Spent the day at Kris’ yesterday, baking a gazillion different kinds of cookies and other holiday treats. We made scotchios, fudge (regular and mint), Hershey Kiss cookies, caramel corn (with and without nuts), sugar cookie lollipops, peppermint bars, Texas Two-Step soup mix, granola, and probably several others that I’ve forgotten. Actually, it was mostly Kris, NJ, Andrea, & Jody making the cookies. I was relegated to smashing the candy canes with a hammer, as my friends are all aware that my talents lay in areas other than those of the culinary arts. My 10 y/o daughter was dubbed “More Useful In The Kitchen Than Her Mother.”

On the other hand, when it was time to get the burn pile fired up, you know who was on the A-list to manage that job!

NJ did carefully transcribe all of the recipes for her own later use. God knows her mother is no help in that department. On the other hand, she will know how to captain a ship and put on her own dang tire chains, thanks to that same mother.

Ta-da! Another major step in making this a reality; the house in Snohomish went on the market yesterday. Although the final work on carpet and some finishing touches are not complete, I came to the realization that if I wait for the contractors to be completely finished doing what they say they’re going to, it would be March before we listed the place! I’ve always heard the “multiply the estimate by two and add a week” rule, but I had no idea how true it is! Arrrghhhh! I’m a generally nice person, but man, they were pushing me close to the edge. Tomorrow. Yeah, well, maybe the next day. Oh, we’ll be there tomorrow for sure. I can’t tell if they’re blatantly lying to me or just truly horrible about managing their time. Either way, it’s appalling!

Those who know me IRL would never believe that I would get excited about new pots and pans, but these are REALLY cool! The whole shebang fits inside one tiny little space. The handles are removable and feel quite solid, the lids have strainers built right in (no more colander!), and each one has a tight lid for storage of food. Got em at Sailboat Owners website. (WooHoooo – new skill, check that out – a renamed link – htmlGoddess in the making – I am SOOO completely winging this) They’re Fagor commercial multifunctional cookware ~ love them! Might even cook with them…you just never know what surprises the universe might have in store!

OK, since this topic has created such a stir within the little Katherine Jane community, I will continue for just a moment ~ I very much appreciate the comments and suggestions so far (We’ve even got Greg doing some research on combination units – Go Team! You Rock!).

Rob’s latest suggestion was to place the unit(s) in the engine room. Clearly, there would be enough room here, given some ingenuity. However, Greg is dead set against that option for several different reasons, not the least of which is my propensity for dropping random items & the way a small sock caught in some engine intake or another would affect horsepower or something else critical…well, you get my point. I can live with that. So ixnay on the engine room for now.

Bringing us back to the lazarette option. While I appreciate the size of the laz itself, you may be able to see why climbing down this ladder with arms full of laundry, though certainly doable, might not be my favorite thing when it’s a cold, blustery night. And I can tell you that given said blustery night, I’m unlikely to be inclined to go retrieve the laundry when it’s finished. “Oh, it can wait til tomorrow, can’t it?” Out of sight, out of mind is a bad thing when it comes to laundry and me ~ this we already know from many years of experience.

Excuse the mess; we haven’t got to organizing this space yet. The freezer that’s down there can definitely go (it’s yet another case of “I can’t get to it easily, therefore I don’t use it”). It was put there by the previous owners, presumably since the boat was chartered and guests are so demanding about needing to be fed. Getting things in and out shouldn’t be too difficult, as there are two large aft deck hatches which allow access (although I have no idea how we’ll lift the freezer; it looks heavy no matter what you do…all in good time). Anyway, off to the right side is where I’d love to put the door into our stateroom. Currently the space on the stateroom side is taken up by a spare bunk which doesn’t do anything except hold Greg’s extra clothes. That and a tank, which I think there would also be room for in the laz, if we configured everything properly.

So Greg has had this cute little fantasy floating about in his head for a few years of kicking back in a little laundromat, reading a dog-eared paperback on a quiet morning, feeling the freedom of not being tied to the drudgery of the common middle-class existence.

Well.

Turns out it wasn’t nearly as romantic as he had envisioned. We decided to give the local suds place a whirl this Sunday morning, just for kicks. That, and the boathouse on the dock is still slightly submerged from the weight of the snow (I swear it will end up floating down the river one of these days…). So off we went.

I don’t think he relaxed once during the entire process. The strange people wandering in and out had him on High Alert the entire time. I found the whole experience rather entertaining for the first 20 minutes, then rather dull and tedious the rest of the time. I think we’ll just brave the boathouse for now. Ideally, we’ll end up with a washer & dryer on board. They’d have to go in the lazarette, which requires climbing down a ladder in the aft deck. I’m slightly less than thrilled about that, but evidently knocking a hole in the bulkhead and putting a door to the laz is a fairly large (read: expensive and time-consuming – Tana knows this!) process. So Greg says that will have to wait a little while.

Meanwhile, back at the marina, there was a very strange man in an unlicensed and apparently sinking boat attempting to cut some logs loose from the remaining flood debris. He was racing about backwards & we were just waiting for him to swamp his whole boat. It seemed particularly sporty of him to attempt use of the chainsaw with the log right up against his boat. I’m no expert, but something tells me there’s a safety issue here…