Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Take Cover! The Sky is Falling!

Damn the storm last night rattled me, rattled my house, even rattled my cats!

It wasn't the worst storm I've ever lived through but that wind was wicked last night.  Some storms, it's better to crawl into bed, pull the covers over your head and try to fall asleep to get through the storm.

I went to my bedroom and was getting ready for bed when I heard it.  Something metallic banging outside of my bedroom window!  What the HECK!  I tried to look out the window to see what was going on but it was too dark to see anything.  I do know that just below that window is my satellite dish and in my mind, that was hanging now by a thread, making that banging metallic sound I was hearing.

The sound quieted down a bit, I crawled into bed when the wind kicked up again and BAM BAM BAM.  I totally freaked myself right out.  My imagination goes from 0-100 in 1.2 seconds.  The satellite dish is on top of a small roof that is over where the window seat in the dining room juts out of the house, which is right below my bedroom window.  In my mind, this is what was going to happen:

The satellite dish was going to come unhooked from the house, swing down on its wires and come crashing through the dining room window.  The cats were all going to jump out of the broken window, run right into the street and all get hit by cars.  See how my mind works?  I saw all of that in my head in literally less than a second.  I am my own worst enemy some days.

I got right back out of bed, made the bed back up, grabbed my pillow and went downstairs to sleep on the couch.  I figured if I was downstairs, I could be right there to stop my cats from jumping out the window and dying once the satellite broke that window!  Hey, it made sense to me.

We all made it through the night alive and with no broken windows.  I came upstairs to get dressed and I heard that damn banging again.  I thought for sure that satellite dish was swinging in the breeze.  I got dressed, fed the cats, grabbed a flashlight and went outside to assess the damage.  I was shocked at what I saw!



It's the aluminum cover over the wood of the window frame.  I should be happy that the damage wasn't worse.  The piece didn't come off totally and it doesn't seem to have taken any siding off with it.  So, I will move my bed a little, take that window out, hang out my window and nail that back onto the house.

If anyone is driving by my house and sees me hanging out that window, please do not call 9-1-1.  I'm ok and just trying to fix my window!!

Um, on the other hand . . . if you see me hanging out that window, perhaps head down, leg caught in the window?  Call for help!

Wish me luck!

We Made it Through Christmas

We all know that Christmas isn't for everyone.  It doesn't mean to me what it used to and it's a chore to get through it some years.  I'm not in the dark place about Christmas that I have been in previous years, but I pretty much tried to ignore it, get through my long weekend and get back to reality.

Phil, playing his Santa, was busy that weekend, go figure!  I wasn't doing much cooking over the weekend, and I decided not to do a lot of adulting either.  I spent the weekend with my Netflix!  That wasn't a bad way to pass the weekend.

I have a list of shows on Netflix that I want to see.  If I'll ever make the time to do it, I don't know.  But, for this weekend I chose Sons of Anarchy for my Netflix binge watching marathon!!!

Ok, not very Christmasy.  Lots of blood, guts, death, dismembering, basic mayhem.  Season one was FABULOUS!  Season two, also AWESOME!  Season three . . . meh.  I was struggling.  However . . . the season finale episode of Season three was STELLAR!  That was some damn good television watching!  That one episode made Season three worth it!  Damn!  Now only four more seasons and I'll have seen them all.

So, another long weekend for binge watching is coming up.  Blood and guts aside, I plan on spending as much of my weekend as I can with some tatted up biker boys again.  Yep, them grungy men made this old lady's heart beat a little faster.


What can I say . . . I've always had questionable taste in men!

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Which is Worse?

I was cleaning the bathroom this morning and I started to think about cleaning.  Specifically, what is the WORST part of cleaning your house.

I mean seriously, no part of cleaning your house is fun, but let's face it, some chores are better than others.

So, I tried to come up with what was my least favorite part.  You'd think it had to do with scooping poop.  Let's face it, I have four cats.  That means I have five litter boxes which get cleaned between three and seven times a week.  One thing about cats, that are great at peeing, pooping and puking.  I clean up all three so regularly that none of it bothers me anymore.

Cleaning up cat hair?  Naw, again, it's part of every day life around here.  My favorite is scraping up the cat hair that is glued to the floor by hairspray.  Good times!

Cleaning a toilet?  Not the worst thing I can think of.  Cleaning grout?  Nope, not even close.

I contacted some family members to find out what their least favorite chore was. 

My sister Cathie said her least favorite was cleaning the tub.  Yuck, not a fun job.

Jim said his least favorite was a tie between doing dishes and dusting.  Yeah, like I said,  none are great and I'm not a fan of either of these either.

