Going Nuts

It may be familial, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's universal.  My mother told a story on herself that, when I was a baby, she lost my shoes.  It wasn't until after she'd had to replace them that she found the original pair...in the oven.  I cannot find the pecans.  I had a large package of pecans from Costco and I used one cup at Thanksgiving.  I had taken them from the freezer and that's where I thought I put them back.  The walnuts are there.  The pecans are not.  Living as far from stores as I do, of necessity, I have a number of freezers.  I spent a good portion of the evening hunting in all of them for pecans.  I also looked in cupboards and drawers.  And, yes, I looked in the oven.  No pecans.  I have gone over every recipe I've made since Thanksgiving, thinking that perhaps I had used the last nut.  Not so.  Craig has developed an allergy to walnuts, so cookies for the holidays need those pecans.  I want those pecans.  They will undoubtedly turn up in some bizarre place immediately after I buy more.  Until then, I'm going nuts!

And while I'm on the subject, some years back Cousin Mark gave me a present of a crate of walnuts and a crate of pecans, both in the shell.  I put them on the deck just outside the kitchen door.  One day I noticed a small pile of walnut shells beside the crate, and I asked Steve to please clean up his mess if he were going to eat walnuts.  He said he hadn't eaten any.  Well, perhaps they'd rolled out of the crate and gotten stepped on.  I swept the shells off and didn't give them another thought.  The next day there was a small pile of walnut shells beside the crate.  Hmmm.  This went on for days, the piles of shells getting bigger and bigger each time.  The mystery was driving me nuts.  One night, the dog we had then started barking at the kitchen door and I went to see what had upset her.  Turning on the porch light, there were two raccoons, helping themselves to the walnuts and totally ignoring me and the dog.  They were washing each nut in the cat's water dish and enjoying their late-night snack.  Either pecans were not to their liking, or they couldn't crack the smooth shells.  They never touched the pecans, but ate every walnut in the crate.  At least I knew where they went.

It was still storming when I walked down to the barn yesterday, bent over into the wind.  One would wonder if I'd imagined that when I took this photo from the milking room door a half-hour later.  Bessie Anne had taken her customary position outside the pen, watching and guarding, and enjoying the warmth of the sun.  She is my constant companion...unless it's raining, and then she explains that it's more important that she guard the house from the shelter of the front porch and that I should be okay on my own in the barn.  That's okay.  She's not nuts!