The Great Bear Lodge trip in March

Nastia, Sean, Elena and Arriana went to the Great Wolf Lodge in Scotrun PA. for the weekend.God to think your rich and spend money like that again, I’d love to do it.

The four of them left Friday, about 5:30, after everyone got out of work. Teri texted them about 10 that night and, yes they had arrived safely. This is the last we will hear from them until they get back home, unless we reach out to them. I guess I don’t have to worry about them being overly attached to us and not want to leave home. They will just not be able to afford to leave. A room for two at the Great Wolf is about $200.00. There are cheaper options for rooms and houses near Great Wolf for less, but that would take some of the fun out of it I think. When they get home, we’ll ask how it was and get a lot of, “oh, it was great.”

Since Friday, Teri and I have experienced an empty house. It’s weird. We lived together without the girls for fourteen years and the girls came into our lives and it changed everything. Now I don’t know how to live without them. When they go upstairs after dinner it’s like we live alone again because we don’t see them again until morning, but there is a safety net, they are upstairs. It’s like when I was sick the other night with a stomach virus and Teri slept downstairs. I told her I don’t like sleeping in an empty bed. But like with all change, I fell asleep to the radio, something I used to do when I was single, Teri and I had bacon for breakfast on Saturday, went out to breakfast at a diner in Central Nyack on Sunday, then we did a little shopping for stuff we needed around the house. It was different, but familiar. We’ve done things like this before with the girls at home, but this is a glimpse of the future. We haven’t spent this much time together since we were dating. Except for her grocery shopping on Saturday morning we spent the whole time together. And yes when the girls got home about six Sunday night they both said they had a good time. Nastia sent pictures to Teri, I guess she doesn’t like KJ imagining what the places looked like and how things were done. Sean was the only one to tell a story. He said he tried to run to get under a huge bucket of water that splashes down on you. In his haste, he wiped out and came home with a nice souvenir of a bruise just above his hip, around toward his back. I would have chosen something simpler, like a nice beer cozy.

My Birhday and exploding ovens

When we purchased the house about twenty years ago, we gutted the kitchen to the studs and even pulled up the floor. Water had rotted sections of the oak floor and there was a hump in the middle of the floor where the room had originally ended. With the help of a friend, a guy named Fred, we tore it apart and put it back together again. We had a company come in and build kitchen cabinets. We purchased some nice, if a little low end appliances. One of those was the stove. The brand was called a DCS. It was a silver thirty six inch wide four burner, with a griddle in the middle.It was nice when it was new, It started breaking maybe after ten years. The light socks in the oven came loose and the bulbs broke when you tried to change them. The broiler broke twice, each time a new and expensive part was required. After the third time we gave up. Over the last five-six years we used a lighter to light the burners, as the automatic lighter would click away as you cooked. Several years ago it had reached its life's end, but we kept using it, not quite ready to replace it. One evening I was at my mom's and Teri called me about dinner. I tell her I’ll make it and she offers to heat the oven up. She calls me a few minutes later and says the oven blew up. The words for a moment don’t register. Oven blew up, that doesn’t happen. She goes into what happened. She said, “I turned on the stove and I was at the sink, I turned around and a bigbang,, the door to the oven flies open and a huge flame shots out. Everyone’s alright.” I guess dinner is going to be late tonight. We talk it over and decide the stove top is safe. I say, knowing she doesn’t really care, that the igniter in the oven didn’t light on time and the gas built up causing the explosion. We both agree, it’s time for a new stove. One night we head to PC Richard’s in Nanuet. We go there because last time we made a large purchase, they gave us free financing for two years.

When we originally purchased the DCS stove there was a lot of back and forth about what we should buy. Six burners vs four with a griddle, Double stove vs a single, Wolf vs Thermador, vs Viking, or something less expensive. It ended with a four burner, griddle in the middle DCS stove. A quick search of the internet and DCS came up for outdoor kitchens, and that it was sold around the time we purchased our stove. They were not in PC Richards. I wanted something nice that we’d have for the next twenty years and not worry about it breaking. Teri was on the same page. The girls didn’t care, they were doing stuff twenty somethings do and their only concern was what’s for dinner and would they have to eat something they didn’t like or have to warm up something they’d rather have. We remember it as the best time of our lives.

