All Quiet on the Home Front

We have three telephone lines coming into our house. Our personal line, which I also use for my business, a business line in my husband’s office, and a fax line/broadband internet.

The business line in my husband’s office went dead about 10 days ago. The phone company was doing some sort of upgrade, and the person he talked to said they didn’t have any of our account information available at the moment, so it took at least a week for the telephone person to come to the house to fix the problem.

He hooked something up at the box at our house and determined that there was a short in the telephone line some 3,000 feet away (!). So he drove off to check that out. He fixed it and told us later that there had been a lightening strike near the junction box which had caused the short.

This morning when I picked up the phone to process a credit card number a customer in Netherlands had given me to pay for editing his manuscript, my personal line was dead. I actually don’t know for sure how long the phone line has been down, possibly for a day or two.

I should have realized something was up when I didn’t get my daily robocall yesterday pretending to be from Google. I don’t answer the phone any more but let the answering machine screen the calls. Early in the day, usually before lunch time, the automated call, which uses a woman with a very soft, pleasing voice, is not deterred by the answering machine message and the beep and goes right ahead with the scam call, which says something like “Please don’t hang up the phone. We have tried numerous times to verify your Google business listing…”

There are usually at least one or two robocalls later in the day – almost always during the time we are eating dinner – but whoever this is disconnects when it hears the “beep” on answering machine and does not leave a message.

Richard hooked up the tester phone at the box where the lines come into the house, and my line is dead. So it is probably another problem at the junction box rather than a mouse or rat having chewed threw the line inside the house, which has happened more than once, and which is why just about every wire running through the house is in metal conduit.

Fortunately, just about everybody I want to talk to and who might call me is someone who I am also in contact with by e-mail, so I am not too worried that I am missing an important phone call from a friend or family member.

We will have to have them come out again and fix the line, but it is rather peaceful not listening to a ringing phone knowing that nearly all of the calls are ones I don't want to answer.

Regifted

My friend Judy does not feed birds because she does not have a place to feed them that is convenient for her sit and relax and enjoy watching them. I, on the other hand, do feed birds and most of the day work at a computer that is positioned in front of a window where I can view several feeding stations. I get great enjoyment watching the birds. I put out sunflower seed, corn, "wild bird seed," and hang wire baskets of homemade "suet" (lard, peanut butter, cornmeal, oatmeal).

The usual suspects in the winter include 4 varieties of woodpecker, cardinals, 2 varieties of nuthatch, chickadees, titmouse, goldfinch, 2 varieties of dove, junco, purple and house finches, yellow-rumped warblers, and some that have slipped my mind.

Judy was given a hanging novelty bird thingy in the shape of a squirrel, which she passed on to me when we saw each other the Monday after Christmas. She told me she was "regifting" it because she knew I would get some use out of it.

The occasional squirrels that show up at the feeder chase the birds away until Richard gets around to shooting them (sorry, squirrel lovers, but they are destructive, evil...), and so I am not surprised that it took the birds a while to start pecking the seeds off it. I think the eyes are made of a cracker of some kind.

While we were eating dinner on Saturday, we heard a loud crash into our storm door. I went outside and found a dove that had died almost instantly. I have taped part of an old feed sack over the glass keep that from happening again.

But in the meantime, since I don’t like to waste anything, I plucked the dove and took out the innards. For obvious reasons the recipes I found call for 2 to 4 doves per person. It fit easily in the palm of my hand.

There are some really creative ways to cook dove, but I didn’t do any of them – just coated it in olive oil, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and put it in the oven on a pan next to lasagna I had put together for Sunday dinner.

I got perhaps 3 bites off the breast and a few bits from the back and thigh. One of my uncles hunted doves and his 3 children have written me about how much they enjoyed eating dove over the years that he hunted them. I can understand why. It was very good.

A Quiet Day

As this first day of 2020 draws to a close, I am remembering very different New Year’s Days when I lived at home.

Dad roused us out of bed and made a special breakfast – usually angel pancakes or waffles. For the angel pancakes, he separated the eggs, beat the whites until they were stiff, and then folded them into the batter. They were very good.

We watched the Rose Parade. I am just remembering one year one of our Aunts came down and wanted to see the floats. So the day after the parade, we drove to Pasadena and saw the floats. They looked beautiful, but dying flowers don’t smell very good and so it wasn't entirely pleasant.

And then the football games began as the day progressed. We almost always watched the Rose Bowl, even if one of the Los Angeles (USC or UCLA) teams wasn’t playing.

But then there were other choices if the teams playing in the Rose Bowl weren’t interesting. Dad would flip channels to the Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Gator Bowl, and others I have forgotten.

Football consumed the day. I watched the games right along with my Dad and brothers and sometimes Grandpa. For a while Grandpa had the only color TV, so we would gravitate to his house (which was a short walk from our house).

I loved football. At least I thought I did.

After we moved here, I watched parts of the Rose Parade a couple of years, and I watched the Rose Bowl a couple of times, and then I came to the conclusion that I no longer liked football that much. Richard had no interest in football – or in any other sports for that matter. So watching sports on television fell by the wayside.

So we have spent a very quiet, relaxing day puttering around the house instead of sitting in front of the TV yelling at the coaches and the players and the referees.

I don’t feel tip top. I went to a lovely Christmas Eve service at the sister church, with the auditorium filled with coughing, sneezing toddlers and their parents, and I am now coughing and sneezing myself. But this will pass.