Thursday, December 29, 2022

Neighborhood Chaos

 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 at the appraisal district to find owner & at Facebook to see if I could contact.  The wife said we had a mutual friend, my realtor Amy.  She didn't answer but her partner found the realtor & contacted him.  

Next thing I saw was a locksmith changing locks.  Then the realtor who said there was no damage inside ...just busted pipes under house.  It wasn't an hour & there was a clean up company hauling stuff off.  Then a little later the mad tenants showed.  Not sure what went on...not sure what was legal...not my business for sure.  But in that vein, I'm appalled that the tenant's kids had to see people hauling off their stuff & having to move because their parents didn't pay rent.  And sad for the tenants that they had to see people taking their stuff too.  But they should have taken care of business.   Not sure if dad still lived there...he works in oil field & I have not seen him in months.  Mom doesn't work, they have 4 kids who occasionally go to school in a whole other town, mom is gone driving all day but not working. I have a hard time understanding choices people make all day.

Realtor said he took video & saw several mice.  I hope they don't decide to move into my house.  

Gonna be interesting to see what happens.


Sunday, December 25, 2022

New Year's Resolutions



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 eliminate the garbage in our lives. Need to include "royals" in that too.

8. Do the 15 hours a week.  Don't get involved.

9. Don't think people are going to change.  Don't count on anyone but me.  Don't trust what others say.  Too many have shown exactly who they are & what my friendship means to them.  I need to take care of me only. 

10.  ...to be continued


Friday, December 23, 2022

But only in my dreams...



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.

It's too dang cold

 


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??


Dessert Board

 


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!!



Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Wishy Washy



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 the front of her face while she stirs.  Plus, she has a cat that walks all over the cabinets & I've seen him lick cookies.  Again...not appetizing.

So, I called her yesterday & asked if she wanted the board.  She hem hawed around & never answered me.  I called again today & she said she'd pass on the board, partly because she "doesn't have anywhere to store it".  Not sure what she thinks it is but storage is not a problem.  Easy peasy.  She gets a platter.

Every question from where do you want to eat to what time do you want to leave to what color do you want? is an "I don't really care".   Who the hell seriously has no opinion.  I alway appear bossy because I'm NEVER ind the mood for "I don't really care".  If you don't, I do.  Nothing would ever get done if I didn't make a friggin decision.  

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Lunchbox



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 the army in WWII & when he worked in a mine, in Arizona in the 1960s.  And every day, my mom made his lunch to take to work.  It saved money & then of course there was nowhere to go from work anyway.  Mom would put a sandwich & chips & cookie & fruit...or a thermos with soup & corn bread.  And she'd put it in a lunchbox like the one above although Daddy's was a little more beat up.  We used to run to see what was left over when he came home.

As I worked, I went through stages of taking my lunch & eating out.  I certainly would have saved more money eating in.  And as my lunch hour over the years went to 1/2 hour, I ate in more.  

When not working at the mine, Daddy would be out sometimes at lunch & in his saddle bag he almost always had a sleeve of saltines & a can of Vienna sausage, or what he called "those little fellows in a can".  

I miss my Mom & Daddy.  

Thursday, December 1, 2022

Bakery Judge



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.  We usually both pick out something yummy looking & split it.  As with most of life, the look is normally better than the taste.  

But these Brit bakeries look yum!!  After 10 years and a full plandemic, I hope it's still the same now.



It's Chicken!!


 

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 better than the others. In fact, I was craving a piece of chicken today.  I ordered 2 breasts so I'd have left overs but they were so over cooked & greasy that I only ate part of one. And today sealed the deal.  I can't imagine ever craving them again after today.

Gandy's was a restaurant & they had good sides & rolls but near their end they stopped cleaning & eventually just died on the vine.  Their old building sat for years & deteriorated. I figured they'd have to implode it to get the nasty out.  A local company finally bought it & rehabbed it & opened it as a breakfast & lunch place.  I miss their rolls.   This was mom's favorite before they turned into a trainwreck.

I occasionally buy a piece of chicken from Popeyes or the grocery & both are better.   I noticed this week  that there was a Popeye's down the street from me, across the street from a KFC & now it's an empty parking lot.  In the chicken war, did KFC win on that corner?😱

I appreciate the train wreck chicken today...glad Church's is out of my life.

Odd sidetrack...the Church's had a sign on their window that said something like "get paid after every shift".  I asked the woman working the window if she really got paid every day?  She said she didn't...and "that's for the kids".  But what an odd thing to me.  I've almost always in my adult life been paid every 2 weeks & budget accodingly.  For the 1 year I worked for "Legacy ATT" I was paid every Friday.  And now as a retiree I get paid technically once a month though I get a pension & social security about 2 weeks apart so really back to every 2 weeks.  Budgeting can be done but it takes a lot of mind rearranging more than anything.  But I think getting paid every day would be a complete disaster.