Sneakers1957

  On Monday, about 6pm I noticed water on the driveway next door but I didn't pay much attention.  Then when I headed to bed about 1045, I heard water running & I wondered it was raining...it wasn't.  I got my little flashlight & went over & found water running down the side of the house.  The residents have been evicted & had moved stuff last week but I hadn't seen them since, so no one waas there.  I called 311, thinking I'd be connected to the water department but instead they sent the fire department to turn the water off.  Big old truck engine, luckily no sirens or lights (except for the lighted Christmas wreath on the front) with 4 firemen.  They tromped through all the water in the back yard, to the alley.  Later, the one rookie, covered in mud & the 3 clean firemen left.   The house has a realtor's sign & no one answered Monday at 6 or 1045...I called the next day & still no answer.  So I looked a...

It's only Christmas night so maybe it's a little early but here we are.  I think the last time I wrote down resolutions was 2020 & we all know what happened in that disaster year.   I watch a lot of videos on Facebook & there are a lot of people screaming at each other about maskes & vaxes.  Thank God that's over.  For the record someone is going to have to sit on my every day of my life to make me wear a mask or get another vax. So here goes: 1. Read on book everyday. 2. Write every day.  This one will be tough. 3. Get savings back up to 10k+ 4. Eliminate sugar from my life. It won't be 100%...I still need in tea & on cereal but no overt sugar.  This includes getting rid of sugary cereals. 5. No soft drinks 6. Twitter once a day.  I've become too dependent on it. I already have eliminate Facebook, except for the videos.  I don't read posts.  7. Ignore Hollywood stories.  It's a little stange but we all need to elimi...

2 more days and the holidays are over. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.  And I have made it through another year. The loneliness is overwhelming.  I miss my family.  Friends are nice but it's not the same.  And I have Steve but he has his own family now & I like them all very much but I'm not comfortable in chaos & that's all on me.  They asked me to come down once but I declined so they never asked again.  And I'm actually ok with that. A couple of years ago I met Hope's family down in Austin & it was nice but they live in Arizona. And they are chaos too.  Growing up, on Christmas Eve we'd eat supper & clean up & open presents.  And on Christmas morning Santa came.  I miss those days. I'll be home for Christmas...but only in my dreams.

  This was the view outside my kitchen window yesterday morning!  The frost is kind of fun to look at but it sure doesn't feel all that good.  This was 12 degrees.  Today it was 7 when I woke up. How long til spring??

  Here is my first dessert board ever!!  It has Ginger Snaps,Linzer Cookies & Peanut Blossoms, chocolate fudge, peanut butter fudge & my first ever divinity.  Also faux turtles (pretzels,Rolos,pecans), gum drops, extra Rolos, chocolate orange candy & hazelnut straw stick things that I don't remember what they're called. It was fun to make!! Here's the divinity! My divinity was not gorgeous but it tasted like my moms.  Next time it'll look better. The best part...clean kitchen!!

This weekend, I'm doing dessert boards.  Charcuterie boards are a way to present food on one board so people can just munch off of it.  It's basically an food art project.  Mine is just going to have desserts.  I'm excited to play with it. I bought 2 boards...I wasn't sure where they were going when I finished with them.  I have some dollar store platters to give goodies to others too.  My first thought with the boards were my friends Deborah & Jan.  But here is the debate in my mind:  Deb has diabetes & she plays that to the hilt. Plus, like me, she lives alone & neither of us need all the goodies...it's kind of a family thing.  But she has cousins she spends a lot of the holidays with & at first I thought she could take stuff to them.  And reuse it later.  But she smokes like a chimney & smokes while she cooks & I can rarely eat what comes out of her kitchen.  Picture her with a cigarette sticking out ...

 

No one reads this but me but for the record my mind sometimes not only goes down the rabbit holes but sometimes into complete outer space.  So follow the train if you can... I like baking shows & the Brits kind of fascinate me.  I mean, I just did an entire post on it...but it also lead me down another trail. One of the shows had the bakers make "Bedfordshire Clangers" which are "hand pies".  There is surprisingly little on Google about them but from the show it shows a definition as:  "Clangers are a traditional Bedfordshire Hand Pie. 2/3 savory, 1/3 sweet with a flaky crust". Basically, it's one long pie with meat & veggies on one end & dessert on the other.  It sounds very efficient.  One guy says he puts one in hs lunch box every day.   For some reason it makes me think of my dad.  He was a cowboy all his life.  The only, short times, that he had a job where he had to be somewhere at a specific time were when he waas in t...

I've decided on my next retirement job.  I want to be a bakery judge.  In Hawaii where it's always warm. I'm streaming a 10 year old show called 'Britain's Best Bakery' where 2 "expert" judges go from bakery to bakery eating.  Sounds like a heck of a job to me. And I'm already tired of winter so I need to move to Hawaii.  And extra 5k a month should help me live comfortably.  😀 We have bakeries in America of course but these Brit bakeries seem like a bigger deal.  I go sometimes to a cupcake store.  There is a lunch place that has more choices.  But I can't think of one in town that anyone gets up at 3am to bake breads & cakes & pastries every day.  I've seen patissere's in hotels in Las Vegas & NY but seriously by the time we get back & I'm ready to make a choice, they are always closed. 😕.   In Las Vegas, there is a little food court thing in Harrah's that has "treats", my niece's favorite thing...

  As I've gotten older I find that there are a lot of things that I used to crave that I absolutely don't anymore.  Pizza, McDonalds,Burger King--basically, ick.  I also used to love Chick Fil A when they were just in the mall & always thought if I had one in my neighborhood I'd eat there a lot.  Now I do have one, rarely eat there. The one thing that I still absolutely love is Schlotzskys but even that's a couple of times a year.  They're all the way across town. My mom loved fried chicken, mainly because my dad didn't like it so if she was in Lubbock, we always ended up with fried chicken one way or the other.  At the time it was KFC, Church's, Gandy's.   The thought of KFC turns my stomach.  I can think of 3 or 4 locations that are still open here but I never see any customers there.  I don't know how they're still open. Church's is a company based out of south Texas that does more traditional fried chicken & I like them bette...