If the Lid Fits: An Odyssey

Have you ever wondered what happened to something you donated to Goodwill?

For the past two years I've been looking for a square glass lid to fit a cast iron skillet we have at the cabin.  Every time I went to a thrift store I'd check out the pot lids.  Not only did I rarely see a square lid, when I did, they weren't the right size.

Then one day a month or so ago when I was in the Goodwill in Longmont.... (Since this is an odyssey, I've created some travel stickers.  The photo below is of Long's Peak after which Longmont is named.  I wanted to credit the photographer, but didn't make note of the name when I inserted the photo and have been unable to find it again)...
...I found a lid that appeared to be the perfect fit...but it had no price tag.  So the lid's odyssey started almost immediately, inside Goodwill!...I took it to check-out and the clerk on duty thought it probably was the top to a casserole.  She called for assistance and I stepped aside and allowed another customer or two to go through check-out while another clerk looked to see if she could find the casserole.  Soon, she returned, indicating the lid had been put out alone and she'd need to get it priced. Off she went, into the back room, finally returning with the lid priced $6.99!  


The check-out clerk commented that it was a ridiculous price and she was only going to charge me $3.99.  I said that sounded great and I'd take my senior discount as well.  So I paid $3 and happily took the lid back to Boulder.... (These are the Flatirons, below, a Boulder landmark, about which I've blogged before.  This photo is by Charles Pfiel and can be located at the Arrowphotos site)...

My sister and her husband had been vacationing at the cabin during this time and the day she came to Boulder to launder bedding before they left to return to Missouri I gave her the lid, still in its Goodwill bag, and asked her to take it back up to the cabin and see if it fit the skillet.  So the lid took its first drive up Boulder Canyon to Eldora. (This old photo of Chittenden Mountain west of Eldora, taken by Donald Campbell Kemp in approximately 1938, is part of the Photographic Collection of the Denver Public Library).

Here are Legs 1 and 2 of the pot lid's sojourn from the time I purchased it...

Several days later I got an e-mail from my sister indicating she had forgotten to take the lid out of her van and had taken it back to Missouri with her! 



Here are Legs 3, 4 and 5 of the lid's odyssey... (My sister e-mailed me that they made it to Goodland, Kansas, the evening they left)....

 ...then drove it on in to Blue Springs, Missouri, the next day....(This photo of the entrance to Burrus Old Mill Park, located where the City of Blue Springs was founded, is from the City of Blue Springs web site).

So this makes Leg 6...

I can only surmise what occurred to the skillet lid at my sister's.  I'm sure it got brought into her house when they unpacked their van...then boxed up and probably taken to the Blue Springs post office (I noted on the internet, plans were announced late last summer to close the downtown Blue Springs post office, so I don't know if it was still open) where it was probably trucked to the Kansas City Airport.  Then I'm assuming it flew to Denver....So, if the trip to the Blue Springs Post Office was Leg 7 and being trucked to the Kansas City Airport was Leg 8, this was Leg 9....

I forgot to note how much my sister paid for postage, but the lid was heavy, so I expect it was quite a bit....but not nearly as much as a coach seat for the same flight!  This lid was having quite the little adventure.  

I'm assuming it was trucked from the Denver International Airport to Boulder and from the Boulder post office to my apartment building, so let's make those Legs 10 and 11.

The last time I was at the cabin, I took the lid with me, Leg 12, and the second time the lid had been driven up Boulder Canyon to Eldora and its potential home!...

Would it fit and get to stay?...

Yes!  It fit!...

Like the original, this odyssey had a happy ending.  

I sure hope I'm not the one to break this lid!  Maybe I should just build a shrine!  Teddee

Happy Feet

I've been trying to determine why I'm particularly happy when I'm at the cabin.  Some of my friends think I should be happier in the apartment in Boulder where I have ample hot running water at the twist of a faucet, a flush toilet, room heat at the touch of a thermostat and a maintenance staff on call to handle any repair.  And when I read the foregoing sentence, their opinion seems sensible.

So what's behind my preference?  I know I enjoy being closer to the elements, even though I could and did get very tired of the high and incessant winds in Eldora that blow down the chimney of the wood stove and spread ashes over the cook top even with the draft closed.  This is what the stove top looked like after I'd been away for several weeks...

But I love the vistas that allow me to keep an eye on the clouds building up on the Great Divide, wondering what they hold in store...

It looks like snow...

It smells like snow...



The crows agree...

And what do I need to do to prepare for a possible storm and colder temperatures?

