Sometimes it’s the little things

In my not-necessarily-humble opinion, the moomincabin is looking pretty darn good and “feels clean” if that makes any sense, this summer. I continue to try to find a balance between de-cluttering and making anything approaching a significant change. In truth, I don’t really *want* any significant changes, at least not until the family is ready to talk about them…

So today I tackled some small stuff. First, I hung a whole bunch of stuff on the clothesline. It was a dry, windy day and I like to air linens out when I have the chance. There’s Radical Betty’s old beach towel. It lives here now for whenever UKW wants to come and visit and I have been using it myself, just to keep it active (or something). Next up is a towel that Liz has been using. I associate it with my brother but that’s not his Real Towel. His Real Towel was his Tagger Towel (cute tiger) and it is upstairs somewhere. My beloved old beach towel (green/blue stripes in various shades and widths) *may* still be around in the form of a couple of cleaning rags but not sure. My grey maxi-skirt that got wet around the edges dragging along the shore yesterday. My blue bath towels and one of the bath mats. A wet washcloth and the micro-fiber cloth I used for the next chore. A couple of rugs also hung outside over our intermittent railings for a long time today.

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The next chore… We have this recycling bin outside the back door of the moomincabin. There were no fewer than THREE white plastic buckets collectors of big dead bugs in that thing. I am the Queen of Recycling and I could not figure how to manage the moomincabin recycling with all of those buckets in there. So I rolled up my sleeves and pulled them all out of there and washed them out, let them dry in the sun/wind, moved them to the garage, washed out the recycle container and (after we dropped off some recycling stuff today), set up new bags in the bin.

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I went out to the garage to continue to process what few of the Commander’s belongings remain and I found a treasure trove of old booklets and pamphlets of recipes and, well, we’ll talk about the Mirro-matic pressure cooker that I will never use another day. The Comm was an inveterate saver of pamphlets that come with appliances large and small (that’s a good thing and I try to emulate it) and it’ll be fun to reunite the pressure cooker with its instructional pamplet. And how about those beans? The last page of that pamphlet talks about Bean Queens and I have actually had the privilege to know one of the Gratiot County Bean Queens in my life. I hope she is still around.

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Errands in town (aka Sault Ste. Siberia): recycling, Clydes for lunch (do NOT feed the seagulls), and Glen’s Family Fare for a “few” groceries. ($127)

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And then, in the afternoon, fellow beach-goers sat on the beach. It wasn’t one of those beach days when the water is calm and you sit down there and get hot and swim, etc. But [almost] every day is a beach day. Love.

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2 Responses to “Sometimes it’s the little things”

  1. Sam Says:

    I grew up in a house with a Mirro-matic pressure cooker! My favorite meal out of it was what I called porcupine meat balls. They were meatballs with meat and raw white rice, tossed in with a quart of home-canned tomatoes and a bit of seasoning, chopped onion, and not sure what. I’ve never tried to make them. (Porcupine from the rice grains sticking out…. Was I a clever child?)

  2. Margaret Says:

    That mirromatic pamphlet looks familiar; I bet my mom has one! To echo Sam’s comment, my mom made those meatballs too, but wrapped in cabbage, then cooked in tomato-vinegar sauce. Delicious!! They are some kind of ethnic, like Polish perhaps.