Dyeing for New Clothes

I have been haunting the local thrift shops for new items that match the dress code at work. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a huge selection of dark blue shirts and/or brown/khaki pants. At least not when I got there.

I had purchased a few blue shirts and some khaki pants in California 'just in case', and I've been able to find a few more, but my goal is to have enough of everything that I don't have to do laundry in the middle of the week. I'm getting closer to that goal, but have not reached it yet.

This isn't out of any laziness; it's just practical expediency. Since I don't have laundry facilities and can only do laundry twice a week, it doesn't take a "rocket surgeon" to figure out that if something went wrong (say a really, REALLY bad blizzard) to disrupt my opportunities, I might run out prematurely.

Of course a number of the things I've gotten need some altering to fit me, and the tailer fairy hasn't gotten them done yet. There's some sort of high-pitched tailer fairy whining about "moving", "unpacking", "Grandpa", "more to do than I can possibly get done, and you want me to SEW. But that's just how tailer fairies are... temperamental.

In light of all these facts, I was driven to a desperate choice. For the first time in my life, I was going to dye. It was actually quite fun, dying. The puns where hilarious, particularly since I dyed late on a Saturday night, and everything is hilarious when you're tired.

For those of you who like me have led a sheltered existence, where dyeing was merely mentioned and not something you personally experienced, I decided to blog about it. It turned out to be surprisingly easy, and I have already dyed again since then.

The first thing you do to dye is read, read, and reread the directions. You have two techniques to choose from. The washer method and the sink method. The sink method involves someone stirring the clothes non-stop for a half an hour, and since no children could be persuaded that sounded like fun, I went with the washer method.

The tools of the trade are a bottle of dye, a cup of salt to help the dye 'take' better, and some kind of metal stirring device. Stirring with your hands is not recommended unless you are going as a character from Avatar on Halloween. I've never done Halloween, so there was no need for me to experiment.
The next step is to fill the washer with water, and while it is filling, you thoroughly wet the clothes so the dye will soak into them at an equal rate.

After the clothes are wet and ready to go in, you pour in the dye and the salt, making sure to dissolve and mix things well. In case you are wondering why the water is yellow before I add anything, that is the natural color of the local rust. We don't have many white clothes around these parts.....at least we don't for long!Then it is time to add the clothes. They are supposed to agitate for 30 minutes. You will have to reset the agitation cycle on your washer to make it long enough, but you will have your own personal agitation cycle upon finding out you missed the right moment and all of your dye has gone down the drain after about 5 minutes.
I quickly filled it up with water, hoping there was still enough dye on the clothes to do some good, and indeed, it seems there was. After agitating long enough, rinsing, doing a normal wash cycle with detergent, and being dried, there was a noticeable difference in the colors of at least some of them. And the others aren't ruined, so I count my first dyeing experience a reasonable success.


I don't know why my 'before' picture insists on being sideways, but it does.

A Doggy Paradise

If Finley could ever remember his passwords, he would blog and tell about his experiences himself. Since he can't, I'll give you a brief glimpse into his experiences acclimating to a new way of life. Finley was born in a city. He lived his next 6 years in the "country", but it was a country with yards, fences and leash laws. He ran away every time he was off the leash, so he hardly ever got to run free.

Then we moved out here. At first, Finley was filled with trepidation at the drastic changes. Winter sounded fierce (and still does...nothing's changed there!), and he didn't like the idea of leaving his comfortable home and food dish to bunk with his Cousin Clancy for the summer.

Once out here, Finley quickly found there were some VERY nice benefits to living out in the prairie wilderness. He got to run loose on his aunt and uncle's property, go for bike rides with me, and best of all, make regular forays out onto the prairie and run to his heart's content.

Along the way he discovered his heritage as a bird dog. Unfortunately, his skill is not commensurate with his enthusiasm. Hunting for him usually consists of sniffing passionately amongst the grasses where moments before, birds had been. Now they were thundering across the fields, but he never noticed, being too busy scenting them. Point!

After the Great Blizzard of October 2010, we took the dogs out to another one of their favorite spots. An old house sits alongside a country road, empty, but still well-maintained by someone. Old barns dot the yard, and old, rusting pieces of machinery are sitting there for lack of a better thing to do. The dogs love to run around sniffing, since all the empty houses seem a winter haven for all sorts of wild creatures. Goodness knows, there's not much else for shelter around here! And the dogs get especially excited after a snow fall, which seems to hold the scent better.


We saw a big ol' raccoon in the house. John surprised the raccoon...and himself...by walking in on him. I guess he spends the winter there, because the next day we could still see him through the windows. And no, he wasn't in the same spot and position, he was moving. We also saw a hawk and an owl flying around, clearly annoyed to have their privacy invaded by rowdy, yapping interlopers.

