The Halloween Tree

‘Twas a night after Halloween, and what did we see?
Snow in abundance covering all trees
(heavy, wet snow, brisk wind, drifting…)

The pumpkins were lit and though shining so bright,
They couldn’t dispel the gloom of that night.

And then in a twinkling a thought came to me,
What was needed were lights from a Christmas tree!

I spoke not a word, but went straight to the task
And soon in the light of the tree we did bask.
(Well, the pumpkins basked – we admired while curled up in our comfy chairs.)

And that, dear readers, is why and how I violated the social admonishment (as expressed in social and mass media) that I not decorate for Christmas until after American Thanksgiving! Yes, I know, I’m walking on the wild side!

(Sometimes social media can be a preachy, self-righteous, sanctimonious kind of place…)

Just remember, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and the wrong way is to keep trying to make everybody else do it the right way.
– M*A*S*H –

gHosT the Dog – Boxed In

Update from gHosT the Dog…

there is a simple. explanation. for why I look like my head. is stuck. in a box: my head IS stuck in a box

but there is a simple. explanation for how. that happened, I was checking. to see if it was true that. all the biscuits were gone.

and even if they were all gone. maybe there were crumbs. that had to be eaten before the box got. recycled. it was a very deep box and when I. couldn’t reach the bottom with my tongue I stuck my head in. just a bit farther then I was stuck.

the two leggers didn’t laugh they didn’t even take a picture they. just pulled the box. off. but here’s the thing, the box was talking to me it was saying. there really are some crumbs stuck. in the very bottom of the box so I put my head in. again. and got stuck again.

apparently that is when the picture. was taken and if the two leggers hadn’t taken the box off my head. and put it out of my reach. there is no doubt I would have got stuck. a third time.

never give up is my motto

Somebodies dog, somewhere – has your dog ever got its head stuck?

my other adventures are here: gHost the Dog

Canadian Thanksgiving – the Traditional Wokadoo

A Really Brief History: Canadian Thanksgiving is a stat holiday that is now observed on the second Monday of October. The first official Thanksgiving was celebrated on November 6, 1879, but long before that the First Nations celebrated fall harvest – even before the early French settlers initiated such an event in 1578.

You know that just before that first Thanksgiving dinner there was one wise, old Native American woman saying, ‘Don’t feed them. If you feed them, they’ll never leave.’
– Dylan Brody –

Family Traditions: Our family cooks a Wokadoo (turkey). Many, many years ago our very young nephew christened all such birds in the oven ‘Wokadoos’. He couldn’t remember the word ‘turkey’ but he had a general idea of what sound a turkey made, (though he was actually thinking of a rooster.) The closest he could get to saying “Cock-a-doodle-doo” was ‘wokadoo’ and from then on, all my turkeys were referred to as wokadoos.

For the past few years, most of our family feast days have taken place at one of our children’s homes – the passing of the turkey baster, you might say. I don’t mind. Our home was turkey central for over forty years.

Thanksgiving: when the people who are the most thankful are the ones who didn’t have to cook.
— Melanie White –

This year, a Son-in-Law (the one with a smoker large enough to accomodate a turkey)  cooked an excellent bird. After dinner, when we traditionally take turns talking about what we are thankful for, the Daughter introduced a twist on the theme. She gave each of us a LEGO kit and tasked us with building what we are thankful for.

This is the kit we each got – and this is what I built the next day after I sort of followed the instruction manual. These critters are very different than the ‘thankful things’ we built the evening before!

These are my Thankful things. Can you guess which ones represent family, friends, nature, a roof over our head?

This is The Car Guys ‘Thankful things’. More people, home, nature but also  the answer to the question ‘how high can you build before it falls over’.

What are your Thanksgiving Traditions?

Hungry for more quotations? Thanksgiving and Turkey Quotations

Another One Bites the Dust

And the Chief of all the Appliances in the house said “Who among you feels not up to the tasks demanded of you?”

And the Washing Machine (a mere 4 years old but beginning to wonder if there was more to life than water in, water out, water in, water out) said, “I feel not so desirous of being bubbly this week. Might I take a rest?”

And the Chief said, “So be it. I shall make it so you striketh against the Tide Pod and so you shall rest for a while.”

And so it came to be.

And the Chief waited a suitable amount of time – until the human inhabitants of the abode were lulled into false security.

Then the Chief asked, “Who among you cannot face another winter of being a burning inferno?”

And the Furnace said, “I feel I am cracking up after 30 years of faithful service. Might I take a rest?” “Me too, me too”, chimed in the Air Con and the Water Heater. “We know not how much more of this we can take before we leak out vital fluids.”

And the Chief said, “So be it. I shall make it so you and everyone in the darkness of the basement are given a full and lasting retirement. You need never work again.”

And so it came to be and the humans in said abode faced a costly HVAC and Water Heater replacement that exceeded the price they got from selling ‘Wanda, the BMW’. And the Chief was pleased that it had successfully granted the wishes of the inhabitants of the basement underworld AND found a new and happy home for Wanda, which wasn’t even in the game plan!

