renee’s blog

TREAT MAKIN' DAY with my sister Raquel.  We made 2 dozen each: smooth peanut butter cookies, double peanut butter cookies (with extra peanuts added),  peanut butter blossom cookies (with Hershey's kisses in center), oatmeal pecan cookies, oatmeal date cookies and oatmeal cookies (unadorned).  I also made a pan of apricot crisp bars and N. and I made 3 dozen candy peanut butter drops (which look like peppermint patties before you bite into them but are actually like peanut butter cups). 

   Three Holidays in one...  I got my Halloween costumes put away.  That is no small task.  I have about 60 costumes.  Really.   At my job we dress up for Halloween every day from September 25 to October 31.   I also got a season pass to the Minnesota Renaissance festival, for which I dressed in costume.  So it takes a while to put them all away.  I got that done on Thanksgiving.  Yep, while the turkey basted in it's own rich and delicious juices, I was folding box after box worth of costumes and accessories.  Since I was going to be in the storage shed anyway, I got the Christmas tree out.  We ate turkey, ham, sweeeeet potatoes, turkey gravy and mashed potatoes, candied acorn squash, S&P spaghetti squash, wild rice and cranberry stuffing, relish, and pumpkin, cherry and coconut cream pies at our house; how peaceful.  It was just myself and my two grown daughters, the hubby and a neighbor friend with her baby.  After the huge buffet was served we set up the tree and decorated it.  I love how it turned out.  Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I'd say it was an eventful day.  Wouldn't you?

I have really steeped myself in Renaissance and Halloween this summer.  Also my oldest child, my only son Jeromie got married this summer!  I have not stopped once to rest.  I haven't been on Vox or online much at all.  That means I have to relearn my way around and see the ways in which it has been updated.  Maybe make some more vox friends.  I thought I'd start again with a photo or two.  (Now how does this go?...)

  I have cleaned house and have far fewer pets.  I still have 7 Cockatiels,(the first 7 tiels on the previous list).  In addition Mikey the Quaker is still the second love of my life; (second to my human family members).  I have Zeta and the fishtank, but have lost my 2 biggest and sweetest fish.  (That was a hard one, I got called at work when they died.)  I no longer have any small birds or hamsters or guinea pigs.  T.J. the Ferret is getting downright rickety and probably is not long for this world.  No more ferrets ever.  Too hard when they go.  I'd say that is enough animals though.  Just wanted to update that.  (P.S. except for the fishes and Chrismouse the hamster who lived to a ripe old age,  all the other pets went to new families which were 'specially chosen for them.)

Some Halloween fun I wanted to share with you.  (It's also video scrapbooking fun.)

Today I gave blood.  I am very happy to have this chance to donate.  I gave at the local Memorial Blood Center.  It took me 9 minutes, which they say is normal for a first-timer.  I also got some great cheesecake with carmel sauce afterward along with the almost obligatory apple juice.  Next time, (not less than 56 days from now), I will give double-red.  That is giving two units of red blood cells.  I fully intend to continue to give blood.  The group liason said that the blood gets seperated into three parts- plasma, red blood and platelets.  Potentially you can help save the lives or improve the health of three different people each time you donate.  Memorial Blood Centers distribute their blood into their local community.  (That's good.)   I went as part of a corporate group, but anyone can walk in and get screened.  If you make it through the screening, you can give blood right then and there.  Or if you'd rather, you can make an appointment or drum up a group and have a party.   I dedicate this donation to the victims, past and present, of the September 11 attack on America.

    I just bought a bag of those pretty, softly rounded, colorful rocks of different colors.  I got it at the Goodwill for $6.99.  I decided that I didn't know enough about rocks; whether man-made, natural, minerals, fossils, stones, semi-precious or precious.  I have always liked all of the above.  Having done just a few minutes of web-based research, I now know how easy it is to be charged so very much for such things.  The simple truth is: It is darned hard to know what's what, when it comes to rocks.  I have a lot of "rocks" that I have collected.  You can get them at amusement parks.  Just pay for the velvet bag and fill 'er up.  I got a few at the craft store.  Some came in a bubbling tabletop fountain kit.  A few were found while out and about on walks. 
    I also have 3 geodes.  They're like fossilized lava bubbles that filled in with various minerals over thousands of years.   One is the size of a softball, one the size of a baseball and the smallest is just a tad larger than a golf ball.  Each of mine is encrusted over the entire inside surface with Amethyst and quartz crystals.  The largest has "gem quality sized crystals".   They're not like the ones you see in jewelry store windows, but in all three, I am more fortunate than many.  Some people, like myself, buy them first.  Then, when money has changed hands, the geode is cracked open.  Some are fairly costly and yield basically nothing.  Or they may be unsightly, unvaluable or "irregular".  Like I said, I was lucky.   Mine are on display in my living room.  
     I digress.  I found that most of the new pretty rocks were probably tumbled agate - of a lower grade.  But, like so many things that I own, their worth is not intrinsic.  I value them for the aesthetic.  I like to look at them, touch them, rearrange them.  So I have little piles of rocks on endtables around my living room.  Cha Feng Shui.