I also love the solitude and not having the neurotic resident who lives below me calling up indicating she's analyzed a sound she's been hearing in the night and she has definitely identified it as being a humidifier...yes, a humidifier...in my apartment (don't have a humidifier...or any other appliance running at night)...and would I please put something under it to buffer the noise it's making, and, oh, by the way, a digital alarm clock went off at 5 a.m. and continued to beep for a long period of time and woke her up and undoubtedly I've gone off to the cabin and left it on (no, I hadn't and no, I didn't) and would I please make sure it's turned off, etc., etc.  This is the same resident who knocked on my door a couple of months ago holding a bowl and spoon and said another resident had suggested she should come and look at the way I'd decorated my apartment and when I shrugged and said, "Come on in and knock your socks off," she proceeded to wander around, with bowl and spoon, as if she were begging rice in an art gallery, ending up in the bathroom where she decided a mirror wasn't hanging straight and spent about ten minutes putting at least five nail holes in the space of a pencil eraser trying to right this wrong.  So, yes, I prefer being buffered from the neurotics who, unlike those residents who are actually on meds, should be.

Whatever the reasons, I found myself lighthearted enough during my last visit to the cabin that I was taking breaks from my chores while I was as the cabin earlier in the week to....dance.  

There is a section of floor about three feet by three feet with no rug..

In between stuffing these plastic bags (back) in around the windows...

Trying, unsuccessfully, to make the front door air tight with weather stripping...

...ah, monkey do, monkey see it's on the wrong surface!  Good thing it's not sticking...

...transferring all of the tools and DYI stuff from two smaller plastic storage boxes into one larger storage box that my sister and I had managed to empty of useless items we donated to Savers in September...

...and storing it back under the bunk...

...cleaning fall flies off the windows, Windexing the mirrors and dusting, I intermittently stopped to dance to the music on an old The Big Band Era tape, The Passing of an Era, I was playing on an equally old clock radio tape deck...

I fox trotted to Count Basie playing Fiesta in Blue and members of the Les Brown Orchestra playing I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, soft shoed to Lawrence Welk playing Chasing Rainbows...

...and quick stepped (sort of) to members of the Benny Goodman Orchestra playing I Found a New Baby and After You've Gone.  Next time I'll remember to pack the stillettos and stockings (with seams).  And, guys, if that and Dancing With the Stars isn't enough to get you into dance class, let me tell you, a little chocolate and Glenn Miller playing Blue Champagne or Dick Haymes (Much better than Sinatra.  Wonder why he didn't endure?) singing This Time the Dream's on Me...mmm!  mmm!

I had a blast.  Dancing on the cabin floor is like dancing on a snare drum.  I felt like Ann Miller on the soup can.  And if you're too young to remember those T.V. commercials, ask your mother.  And if she's too young to remember Ann Miller, ask your grandmother...or just watch this...

Now that would give that woman downstairs something to squawk about!  Teddee

Missing the First Snow

Last year I missed the first snow at the cabin because I was stuck in Longmont after the Sears Automotive Center there, since closed, ruined my car then threw up their hands and said they had no idea why, after they installed a brand new thermostat, that my car blew up in the canyon on the way back up to the cabin at 9:30 at night, or why, after they installed a new radiator because the previous one ruptured when the car exploded, the car started boiling almost immediately after leaving their premises.  They couldn't run diagnostics and the diagnostic center they recommended couldn't take me until the next day so I had to cripple my way to a motel.  In the night, while this huge snow blew in from the plains, I decided I'd have my car towed back to Peak-to-Peak Motors in Nederland for the necessary repairs to the Sears repairs.  Here's a photo bringing back that entire debacle...

This was about October 26.

Here is a photo I took through the tow truck window while the driver had stopped part way up the canyon to put on chains...

And here's what the cabin looked like when I finally got home...

Well, here it is only October 5 and this is what I saw to my surprise when I opened the drapes this morning here at the apartment in Boulder...

Just the lightest dusting of snow.  My friend Olive didn't feel like walking this morning so I took Kooky the Pomeranian out for a quick walk and could tell from the cars coming down from the mountains on Canyon Boulevard that they'd had a lot more snow up there.  I thought I could almost pick out the vehicles from Eldora because some of them had as much as one to two inches of snow on the roofs and hoods and we always got more than Nederland.

So, I've missed the first snow again this year.  This web cam photo from the Eldora Mountain Resort (ski area) is as close as I'm going to get, I guess...

 

...or this NOAA on-line forecast...

I feel as if I'm missing baby's first steps.