I believe Teri and I had agreed on a Wolf six burner stove before we agreed to meet at PC Richards. I found the griddle in the middle was a place for crumbs to collect and in the winter mice get into the house and love to crap on the griddle, so I quit using it years ago. Teri arrived at PC Richards first and showed me the stove. We dealt with someone, sorry I forgot his name, who she’d known since elementary school at St Ann’s.

On the way to check out I see their mattress department, and out of curiosity I ask about them. Teri immediately says no, we are not getting a mattress. I agree, we just spent a fortune on a Wolf stove. We walk over lay down on a memory foam mattress that reminds me of the foam mattress topper we just took off our bed. Next is a high end Stearns and Foster, it’s nice, then a second tier Stearns and Foster. I comment that you can feel the difference. We get up and sit down to finish the purchase of the stove. Before we go much further, she looks over at me and says, “Do you really want it?” I know she is talking about the mattress. THe mattress was purchased around the same time as the DCS stove, about twenty years ago and it too is long over due to be replaced. I am willing to walk out of the store with just the stove, but if she wants the mattress, I will not pass it up. Long story short, we purchase a stove and a mattress. The mattress is delivered on a Friday, and left in the front living room. The two guys say they can not get it up the stairs.They don’t get a tip. Over the weekend three guys come back and after watching them move the mattress up the narrow stairs with the turn at the top, I feel so bad, my cheap tip becomes $25.00 each for the three of them.. The new mattress is higher than the old one to the point that Teri’s feet don’t touch the ground. The new stove The stove arrives when I’m at work, the way I like it. Teri said they bought the stove in the front door, turned left into the front living room, through the family room, a right into the dinning room and finally a left into the kitchen. KJ drew a picture of them delivering the stove since I wasn't there.

The old stove leaves the opposite way. I love this stove so much that I am willing to cook dinner every night. Some of the meals have been really great and I credit that to the amazing Wolf stove.

For my birthday, we stay home because I’ve been disappointed in The Outback lately, last birthday and maybe Father’s day, so Teri buys steaks, I cook them on the grill outside and I make homemade french fries, it’s really great. Nastia and Sean buy me a tres leches cake from Restaurant Depot.

New Years Eve into New Years day.

New Years eve and day has become a nothing event at our house, sorry girls. When I was younger I went to parties, as I got older I went with Teri and towards the end, the girls. Covid ended the parties at Uncle Eric’s and sorry about that girls. The last few years since Covid, New Year's Eve has consisted of staying home, watching TV, falling asleep and waking up in time to wish Teri a Happy New Year, yes boring. I have no idea what the girls were doing each New Year’s Eve.

KJ did a picture expressing his joy for the up coming year. It is an impressionist work again. Each may interpret this work of art as they wish, but I see a pink New Years Eve mask on top of a black New Years Eve mask thrown away after all of the celebrating has ceased.. It is a very deep and insightful work. It tugs at the longing for connection with another soul and the joy of a life lived together. It is a work many years beyond expectation. Wow, can you smell all that crap I just layed out, I should own an art studio. I could sell the scribblings of a year and a half old. My apologies to KJ, who might be older and stronger and have a sharp temper when he reads this. If I’m still alive when you read this, I’m just having fun with no thought about how my wise ass jokes might stunt your artistic growth. Oops, another joke just slipped out. Yeah, I know to be a joke, it’s got to be funny first.

This New Years Eve, Nastia asked if we could play cards. I have this lovely set of chips in a silver aluminum case, it looks just so cool. I have played cards with the girls and Sean for no money, but this time I wanted to teach them a little about gambling. How the house always wins. We played Black Jack. Black Jack for all of you novices is the game of twenty-one, with a few twists. First if you have a King and an ace, you win one and a half times your bet. You bet a dollar, black jack makes your winnings two dollars and fifty cents, plus your bet back, nice. If the dealer gets it, everyone loses immediately except if you also have black jack and I think that is a push where you get your bet back. You can split your cards, if you get two of the same card, or you can double down. You double your bet, and get one card.

