Life is pretty quiet and calm right now, knock wood. Car runs. We have money in the bank. Mom and Michael are fine. I am fine. Lola is a hot mess but basically fine.
My old house always has something going on.
A couple of days ago the heat upstairs quit working, which was scary. (Thanks goodness it was not cold on Sunday.) Air would come out, but not heated air, and the Auto thingy on the thermostat wasn't working at all. Called the HVAC company we use and they came out yesterday morning. One tiny wire had come loose in the thermostat. That was fixed easily. YAY.
I am slowly but surely gathering all the stuff so the taxes can get done, asap. I help Mother get hers done and I do Michael's taxes with him, using a program called Tax Act, which is easy. Mine have to go to the accountant, like Mom's.
I spent the weekend contemplating and then making a red velvet cake, for a friend's birthday. I had never made one before. It's basically a chocolate cake with red food dye in it. The cream cheese icing was easy to make and the recipe made a TON of it. I will definitely make this cake again because it's not that hard and it's festive.
I am not great at layer cakes. They are always lopsided. I also didn't refrigerate the layers, which is a great trick. Nonetheless, when my friend came to pick it up we all had a piece. He loved it.
Saturday was a rainy and gloomy day so after Michael and I made the obligatory grocery store run -- which can be kind of fun because he has a list and I have a list and it's sort of like a contest to see who finishes first - we went and bought donuts. Not Dunkin or Krispy Kreme, no... a new, no-name donut place in Tucker -- Donut City. Everyone in the Tucker Facebook group had been raving about how wonderful the donuts were so I thought why not try them. We had never been there before and the guy threw in two extra donuts -- of course, he was fixing to close for the day and might have been going to throw them out but it was nice, anyway.. They were more cake-like but they were much more light textured than Dunkin and they didn't have the weird oily industrial taste that Dunkin Donuts have that I hate. These were more pastry-like. They were out of apple fritters, which they are famous for, but oh well..
A friend of mine went out to Comfort Farms yesterday and took photos for me, for an article I am writing for a cooking website. Wish I could have gone, but it's a 2 hour drive and I was waiting on the HVAC guy. Plus, I can't leave Mom all day. Jon posted great photos of his prized pigs on the Facebook page, noting how well-mannered they are. I love this photo -- it looks like they're gossiping. Plus, look at the cool rainbow behind them!
Reminder: please Donate to Comfort Farms and support their wonderful mission of helping veterans