I enjoy the chance to see our dogs so happy (because of course I take my mom's and my sister's when I can), and I like to explore and see all the cool old things. If you know me at all, you know I like old stuff, and I've moved to the Motherload of old stuff! If anyone likes to renovate old cars, this is the country for you. People have the coolest classic cars just sitting there rusting in their yards. This particular farm yard also has several vintage children's wagons and an old flour mill in varying stages of decay.

My mom and I spent a nice Sabbath afternoon walk there last week, so here are a few pictures from our adventures.






Mom wasn't too enthusiastic about posing for me, but she looks so cute there in the snow! Hannah and Jackie kept eating the snow when they weren't pouncing through it; I guess they thought it was a really bland snow cone. It really is great fun to see California dogs play in the snow! Now the snow is almost gone, after a week of warm weather. But not to worry, I've heard there's more where that came from.

The Blustering, Billowing Blizzard

The Grenora City Hall officials had left a notice on all the trailer doors reminding the residents that they needed to have their trailers winterized by the first hard freeze or the city would turn off the water to prevent damage to their own equipment. That was earlier in October, and my dad was still in California. He was confident that he'd be out in time to take care of things before it got bad. And he was. Sort of.

My dad arrived from California on Thursday. John got back from Mount Ellis on Friday. The storm arrived on Tuesday. Sunday was spent in manful bonding around the trailer. Progress was made. Not enough. Monday it began to rain. The after school hours were spent the same way, and further progress was made. We were getting somewhere. But we had not arrived. Tuesday afternoon the rain turned to wind-blown snow. And at last, sometime that afternoon, surrounded by the burgeoning blizzard, the underneath of my trailer was at last winterized.

Tuesday night is my night to go up to Westby for friends, family, and most importantly, showers and laundry. No piddling little blizzard was going to prevent that. No, sir! Driving the 20-some miles of open prairie in between Grenora and Westby was a fun introduction to winter driving for this California bred and born girl. But by going slowly and watching the edges of the road....and by assuming there would be no on-coming traffic because who would be stupid enough to be out on a night like that...we made it up to Westby and the warm welcome of the family home.

I hurried as fast as I could to do showers and laundry, but it was still a couple hours before I was ready to leave. There was a "No Travel" warning for our area and Jack was advising staying the night because he had barely been able to see to get home. You weren't supposed to travel unless it was an emergency, and then you were supposed to have emergency winter gear. I had neither gear nor emergency, but as a sop to safety, I threw a small sleeping bag into the van before John and I started out.

We nearly ran off the road before I even left town. That would have been humiliating! I couldn't really see in front of me. If I looked directly ahead, all I could see was vague shapes of rapidly swirling snow. But I could see the edges of the road through my peripheral vision. Only right there, there was a road that joined the one I was on and my edges suddenly disappeared. Thankfully, I was going slow enough that the few feet of grass and ditch I could see ahead of me was enough space for me to swerve back onto the road. After that, the going was much easier, although I have NEVER driven a more wearing and lengthy trip between the two towns. I was sooooooo glad when we arrived safely in town. No lurid "Stupid Californians Die in First North Dakotan Blzzard" headlines for tomorrow's paper!

As we went into the trailer, I could clearly see that the trailer was casting a snow shadow in the grass; where the trailer was blocking the wind had noticeably less snow than the rest of the grass. I decided to move my van into that shadow so it would be less likely to be snowed in in the morning. Then we settled in for a long night of heaters and harsh snow peppering the trailer's metal shell.

Morning's light revealed a harsh truth. Snow changes the rules in the middle of the game. Whereas the night before, the trailer was sheltering a small spot, now I saw that the night's wind had blown the rest of the grass virtually free of snow. Only in the sheltered spots behind all the trailers had snow been able to accumulate, and accumulate it had! It was with some foreboding that I opened my door, straining to hold it against the wind, and headed to the car to got to work. To my relief, I saw that my two foot tall drift started, oh, about 12 inches from my van tires. I was very thankful to my noble angels who spent the night shielding my van with their wings so my ignorance wouldn't result in an unusable vehicle. Because, of course, I didn't have a snow shovel yet.

Here are some pictures of what I saw that morning as I left the house. They were taken in haste, because the temperature was hovering in the 'teens, with a wind-chill of minus 50,000.



