I'm ready for the new year to begin. I don't have a difficult time saying good-bye to the old and excited about what the new will bring. This is also the way I greet each waking morning, rain or shine. Christmas decorations came down when we arrived home from Florida. Yesterday was quite overcast but the temperatures reached a pleasant 58 degrees by 4 pm. Today the tree is boxed, lights and decorations are back in their bags for Cliff to store in the garage. My 2019 seed catalogues were in my mailbox before Christmas and yesterday's delightful air sent me flipping through catalogue pages looking for new seeds to try. This morning I returned to the gym. Did a half hour of Zumba and 15 minutes on the elliptical. Felt so-o good to be normal again. The down time in Florida did me good. Made a lasagna and a lemon blueberry loaf yesterday. Cliff is always looking for something to eat, especially in this dreary gloomy weather....
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Last Friday we left the dreary rainy chilly mountains for the flat land in Rockledge, Florida to spend Christmas with Mark and Jen. We always do the trek in two days staying in Valdosta heading south and Perry, GA heading back north. Purchasing the Sunpass was the best money ever spent making the drive through Atlanta easier, quicker, and less stressful for Cliff. Cliff with his Florida dogs, Schroeder and Ember. The dogs aren't really settled comfortably on a human's couch. Cliff also has a pug,Toby, in Virginia. Our weather was cool the first couple of evenings and days, breezy during most of the five-day visit, and high 70's during the last couple of days. Sunday we visited Sledd's U-Pick Farm. This time of year you can walk the sunflower maze and pick eggplant, cabbage, kale, peppers, broccoli, and a few other vegetable on her farm. I just picked kale and broccoli to bring home. Acres upon acres of happy sunflowers swaying in...
A few years ago my neighbor up the road was grocery shopping in Ingles when she felt faint, melted onto the store floor, and was transported to the ER, checked out, and sent home. Not knowing where this occurred or why she went to the ER, I saw her days later, asked how she was feeling and what happened. With a serious face she said she fell off the bar stool. I thought what a great response! If I ever fall down, that's going to be my response. Well, my opportunity came and went and I forgot to use that line. Saturday evening during the clean-up at Station Twenty-five's Christmas party, I felt my right foot hit something as slippery as ice. Both feet became air-borne with the body following. One of the volunteers said I looked like the slow motion sometimes seen on TV. My life raced before me, thinking in those seconds how to avoid breaking the fall with both wrists. When I landed on the concrete floor my right hip felt the imp...
This time of year leads me to the archive of my mother's handwritten letters. She loved the holidays. It was a family gathering time, a time for giving her home-baked wares to other, and a spiritual celebration. While thumbing through my photo box of old letters looking for something dated in December, a January 1996 envelope caught my attention because it was thicker than other envelopes. My mother often included newspaper article clippings that she wanted to share with me or Snoopy , For Better or Worse, Hagar the Horrible comic strips. She also signed off "drink more vodka" at the end of her love letters. My parents didn't drink wine or beer, let alone vodka. (I don't know where they got me.) Tucked inside this thick envelope was included a clipping " Fig- and mango-flavored vodkas seem to be the wave of the future." In Russia, where grain has been distilled into vodka for nearly 1,000 years, a flavored vodka ---- and they do flavor...
Our temperature dropped to 19 degrees this morning. Hideous! for this time of year. The past couple of days steadied in the 30's with today being mostly sunny. This is brutal for late November. I may have to whine my way through fall/winter this season. Normally I can grill our salmon steaks outside until January but tonight they are being pan fried. Our outside Christmas lights were put up yesterday in cutting cold 11 mph winds. We bundled up and did the best we could before my finger tips froze, with gloves on. On a positive note, the crisp cold air wakes up your senses. Thursday morning 9:05 am bright sunshine November 30, 1995 30 degrees at 6:40 am Dear Betsy, Well, I stopped what I was doing to hunt through my recipes books for my small cranberry book of recipes. Can't find it anywhere. Do you have it? Anyway, I got all the books of the shelf and dusted the shelf in the kitchen that holds my c...
Thanksgiving was delightful and delicious. Originally I had planned on slow-cooking a turkey breast, baking sweet potatoes, my gluten-free gravy and dressing, a few veggies, and some kind of dessert. Cliff, being my clean-up guy, began to visualize dirty pots and pans, the slow-cooker, utensils and mixing bowls strewn from one end of the counter to the next and all over the kitchen island. Two weeks before Thanksgiving he announced change of plans. We would be having Thanksgiving dinner at the Chop House surrounded by conversation and smiling faces at other tables. The few times we stayed home alone and made dinner, we found the quiet was depressing, that we needed to mingle and socialize during our dinner. When I found out our yoga instructor, Anita, would be alone that day, we added her to our reservation. I brought my gluten-free gravy in a little jar and poured it on my turkey. I don't eat dressing anyway because it fills me too quickly and ...