I had planned to post some fall photos so, even though it looks as if winter is upon us, I guess I'll proceed.  Perhaps we'll have some Indian Summer after this cold snap.  That Columbus Day forecast of Sunny with a high of 55F degrees sounds likely.  

 

A chrysanthemum my sister purchased when she was visiting what, three weeks ago?  Loaded with buds that just won't flower...

I've brought this inside and will move it out on the balcony again when the night temps get above freezing to see if it will do anything else.

 

Here are some fall touches I've added to the balcony...

 

I've also been working on some Halloween crafts.  This "wreath with a story"...

I'm not exactly sure what that story is...It's up to the viewer...but I bought this skeleton arm and hand at Michael's last weekend when all their Halloween products were 40% off and I had a 25% off, including sale items, coupon....

I dug into my jewelry box and added the ring, made a sort of Victorian looking cuff out of some wonderful trim I'd bought at a Goodwill when I was still living in Phoenix, painted some cheesecloth black and made a rotting sleeve and wired in the little bell, which I'd bought at a thrift shop sometime over the past two years, reminiscent of those "grave bells" that were sometimes used to give those buried alive the ability to signal their reawakening to those above ground.  

I had one crow and purchased another at Michael's when I bought the skeleton hand.  I had the Victorian door knocker and just included it to the mix for atmosphere.  I added the cottonwood twigs because I'd thought, since I found them in a shopping cart outside the Boulder Savers last year, that they looked like finger bones, and the sueded brown leaves I'd saved from some fall stems last year.  I believe I'd found the white bleeding heart at the Golden Community Garage Sale.  The white pheasant feathers were another Michael's find when their stems were 50% off a couple of weeks ago. 

The nest was something I'd purchased back in 2010 at a shop in Blue Springs, Missouri.  Have forgotten the name.  The nest looked empty, so I decided, knowing crows have a proclivity for collecting treasures, to add this little ceramic heart box that I'd bought last year at the Golden Community Garage Sale.

After I added it, I decided to print off an on-line photo of a Victorian woman and insert it into the "locket."  

Is it the deceased?  Perhaps...

I plan on hanging this on the outside of my apartment door closer to Halloween and hope it won't be too disturbing to my neighbors.

Perhaps the crazy print below will offer some comic relief...

I had purchased, at a Goodwill in Phoenix several years ago, this already rather weird print of an oil painting of these two men in Victorian evening dress...I had been referring to them as The Twins.  Ironically, it was one of the framed prints my sister selected, sight unseen from my storage, since all were wrapped in bubble wrap, to bring out when she visited a few weeks back. In addition to sticking on the googly eyes, I painted the frame black and draped it with "mourning crepe," some black spider-web-pattern fabric, and another piece of the trim identical to that used for the cuff on the skeleton arm.  It will take its place outside on the wall next to the wreath.  Did these creepy men have something to do with the deceased's demise?  You decide! 


More later, Teddee

Fire on the Mountain

When I was at the cabin last weekend I could see this one stand of aspens that was flame red, not the standard yellow, high up on the mountain that creates the south side of the valley in which Eldora, and the cabin, are located...

This is quite a distance west of the cabin, so I'm not sure this is still considered Spencer Mountain, the mountain that overlooks the cabin directly to the south.  

I could have taken a photo of this from the cabin, but there are so many utility lines in the area that I decided to seek a better vantage point.  I took The Loop Trail, walking from "downtown" Eldora, across the creek, along the south side of the creek and west.  

The further I walked, the worse the view!  I remembered that a little over a year ago, when Lola and I walked on Labor Day...

...we got high enough that we had a spectacular view of the entire canyon, so I took a slightly different route and got the view I was seeking...

Another hiker commented she had heard there were some fires in the area, and although I haven't been able to confirm that, the air certainly was hazy.

Everything I have found on line about aspens indicates this red color is unusual, even rare, but I haven't found anything telling me why some turn red rather than yellow.

After I captured the Fire on the Mountain shots, I walked on to what became my phone bench...

 I sat here and talked to my brother in Tacoma with this as a view...

Here are a few additional photos taken last weekend....I love the way the aspens decorate the conifers...

..as if they were already getting ready for Christmas.  I took this one last October...

This combination of colors and textures reminds me of a Japanese flower arrangement...

Even the boulders were getting into the act...

I love the patina on the metal roof of this shed...

And to end on...

...I was so focused trying to capture these aspen leaves going over this little waterfall on their way to Boulder that I didn't even notice the reflection in the viewfinder until I got these back to the apartment, transferred them to the computer and started editing.  

A happy ending to a happy day...Teddee