Flush with success, and before the new inhabitants of the basement even arrived, the Chief approached the Refrigerator. “Are you tired of being cold, cold, cold while everyone else is basking in the heat of this very warm summer?”

And the Fridge, also only 4 years old and unaware of the expectations of how long a fridge will perform, said, “If I see one more bag of Sugarsnap pea pods, I think I am going to barf.”

And so the Chief caused the ice in the ice maker to melt and run onto the floor and all the cold to flee and the Fridge felt warm and cosy for the first time in, well, 4 years.

The Chief, well satisfied with what it had achieved in a mere 4 months and humming the tune ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, contemplated how long to wait before approaching the Dishwasher,  the Clothes Dryer the Deep Freezer, the Water Pump and/or the Septic Pump.

gHosT the Dog – Woodworking

Update from gHosT the Dog…

somedays i am a shop dog i am into, woodworking as you can see i custom. craft small logs i debark and shape, i am like a planer and a sander and a drill all in one.  it is hard work all i ask in return, is some biscuits and peanut butter. and a walk preferably in the ditch not on the road and a clean. bowl of water with no. dead flies in it!!!

two-legs who i live with and two-legs car guy are doing. woodworking, too they are making wood boxes. with bows and ribbons. made of wood they use lots of tools but best. of all is all the sawdust. they make then i lie in it. and roll in it

two-legs who i live with named her wood things website. after me The Rustic Ghost. she isn’t selling. any of my sticks they are priceless. i think but also hard to find. when i am done i hide them or two-legs gamma puts them. in the chipper pile she thinks i don’t know she does that. but i know

two-legs gamma gives me a biscuit. after our walk in the ditch. she makes me lie down. and stay then she breaks the biscuit. into three or four pieces and hides them, around the shop then i look for them which. is hard because i didn’t see where she. put them and the biscuits don’t have any smell or maybe, they do smell but it is the same as sawdust which. is mostly what the whole shop, smells of.

if you want to see, the other things i’ve written or things that have been written. about me just go here gHosT Dog. i’m done this story so two-leg gamma will finish things up:

A boy can learn a lot from a dog — obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
– Robert Benchley –

Every snack you make,
Every meal you bake,
Every bite you take…
I’ll be watching you.
– Unknown Dog –

Handle every situation like a dog. If you can’t eat it or play with it, just pee on it and walk away.
– Author Unknown –

If you think dogs can’t count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then give him only two of them.
— Phil Pastoret –

My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to $3.00 a can. That’s almost $21.00 in dog money.
— Joe Weinstein –

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
— Groucho Marx –

Watching Them Watching Me

Gary Larson , of  Far Side Comic fame, invented a phobia –  Anatidaephobia. He defined it as “the fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you.” (Anatidaephobia comes from the Greek word “anatidae”, (referring to ducks, geese or swans and “phobos” meaning fear.)

If I was inclined to have a phobia, it could certainly involve geese and ducks! Every spring, a pair of Canada Geese stand on the rocks behind our house. They do this every morning for several weeks – assessing, I suppose, the probability of whether there will be a slough around the rocks this year. I watch them and they watch me.

If the geese aren’t on the rock, then Mallard ducks might be. They watch me and I watch them.

On the other side of the house, Ma and Pa Mallard settle down on the driveway each morning. I can’t begin to guess why they do that, but… I watch them and they watch me.

The Geese and Ducks certainly don’t make me fearful, but if I try to approach them – they fly away. I suppose you could say they have Anthropophobia (fear of people)!

While I don’t have any phobias and I don’t think I Hate anyone or anything,  I really dislike certain creatures like Snakes, Scorpions and a certain politician.

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
– Douglas Adams –

Silence is golden…duck tape is silver.
– Author Unknown –

I heard the Secret Service had to change their commands. They can’t say “Get down!” anymore when the President is under attack. Now it’s “Donald! Duck!”
– Joke during the Presidency of Donald Trump –

Quirky Quips and Quotes – Laundry in Limp Mode

Preamble: A few years ago our Jeep suddenly lost it’s zippy acceleration while we were driving home from Arizona. We took it into a Chrysler dealership. They couldn’t repair it for days, but said we could drive it home. It would be a slower trip than usual because the Jeep would be running in ‘limp mode’.

Fast forward to this years snowbird return to The Red House. We unpacked and I started to do laundry. Oh, oh – our four year old washing machine quit after just one load. It’s electronic dial spit out an ‘E-11’ error code. The Car Guy did a reset (unplug and plug back in) but it didn’t help. He made sure the water wasn’t blocked and that the pressure was okay. Check, check. He contacted the warranty repair company. That put us on the list for repair, but it has been two weeks now and we still don’t have a date they can come out.

The pessimist in me thinks it could be a long time before the washer gets repaired – so I thought about whether a washing machine has a ‘limp mode’? I started to test various combinations of water temperature, wash cycles, etc. After a lot of trial and error, I’ve been able to use the machine on ‘tap cold’ mode on the ‘rinse again and spin’ cycle and one wash cycle – as long as I don’t push the ‘pods’ soap button. Fingers crossed.

