Simply Saturday....

As I type on this post-Thanksgiving Saturday morning, it is raining outside. I woke up sometime during the night and heard the rain pouring down, but then quickly fell back to sleep. I think this is just the fourth rain storm of the whole year, and every blessed drop counts. We had water in the pond from last week's rain, and today's rain will raise the water level in the pond even more. Thank goodness for rain clouds that hover over this part of the Hill Country.

We had Thanksgiving dinner up at J&J's house.... they made the turkey (yaaaay to that-- I hate cooking a turkey).... actually, J cooked the turkey in a smoker, and I was under direct orders from my cousin F to "Take a slice of that turkey and eat it so you can let me know what it tastes like!" -- the turkey was excellent, nice and moist and juicy and it did have a mesquite-smoky taste to it that was delicious. So there... I've had my slice of turkey for the year, and I didn't have to cook it. My husband made his killer mashed potatoes and oyster dressing.... and I made Aunt Dolly's sweet potato recipe (no marshmallows, and a pox on anyone who melts those things on top of a perfectly delicious sweet potato-- am I the only one in the world who doesn't appreciate marshmallows on top of sweet potatoes?)

And of course we had pie..... J made a pecan pie, we bought an apple pie from Royer's. I have to admit that I wasn't pleased with their apple pie this time.... way too much brown sugar on top of that pie-- clumps of heart-stopping brown sugar that I just left on the plate. From now on, I'm making my own apple pie (which I think is better than Royer's-- with apologies to Bud, the Pie Man).... and I did miss making my pumpkin pie, which I intend to make as soon as the last of that apple pie in the fridge bites the dust. (I've been eating just the apples, and giving the brown sugar topping and the lard-crust to the chickens. Again, my apologies to Bud the Pie Man. Maybe I should also apologize to Scarlett, Prissy, Audrey, and PittyPat.)

Yesterday, we drove into town to get the Christmas tree from Home Depot... they had stacks of just-delivered trees, so we got to pick out the best tree before they sat on the concrete too long. Right now, the tree is in the garage, sitting in a bucket of water and waiting to be carried into the dining room and set into the solid steel and iron cat-proof tree stand. We have had 14-foot trees in that tree stand, with not a branch swaying or a trunk leaning towards the fireplace. And one year when Mickey Kitty was just a baby, he managed to climb up into the Christmas tree and there he was, poking his whiskered face out from between the branches as he tried to get to the very top.... and the tree held firmly in that stand.

Black Friday yesterday..... I hate that term, I hate the retail-minds who conjure up this shopping frenzy every year which prompts senseless people to fight and push and intimidate other shoppers as they grab and punch and kick to get the perfect gift for a reduced price. Is anything out there in the stores worth that sort of inconsiderate un-Christmas-y behavior? And do the stores really have to open up at 9:00 on Thanksgiving night? Pretty soon, the retail Powers That Be are going to do away altogether with Thanksgiving, and call that day "Thankless Thursday," which will be a prelude to "Black Friday." Give us all a blessed break.

Speaking of break......... I called the nice people at Lowe's last week to tell them that our two-days-shy-of-one-year-old refrigerator was making funny noises and clicking sounds. This is the smaller fridge that we had bought for the pantry last year (Nov. 26, to be exact). Of course, any appliance that is made these days is only set to last a year before something goes wrong with it.

And I'm telling you, there are two refrigerators still in my grandmother's house in NY that were there when I was a kid, and they're still there and still working. Why is that? My theory is that the American factories where appliances were made years ago put out good products that would last. Now everything is made overseas in heaven-only-knows-where, by people getting paid pennies a day for tedious work that no one is checking because there's no one in charge who cares if the damn appliances last ten days or ten years because what do they care if Americans have working appliances because the people putting these things together are probably living far below poverty level. (How's that for a run-on sentence?)

Anyway..... the repairman was here this morning, and of course the fridge was working perfectly. Mind you, at ten o'clock last night, we were taking the frozen food out of that fridge and putting it into the fridge in the garage because we thought the pantry fridge had just up and died. But this morning, the noises stopped, the clicking sounds weren't there, and the fridge and freezer were running perfectly and soundlessly, just as before. The fridge guy said he couldn't fix a problem that he couldn't see or hear....... and "what y'all call a click may not be what I call a click so I really can't help y'all any with that there." (They sent Gomer Pyle to fix our fridge, in case you hadn't guessed.)

The conclusion we came to was that the clicking sound was the fan hitting a piece of ice that built up behind the freezer unit, which made the fridge go into 'defrost mode,' which caused the end of the clicking, and the sound of melting ice dripping into the pan underneath the unit..... so this morning when we woke up, we had just what we had before-- a quietly running, efficiently working pantry fridge. "Now the next time that happens, if it does and it probably will, y'all can get out a recorder and tape the sounds it'll be making and that way I'd be able to hear the clicking sound y'all are talking about and maybe I can be of more help to y'all." Before Gomer said goodbye this morning, he told us half a dozen stories about other customers who heard strange noises coming from their refrigerators. I resisted the urge to tell him to say hello to Andy and Barney when he got back to Mayberry.