We started playing around nine, I think. We kept going for a while and the house was killing them. I slipped Elena about fifteen dollars to get her to stop drinking. The house was doing so good, I felt bad and really shuffled the cards extra well. It changed everyone’s luck and they started to win and have more fun. I collected fifty dollars for the chips and intended to keep it at least overnight, but with the shuffle of the cards, the house, me began to lose and lose big time, but to only one person, Nastia. At one point she alone had over fifty dollars. The bank could not pay her and the other two. When we finally quit playing, I nonchalantly gave back their money, saying I couldn’t keep it.

A little while later it rang midnight and somehow I didn’t get to bed until almost two. Everyone else twelve-thirty, maybe one at the latest. Both my daughters drank that night and I guess Russians have a special immunity to hang=overs. They were drinking a chocolate liquor, stuff that would turn the stomach of most Americans after a few making them refund their drink at the porcelain god or on some poor sidewalk out front of Annie’s in Nyack. It was a fun night and I hope the new year will be a good one for our family. New Years day. New Years day was quiet. Nastia went off with Sean. Teri,Nancy, Elena and I went to a movie, Mufasa: The Lion King. I fell asleep. Happy New Year!

Christmas 2024

I’ve fallen out of love with Christmas. When I was a kid it was a magical time. I’d put the lights up around my mom’s house. I’d put out the nativity (Three white plastic figures) that my mom and Dad purchased from Grants or some other now long out of business chain store. She painted them up one year. Joseph had a blue jacket or maybe it was Mary who had a blue dress By my teens they were well past their prime. I’d put up lights in my room, looking forward to the first Christmas special, usually ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ on channel 2, CBS. Then the search for ‘A Christmas Carol’ with Alester Sims would begin. In the 1980’s I got a VHS copy of the movie and thought I had a copy of the movie and could see it any time I wanted to. RIP all the VHS movies I collected.

When we adopted the girls, I tried to start traditions. I told them a story about how I met Santa Claus one Christmas Eve. They were very impressed with the story the first year I told them. They were so impressed with the story, when I asked them about the story years later they didn’t remember it.

Those early years helped to keep Christmas fresh and new with the excitement of the girls those first few years, but like everything and everyone one, they grew up and one year I’m sitting next to the tree at the very late hour of 9AM, with my camera (remember them?) and they are still in bed. They know it’s Christmas, they know Santa (yeah, Dad, we don’t really believe any more.) has been there the night before (yeah,he did eat the pinwheel cookies you baked.) but sleep is more important. This past Christmas we waited for Nancy at eleven. One of the great stories KJ and Amanda will come over later.Teri tells the story about every time KJ sees our Christmas tree, this year, he stands in front of it and goes “Wow!”. Teri said it melted her heart. She always says she just loves him to death.

There were no big announcements this year, like two years ago. Presents are opened and Prime Rib is served for a two o'clock dinner, that is served at three-thirty. Sean’s family is serving their dinner at two also, so he isn’t there. We find out later they ate some time south of four o’clock. I guess more than just us are running on Muller time.Right now I’m running on Muller time. To tell the truth, since my name is Muller, I am forced to run on Muller time all the time. Teri doesn’t understand.

Back in August or September I suggested we should go to Disney, not during Christmas, but give the gift on Christmas of going to Disney in the Spring, so we didn’t have to buy gifts for people who don’t need anything, that rampant consumerism that forces you to spend money you don’t have on gift that most people don’t need. Teri thought it was not what she wanted to do. After cooking Christmas dinner she was talking about going on a cruise next year instead of doing Christmas. I guess timing is everything. I made a Vanilla cheesecake with raspberry swirl and a tres leches cake. If you want the recipe for either email me, they are both great. My boss at work, Paul, had a piece of it a few years ago and loved it. After that the day was over. Sean arrived back at home not too late. Like everyone else he had to be at work on Thursday, the 26th. Below is a recipe sort of for hot chocolate chip cookies

The Great Corvette Restoration end of season 1

The Great Corvette Restoration has ended season one, with a little push into the sunset. Yes the car sat to the east of the garage and it was pushed into the garage (toward the west) where it will sit until a warm day sometime next year.

