Penny Sanford Designs

Cooking by Kerosene Lamplight!

Whooo weeee!!!! We had a humdinger of a storm this afternoon, and the power was out for almost five hours! We were three hot humans and seven hot dogs!

At least we could continue cooking because the stove and oven are powered by propane! We were well into making beef and chicken enchiladas...and cooking squash to freeze...and making some squash and chicken soup to put on the dog food every day.

That was a lot of cooking putting out a lot of heat without air conditioning! Phew! The four kerosene lamps also put out their fair share of heat!

Because we are the LAST customer on this power line, we have experienced plenty of power outages over the years, some of which have lasted days! A 117 hour outage is our record so far, and thankfully that occurred in the winter! We stayed warm with propane and wood heat!

Gordon and Unc, as always, pitched in this afternoon, and we got it all done with squash frozen and a couple of casseroles of enchiladas in the freezer, ready to cook another time. I do like to make enough of whatever we are cooking to freeze for an easy meal another day!

The food photos are from some time this month! I need to take more photos to share with you as the squash and green beans and as of today, cucumbers, are beginning to come in. Unc and I had a cucumber sandwich at tea time...even though we do not have a formal tea time every day. LOL

Progress toward being reinstated on Facebook

I am DEEPLY moved by how many of you are emailing Facebook, asking them to reinstate my account! "Thank you" does not seem strong enough to express how you have moved me emotionally with your response!

We are all so busy with just living Life, that it is a GIFT when you take a moment to send an email of protest for someone and something that does not directly affect you! At least I interpret your gesture as a GIFT!

A number of you have shared with me about similar experiences with Facebook...a friend or a group of even personal experience with having one's account disabled. Thank you for commiserating and sharing your experience with me!

If you are reading this for the first time, my blog post yesterday shared the details.

I do think that FB is growing so fast and has automated so much of their communication that they are essentially constipated. 

Gordon and I continue to send emails every day asking them to reinstate my account. The emails you are sending are helping. I'm hoping the automated system at Facebook will see the words, "Penny Sanford Fikes" enough that the issue will be handed over to a human.

So, if you have another minute to send another email, or if you think your friends would have a moment to send a short email, please send an email to disabled@facebook.com and ask them to reinstate the account of Penny Sanford Fikes.

I hope there will be SOMETHING I can do for you in the future that will mean even half as much as what you are doing to help me be reinstated on Facebook! You can be sure that the minute I hear anything from FB, I will be sure to let you know!

Now, I'm off to make chicken enchalidas and beef enchiladas. I made some beef enchiladas last week, a first for me, and Gordon loved them! That makes me feel like a million bucks for him to enjoy eating something I have just made for the first time!

I'll let you know if I hear anything from Facebook! 

Facebook Disabled My Account!

My Facebook account has been disabled. 24 hours ago. I am so bummed about this!

It seems I have too many friend requests, and those friends have sent me too many Facebook messages. Excuse me?  Is not that the purpose of Facebook to begin with? To make friends and communicate with those friends?

I could go into the nitty gritty details, but quite frankly, I am just too disgusted to write it all down, even on a keyboard. 

As of this time last night, the groups I started were still in place, but I had been removed as administrator. Those groups are just there, without anyone protecting them from spammers.

I had created:

Mississippi Quilters
Alabama Quilters
Louisiana Quilters
Tennessee Quilters
Arkansas Quilters
Florida Quilters
North Carolina Quilters
Kansas Quilters
Oklahoma Quilters
New Mexico Quilters
Texas Quilters
Texas Quilts

I started a few more groups for quilters from an individual state to find each other, but at the moment I can't remember which states for certain. Eventually I was going to make a group for every state that did not already have a Facebook group for quilters of that state.

The reason is that when I started on Facebook, I could not find more than a few other Mississippians who were quilters. From the comments I have received from MANY Facebook quilters, others have felt the same way about finding quilters from their state.

Gordon has helped me research having one's account disabled by Facebook, and there are hundreds of people, maybe thousands, who have had their accounts suspended or disabled. Some have experienced that indignity several times. Most have been reinstated after badgering Facebook with emails.

If you could help me get back on Facebook, I would appreciate it. I need my account, "Penny Sanford Fikes" to be reinstated so that I can keep my friends and keep the groups I started. Please email: disabled@facebook.com and ask them to restore my account.

So many of my blog friends have also connected with me on Facebook. I love to be able to connect via Facebook. It is like seeing people at a grocery store. The greetings may be short in passing, but one feels like one has touched base with more people because it is more interactive (in my opinion) than blogging or Twitter or Flickr.

I think Facebook is making examples out of some of us so that they can set the stage to charge for "power users". Fickr has a pro account, and Typepad has a pro account. Other social networking platforms have paid pro accounts.

I would pay for a pro account from Facebook, but that is not even an option. For now, they are penalizing a few people according to some irrational triggers in their automated system. POOF, six months of friends and photos and conversations and groups are gone as if I had never existed. Many of those friends I don't know how to contact outside of Facebook.

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Gordon has just washed the four Westies, and they are romping and playing around the den-turned-bedroom. It is precious to watch! We don't have to blow dry the Westies...they are Run Dried! LOL

I promise to do better at blogging again! Please forgive me for not being more consistent in writing this month.

If you can help by writing Facebook on my behalf, I will be very, very appreciative.

Where to begin?

I'm so behind in sharing stuff with you that I hardly know where to begin.  

If I wanted to blog about something lately, I did not have accompanying pictures to share. Or if I have the pictures to share, I've been too tired to edit them to upload and write anything. 

That is something for which to be thankful because it means I have been more active lately than I have been in many months of that stupid bronchitis. Today Gordon carried the oxygen-making machine back upstairs to the closet where it has been stored. I no longer need supplemental oxygen. YEAH!

We're planning a "freshening" project for the kitchen involving paint and a new floor and some re-organization. We've been moving Unc's wood-working out of the kitchen in preparation.

Yes, you read that right. In the 4 plus months I was sick and in bed most of the time, Unc moved into the kitchen with his carving. The kitchen is the center of the house, and he likes to be around people when he carves. I was unaware of how bad the kitchen was getting, and Gordon was torn between not worrying me and still keeping Unc close by to watch (and be sure he was not cutting off fingers).

I won't tell you how many of his tools and pieces of wood and carving chips and layers of wood dust were actually in the kitchen because I don't think you would believe me! I did not take any pictures of that clutter either!

This is also another step of the journey of turning the kitchen from Mama's kitchen to my kitchen. Those of you who have made such a conversion will understand the heavy baggage of memories, good and bad.  Off to work on the kitchen now...

Oh, the wild turkey (which is a female, Unc says) visited us one morning recently to check out the free fruit under the Mulberry tree! I was surprised how much they walk with a regal gait like a peacock!