Then it was time for my first adventure in post-blizzard roads. Well, it was still a little blizzardy, but I could see the road most of the time. The roads weren't really bad until I got closer to Williston. I did get to experience something Noni had described to me over the phone last winter. She called it 'rivers of snow flowing across the road'. I never succeeded in capturing a good image of it, but it is very unique looking. You'll come to spots where the wind blows the fine powder across the road in unending rivulets of white. Very pretty to look at, but as a driver, you do stop to ponder if the pretty white stuff covers not so pretty ice patches waiting to snatch up your vehicle and hurl it into the ditch to be covered by snow and found in the spring and maybe they put up a little monument to remember you by. At least I pondered it. Quite a bit.

I didn't so much merge onto the four lane highway as I slid sideways onto it, having just experienced my first major patch of ice. Then it was over the hills to Williston and the discovery that the roads in town were solid sheets of ice. As I came down the straight stretch towards Walmart, the car ahead of me began to brake preparatory to turning. I lightly, oh so lightly, caressed my brakes, and began to slide all over the road. It was SO embarrassing! I have got to get the California plates off my car so people will stop saying, "Stupid California driver, doesn't know how to drive in the snow!" and start saying, "Stupid driver, doesn't know how to drive in the snow!" I'm sure you can see the difference.

I hear that we are expecting a big storm in the next week or so. I'm definitely better prepared this time, both in my now-vast experience, and in the further weatherizing of my little abode. "My" next task is to winterize my car. My dad should be getting here sometime next week. Perhaps he'd like to volunteer.....

The Long Way Home

Last weekend was Laura's first home leave that she actually came home for. The first one happened while I was in California so she went home with a friend. I had naively supposed the home leaves to be voluntary---you went home if you could, but if not, you could hang out at the dorm. Not so. There would be no sad little Ebenezer Scrooge in the boarding schools of today. You are out of there by 5:00 Thursday evening, and you'd better not get back until Sunday evening.

My mom went and picked Laura up in my van while I was at work on Thursday. That was an adventure in itself, since she took the loooooooooong way home and got lost besides. I wasn't picked up until nearly 11:30. By that time, poor mom was only a fragile shell of her former self after 13 hours of childish nattering, pooch wrangling, and brave exploration of little known and seldom used routes.

Meanwhile, John was on a bus, traveling home from Bozeman. He was able to spend the night at some very kind people's house in Glendive, so the next morning Laura and I headed down to pick him up. It was a lovely fall day. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, so we stopped at the Missouri River access on the way back for a puppy potty break and some scenery.

On Sabbath, we took the dogs to one of their favorite places for a romp. It's a place just outside of town where random piles of dirt and gravel have been heaped up. I don't know why, but I trust that at some point there was a reason for doing so. Now the handy piles of dirt are used for target practice, or on the odd days, doggy exercise courses. The dogs (and the kids) like to run up and down the hills. It does my stationary heart good to see them using up that much energy while I stroll below, or perhaps sit in the car if it's nippy. An added bonus is the train section sitting abandoned on the tracks just down the little valley. It's a neat place for pictures and a fun place to climb and explore.



Then Sunday, it was back to work for me, for Laura it was back to the salt mines of boarding school, and for John, working on winterizing the trailer and school at the local high school. They got it done just in time, too, since 2 days later we were having our first blizzard of the season. But more on that later!

Breaking News Story!

Urgent News Update: I don't know how this will end up, or how it will work out, but it's sure a game-changer. John, the eldest, and erstwhile-resident of Mt. Ellis in Montana, is beginning an unexpected and involuntary sabbatical from boarding school. Now. As in he's already here.

Well, life does have it's little twists and turns, doesn't it? How will this change things...not exactly sure, but here are some possibilities. Since I won't have to pay tuition, I automatically have a much higher monthly income. I also have a much, MUCH smaller trailer all of the sudden. So I might (if God works a miracle, that is) be able to get a house to stay in. I'll be working on that this week.

John will be enrolling in the local school on Monday and getting to experience life in a small trailer with no phone, no computer, no TV, no shower, and no hot water. Our little trailer promotes literacy, that it does! He'll also be able to help my dad winterize the trailer since we are expecting possible snow showers on Wednesday.

I will continue to work, look for housing, and try not to have a nervous breakdown in the process. Laura will be at school trying very hard not to get sent home because I would very possibly kill her if she does, and Caleb will be in his program slogging away through the different levels. Finley will be languishing up at his Auntie's or Grandma's house, wishing I would visit more often (because he stays up there during my work week), and Anika will be trying her very best to run away constantly and wreak havoc throughout the neighborhood. The cats will be snuggled warm in their new home (my sister's) trying hard to avoid those vague and distant unpleasant memories of their former lives.

To be continued......

Lots of Potential and Buckets of Charm. Just No Water.

So the other day my dad, sister, a passel of kids, and two dogs went to look at a house. Next time I am leaving my dad home. Hmmph. He is too filled with practical advice! The house is in Montana, so I couldn't live in it right now if I wanted to, but come summer when Caleb is out of school, I won't need to be in North Dakota anymore. And I will need a larger place to stay than the trailer when I have 2 and possibly 3 kids home from school.