Happy Birthday to me!!! Another dreary gloomy 44 degree cold day. My Corinthian chimes have been playing tunes in 11mph gusts. We celebrated my 72nd birthday with a wonderful Flo's Filet steak at the Longhorn in Ellijay, GA. The low temperature in Hudson on the day I was born was 25 degrees and the high was 48, not too different from today's weather here. Interesting facts............. The next time I can reuse my old 1946 calendar is in 2019. I've been living, breathing, and enjoying life for 26,298 days. And there have been 890 full moons in my lifetime with the next full moon on November 23. The modern birthstone for November is topaz. The zodiac gemstone for Scorpio is beryl, which was my mother's middle name! The most popular baby girl name on this date was Mary, which is my middle name. I was named after my dear Aunt Mary. The most popular boy name was James. If you believe in a past life ...............
Remember playing Pick-up Sticks as a child? The game was suppose to develop hand-eye coordination while having fun interacting with other children. It's been years since I played the game. Actually I thought it was boring and lame as a child, probably because I always lost, and the other evening confirmed it when I played pick up no. 4 pasta sticks from the kitchen floor. My big pot of water was boiling frantically on the front burner when the cellophane package slipped through my fingers landing at my feet strewing pasta noodles in all directions. I picked them up, blew them off and slipped them into the boiling water. Days later while vacuuming under the fridge, I found the rest of the pasta. It rained Monday, poured all day yesterday, 2+", annoying spitting rain today and another day of cold rain is predicted for tomorrow. The wood stove warmed the house and I baked banana carrot coconut muffins and cornbread and butternut squa...
Many years ago, maybe thirty-two years ago, when Mark was around thirteen and wasn't sure he wanted to be seen with his mother anymore, especially in a Publix supermarket where his friends could also be seen with their mothers, he would covertly flip through magazine pages as I stood in the check-out line. Using my time efficiently in line, I usually struck up a conversation with the person in front or in back of me. Standing in line during busy hours or getting behind shoppers with overloaded carts, I found friendly conversation with people made the wait tolerable. By this time, Mark's face was totally buried in a magazine. On the way out to our car, he would ask who the people were that I was talking with in line. When I told him I didn't know them but took the opportunity to make a dreaded experience tolerable, he just shook his head. He continued accompanying me to the store, even proudly drove me once he had his drivers license realizing that I w...
This was our dog for about 12 hours. Monday night around 11:00 she wandered onto our porch and spent the night sleeping on the porch carpet by the door. In the morning I walked out and became the dog whisperer. She cautiously approached me, let me touch her and I sat on the carpet talking to her with my hands on her face. Then she nestled her head under my arm and sat across my lap. I called all the local vets and searched our WKRK Facebook page for lost dog postings. None. Vets had no owner calls reporting a missing golden lab. My heart sank. We couldn't keep her. She let her guard down and put her trust in me. She followed me everywhere in the yard, barked at squirrels chasing them up trees, always returning to my side. Around noon we drove out to the Humane Society Animal Shelter and surrendered her. I cried as I told them how she came to our home and why we couldn't keep her and cried all the way home. She is ...
Since Cliff has been making a true effort to lose weight and maintain, he's been reading labels for ingredients and taking note of portion size. In our doctor's office, there is great visual reference chart comparing food portions to items in our every day life, such as a pack of card, a baseball, a computer mouse etc. Today with his open tuna sandwich, Cliff placed some Cape Cod 40% reduced fat potato chips on his plate. We hardly include them in our meals anymore. He questioned whether he was allowed 40% more chips to equal 100% fat. A serving size is 19 chips/28 grams. He asked what size chips and how do you count all the broken ones? I do have a kitchen scale that I use when measuring almond and rice flour grams for my gluten free baking, but he figured he's just estimate and settle for 40% more chips. Our mountain temperature was 31 degrees this morning at 7:30. I did bring in the aloe that Barb brought me from Florida. That p...
The hummingbirds were on their journey south when we returned from Shawnee, Kansas. We still had two females the day before we left so I filled all the feeders with newly brewed nectar to carry them over and nourish any new travelers passing through. The nectar-rich trumpet flowers on the pineapple sage plant will continue blooming until our first freeze, which may be tonight. Yesterday Lisa and Bill's bees swarmed around all the flowers working tirelessly gathering nectar before the cold air sets in. About four weeks ago we noticed more hummingbirds around and more turmoil at the feeders. One of the females perched herself on the hummingbird swing like a matriarch mob boss watching over her territory. When other birds tried to feed or perch nearby, she would chase them off, return to her command swing ready to defend her nectar again. She was one of the travelers we had for about a week on the journey south. Another HB perched atop a little...
Cliff decided on the spur of the moment that he wanted to spend his 74th birthday in Kansas with John and Carolyn. Tuesday before we left he did a Fire Prevention Program at Martins Creek Elementary School for pre-K through third grade. Little petri dishes of bacterial cultures.............. Wednesday evening he seemed to be sniffling more than usual but we thought nothing of it. Pollen and mold spores have been high here. We sneeze a lot. Thursday morning we headed toward our hotel in Cape Giradeau, MO about an eight hour drive with stops for eating and stretching. By that night Cliff was coughing so we knew it wasn't the pollen. Thursday night his hotel sleep was interrupted by continuous coughing. We arrived at John's mid-afternoon. Weather in Kansas City was old and raw. Saturday I was able to get a walk in, 53 degrees, before the temperature dropped and rain set in. Sunday was just plain bone-chilling miserable, 41 ...
