Tired of Winter, Part Two

From the Burlington Free Press:

If you regard winter as only Dec. 1 through Feb. 28, which is considered climatological winter, this is the second snowiest winter on record.
Since Dec. 1, we’ve had 97.4 inches of snow, the NWS says.

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By the way, Burlington has had snow on the ground for the past 54 consecutive days.

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Eight feet of snow in three months. That's why we're tired of Winter!

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(But, we know that Spring is coming!....)

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Tired Of Winter

The entire Northern household is tired of Winter.

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It's cold. It's dark. Snow is no longer a magical experience...snow is now the enemy.

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NorthernToddler has been starting almost every conversation with the words, "When it's summer, and there's no snow outside...."

As in, "When it's summer, and there's no snow outside, I can play basketball. ....I can ride my big-boy bicycle.......We can go fishing......etc."
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There was a remarkably warm day last week where it warmed up to 57 degrees. It was a time for celebration. Everyone had a spring in their step, it felt like spring was finally breaking the hold that winter has had on us for the last five months. The next day, it was 24 degrees with a biting wind slashing to the bone. Spring has betrayed us. Our hopes are crushed.

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NorthernDaddy is tired of dealing with the cold around the house. Earlier last week found him standing two stories up on a ladder, using a propane torch to try and remove a huge ice dam on the roof. Water was backing up over the flashing on the chimney and pooling on the floor of NorthernToddler's playroom. The torch wouldn't touch the ice dam (really? Torches are supposed to melt ice, dammit!). Chipping away with the claw of a hammer wasn't working. Screw it - we'll wait until spring to deal with it! NorthernDaddy has also given up on shoveling snow. If it falls, he's just going to drive over and pack it into the driveway.

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The rabbit is a little bit angry with winter. (see previous post about rabbit moving back to the unheated mudroom)

The chickens are tired of being cooped up. They've explored every nook and cranny of their coop and now bumrush the door everytime it's opened in an attempt to get out into the.....cold, snow-covered yard. Stupid Chickens!

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NorthernMommy is tired of winter -we think.......... Every time we try to talk to her, we find her with a glazed look in her eyes, mumbling something about being on the beach in the sun with no NorthernDaddy or Toddler in sight......

Cute But Deadly

Autumn the Bunny looks pretty cute, right?

(Please excuse the stains on the floor in the photo below. Our only excuse is that it's the floor underneath NorthernToddler's chair, and we don't have the energy to mop up after him every meal!) In fact, Autumn the Bunny is a killer.

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A few weeks ago, there was a long spell of really cold weather in NorthernLand. Zero and below. NorthernDaddy took pity on Autumn and moved her cage into the kitchen. (Mostly a selfish move: NorthernDaddy was tired of the waterer freezing up every twenty minutes.) Everyone enjoyed her company and having her in the kitchen.....until the latest bag of hay was opened. NorthernDaddy has a moderate grass allergy, and this bag of hay was super-effective at triggering that allergy. NorthernMommy and Toddler tried to help by volunteering to be the ones to feed the hay, but the allergies persisted. The bag of hay was tossed out the door, all carpets and air ducts were vacuumed, and the furnace filter was replaced - no affect on the allergies.

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NorthernDaddy is was sympathetic to the bunny; she's not really trying to kill NorthernDaddy....it's just the grass, and she needs to be inside in the warm.

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A few days later, the bunny is still inside and still getting hay. She's also shedding a very fine coat of hair - her cage is starting to look like a rabbit fur "poof". No problem, NorthernDaddy is taking an allergy medication to allieviate his symptoms.

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At three A.M. on Sunday morning, NorthernDaddy woke up not able to breathe. His nose was clogged and his throat was constricted - to the point of wanting to head for the Emergency Room. (Seriously. NorthernDaddy was even considering how to perform a self-tracheotomy if the rescue squad couldn't make it in time!) After calming down and getting some cool water and breathing some cold air, NorthernDaddy's condition improved - but he was convinced that the bunny was indeed trying to kill him.

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NorthernMommy and Toddler went to Boston to see Funny Cartoon Movie Characters On Frozen Water (we're not about breaking trademark law on this blog - try using the rhyme "kidneys on rice", it sounds close enough!). NorthernDaddy saw this as an opportunity to move Autumn the Bunny back out to the mudroom (and save his life!). With NorthernToddler out of the house for a day or two, NorthernDaddy wouldn't have to listen to the endless stream of questions from Toddler inquiring as to why the bunny had to move. Two minutes after the NorthernToddlerAdventureMobile™ pulled out of the drive, the bunny's cage was relocated to the mudroom. NorthernDaddy thwarts another attempt to kill him! (NorthernMommy counts for attempts #3 through 8!)

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Yup, Autumn the Bunny is a killer....but we'll keep her around anyway....

Food (Mis)Adventures

NorthernMommy has been experimenting with gluten-free foods recently, and today she brought home some gluten-free flour with the idea of making pasta from scratch. NorthernDaddy was into that - he's been toying with the idea of making home-made pasta for months (but has found that it's difficult to set aside the time needed).