Jenny's was a toss up between mopping the floors and finding homes for all the the stuff the boys have!  Ugh, there has to be an easier way!

My least favorite??  I HATE, and I mean HATE . . . cleaning the hair from the vacuum sweeper's roller.  This job makes me gag every time.  I don't know what there is about this job but I absolutely hate it and would happily pay someone to clean it out for me every week.

Oh yeah, and then that person can clean the tub, do the dishes, dust, mop the floors and put all of MY crap away!  They all suck!

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Broken Boy

Yesterday afternoon, I grabbed a garbage bag and went about picking up garbage from my yard.

I live on a relatively busy street and people have no problem throwing crap out of their cars into my yard on their way by my house.  I've blogged and facebooked before about the kind of stuff I've picked up from my yard.  Fast food bags, liquor bottles, condoms (new and used!), a bag of crack, soda cans, mail, car parts, knives, etc.

Yesterday I found a broken boy.


I don't know what it was, it felt like pottery.  But for some reason, this made me so sad.

What made someone throw this out?  What was it?  I wish I knew his story.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Why I Hate the Dentist

I've had a lifetime of bad experiences with dentists.  I will give you one example out of many.

As a kid, maybe 10 or so, I had a tooth grow in the roof of my mouth.  Obviously it had to come out.  The dentist we had was not a nice person nor was he a good dentist.  I'm a terrified kid about to have a tooth pulled and he's yelling at me to sit still.  To make sure I complied, I ended up with his knee on my chest holding me down while he pulled the tooth.  That's a hard thing to get over.

So now I'm a terrible patient.  I need handled with kid gloves.  I don't go as often as I should not only because I have no dental insurance but because I have to be really NEEDING to go to make an appointment.

Last month I was trying to be responsible and had a cleaning and had x-rays taken of all of my teeth.  One cavity had to be fixed, bottom front of my mouth.

I went at the end of November for this filling.  When the Novocaine wore off, the front of my chin was painful to the touch.  It's where the needle went in so I didn't think much of it.  I figured a couple of days I'd be fine.

The pain from the needle stick went away but holy cow my tooth HURT.  It hurt to brush it, it hurt drink cold water, it freakin' hurt.  If I have to call the dentist for another appointment you know it has to be bad because I hate going to the dentist.  But I was hurting and called on Tuesday and got an appointment for Thursday morning.  On Tuesday I didn't know if I'd make it to Thursday it hurt so bad.

You'll never believe what happened on Thursday morning.  I woke up and my tooth didn't freakin' hurt!  Seriously.  I kept my appointment, told him how much pain I had been in but woke up pain free.  They took a panoramic x-ray of my teeth to see if anything was going on since the face full of x-rays I just had done two weeks prior but they didn't show any infection or any problem.  Since I didn't hurt, I assumed all should be good aside from another big hit on my checkbook.  He said he can't find anything wrong with the tooth, all should be good going forward.

Guess what happened Thursday night!  Yep, tooth started hurting again.  Friday it was worse.  Today is Saturday and I barely ate breakfast with this damn tooth and I don't know what to do anymore.  I thought I would scream when I brushed my teeth, again with no cold water or soda, my tooth f-ing hurts.  I may have found the secret to weight loss because I can't eat.  I can't bite, I can't chew, the damn tooth hurts when my tongue touches it.

I really don't know what to do.  I was just at the dentist and he said nothing is wrong.  I'm broke after paying for a full set of x-rays, a panoramic x-ray, a cleaning and a crappy filling.  And I hurt like hell.  And I am beyond frustrated.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Brr I'm Cold!

Monday started out so good!  I mean for real, it was a good morning!

I just woke up in a good mood.  Not an easy task for a Monday.  I worked all day and didn't have to slap anyone, no one slapped me, a good day.  I walked in the house after work and BRR, it was a bit chilly in here!

I keep my thermostat at 68 during the day, 64 at night.  I looked at the temperature in the house and it was 62 at six in the afternoon!  What the heck!  I ran to the basement and looked at the furnace.  It wasn't on fire and it was still there.  That was the extent of my expertise!  Next I did what I do best . . . I called my brother Mike.

Mike and his tools came over but alas this was more than an easy fix.  It needed parts and there was no way he could fix it that night.  He called a heating company and luckily he talked to them because I swear they were taking in another language.  I understood about every other word.

The guy didn't have the parts I needed on his truck so he said someone would be at the house in the morning.  IN THE MORNING!!!!!!!!  That means a night without heat!!!  Ok, we're not exactly having arctic temperatures right now but still!  I am a wuss at heart.

