is done.

Coffee With My Editor

25 Saturday Mar 2023

Posted by Melanie Fletcher in Cats, Personal

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My editor lives in the next town over and knew about J.J. so she offered to take me out for coffee today, coffee being a code term for taking an hour to grab some sort of non-alcoholic drink and something sweet to eat, then hanging out together for a good old-fashioned bitch session.

There’s a place in Allen that I particularly like for their boba tea and mochi donuts, so we spent an hour there talking about losing pets, our quilting (we both love to quilt and often bring our latest projects to coffee time), her recent trip to her husband’s home state, and other things that were meant to soothe me and get me back onto an even keel.

Which I kinda need. I hate crying with a passion—it makes my eyes puffy, it’s hard to see, and I get whanging sinus headaches. So the fact that I’ve been bursting into tears every couple of hours has not been pleasant, as you might guess. I know grief is a process, everyone goes through it at their own pace, and at some point I’ll be able to think of J.J. and not tear up. But I haven’t reached that point yet (apparently I am in the Pain and Guilt stage of grieving)

So I’ll just keep a handkerchief on me and rely on my friends to cheer me up. Luckily for me I have great friends who are really good at doing just that.

Making a Memorial

23 Thursday Mar 2023

Posted by Melanie Fletcher in Cats, Personal

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As it turns out, digging a grave for a frail elderly cat is more work than you’d expect, especially in North Texas clay with all kinds of thick roots running through it. But making yourself too tired to cry is kinda useful, too.

We buried J.J. with the ashes of Jordan and Sandy in the southwest corner of our back yard (ignore the condition of the soil—I’ll be remediating it this spring). As I said to Lyndon, their little boxes are just something I dust and it would be more appropriate to mingle their ashes with J.J. We also added one of Lyndon’s old shoes, because J.J. loved to sing to Lyndon’s shoes at night, dragging one into the middle of the floor and MEOOOOOOOOOWing to it.

I cried a lot yesterday, especially in the shower, and only got to sleep with some pharmaceutical help. Today, however, is memorial day. So I went to Calloways and asked them what kind of rose or flowering shrub would work well over the grave. Since it only gets 6 hours of sunlight in the morning they said that a rose would be problematic but an azalea bush would work well in that kind of partial sunlight, blooms in spring and fall, and we could always plant annuals around it for additional color.

So I bought a small azalea bush with red blossoms, some shrub soil, additional lantana for the southern flower bed to replace the ones that got killed in the frost, then came home and put on my gardening clothes. I grabbed border stones from the little wall ringing the tree stump out front (will someone please remind me to have people come out this summer and grind out the danged thing?) and used those as a border, then dug a hole for the azalea bush, added the shrub soil and some mulch, and watered it.

I can see it from my kitchen window when I’m at the sink, which makes me, well, as happy as I can be at the moment. Afterwards I took the practically unused box of Hydra Care into our vet to have it donated to someone who could use it and thanked them for taking such good care of J.J., and of course I burst into tears at the end of it. Lyndon and I will probably grieve for some time, and even Jeremy, who is Not a Cat of Much Brain, has noticed that something is wrong and wants to stay with me when I’m in the house. I guess he’s my new shadow and bodyguard. As for Jessie, she keeps wandering around the house, then comes up to me wanting scritches and reassurance. Jemma and Jasmine don’t seem to be bothered all that much but they weren’t raised by J.J. and Jordan the way Jer and Jess were.

There’s a palpable absence in the house. I keep walking past the futon, which has now been cleaned and had its cover put back on, and it’s so strange not to see J.J. laying on his bedding and lifting his head to look at me. Lyndon said that he always used to talk to J.J. when he came in from the shops and was putting things away in the kitchen, and last night after he ran to Walmart it hurt not seeing J.J. watching him while he chatted about his day.

He was an amazing cat, and he will be missed deeply.

I Am Olde™

20 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by Melanie Fletcher in Cats, Personal

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Ow. Ow ow ow.

So my office, the upstairs hallway on the office side, and what of the craft room I could reach has all been vacuumed (the entrance to the attic is right over the hallway so it’s part of the house that will be seen by the HVAC tech on Wednesday), the stairs have been vacuumed, and all loose stuff in the library and dining room has been tidied away. I figure I’ll vacuum/dust the library and dining room tomorrow, and give the downstairs bathroom a nice clean just in case the tech has to pee while he’s here (hey, it’s happened before).

My body is now reminding me that I am no longer 16 nor am I Xena. But I come from a long line of females who believed in the core of their beings that if a stranger came into your home the place had to be immaculate or you brought shame on your family. There’s no way I’m going to manage immaculate, especially with the Elderly Gentleman wetting his bedding a couple of times a day, but I can manage clean and smelling okay for the places the tech will see.

Speaking of the Elderly Gentleman, we had a rather nice evening tonight. It was chilly today in the Clavicle of Texas and he wasn’t feeling very chipper so I stretched out on the couch and let him cuddle on my chest (I am the world’s best hot water bottle according to Lyndon) while Lyndon sat in my chair, Jemma hung out on the back of the couch, Jeremy curled up by my feet, and Jasmine roamed the room. The only one not there was Jessie, but she likes to sleep in our bedroom until we turf her out at night. Lyndon and I spent a very pleasant couple of hours talking about anything and everything while I petted J.J. and kept his toes warm.

To be honest I don’t think he’ll be here for much longer. These last two weeks were a gift that I will always treasure, but in my heart of hearts I knew it was a surge and wasn’t going to last. Right now our goal is to keep him warm and comfortable until either he passes in his sleep or we need the vet’s help.

*Sigh*

19 Sunday Mar 2023

Posted by Melanie Fletcher in Cats, Personal

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There’s nothing quite as special as taking out the refrigerator water filter only to have it start spraying water all over the floor. Our impromptu fountain stopped while I was cursing in panic and dragging out the fridge to get to the water cutoff, but still. I’m guessing there was some mineral buildup that kept the valves open until it was cleared by the water spray, but there was no more leakage once we installed the new filter which is all that matters.

On the plus side, the space behind the refrigerator is now vacuumed, dusted, mopped, and sparkling clean, I got to use my new spin mop to mop up all of the water that had been sprayed across the kitchen floor, and I was able to put all the towels and cloths used to wipe up the water into a load with dirty cat bedding. As we have a HVAC checkup appointment on Wednesday I needed to clean this place anyway, so this was the perfect prompt to get all the cleaning started.

As for the Elderly Gentleman, he has had water and sub-q fluids this morning and is currently snoozing in a sunbeam. As far as he’s concerned, he’s all good.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

17 Friday Mar 2023

Posted by Melanie Fletcher in Cats, Personal

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I am sitting here in a Buc-ee’s St. Patrick’s Day shirt and green sweat pants so there will be no pinching of me today, the Elderly Gentleman seems to be in decent condition and spirits, a present that I sent to a friend got there this morning so thank you USPS for being prompt, and I’m going to Jason’s Deli tonight to pick up some corned beef sandwiches (since it’s Friday and I don’t have to cook on Fridays).

And now, I must get back to writing, tra la.

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