Five Frugal Things and Gratuitous Dog Pic

Disclosure:  This is a gratuitous pic of a dearly-loved family member having no relation to the content below.

1.  I set beef to marinade for dinner.  The marinade consisted of juice drained from canned pineapple for fruit salad. (I save the juice from canned fruit - not syrup.) I added Chinese Five Spice, sesame oil, and soy sauce.  I'll have a stir-fry this evening with rice I deliberately cooked too much of Sunday. Frugal Girl is correct - meal planning is da bomb. Having some of dinner completed ahead (the rice, the marinade) makes me feel better about having to cook after a long day.

2.  I made iced tea from bags, setting it on the porch to cool. No need to heat up the fridge.

3.  Breakfast was made at home.  I cooked an egg sandwich with a sliced tomato, a small amount of mozzie cheese, and a thin slice of ham. The egg was free from a friend who raises chickens.  The cheese, ham, and bread were discounted.

4.  I cook for four, but there are two of us. After dinner, I create "TV dinners" (my husband's term) from the leftovers for his lunch. Today's lunch was roasted acorn squash and a stuffed baked potato. The frozen lunch keeps anything else in his insulated bag cool until noon, even in the summer.

5.  This frugal thing may not work for everyone.  My husband had been using clinical strength antiperspirant which severely irritated his skin. Some people believe there is a health risk associated with using antiperspirants, as well. I remembered my frugal and immaculate grandmother used rubbing alcohol instead. We tried it over the weekend. If we were going to end up stinky, we didn't want it to happen during work!  The alcohol worked perfectly for us.  This morning, I patted on rubbing alcohol instead of antiperspirant: healthier and much less expensive.  

Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

I don't generally talk a lot about the weather.  Bruce is in charge of weather monitoring.  Having grown up on a farm, he pays enough attention for both of us and some other unknown folks who blithely head out each day without proper outdoor clothing, boots, umbrellas, and all manner of dangerous weather ignoring behavior.

I just HAVE to say something today.  The old thermometer next to the back door says 63 degrees.  On Tuesday, it read 9 degrees. Please note that my faithful writing companion up top was wrapped up in a blanket warmed in the dryer on Tuesday.  Today she has abandoned me for the backyard.

Here are the sad remains of the hula girl snowoman built by my next door neighbor in my backyard. She didn't ask, I just looked out back and she was building it.  I brought her out some hot tea (it was terribly cold) and asked her why she was building it in mine.  She said, "Your yard is prettier." Uh, okay.

My blog title: Adapt, Improvise, Overcome is a motto expressing the corporate culture of the Marine Corps...oooh rah!

The motto also works well for those who practice frugality or who want to leave a lighter footprint on the earth.

My shower curtain was looking its age of 16 years, so I was keeping an eye out for one on a deep discount or at Goodwill.

You can see the pink hue of my bathroom with the window treatment on the very tall window.  The curtain is a Rachel Ashwell sheet I picked up for a $1.50.  The only thing I found wrong with it was a tiny splotch of white paint that is not noticeable. 

The little dress was $3.50. I already had the necklace.  I got this together about 4 years ago.  Mostly, I am showing this to indicate the delicate pink hue of the bathroom.

I thought I had found the perfect color at Goodwill and took home a shower curtain I thought would match.

What was I thinking?  The hue was far too loud.  I put it through the wash three times with bleach...it was as loud as ever.

I mulled it over for a few days, hating to give up a shower curtain which was almost perfect.

Holding it my hand last night, it occurred to me to hang it up backwards.  Now it works!

In the Bleak Mid Winter

In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak mid-winter

Long ago.

Okay, okay, it isn't soooo bleak...we just have had a blizzard! Up above you see the view outside my front door.

Here's my old-fashioned detached garage and the old pecan tree.  

