Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Springing back to Winter Weather again

I'm sure that this cold snap is going to be brief only because March is just a day or two away.  The Winter months always look hopeful once March approaches and Spring is right behind.

My Maple tree is already budding and some of my plants have broken through the ground.  The Buttercups are just about to bust out and bloom any day now.  I've seen other Buttercups already blooming  around town, so to me, this marks the beginnings of Spring.

 The tomcats have been here for a couple of months now making their rounds, looking for that perfect mate.  Of course, my Squeaker is very pretty, but she's fixed but they still chase her around.  She hides, but gets caught at times by the looks of her ruffled up fur.

I'm finding myself in a much better mood now knowing the warm weather is just right around the corner here to stay for a few months anyway.  Even on the dreary days I have something to look forward to now.

Even tho today has turned cold again, and it will be below freezing again tonight, I'm still hopeful and I'm not letting this little cold snap get me down, because I know that it's just a temporary little setback.

Friday, February 09, 2024

Supper with Zac and Jennifer at PapaLeno"s this evening





 

My new hobby: Eating Out

I treated myself to a Shrimp Fajita (to go) from my favorite Mexican Restaurant in Berea, Ky. this afternoon.  I ate the shrimp and the green peppers, onions and tomatoes, but I saved the Spanish rice, refried beans, nachos & sauce for later or for tomorrow.  I told them that I didn't want the Pico de Gayo or salad, but I did take the little flour tortillas that are wrapped in foil home.  This time I'll eat them.

 Last week I treated myself to Red Lobster.  I didn't order what I wanted because that order now costs around $47, so I ordered a Southwestern Shrimp Salad which ended up costing me $21 with the taxes and tip included.  That was the cheapest thing that I could find on the menu that included shrimp.  The salad was very good and I plan on ordering it again sometime.  Maybe someday I'll order lobster, king crab legs, shrimp scampi, but not anytime soon.

I think next week that I will treat myself to something from PapaLeno's here in Berea.  I love their baked spaghetti with a side of fresh baked bread that you can dip in butter.  Oooooh!  It's so good.  I also like their Italian sub and also whatever kind of sub that Suzanne orders.

I think my new hobby is picking places to eat that Jimmy used to take me to.  He had good taste and he also loved a good tasting meal from a nice restaurant.

Treating myself to political news and influencers

Today I'm treating myself to an overdose of politics.  I'm listening to podcast after podcast of various influencers, historians, scientists, world leaders and of course one of my favorites, Tucker Carlson.  I love his interviews.  He lets his guests just talk and only interrupts to ask questions, but not so many that it interrupts his guests.  I also listen to Bill O'Reilly because he's also an Independent, and Jimmy loved to listen to him and to read his books.  So I have some of O'Reilly's old books here, but I haven't read any of them.  Maybe if I get bored enough I might read one, haha.

I'm spending the day by myself today.  Last night I stayed up most of the night watching movies, as I do most nights.  I simply put in my apple air pods and I can listen and watch movies, documentaries and mini series in peace, of my own choosing.  It's so nice.

Now it's after 2:00 p.m. and time for me to eat.  I'm not sure what I want today, but whatever I choose I know it will be good.    

  

Thursday, February 08, 2024

Callie's a good friend

 Everyday I feel awkward, out of place and confined to a living space.  I have no friends except maybe one, Callie Hayes. When I stop in to see Callie she is always excited to see me and makes me feel welcomed.  Callie at the moment is confined to a rehab home and if she does well there she will be going back home.

I really enjoy playing cards with Callie.  She is so much fun to be around, but I only wish that her and I could leave her house once in a while to go eat or just to shop likes she likes to do.  At the moment Callie cannot walk because of some really bad sores that she got on each of her lower legs and also because of all of the swelling which makes it hard for her to walk.  I hope all that is taken care of once she leaves the rehab hospital next week.  She still won't leave her house tho because she doesn't like leaving it empty with no one there to watch it.

Callie is so sweet, just like a grandma, so you can't help but love her.  I hope her daughter and sister find her hearing aids while she is gone because she really needs them.  It's very hard to carry on a conversation with her without them in her ears.  I'm also getting to the point where I have to start thinking about getting some hearing aids for myself very soon.  I can't hear out of my right ear and my left ear is fading fast.  It's so hard for me to hear what people are saying especially if there are a group of people talking all at once.  I can barely keep up with one person; that takes a lot of effort and some guessing at times.  Rick makes fun of me and that makes things worse.

