Pearl Sutton

No one has mentioned the reason crab apples are very high on my list in Missouri. They are not affected by Cedar-Apple rust. That is a MAJOR issue around here.

I posted a meme on a thread here earlier today...



But my head won't let it go. It's been designing ways to get groceries up those steps without carrying them.

My best idea for that is a ski lift type pulley thing that has containers that automatically tip out the contents at the top, and a well trained big dog. Some groceries are put in the container at the bottom, Big Dog gets in his container in the top. His weight takes the container down and the lighter one up. He gets the bottom, runs up the steps, gets there in time to ride back down and move the next load up. Hopefully he thinks this is fun :D

So, I throw the question out, what other ways can we get groceries up those steps without carrying them? Apples awarded for the best answers in the 'Logical Answers' category, AND in the 'Fun Answers' category, Rube Goldberg type ideas welcomed! (Look him up if you don't know the name, he's fun!) Practical OR bizarre, educate me or make me laugh! :D

Those are serious steps!! I have damaged knees.... They hurt just looking at the pic

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I have more than a few teapots. I can match several of the ones posted already, so I'll post different ones. I'm into reuse, and I hate seeing beautiful china being sold cheaply at thrift stores, knowing someone loved it.  I rescue what I can.

The first teapot I ever got was this one. It was my grandmother's, and when I was in high school I used it all the time, so she gave it to me. In the rat trap off campus house I had in college, it was used by starving students :D



When grandma cleaned out her house to move she gave my mom a set of violet pattern tea party plates, my mom knew I loved them, and gave them to me.  I have bought more of the pattern over the years, and have had a lot of tea parties involving them!



At one point I found a teapot that matched them and got it to go with the violet china.



Some of the tea parties were with my friends, we would all dress up in garden party clothes and use all the pretty china and be elegant and silly.

Some were more interesting though. I'd make an appointment with an old lady who lived alone, all I asked of her was I needed a pan of boiling water, and I was willing to fill it and do it.  I'd show up with a cooler, packed with a tablecloth, linen napkins, lovely china, beautiful dishes filled with all kinds of neat nibbly things, and I'd make tea in the pot, and we'd have a tea party and laugh and I'd get her to tell me stories of her life. When we were done, it all packed up into my cooler and she had no mess to deal with.  It was great fun and I learned a LOT.

My neat antique china has had an interesting life, both before I got it, and since.

On top of what I listed above, I also use chopsticks to poke seed holes when I plant. I can mark the stick if I want an exact depth. Can also just make a quick narrow line in the dirt to drop seeds in then cover.

Lif Strand wrote:

I would think that crumpled foil would work the way you are describing because it has many surfaces to reflect kind of like the DVD discs do. Now I'm thinking about some kind of a combination of aluminum can tiles with DVD discs. A work of art rather than merely functional.

My house design has homemade light tubes lined with foil under DVDs in a shingle pattern. The test I did on it worked well. I want light weight and not a problem if things come loose and fall. The tubes will open for maintenance.

My last house I made a light well with mirror tiles and when a bad storm brought down one mirror onto a concrete floor from 9 foot 6 up.... I never want to deal with that again. Light weight, no shattering!

Lif Strand wrote:

Now I'm thinking about what using a bunch of "tiles"made of aluminum cans  on a ceiling would do. Or the same on walls.

The other things I like are carefully crumpled tinfoil behind glass, smooth foil with no glass, and dead CD and DVD disks. The DVDs change the scatter pattern a lot and soften the glare, and change the color.
The crumpled foil really spreads light around. Smooth foil doesn't do as well (I think it gets dirty fast) but still brightens up dark corners.

Sky admirers! Check the sky tonight!
Small CME but also a not big solar flare joining it. The combination gives us chances of lights in the north.

Other than knots I'd go for ties.  Knots may work well  :D

The staff calls my mom Mother of Pearl, it's a good name for her, mother of pearl is smooth and elegant and has many beautiful colors to it.
Today is January 9, 2026. It's the one year anniversary of the day I watched mom have a stroke at the breakfast table, that resulted in her death Nov 7, 2025.
Tomorrow is her memorial service in another state, I am not going, for many reasons. I'll watch it on my computer.

I lost my housemate, my best friend, the person I talk to all day, the person I work with well, the person who I share all the weird beliefs and theories that pattern my life with. As well as the only housemate I ever really enjoyed living with, the person who adored my cooking, the person who plays silly games and bad jokes with me. And don't forget my partner in long term projects, who understands WHY they are our goals, why they aren't being done "normal," and why I do all the weird shit I do that makes no sense to anyone else.

I'm having to rebuild my whole life.

I sent something to be read at her memorial:

Mom was the most influential person in my life. There's a point in your life when you realize you will end up a lot like your mom, and I said "Cool! I HOPE I can be that neat!" I'm honored to have had her in my life.

In the obituary it said she was always handing you a book and telling you to read it, I got handed a LOT of them from an early age, then I started I handing a lot of them to her. We learned a lot together, it was always 50-50 who sent us both in a new direction of something new to learn and debate and learn more about.

Her sense of humor has always been fun. When I was in a bad car wreck and was laying in an emergency room bleeding, after everything we had to talk about had been said, what do you say to your kid laying there? She made me laugh, so I wouldn't cry. She said "I hope you were wearing clean underwear!!" In the house here I'd be working on something and she'd start screaming "PEARL! PEARL! COME HERE! QUICK QUICK QUICK!!" I'd run to where she was and hear something like "Look! There's a moth in my bedroom!" And then she'd start laughing :D

Whether we were apart for three days or three months when we met back up, it was always the same routine. We'd sit down with tea and snacks and tell each other what we had been doing, all the stories, and laugh ourselves silly. I expect that when I die, we will do the exact same thing, and laugh about it, just like we always have. Until then I will miss you every day, mom, and I'm saving up lots of silly stories for you, hope you are doing the same! Like you for always and love you forever.

Keep us both in your prayers.