It's been three years since Cliff and I visited Matthew, Taelor, and our two beautiful great-grandchildren in Kentucky. Alexandra was a baby and Christopher was two years old. Christopher is in first grade now and Alexandra just turned four. I don't know why so much time passed between visits. We won't let that happen again. Once you get to Kentucky it's a beautiful drive. We had a wonderful time with our little ones and their parents. Once Christopher got home from school, we headed to Golden Corral buffet, which was right next to our hotel. When Matthew was little, Cliff and I would take him to "all-you-can-eat" Red Lobster specials. Red Lobster stopped the all-you-can-eat shrimp deal since then. I think Matthew ate them all. He and Cliff made multiple trips to the popcorn shrimp buffet Tuesday evening. The rest of us enjoyed the chocolate fountain after our meal.
I began this writing last night with a Florence update in the background until Cliff switched over to our next Amazon episode of The Sopranos. I think it ran on HBO years ago but we never got involved because we never had HBO. Surprisingly, I'm more interested in the story than I thought I would be. My brain and heart can't tolerate emotional and physical cruelty/violence so I remove myself from TV or conversation that involves toxic drama. This series isn't just focused on the mob whacking people but the struggle in Tony Soprano's attempt at being a good family man while running the New Jersey mob. After our evening meal, Cliff stacks the dishwasher for me, cleans up my messy cooking pots and pans and counters before we settle in our recliners for the next episode. Watching the series has given me a vivid image of our saying " going all Tony Soprano. " As of the 5 a.m. Weather Channel update on Florence, the present track shows the tropical low o...
Yesterday evening I decided I'd better clean up the 102 emails sitting in my mailbox. Many of the emails are articles I had saved to read later when I felt like sitting and reading them. Later never happened. Before deleting The Farmer's Almanac posted on August 18, I wanted to know The 20 Signs of a Hard Winter. These were the most interesting to me. 1. thick hair on the nape of a cow's neck 2. heavy and numerous fogs during August (those we had) 3. insects marching in a line rather than meandering 4. unusual abundance of acorns (not here, our acorns are puny and scarce) 5. narrow orange bands on the Woolybear caterpillar warn of heavy snow 6. my favorite..............pigs gathering sticks!! These are only a few from the article. From what I gather on further reading, we're in for a cold, rainy winter. Acorns are scarce this year bringing the bears closer to homes searching for trash bags and...
This is not a fuzzy dark rotting tree stump! 11:49 this morning................... At this point I brought the iPhone out to the front porch with me for better photos than through the kitchen screen. Oh, no! Not the feeder............Please don't yank it off the hook and destroy it.................. While she shook and tipped the feeder, I stood on the top step banging two metal kitchen pots together and asked her to go feed in someone else's yard. She just looked at me. She went back to her eating and I remained on the top step watching her in amazement. She's thin. Not enough berries and acorns for the wildlife to fatten for winter. She's so beautiful................Maybe she found me annoyi...
Delightfully cool 52 degree morning! Many years ago, maybe about fifteen or so when we lived in Florida and Cliff's mother was in her early 70's, she flew down a few times to stay with us. We took her to D.J.'s, our favorite outdoor eating place, where we sat at umbrella-covered picnic tables only feet away from the inter-coastal water, watched the fishing boats come in, and the pelicans perch on ocean-weathered wooden piles. Back at the house we often just sat on the screen porch and chatted. On our work days, Dot would spend her day on the porch reading or enjoying the birds at the feeders and occasionally would spot a brown bunny cautiously emerge from the woods making its way to seeds dropped from the feeders. On our arrival home from work, she would recant her daily activities but on this one day she told us that she watched the bunny for hours that afternoon and for some strange reason it never moved from its spot. We chuckled and Cliff had to...
Just an update........ Cliff has his implants. Thursday's surgery was a little more difficult. By evening he felt some pressure in the eyeball and by Friday morning he knew something wasn't right. He drove back to the Hayesville office first thing in the morning where the ophthalmologist checked his eye pressure which was in the mid-40's but should have been around 11. He was given a Rx to get the pressure under control. That afternoon he saw our optometrist in Murphy to recheck his pressure which had dropped down to 19. He seems to be responding to the Rx and will see our optometrist Monday morning for another pressure check.
Friday Cliff had his one week post-op eye appointment with our optometrist only to walk out of her office with continued restrictions. She felt he needed another week to allow further healing which brings him to the time of his right eye surgery. That was depressing news for him. So many daily tasks that we do automatically, like reach down and tie our shoes, empty the dishwasher, pick up things that drop on the floor, he still has to remember to modify or ask me to do them. He's restricted from running fire/rescue calls, doing yoga, yard work or anything that kicks up dust and debris, including not lifting more than twenty pounds, and has to keep water from running into that eye. For about the next three, maybe four weeks, lots of chores around here will be put on hold. Saturday morning we did the usual errands, had lunch, and headed to the Ocoee River Gorge in Tennessee to get Cliff out of the house for a few hours. The river rapids are wild after conti...