I will admit two things to my dear readers, yes it is still readers, I saw four people check out Nastia’s birthday and got a hardy laugh at my jokes and are amazed about KJ’s abstract self portrait that I’ve dubbed KJ reflects on the world. The two truths I’ll admit to since my wife is not one of the four readers. The first truth about the Corvette is I’ve greatly underestimated the cost of repairing it. I thought a couple of new parts and we’d start the engine. No, I’m replacing or will replace just about everything from bumper to bumper and everything under the hood.The second, and more damaging, believe it or not is the engine is so far beyond my ability as well as Elena’s abilities, I don’t know where to go with it. I guess a third truth would be I should have gone with the white 1979 C3 Corvette. The engine was made before all of the advanced crap on the 1986 C4 we have, but it’s a convertible! How could a rag top guy like myself pass up a classic convertible. The 86 is the first year they made a convertible in years and they only made a little over 7,000! Plus it’s a stick and I’m sure you’re tired of me talking about my love for this ancient and severely outdated technology.

I knew it was getting time to move the Corvette. Teri was giving me subtle little hints like, “If you're not going to work on that thing, get rid of it!” or the equally tender, “I’m calling the junk man, if you don’t do something with that car!” I’m very sure my wife doesn’t read my blog because she still talks to me after I reveal things like that. For the last several weeks I’d been cleaning out the garage anticipating the move of the car into the garage. Silly me thought in April or May of this year, when I got the car and fall came we’d just start the engine and back it into the garage. We’re not there yet. The slope of the driveway is not too steep, but it is steep enough that several years ago when it was icy, I backed into the driveway and I had to do it several times because everytime I’d go to put the car in park it slid back down the driveway.

I opened the garage doors and called Elena to help. After a few minutes and an attempt, I called Sean and Nastia. Nastia was too scared to steer the car, so Elena was volunteered. Nastia, Sean and I put our backs into it and gave it the old college try. To my amazement we managed to move the car in the right direction, toward the garage. The car cooperated by not rolling down the driveway toward the road and the barrier across the street. After a couple of steering adjustments to straighten out the car. It had gotten crooked from falling off the jacks several times. It turns out when you jack up a car on a gravel driveway, it will eventually sink and fall over. It did that about four times, thank God no one was hurt. After the steering adjustment Nastia starts to complain that she’s pushed so hard, her ovaries are hurting. SHe

agrees that maybe steering isn’t so bad. Elena and her exchange place and after a couple more miracles, like not hitting the drives mirror we get the car into the garage. It sits about where the Mustang has sat for the last eight years and it awaits the first warm Spring day of 2025.

Nastia's twenty-sixth birthday

Nastia’s birthday, this year, is on a Tuesday. It’s a tough day of the week to do anything so we waited for Saturday. We told Nastia we didn’t want to go to the restaurant where you cook your own food. I don’t remember its name, only that it is in the Palisades Mall, fourth floor. She picked Gilligan’s in Mt Ivy. We’ve been there before and it is nice. I try to make a reservation for six. They don’t take reservations, only call ahead seating. So as we head toward the restaurant, I call and tell them we will be there in about a half an hour. We are a party of eight. Originally we were a party of nine, but Jesse, Nastia’s friend, the one with the son, said she couldn’t make it.

The weather for late November, early December has been unusually warm, fifties most of the time, so everyone has a lighter than normal jacket. We are seated in the glass enclosed part of the restaurant and it is always cooler there, than the other part of the restaurant. It was cool, not really cold. If it had been a normal December we would have been cold. I took some pictures of Sean and Nastia so I have them for the blog. In all of the pictures I see Sean looking up toward heaven. I’m wondering if he is praying to God for something or is he telling God he really has been good and doesn’t deserve coal for Christmas, I really don’t know. So I actually ask him why he is always looking up. He points to a rather large TV to the right and behind me that I had to walk by to get to my seat. There is a football game on it. I’m not the football fan I used to be, so I didn’t even notice it.