The house is simply the house of my dreams. It is loaded with Potential and has buckets of Charm. It is a fixer-upper, but that's what I want and what I can afford. There is the slight problem that the well is bad and shows every indication of being bad for the rest of time and eternity, but what's that against Potential and Charm. Quite a bit in my dad's opinion, anyway.

I still consider the house in the running if the time came when I had to have housing and if it was still available, AND if it was all I could afford. It costs $12,500, so here for your viewing pleasure is a possible future Tina house.


The entryway.




The LARGE dining room, with a window seat!



The charming and slightly dangerous stairway.




The large and cupboard-ful kitchen.




One corner of a very nicely-sized master bedroom suite.









And a picture of the shower unit, which gives some hint as to the concerns about water quality. It used to be white, you see.

It is a nice house. It has four bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, laundry room, mudroom on the back and front entrances, basement, large bathroom, kitchen, and several closets. We could certainly fit into it, and if it were only used during the summer, the heating costs would be very low. And who needs electricity anyway?

I don't know if we'll get this house or not. I still don't know where I'll be long-term, but I can sure tell that wherever I'm headed, God's the one taking me, so I'll just hold on and enjoy the ride.

My Life as a Walmart Associate

Once I was back in Montana, I started looking around in earnest for a job. Of course I hated to get one because there was still so much to do around everyone's place before winter, but having no income sort of made it a necessity. I studied the help wanted ads, meanwhile putting in an application at Walmart, since I knew if nothing else worked, they would probably hire me.

As it turned out, I didn't get a chance to try for any other jobs because Walmart called me up almost immediately, called me in for an interview, and hired me on the spot. "Wow, Tina, you must have been a really special applicant for them to hire you so quickly!" Not really. My special qualifications were that I was breathing and I could move.

See, it's another lovely result of the oil boom. Working on the oil fields pays well. REALLY well. People are leaving their long-term jobs and going where they can make $10 to $15 an hour more, which creates a huge job vacuum. Everyone wants those high paying jobs at the same time that there are huge new population numbers that need to be served in restaurant, motels, gas stations, and of course, Walmart, the only large store of its type within 2 hours drive of Williston.

This Walmart is the top selling Walmart of its size--in the country--at the same time that it has the lowest employee #'s. Store executives want to know how this store does it...keeps operating costs so low and profits so high. I can tell them after working there for 2 and a half weeks. Sheer desperation!

As one of the cashiers (a surprising career choice for one so math challenged as I!) I am at the front lines during the day. Literally. The lines stretch 6-10 people deep most of the day, and these are mostly people, carts piled high with goodies, who shop like they come to Walmart once a month--because they do. Or it's oil workers coming in and buying 2 cart loads of bedding, socks, snacks, and drinks for the company. It is non-stop work all day as we watch the store merchandise flow through our registers and out the door.

Then, at last evening comes and it is time for me to go home. As I walk to the back to go clock out, I see the evening shift just coming on. Like a frantic troupe of magical gnomes they rush about trying to replace an unreal amount of stock before the flood-gates of customers begins pillaging the store the next morning. This happens EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

This particular Walmart gets a lot of complaints because of the empty shelves and long lines. I regularly hear comments from people in my line about how Walmart is too cheap to hire more cashiers and that's why the lines are so long. Au contraire! Walmart would LOVE to have more cashiers, indeed, I've felt a little bit like a rock star as a new hiree, but no one is applying. They'd love to have more stock on the shelves, but people don't realize that the magical gnomes can't keep up with how fast it flies off the shelves.

As for me, I love working there. I am getting a little better about making mistakes and needing help constantly, and I love the work. I am the airline stewardess on my customers' Walmart journey, and I try to make sure I meet their needs in a fast and friendly way. No one has been really mean yet, so I'm having a great time.

Oh, and one more WONDERFUL thing about my new job at Walmart. When I first hired on, I was thinking, "Oh dear, I'll be standing still all day. What a dull and lifeless job. I shall get quite pudgy." I couldn't have been more wrong. I am hauling mid-range weights (milk jugs, heavy cans, dog food, cases of water, flat-screen TV's, etc.) all day long, plus periods of quick stepping when I scan items in customers' carts or put their bags away. I am getting 8 hours of low-level exercise every day, and I am losing weight!!! Yeah! Instead of joining a gym, I am letting the gym pay me. Couldn't be better.More affordable housing, but this time in Montana. Note: If you read in Noni's blog about the fox that jumped over her, this is the house and the upper left-hand window is the one it jumped out of.