You can have your hot water bottles, your socks filled with rice and microwaved, your electric blankets or your heating pads!  For all out comfort and warmth while the blizzard howls around your hundred-year-old house, up on the second floor, there's nothing like snuggling up with a mutt. 

And she was quite frugal by costing us nothing and giving us everything. Who rescued who?  

Whenever we have severe weather, I feel cozy up in our room.  The thunder sometimes shakes the house, we've had a very weird earthquake which also damaged the Washington Memorial.  We've gone through hurricanes and tornadoes.  Most recently, we've had a blizzard, but the old Shea house at 256 Constitution Avenue still stands unafraid. 

If she could talk she would say, "I am still here. I am unbowed. I have horse-hair insulation. I was built to last with 2x4's that were really 2 feet by four feet. I was built by a craftsman who cared and a family who loved me, not a developer."

The old Shea house at 256 still has a family who loves her very much. The great grand nephew of the original family lives a block and a half away. His uncle did upholstery for the railroad.  He was a generous man who also donated the land for the old school across the street.  Mr. Shea built the house next door for his mother-in-law.

So just like Mr. Shea did, we shoveled the sidewalks, stamped our feet up the steps and on to the front porch.  We made warm comfort foods while snow and ice fell so hard that we could hear the crystals hit the ground. 

The only thing that I can guarantee that Mr. Shea did not do after this storm was acquiesce to the request of the next door neighbor (nobody's mother-in-law) to take a picture of her in a belly dancing costume (no coat on) in the backyard for an online "Snow Goddess" challenge.  

She is an endless source of amusement without meaning to be, if you know what I mean.

I've Grown Accustomed to His Face

I love this guy.  He is the mascot for a small-engine machine shop in the next neighborhood over from mine. This shop tends to be open on weekends only and I suspect some beer drinking is involved.

Here's his face close up.  They must have spent a fortune at the dentist getting those straight teeth.

I've become accustomed to his face.  The Tin Man is jealous.

A Day Which Will Live in Infamy

Having lived at Pearl Harbor many years with a poorly placed street sign making it seem that the Arizona Memorial was in my backyard, this is an important day.  

The Memorial was often right in front of me in the Harbor when I worked for the American Red Cross.  You can't be affiliated with Pearl Harbor without feeling the pathos, the horror, and the valor which the Memorial represents as it still exudes a sheen of oil on to the water.  

Every day, a lei will be thrown in the water from tourists or service members who still remember the sacrifice of these men.  I'm sure that there will be hundreds of leis there today in their memories. Dorie Miller, pictured below receiving the Navy Cross, is a tangible hero of the War for me.

He was the son of a large family of Texas sharecroppers.  A high school drop out, he was a "messman," serving food and attending to officers' staterooms and laundry.  The rate doesn't exist anymore.  I guess the Navy figures that officers can do their own laundry now.

On December 7, 1941, Dorie Miller heard the call of duty.  He had been below decks attending to breakfast and laundry, but headed up topside. 

Although he had never been trained on using Navy guns, two officers coached him and expected him to load ammunition only. When they turned back to him, he was firing away.  

His years shooting squirrels to help feed his large family surely helped him. Just remember that God never, ever wastes the experiences in your life. This was just a bigger gun with bigger stakes  Dorie Miller shot down 3-4 enemy planes in addition to other heroic duties moving shipmates out of harm's way.

Sadly, he was killed in action in 1943 when a Japanese sub torpedoed his ship.

As my favorite poet, Langston Hughes said, "When Dorie Miller took gun in hand, Jim Crow started his last stand..."

I remember him today.

A Botanical Surprise

My Nana Dunn had a green thumb.  In fact, I think she had a green hand, she was so good at making things grow.  Nana and Pop's house at 15 Maynard Drive in Farmingdale on Long Island, New York had a lawn which looked like green velvet.  Their phone number was MY4-5696.  Here is the house on Google, but it isn't nearly as pretty as I remember it.  It is the split level home in the middle with gray shutters.
Nana and Pops

If any errant dandelion dared besmirch anything in her yard, she was on the ready with an old screwdriver and the top of the metal trash can turned upside down to rip them from the ground.  She would hold the lid in front of her like a shield; kind of like Joan of Arc!