My brother Mike and my niece Jenny both offered up their houses to me.  I thought I could tough it out.  Besides, I was kinda worried about the cats.  They are not used to roughing it either!

It really wasn't a horrible night, just a little uncomfortable.  I did everything I could do to make it better.  I put an extra blanket on the bed, I put a heating pad IN the bed to warm up the sheets before I got in and I even let the cats in the bedroom for the night.  Hey, it was worth it for the extra heat!  Funny side story.  All four cats were on the bed that night, but Ava was the one that figured out how to crawl under the covers with me!  I woke in the morning to see see her little head on my pillow and the rest of her under the covers.  Yeah, she's the smart one!

Luxury Heating Co and Wayne in particular are now on my favorites list.  He showed up when he was scheduled to show up, he had me up and running in 15 minutes.  I had FIRE!


Ok, it was an easy fix for him, but he took his time, looked at the whole unit and even took the time to educate me on what I should know about the whole thing.  That included going up to the second floor with me to show me how the vents are SUPPOSED to be opened!  Geez, I've owned this house for 12 years and I'm just learning now how to work the vents!  He knew what he was talking about!

All in all, Monday started good, then went bad.  Tuesday started bad (57 degrees in my house!) but ended good.   You don't know how spoiled you are until your furnace goes out.  I am very thankful to have my heat back!

Monday, December 07, 2015

God Bless America

I've seen this display a few times now and I just had to go take pictures of it.  This flag is HUGE!  That cut out of the navy man is life size.

This is in Avon on Detroit Road just east of Long Avenue.  Gorgeous.


Sunday, December 06, 2015

I Usually Want to Know You Better Before I Want to Hit You!

I stopped at Giant Eagle the other night after work.  I really was daydreaming or something that day, because I sure wasn't paying attention to what I was doing or where I was going.

I walked aimlessly up and down the aisles to buy two things, cereal and fabric softener.  Yeah, some times that's just how my mind works.  I went to walk into a check out line and seriously, I was NOT paying attention.  I ran right into the woman standing at the check out, signing the little gadget where she ran her credit card.

She looked back at me shocked!  Her husband, that was standing right in front of her, looked at me with the weirdest look on his face.  I am hoping it was just shock as well.  I mean for real.  There was NO reason I ran into this poor woman with my shopping cart.  It was ALL my fault and it was solely because I was not paying attention.

Without missing a beat, I said "DAMN!  I usually know a person better before I want to hit them!  I'm usually really nice to strangers!"

Ugh.  I did apologize after that and luckily the nice couple understood that I was joking.  She accepted my apology, we all laughed and they went on their way.  The poor cashier could barely look at me without cracking up.

I am sorry.  I know I didn't hit her hard, I just nudged her with the shopping cart but still.  I should have been paying attention.  I hope I at least made them laugh about this story when they retold it.  Either that or they headed right to the police station to put out a restraining order.

Yeah, that one could have gone either way.

Saturday, December 05, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving, Part 2

Yeah, I know.  It took me awhile to get part 2 here!

Last Saturday, most of my family was at my nephew Michael's house for Thanksgiving dinner.  From where I sat, we had a great time!  My niece and her family came from New York state, my brother and brother in law came from Pennsylvania and those of us that are living in Ohio, well, we showed up too.  I dearly missed my sister and her husband from California at the table.  We talked about you Cathie, if that counts!!

I wish I would have taken more pictures because for 14 of us, you can't BELIEVE how much food was there!  I was able to take home so many leftovers, I ate all week on it and finished the last piece of ham for lunch!  I do love leftovers.

Out of all of the holidays that we celebrate, Thanksgiving has always been my favorite.  When I still lived in Erie, I cooked Thanksgiving at my Mom's and there were years I had everyone to my apartment for Thanksgiving dinner.  My favorite holiday, some of my favorite foods.  With so many things in my life to be thankful for, this holiday has just always resonated in me.  After my birthday, this is my favorite day of the year!

I wish I'd have taken more pictures but I think I'm out of the picture taking habit.  I didn't even think about it until some of the family had left the table already!  So, I'll post what little I have but trust me, there was so much more!

Let's start with the family!  From the bottom right corner in the yellow striped shirt going clockwise is my brother Mike, his wife Mary Jane, my brother-in-law Bill, my brother Phil, my niece JoBeth, her husband Brad.


The other side of the table had starting with Mike again, Bill's shoulder, brother Phil, JoBeth, Brad, across the table is my niece Jenny, her son Evan on the couch, my brother Jim.  Aargh, I wish I'd have taken pictures before the kids left the table!  I didn't even get my nephew Mike in either shot!


