art

Homemade Dutch Oven Table and Bean Pot Tripod

My husband constructed this Dutch Oven Cooking Stand out of an old aluminum  truck toolbox using an old bed frame to attach legs purchased from Home Depot for less than $30.  All other materials were from his shop.  It is light, folds up well for travel and storage and shows no signs of heat damage or wear despite several years of use.  The wind screen latches in place with small holes at corner.  I put my coals directly on table and use it for hours.  You can see it is very heavily loaded.  I bake bread and desserts in Dutch oven as well, using a cast iron trivet to avoid burning the bottoms.

He also built this fine tripod from scrap using the hollow legs of a rack from a truck.  The actual tripod connector is made of 5/8″ cold roll heated in his forge and bent into shape.  I love this thing!

I have a nice collection of cast iron, though not nearly enough, of course.  I bought a few pieces new and picked up a lot at flea markets.  I don’t shy away from a piece without a lid.  You can get a good deal on them and pick up a lid some other time.  When I am looking for a lid, I measure the inside diameter of inside rim and keep a tape measure in my pocket. I picked up my !4″ Lodge Dutch Oven for $37 without a lid and ordered lid from Amazon (No shipping) for around $20.  Bought new, the Dutch Oven would have been over $100.

A flat bottom Dutch Oven works beautifully placed on top of pot lifter.

 

Puppy Love

My dog is cheating on me.  He begs to go out then only stands in the drive and looks longingly at the neighbor’s house.  I do believe, if I allowed it, he’d  howl a serenade under the lady’s window.  A few times, she’s stopped to visit and pet him.  You’d think think she’d invited him into her life.  Puffing out his chest,  he peed impressively, then kicked up a huge cloud of dust. to show what a mighty fellow he is.  In all honesty, his bladder capacity is astounding since he’s a mastiff, but I don’t think it makes her want him more., nor does his habit of making a beeline to sniff her nether portions.

Worse yet, if he gets more than twenty feet ahead of me, he goes stone deaf.  Buzzy, my other dog, suffers the same malady.  Though we have a two-acre yard with plenty of poop room, they are both desperate to leave surprises for the neighbors.  Early on, I made sure they knew the perimeter of our yard.  Since then, they’ve both try not to go inside its boundaries.  If they got their heart’s desire, we’d be surrounded by a poop fence on all four sides ten feet just outside our property lines.  Buzzy’s deposits are offensive enough, but Croc’s leavings are mountainous.and would soon obscure the view if left to lie.  We’d be run out of the neighborhood if they got their wish.

Afternoon Funny

 

 

lawXmas-cart-2lawyer-cat A divorce court judge said to the husband,”Mr Geraghty,I have reviewed this case very carefully and I’ve decided to give your wife $800 a week.”
“That’s very fair,your honour,” he replied. “And every now and then I’ll try to send her a few bucks myself.”

A physician, an engineer, and an attorney were discussing who among them belonged to the oldest of the three professions represented.

The physician said, “Remember, on the sixth day God took a rib from Adam and fashioned Eve, making him the first surgeon. Therefore, medicine is the oldest profession.”

The engineer replied, “But, before that, God created the heavens and earth from chaos and confusion, and thus he was the first engineer. Therefore, engineering is an older profession than medicine.”

Then, the lawyer spoke up. “Yes,” he said, “But who do you think created all of the chaos and confusion?”

“You seem to be in some distress,” said the kindly judge to the witness. “Is anything the matter?”
“Well, your Honour,” said the witness, “I swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but every time I try, some lawyer objects.”

To help someone before they commit a crime means you are their
accomplice.
To help someone after they commit a crime means you are their attorney.

 

A lawyer died and was standing in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter said, “you can’t come in here… you have to go to the other place”. But the lawyer was really good and pleaded his case to the point where St. Peter said, “OK… here’s what I’ll do. You will spend the same amount of time in hell as you did on earth, and then you can spend the rest of eternity up here.” The lawyer figured this wasn’t too bad of a deal, so he said “OK”. St. Peter said, “Great… I’ll see you in 350 years.”. The lawyer said, “But, how is that possible… I’m only 65 years old!”. St Peter said, “We go by billing hours”.

 

A plumber went to the attorneys house to unstop the sink. When he finished he said to the attorney “that will be $400.00.” The attorney became irate “What do you mean $400.00, you were only here 20 minutes, that’s ridiculous!!” The plumber replied, “I thought the same thing when I was an attorney”.

Familyisms

Like all families we employ time-honored phrases that seem nonsense to others:

“Don’t go crazy, Sue!” My cousin’s husband, a real doofus, employed this when he really messed up, intending to temper her reaction. example: He backed over the dog after she’d told him it had slipped out. It didn’t calm her down a bit.

“I don’t like what I wanted.” My three year-old-niece had a quarter. She’d been hounding her mom all morning to take her to the store. Finally, the time came. Chelsea ran up to the vending machine outside the store , popping her quarter in before Mom could stop her. Out popped a tacky little plastic car. Furious with disappointment , smashed it to the ground. Mom chided her. “I thought you wanted a prize out of the machine!”

Chelsea spouted back, “I don’t LIKE what I wanted.”

That phrase is perfect for so many of our choices in life!

“It couldn’t be helped.” Mother is a ditz, scatterbrained and chronically behind in whatever she had to do. When the beans burned, she forgot to pick a kid up at basketball practice, forgot to stub a check, or messed up in any way, she justified it by saying, “It couldn’t be helped.”. This was rarely true.

“It’s starting to get some better.”. Daddy was a hypochondriac.  When he managed a malady, he clung to it tenaciously. About two weeks after wasps stings, Mother facetiously asked how it was.  Mistaking her sarcasm for concern, he replied, “It’s starting to get some better.”

“The head’s as dangerous as the rest of it!”. My sister was warning us to stay away from a decapitated snake.  “Stay away from that snake head!  It’s as dangerous as the rest of it!” Duh!

“Only fools f___s with snakes.”. A guy Bud worked with coined this wisdom.  Since we had little kids at the time we had to amend it.

” I salted it, but not enough.”. Mother was the master of confusion.  Putting a plates of eggs on the table one morning, she advised us, ” I salted them, but not enough.”. Where do you go from there?  Salt or don’t salt.  By the time you decide, your egg’s half gone.

Sketch of Roscoe Holdaway

This is a sketch my mother did of her father January 31, 1942, just a few days after Pearl Harbor Day.  She was twelve years old.  It is better than any photograph she has of him.Kathleen's Pencil Sketch of Roscoe 1941

Gift for Danny

imageDanny colored print0002The delightful photograph above is my brother-in-law’s favorite photograph, made with his mother, when he was five years old.  My mother gifted him with this portrait of the two of them, based on that photo.  Let me know if you’d like an illustration done,