The back yard was all grass except for two feet around the fence perimeter which they filled with zinnias in every color.  At the back wooden fence which separated their yard from the Noto's yard, they planted these beauties, called "Chinese Lanterns."

Tricia Noto and I would pump as high as we could on the swing set while Nana hung laundry out in the fresh air.  At night, the adults would sit out on the concrete patio and sip a beer, while we kids caught lightening bugs in empty mayonnaise jars.  

Nana didn't have a lot of inside plants, most likely because she didn't want to clean up dead leaves or flowers. She was a meticulous housekeeper and an immaculate woman whose house was always tidy and smelled of Fels Naptha soap.

She did have one inside impatiens plant, which was gorgeous. Nana babied it like a child.  The impatiens sat in front of a sliding glass door where it received perfect light.  Frugal woman that she was, Nana didn't go out and buy a plant stand for it.  Instead, she artfully draped an old, paint-spattered stool with a pretty tablecloth and arranged the bottom of the cloth just so on the carpet.  It was beautiful.

I've never been able to keep an impatiens going inside until a few weeks back, I noticed the pink flowers at the bottom of a green plant given to me years ago by a very old woman named Grant Creekmore.  Only she said it as , "Grant Creekmo"  Grant was a matriarch of my church who taught school in the building across the street from me. 

Grant had snowy white hair piled on the top of her head and often wore a silver necklace with cut outs of little children all around it, like charms.  She was drafted during World War II because of her unusual first name and had to go to the Draft Board here in town in person to fix it.  She's organizing things in heaven, now.

I guess some would say that I picked up seeds on my shirt from outside and somehow transferred them into the house.  I'd like to think that Grant and my Nana got together in heaven to let me know that they are thinking of me.  

My Nana didn't get drafted during World War II, but she was such a formidable woman that she could have given Hitler a good butt kicking and a piece of her mind, as well.

Frugal Finds - Library Card Catalog

I've been yearning for a library card catalog since I saw this beauty in the living room on Big Bang Theory:

They look lovely and can store so many things.  

A local vintage shop was selling a recently made catalog for $620 - Jeepers!

Here's an amazing example, reassembled from two broken down ones and rebuilt - on line for $1,000:
Card Catalog Redo

Each time I see one, I am transported back to the East Hartford Public Library - Wickham Branch. Located just two blocks away, I could walk there from my grandmother's house.  Looking down, I can almost see my little feet in red Keds trudging along, making sure to not to step on the sidewalk cracks and break my mother's back.

There was always that "library smell," hard to describe, but redolent of book pages, paste, and age. Eau d'library. I still feel a thrill when I see a big ole pile of books at a library, a junk store, or a yard sale. The entire world opens up through reading.

My neighbor, Bob, had a yard sale.  He's a carpenter.  I noticed a shelf of drawers that stacked and excitedly talked to Bruce about how I had found the little pulls on line for $3 a piece.

Bob heard me and brought out those very pulls out from his garage, giving them to me for free.  I paid him $25 for the drawers.

And this is the cobbled-together result in my front hall:

Bruce added the drawer pulls and created the labels:

I think I like my $25 version better than the $1,000 one!  I get a kick out of doing things on the cheap. My library card catalog makes me think of kind Bob Sauls and my wonderful Bruce every time I use it.

Anyone can spend a lot of money to make a house look special. 

Here's to all those bloggy girls like...

• Judy       Anybody Home
• Debra   As I See it Now
• Brenda Cozy Little House
• Kim       Imagery by Kimberly
• Vicky    Vintage Vixen 

...and countless other creative women who cast household magic from items discarded by others.

Library Card Catalog - $1000