Callie is Rick's aunt and he will probably never go back to see her now that Harold is gone.  I know that Callie would love to see him, but I will visit Callie every chance that I get once she is at home from rehab.

Callie is 82 years old and fading fast, so she is what grandmother Hatcher would call "borrowed time."  So am I tho.  I think Callie thinks more of me than Rick does.  Rick just uses me to get by so that he doesn't have to rely on himself to survive.  He needs my shower, bathroom and a place to cook & eat.  He also needs the use of my vehicles.  He's hinting around me buying him a different truck once I get my Prius paid off, but that's not going to happen.  He has two properties that he can sell to buy his own truck or car.  He doesn't care about my needs and never did, so why should I buy him a new truck.  He thinks that all he has to do for me is to go out and pick up the sticks in my yard, mow and do some cooking and that's all I need.  Well I can hire someone to take care of mowing and I still can cook my own meals, and I can even clean my own house if I so choose, so that's not seeing to my needs or bringing me any joy.  He won't even week eat my yard and make it look as neat as Jimmy & I used to keep it looking.  Rick does a sloppy job on my yard and I know he could do better because he keeps his yard looking very well kept except for all that junk he has pilled up in it.  He has pilled up my yard with junk too and also cluttered up my house with stuff too that makes it hard to clean around.  Rick is a pack-rat.  His sister Barbara says that Rick likes things clean and neat, well I don't know where she gets that because you should see the inside of his little house and also the inside of mine where he scatters all of his mess.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Finding Contentment

After staying at home for nearly 8 years waiting for Rick to decide to go somewhere with me, I have finally given up and have resigned myself to just staying at home and being content with it.

Rick goes to hang out everyday in McDonald's in the Winter and sits on the Sonic outdoor benches when it is warm.  He visits with his brother and with other men who come join them.  He's content with this and it never seems to bore him.  I on the other hand have been extremely bored with this arrangement for several years, but there is nothing I can do about it.  The only thing to do is to find my own way. To find a hobby, something that interests me, and something that I can do and enjoy doing it alone.

I do seem to have found contentment watching movies and TV programs on Netflix and Amazon Prime.  It passes the time away and I don't have to think about anything but the story line in the movies and series that I watch.  Sometimes I get so involved in a series that I watch it hour after hour non-stop for days at a time.  I can't remember the last day that I have been outside to enjoy the beautiful world that I used to enjoy so much.

My whole life I was an outdoor gal.  I hated being inside and spent my days outside enjoying nature and whatever the world had to offer me.  I was so happy then.  I had so much to do after I got off work.  I never could understand then how anyone could ever be so bored when there was so much to do outside.  

My father's influence......that's how it all started at a very young age.  My grandfather also had a great deal to do with my love for the outdoors.  My grandfather and grandmother in San Gabriel, California let me spend as much time as I wanted to running around in the back yard which was extremely large with all its fruit trees and other buildings.  I remember climbing up all the trees and sitting up in the branches picking and eating fruit.  We had fig trees, black & white figs, and all kinds of guavas, plums and I really enjoyed the large pomegranate tree next door with its large branches of fruit hanging over our fence.  There were fruit trees and fruit bushes that I don't even know what the fruits were called. In the large Ramada (patio) with its orange colored floor there hung large green pear-shaped fruit over-head that I also loved to eat.  The only fruit that I was NOT allowed to touch were the cactus apples.  My grandfather would pick a large cactus apple and peel it for me and I would eat the juicy red sweet fruit inside.  We also had raspberries and boysenberries.  I guess this is where my love for fruit began.

My grandfather also built me a mound right behind the backdoor and next to the Ramada for me to play in.  I had to be very careful playing in there because it was a cactus garden.  My grandfather made me some small adobe houses for my lizards to live in.  Grandpa would surprise me with lizards that he brought home in his metal lunch box from the Huntington Library where he worked as the head gardener   of the cactus gardens.  We would release the lizards into one of the two adobe houses.  My grandfather must have also brought home little surprises for my dad when he was a boy, because my dad continued this with me by bringing me a surprise home in his metal lunchbox everyday from Nardons where he worked in Alhambra.  Everyday he would hand me his lunch box before he went inside and tell me to look inside.  It made me feel so special.  I loved my daddy.

