Now I understand

You probably wonder what cave I came out of, to not know how Feta cheese should be used.

Thanks to a reader, I know now that it is not for cooking.

That's probably where my Fancy macaroni went wrong. Maybe I'll give it another chance one of these days.

Thanks to the Internet, I found out I can freeze Feta cheese in small batches and use it in salads, of which we'll probably be having many, very soon.

Have you ever met someone who refused to share a prized recipe? I wonder if this is the reason: They're afraid people will take liberties with the recipe and then blame them for the dish's failure. I've had it happen to me.

I am already so tired of winter! I'm too old to wish my life away, so I won't do that. But I'm starting to see why snowbirds like my sister spend the cold months in the South. I think I'll start haunting the seed catalogue websites and planning my next garden; that should get me out of my funk. I've been known to plant peas and lettuce in February; that isn't so far away.

I actually bought some milk yesterday at the store. As I told Cliff, since I don't have to milk the cow, I'm not going to, during this miserable weather. It isn't the cold temperatures that get me, it's the mess. It's really hard to clean up an animal that spends time lying in a dirty shed trying to stay out of the cold. Back when I milked lots of cows, I thought nothing of the cleanup part of it, although I really had no option anyway.

Since Bonnie's calf takes care of the milk, I don't have to worry about it. I like having that freedom.

I'm back to playing that silly "Farmville" on Facebook. It's never too cold to milk my cows and raise crops there! You can even have snowdrifts and snowmen next to your garden, and things will grow just fine. The only way crops will fail is if you don't harvest them in time, and even then it's no big deal. I find it humorous that it isn't children playing these time-wasting games: it's adults like me.

Here's my farm; as you can see, my cows are all in the dairy barn, nice and clean. The snowdrifts given to me as gifts by my neighbors have no effect on the rice and watermelons growing nearby. Kind neighbors come by while I'm sleeping and fertilize my crops for me, chasing away foxes and pulling weeds.

In real life, the only weed my neighbor would pull on my property would be the morel mushrooms that pop up in the spring; or the marijuana that grows wild at the back of the place, a result of the crops of hemp raised back during the Civil War.

These are my barns, and you can see I have a tractor that makes my plowing go faster and a harvester (the blue thing) that helps me harvest faster. Oh yes, everything is up-to-date on my farm. To show you how amazing this Internet world is: John, whose farm, as you can see, is next to mine, is the man who interviewed me for my job at Kohl's in the year 2000. He's a wonderful person, but I would never have expected to have heard from him again, since we don't run in the same circles or live near one another; we really aren't even all that well acquainted. And we neither one work at Kohls any more.

But one thing led to another, and here we are playing silly farm games together. Another of my Farmville neighbors was my first assistant supervisor when I started at Kohls... one of the best bosses I ever had. Another neighbor is my sweet, funny Jessica.

Say what you will about Facebook. I'm loving it!

I'm also loving how easy it is to take screenshots with my Mac. I'm loving how easy EVERYTHING is with my Mac!