I briefly wished I still had my trusty old Maytag washing machine. It would have been 44 years old now and it would not have given me grief about eating another ‘pod’. Mind you, it only had one cycle that reliably worked, it didn’t spin the clothes very well, it refused to wash sneakers or quilts and it sometimes took a walk about when it was out of balance… but it never had a hissy fit over the type of soap I gave it.

Have you ever taken anything out of the clothes basket because it had become, relatively, the cleaner thing?
– Katherine Whitehorn –

I love those 17 seconds when the laundry is all caught up!
– Author Unknown –

Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you’ve got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn’t your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.
– Jerry Seinfeld –

One day my housework-challenged husband decided to wash his sweat-shirt. Seconds after he stepped into the laundry room, he shouted to me, “What setting do I use on the washing machine?”
“It depends,” I replied. “What does it say on the back of the shirt?”
He yelled back, “University of Oklahoma.”
– boardofwisdom.com –

A clever take on the song “I’m Gonna Be (500 miles)” by The Proclaimers. “But I would walk 500 miles, And I would walk 500 more, Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles, To fall down at your door.”

Other Posts of this nature: Clothing Quotations

Christmas Tangle 2021- Year of the Moose

The Car Guy and I (and the Munching Moose Tree and Hedge Maintenance Service) would like to wish you all a

Very Merry Christmas

and

All the Best in the New Year!

Toilet Paper – The Great Debate

The preferred method at The Red House is the over hang. How does it hang at your house?

It is written in the book of ‘Internet’  that paper products were first used to do ‘clean ups in aisle one and two’ in the mid 1800’s. One option were sheets of manila hemp paper infused with aloe vera. Another option were the pages of the first widely circulated catalogs from Sears Roebuck. By the late 1800’s, paper was being rolled onto cardboard tubes.

From that day forward, people who had nothing more urgent to discuss, would debate how toilet paper should be hung. Some would advocate the forward (over) hang method, suggesting that might stop the paper from clinging to the wall.
The backward (under) hang proponents would point out that the family cat was less likely to unravel the roll if it was clinging to the wall…

Toilet paper holders have come a long way! I like this one from ‘Planet Dork Sculptures’

Friendly debate continues to this day, though it would seem that the over hang method is the preferred one. Manufacturer Georgia-Pacific conducted a survey in 1993. 73% of those polled preferred the forward hang. In 2010, the Cottonellle Roll Poll attracted half a million votes – 72% chose the ‘over’ method.

And so it went until 2020 when the world  went mad and people started buying up toilet paper. There may in fact now be a few homes with enough stockpiled toilet paper to last them for a very long time, as described in this joke that circulated late that year: “It was a quiet Monday morning in September 2053, when John awoke with a need to go to the bathroom. To John this wasn’t just any ordinary day! This was the day he would open the last package of toilet paper his parents bought in the year 2020.”

Also in 2020 – Stock Market Report
Helium was up, feathers were down. Paper was stationary.
Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading. Knives were up sharply. Pencils lost a few points.
Hiking equipment was trailing. Elevators rose, while escalators continued their slow decline. Weights were up in heavy trading.
Mining equipment hit rock bottom. Diapers remained unchanged.
The market for raisins dried up. Balloon prices were inflated.
And toilet paper touched a new bottom.

What’s a mathematician’s favorite type of toilet paper?
Multiply.

What do you call someone who goes from one store to another looking for toilet paper?
Bounty hunter.

Francis Ford Crapolla – This photo is near the top of my sidebar. Click it and you will be whisked away to a random post… on my blog, not on your blog…

Since this might be my last post ever about toilet paper, I expect you want to share your thoughts on these important questions:

Does your toilet paper hang over or under?
Are you the empty roll change agent in your house?
Do you have an interesting roll holder?
Where do you keep extra rolls of toilet paper?
Your preferred vernacular – lavatory, throne, loo, WC (water closet), john, latrine, comfort room?
How many books or magazines do you have in that room?

My ‘Rona Virus’ Toilet Paper Posts, none of which went viral:

Will Trade Grapefruit for Toilet Paper

Not So Close Contact

More of the Lighter Side

 

Sunrise Fails to Change by an Hour

November 3, 2021 – Sunrise colours at the Red House – 8:16 AM Daylight Saving Time

We are back on Mountain Standard Time again. I’m slowly adjusting to the hour difference but sadly, the sunrise isn’t. It insists on colouring the clouds at about 7:16 AM instead of 8:16 AM. It will keep up this sloppy attempt at adjusting until about  mid December when it will be get back on track for putting on a show at the same time I am alert and ready to watch it.

I went for a hike to watch the sunrise and saw a group of young deer frolicking in the morning mist.
It was a fawn dew party.
– Author Unknown –

Two Texans were bragging about how big their ranches are.
The first guy said “Well I’ll put it to you this way, I can get in my truck before sunrise, drive all day long, and by sundown I still haven’t hit the other side of my spread.”
The other fella said, “Yeah, I used to have a truck like that.”
– Author Unknown –

One of the best things about Daylight Saving Time is that the clock in my car will finally be correct again.
– Author Unknown –