Daddy, after remarrying a woman with 4 kids of her own took all of us kids somewhere every weekend.  Either to the beach or the mountains, or the desert.  We would leave either on Friday or Saturday and we would come home on Sunday.  I continued this with my own children when I grew up and got married.  I found a cabin for sale on the Licking River in Robertson County Kentucky and I bought it with money I had saved.  It was way out away from civilization and very secluded.  My children spent a lot of time at the cabin by the river until they reached around 15 yrs old and then they lost interest.  They wanted to be with their friends in town even tho we had allowed them to bring friends with them to the cabin by the river.  I grew up with my children there and have many happy memories of our time there.  

I'm a strong believer that the good memories that you make with your parents exploring nature, are passed down generation after generation, just ask my children.  If parents don't do anything with their children, their children will probably not do anything with their children either.  It doesn't matter what activities you do with your children, but the time you spend with them is all that matters.  I just so happened to love the outdoors, but I also loved to cook and bake from scratch which I did not get to share with my daughters because of a fear their dad had for kitchen fires.  That's one of my biggest regrets in life.  

I don't cook much anymore because Rick insists on doing all the cooking himself.  He has so many hangups that he won't eat anyone else's cooking.  At first I fought it, but then I realized that if I wanted or craved something that I loved to fix, that I could fix it while he was gone to hang out at McDonald's or Sonic, that's my time to cook the things that I truly love.  Some I share and some I don't, and if he finds them in the fridge, Rick is welcomed to eat try it.  Since I don't have an oven I am limited to what I can bake, but I manage well around this little problem.  It makes for some experimentation on how to bake something without an oven.  It sometimes can be done over the cooktop, almost like camping and making biscuits.  There is however one thing that I haven't figured out how to make without an oven and that is that good custard, like flan that Gigi Shattler taught me how to bake.  I loved that so good that I made it almost everyday.  

It is rainy and windy out today, but at least it's not cold.  It reached 60 degrees F. and the sun was in and out for a little while this morning.  My poor kitty Squeak has not come out of her house for the last 2 days.  I think she must not be feeling well or maybe she just hates mud as much as we do.  The snow all melted off yesterday here leaving so much mud that you don't dare go out and get off the sidewalk.  And with today's rain, well, it just doesn't help the mud problem.

I can't believe that it is already 4:14 p.m. and that I haven't even watched one movie today.  I better say goodbye and find a good movie or two to watch before Rick gets home.  Bye.....

 

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Feeling bad for my Squeak

 This is about the third cold day and we have about 3 inches of snow on the ground and extremely frigid temperatures outside.  It was 9 degrees F. outside last night.  My sweet Squeak has a heated cat house with many blankets inside for her to bundle up with, but I still worry about her being alone outside in these temps without Jybow snuggling up to her anymore.  Jybow was around last winter, but was killed by a pit bull early last year, so Squeak is alone to brave the elements.  If it gets too cold I won't hesitate to bring her inside, but I still worry about these cold temps.  Today the high is only around 12 degrees, and she hasn't come out of her heated house.  She has stayed in all snuggled in her blankets and heated floor.  I really don't blame her.

We let a little Spring female kitten stay here last Spring and finally in the Fall, the kitten and Squeak had become friends.  We had hoped that the kitten and Squeak would nuzzle together in the heated cat house for this winter, but right before winter the kitten got run over and we found her dead on the road one morning.  That was kind of a blow to us because now we realized that Squeak would bed down alone in the cold winter nights.

As I previously said, I worry about Squeak, but I don't have a litter box or litter to put in the house and right now I'm still not over whatever sickness I am just getting over with.  In early December 2023 both Rick and I got sick.  Rick was tested and had Covid.  He was very sick and a week later I was tested and did not have Covid, nor the flu, nor RSV, but I did have an infection in my left lung.  We both were treated with prescription medications and are slowly getting better, but not well enough to go out and buy litter or a litter box.  Whether Squeak would use it is another matter.  But if the temps fall below zero I won't hesitate to bring her inside for the rest of the winter.  I do realize that once I bring her in I cannot put her back out again.  That would be cruel.  Squeak never volunteers to come inside the house even when the door is propped open, as when we are carrying in groceries, so I know she doesn't want to come in, but for her own safety I will bring her in if necessary.