The food is good, Nastia gets a bucket of mussels, like usual. Elena asks to get some calamari and of course the bread is really tasty. Teri begins to warn everyone there is a lot of food coming. I gave up on that years ago when Elena would eat bread, an appetizer and salad. When the main course came she wouldn’t touch it and she’d take it home. I’d ruin the fun of eating out, so I stopped.

Elena did channel her past self this night. She ate bread, the appetizer and salad. At the end of the night she took most of her main dish home, but not one yell and made someone else unhappy. I’m still shocked at the price of going out these days. There was a whole lobster on the menu with something else, I hope and the price for it was sixty-two dollars. We bought a whole bunch of cash, but no alcohol was ordered, so it was a little less than we figured. My mom had leftovers. She said she warmed up for her and Bruce a day or two later. I think the leftovers we took home ended up getting thrown out the following Sunday night. I’m not sure. I do remember Teri showing me three shiny metal containers saying she is just going to throw it all out without opening them. After thirty-two years together, thirty married, I’ve learned to not ask too many questions.

Thanksgiving 2024

Life for me these days seems busy, and very repetitive. It’s like that Kink’s song, that no one except people my age or older might remember, ‘Well Respected Man’ Cause He gets up every morning, And he goes to work at nine (really eight) Takes the same train every time (drives the same car every time) And comes home at five-thirty. And so on, that’s my life. Very much the same thing every day.

Now Teri has been given a job, she doesn’t get anything for, except a thank you and the love of that one and a half year old KJ. I’ve inserted one of his drawings here, he’s gone into his abstract phase. If you look closely you can see it’s him looking over his left shoulder with a very contemplative look on his face. I wouldn't have expected this level of depth from him until at least six or so. Elena helped him sign his work. Thanksgiving, I should have asked KJ to draw me a picture of that event, but he went with his mother to have dinner somewhere else. So he would have drawn an impressionist drawing, I guess. You know, he’d have to draw what his impression of the day might have looked like. Come on, if I have to explain the jokes, they're not funny. We had dinner at two in the afternoon. Sean and Nastia left our house about three-thirty to go to his mom’s house to share dinner with his mom, sister and other assorted relatives. Teri got up early, as usual to make Thanksgiving dinner in the way she remembers it. She’d make the stuffing, just as her mother made it. She used chicken broth, maybe as her mother did because she didn’t want the gizzard and other leftover parts anywhere near the gravy to baste the bird. My mom would use the innards, an onion and some other items to make a gravy to baste the turkey. Teri let me make the sweet potato casserole. I enjoyed making it and put my all into it and, yes, it came out good. I ate it at three different meals. Teri also made white potatoes with dry onion soup mix. They were great. The turkey, like usual, was made in a roaster we keep down stairs. It’s sort of like how her family use to make holiday food in an old oven from maybe the 1920’s? Tony said it didn’t have a way to set the temperature, but it cooked some really good food. I wanted a dual oven stove, but I was out voted back when we rebuilt the kitchen, one to one. She will insist to this day she never voted against a dual stove oven. I wanted one because it was just the two of us and why warm up a big oven for a small dish, plus I thought it was cool. The guest list was the usual,Teri, myself, Nastia, Elena, Sean and Nancy. My mom was invited, but said it was easier to walk to Eric’s for supper. We've lost the Muller dinner time in these last few years. Teri said dinner was going to be two in the afternoon, so Sean and Nastia could go to his mother’s. We served about two-fifteen, not the Muller three, three-thirty. Some traditions die quietly, I guess.

I made a cheesecake in a sixteen inch wide spring form pan. Alexa doesn’t like me, so when it was time for the time to go off, she didn’t and I remembered the cheesecake before it got burned, So it was over cooked, a little rubbery and dry. I threw most of it away about a week later. It was a nice holiday. Shame Kj and Amanda couldn’t make it.

Too much about the election and not enough about the girls.

