215 - A Barn Trip

Stacy's here!!! We've been chillin' and grillin and catching up and having fun.

My cousin got me the perfect door mat. I. Love. It. I saw it somewhere and posted it on Facebook so she got it as a housewarming gift. :)

My fascination with dead white flowers continues.

Stacy!

Top of a tree across the way.

Today we decided to take a walk to the barn and see what's going on... lots of weeds to wade through.

Our barn. Very rustic. I like it.

Bo exploring.

There was an unfortunate price to pay for this journey... stickers and spines all up on me. Yowsers. Fifteen minutes later I'd cleaned them all off.

And now for more grillin'. Non-Apricot Chicken with coconut rice and leftover garlic bread. Mmmmm. And definitely more chillin'... it's supposed to get down to 19 tonight which probably means 11 (they always predict about 8 degrees too high). Guess the kittens stay in the other room instead of the basement tonight.

Gracie update: She's eating again!!!! I got a Fancy Feast Appetizer and set it in front of her, I figured she'd turn her nose up at that too (she never really cared for them in the past) but she sniffed it and settled in, eating about half of it over a 20 minute period. She even ate the meat, not just the juice. So... so far, so good, she's been eating whatever I put in front of her and has been drinking water as well. I keep the door to the cage open until we go to bed so she can come and go as she pleases. Sometimes she does, in fact, crawl back in of her own accord. Bootsie seems to have a crush on her, he comes up and tries to reach her through the door and lounges on the table in front of her. It's cute.

214 - The Beauty of Monochrome

Fall is my favorite, but the color has come and gone. Still... there is beauty in winter when you can see the architecture of the trees and the landscape becomes monochromatic. Today as Bo and I took a walk I noticed that the sun shone on the skeletal remains of some flowers/weeds growing alongside the edge of the road and it looked like ice sculpture.

But first... a pretty layered sunset of pastel blue and pink

Which morphed into a blazing pink sunset

And later the moon came out. It looked pretty cool.

Bo was oblivious, but beautiful.

The next day, Gracie got some time to roam around a bit. She likes the window. We had a minor setback the last couple of days where she stopped eating again. But last night she started drinking water on her own and today I enticed her into licking more gravy. So we're *hopefully* back on the road to recovery. Again.

Went for a walk this afternoon.

And here are the flowers I mentioned so long ago...

Nice windy road

But Bo's favorite thing is to chew on a stick in the yard.

So now it's time to get the grill going and make some space in the freezer.

Oh! Speaking of... Our brisket was heavenly. Mike and I came up with a dry rub. I doused the brisket with a simple pre-rub, then covered it with several layers of the rub we made, Mike smoked it all day and then (because we miscalculated the amount of time a 12 lb brisket would take to cook) put it in the oven to finish overnight. It was one of the best briskets I've ever had. Made some potato salad to go with it and we had leftovers for a week plus what went in the freezer. Bo also got fat cubes for treats. We even gave some to Tom and Jeff at the hardware store.

I also came up with a pizza sauce and finally got the crust to work out like we want. Progress. We had pizza night the last couple of nights since it was raining, but it's not raining anymore. So it's grillin' time.