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Pasta is remarkably simple in its compostion and construction; flour, eggs, salt, water, oil. Mix it together, roll it out, shape it, and cook. We can do this! Check our ingredients....eggs - straight from our chickens today. Salt - only the finest sea salt. Oil - good stuff (really expensive and incredibly good tasting). Water - um....water from our well (it's an acquired taste!). What's left? Of course: flour. NorthernMommy brought home some gluten-free all-purpose flour. Ingredients: rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, chick pea flour, navy bean flour, sorghum flour, and xanthan gum. Sounds healthy and natural, but keep that navy bean flour in the back of your mind - we will be seeing it again.

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We gathered 'round as a family to make our first batch of yummy home-made pasta. NorthernMommy and NorthernToddler measured out and mixed the dry ingredients.

Huh? I've got flour where?

NorthernDaddy combined the "wet" ingredients and mixed them with the dry. Then, as per the instructions, started to knead the pasta dough. Instead of the reassuring and familiar aromas that NorthernDaddy is used to from baking yeast breads, the kitchen began to smell faintly like potatoes. (Remember the kinds of flour in the mix?) After a couple of minutes of kneading, the unmistakable odor of beans began to spread through the house. NorthernDaddy has a distinct hatred for certain legumes. Pretty much any bean that has that special "beany" smell and nasty grainy texture goes straight into the "Will Not Eat" category. Lima beans, lentils, and navy beans are all fit to be cooked and tossed straight into the compost bin. (Black beans, on the other hand, are an essential food staple in the NorthernToddler household.) So, the emergence of 'bean vapors' from our pasta dough was taken as a bad sign.

We may have shortcut the resting times for the dough - it never became perfectly pliable and easy to form. As we rolled it up to cut, the dough crumbled and generally made a mess of itself. It's possible that the textures of the different flours and the lack of gluten had something to do with the results.

The NorthernClan pushed onward - we're having home-made pasta no matter what! NorthernMommy slid the pasta into the roiling water and, as it cooked, sampled a piece. Directly after her taste test, she handed over the cooking duties to NorthernDaddy and went off to toast some bread for herself and NorthernToddler to eat (instead of having the pasta).

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NorthernDaddy is tougher than the other two pansies in the house. He was going to have a meal of the first home-made pasta ever created in his home.

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How did it taste?

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Like this:

(Side note: dessert was Milk Chocolate Covered Kettle Chips. Yup - ridged potato chips covered with chocolate. Created by none other than our beloved Snowflake Chocolates here in Jericho. It's an odd combination, but the chocolate is so good that we're snarfing down the chips!)

Home Improvement

NorthernDaddy spends a lot of his free time reading home improvement magazines. Mostly, it's to find design ideas for the two major projects we're planning (bathroom remodel and connecting the house and garage with a sunroom), but sometimes a new product review will jump out and scream, "BUY ME!!!"

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The most recent product to catch our attention was the HydroRight dual-flush converter from a company called MJSI. The idea: change your normal dump-a-million-gallons-per-flush toilet to a water-sipping eco-toilet with a simple valve kit. NorthernMommy thought it was a good idea because it saves water (EPA estimates state that toilets comprise up to 27% of a home's indoor water use). NorthernDaddy thought that it was a good idea because NorthernMommy wants to save water and a brand-new dual-flush toilet costs significantly more than the eighteen dollars that your home improvement store wants for the HydroRight.So simple that a two-year-old could install it! Well, almost - NorthernToddler might have been able to install it, if he hadn't looked at the icky sediment in our toilet tank and run off screaming. (He eventually came back and assumed his normal role of Chief Flashlight Holder.)So, does this contraption work? In a single word: yes. Installation was stupid simple. Tuning the unit involves changing flush settings until the toilet uses the least possible amount of water to clear the bowl - a process that was time and water consuming. Once set up, there are two flush 'settings': the upper button flushes for liquids, and the lower button flushes at full volume (volume of water, not sound!). In daily use, we have found that the "little" flush handles most needs well. Water savings have been considerable - although without a water bill or measuring device, we can't prove it - we can verify that the toilet uses less than half the tank of water for "little" flushes. That would be a 50 - 60% drop in the amount of water used by the toilet for most of our flushes. Not bad for a sub-$20 item that an untrained monkey could install!

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Another recent project was to insulate the hot water supply pipes in the house. The pipes run exposed through the basement and cool themselves quite rapidly. It takes forty-five to sixty seconds for the water to run warm at the kitchen tap. That's a long time - and a lot of water. The cheap and quick method for fixing that is to use foam pipe insulation to wrap the pipes.

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Secondary use for foam pipe insulation: sword fights! (Please excuse the not-so-clean kitchen in this photo - NorthernDaddy was sword-fighting, not prepping for the photo shoot.)

Down in the basement, wrapping the pipes. The previous owner (or his contractor) insulated the cold water supply lines that feed into the house, but not the hot water pipes.... Pipes are insulated now - so far, it seems that it works okay: it now takes 20 seconds to for the faucet to run hot instead of 45 -60.

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Cool/Freaky new development: As we're finishing this blog post, we are experiencing thunder snow. Really weird to see snow coming down at about two inches per hour and then see the flash of lightning and boom of thunder!