It seems I spend a few moments every time I open up the computer these days finding the little white arrow that will guide me to where I want to go. I know it’s a sign of getting older, though I still feel like the fifteen year old I was Fifty one, almost fifty two years ago. I’ve got the brain of a fifteen year old, I know. I like to sit around all day, these days and watch TV, yeah, fifteen year old stuff.

My daughters are trying to grow up and in some ways they are successful. Last week I asked Nastia if she wanted to cook dinner with me. We both had worked that day and were tired. She hesitated in her answer, so I knew she didn’t want to, but she helped me with dinner, doing most of it. I enjoy making dinner with her and I’m happy when she joins me. We make some interesting dishes too. They range from basic comfort food like MeaMaw’s chicken casserole to Indian dishes and Cajun food.I’ve gone out, gotten Indian spices, and mixed creole seasoning. One of the best feelings is when the people you cook for, say the recipe is a keeper, meaning it gets put in the binder to make again. I hope that all these different foods helps Nastia broaden what she will serve at her table. After that night, over the weekend, Nastia made, nodollar pancakes, but half dollar to quarter size pancakes.

Elena is still Elena, as she always will be. I don’t yell at her and if I know she is in a bad mood and I have to call her because she is late for a fabulous diner or maybe she is staying away because the last dinner was Paula Dean’s Chicken Florentine and I didn’t have the spice Curry and Google said to substitute with Red Pepper and Cumin, if I remember correctly and it was awful both time we tried to eat it. So I’ll call her and just talk to her about whatever comes into my head. I get her talking, I’m talking very calmly and there is no urgency and when I get around to it, I remind her we are sitting down to dinner or already have and she is missing out on a really great meal, at least most times. We can’t always do a MeaMaw’s chicken casserole.

It was election day recently and I will say I’m a Republican who can never vote for a clown and never have. The line to vote at six in the morning was long, but moved. Nastia and Teri voted when Nastia came home from work at three-thirty. The line wasn’t too long. Lots and lots of people voted early and by all definitions the American Experiment had a banner day, and like the election in 2020 was fair and the voice of the people was heard. I hope in four years, first to be alive, and second to look back and say I was wrong about him and the world and the US are better for it. We are just not starting out very well with his cabinet picks. I was supposed to not say all of that. I was going to do a short lead in to Elena not voting, she said because neither candidate was very good. I was very disappointed because her old country is run by a dictator with visions of rebuilding the Russian Empire, and you only have to be fearful if you say anything he disagrees with. I think it was the weekend before election day, Elena said she had talked to Sean Sr. and he was going to come by and lend a hand with some of the issues we are having on the Corvette. I was very glad he showed up and Elena and him straightened out the rear right of the car where it had been hit. He showed her where everything fit back in and how sometimes you have to use a little force. The two of them did more in a short afternoon, then Elena and I in weeks. Yes, I didn’t turn a wrench. I stood by to get tools and jack and whatever else they needed. I felt Sean’s pain when he tried to get up off the ground after working on the car. Needless to say, very little has been done since. I asked Sean Sr., and I warned him I was going to put him on the spot. I asked if the body work was finished, can we return the car to the shop to work on the engine? His reply was,”If it was up to me, …” I knew he would say, yes, but I stopped him and said I understand. He loves working on cars and I bet he loves the old stuff more.

Teri has baby sat KJ whenever Amanda has been at work and no one else is available. Usually it’s four days, this past week she watched him all five days. She loves that kid to death and I hope KJ remembers his time with her and it makes a huge impact on the man he grows up to be. Hopefully he will be someone who loves too much, is respectful, kind, and very giving of himself. Teri puts a lot of energy into the time he is here in the house. She is exhausted at the end of the day when she drops him off. I bet you she wouldn’t trade the time she spends with him for that job she chased over the last several years. Maybe this is God’s plan. She was meant to care for him and make him a better person. Better than he could be without her.KJ drew a picture of his day with his Great Aunt Teri

Teri has made her Christmas list for 2024. It seems she has just recycled her 2023 list, boy how lazy can you be!