Speaking of the kids, they have ALL grown like weeds since the last I saw them.  How can that be?  I'm not getting older, so how can they be changing so much so fast?

On to the food!  The stuffing before it went in the oven, and the carrots cut up and ready to cook!  Oh my goodness, waaaay too many carrots!  I should know, I took all of the left over carrots home.  It's going to be a looooong time until I cook carrots again.


 

I sucked up to the host and made him a batch of my almost famous party mix!  This stuff to some of us is like crack.  One bite and you're addicted.  I had to promise additional batches to other family members so as not to leave anyone out!


And my favorite part, the city chicken!!  Considering how long it's been since I had made this, I thought it came out great!  This was a piece of comfort food for me.  The round patties on the top are the "breading patties".  My mom took the rest of the beaten egg and the rest of the breadcrumbs from breading the city chicken, mixed them together and formed patties.  They would also get fried and baked with the chicken.  This was because my Mom never threw food away, so the eggs and breadcrumbs were made into SOMEthing.  We didn't know that as kids.  All we knew is the breading patties were awesome and we used to fight over them!  Mom would end up with one or two small ones only.  I purposefully had extra eggs and crumbs to make more patties.  Like I said, comfort food and happy thoughts of my Mom.


And THIS isn't even a drop in the bucket!  We also had a ham, two turkey breasts, backed russet potatoes AND baked sweet potatoes, cheese trays, fruit trays, pies, cupcakes, and gravy.  Man oh man did we have gravy!  As requested, I heated up six jars of gravy and believe it or not, most of it got thrown away.  Go figure!!  Four jars are put in the cupboard for next year.  Or for the next TWO years!  Yeah, two bottles would have been more than enough.  Phht!  And oh so much more food that I'm forgetting to mention.

Do you SEE why this is my favorite holiday?  Aaah, this did my heart good.  It was a great day filled with a ton of great food, hugs, kisses, stories, and lots and lots of laughter!

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving!

I can't believe it's Thanksgiving!

It's actually been a quiet day.  Our big family dinner is on Saturday so today was spent with some laundry, a little cleaning, and a frozen pizza for dinner.  Yeah, that's how we roll!

So, dinner on Saturday at my nephew's house.  We've split up the cooking duties and on my list is:

1.)  Make City Chicken.  My idea . . . I have a hankering!
2.)  Make Stuffing
3.)  Make carrots
4.)  Bring applesauce
5.)  Bring gravy
6.)  Pick up birthday cake (My sister-in-law's birthday!)

I hope that's all on my list because that's all I have written down! Anyway, I need to tell you about the gravy.  That should be one of the easiest things on my list!

One thing you should know about me.  I am not a fan of gravy.  Don't know why, it's just not on my top 100 list.  We are having 14 people for dinner, I don't eat gravy, so I needed enough gravy for 13 people.  Simple math.  I figured I'd need . . . two jars!

I told my brother Mike that I was going to pick some up gravy at Fligner's last Saturday when I stopped there to get the meat for the City Chicken.  I was all over Fligner's and could find NO gravy.  I texted Mike to tell him I'd pick it up during the week from Giant Eagle since I couldn't find any.

Well, he was at Giant Eagle last Sunday and picked it up for me.  When he came to work Monday, he put it in my car since I'm the one that still needs to heat it up.  For real!  It's on my list!

I got home, unpacked the car and wondered what in the HELL Mike handed over to me!  Was there a frozen turkey in these bags?  They were heavy!  Here's what I had:


TEN BOTTLES of gravy!  Are you kidding me????  Did I mention that there are at the most 13 gravy eating people?  And turkey is NOT our main protein!  And there are NO mashed potatoes on our menu?!?!?  WTH!!

So, I'm still going with we only need two bottles.  I'll carry them all over, and I've been told to heat up five or six of them.  Talk about over kill.

Stay tuned for a gravy drama update!  I am guessing we'll have enough gravy . . . for a couple of years!

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Have Tools, Will Travel

Due to circumstances, I need to bring in a hired gun to help me with some stuff around the house.  My hired gun is my brother, Michael!

Michael is the go-to guy for a lot of people.  He is so good at this that his van is always packed and ready.  Some people pack a lunch, some pack an overnight bag, Michael packs a tool bag!

A few months ago, my kitchen sink started spewing water everywhere!  What a mess I had to clean up that day.  Michael came over after work, seriously, spread out so many tools he took up my entire counter and went to work on my sink.  Come to find out, a hose just came loose so he didn't need any of his tools but better safe than sorry.  He came prepared!

So now I put all of my odd jobs onto a list and when the list gets big enough, Michael is nice enough to donate an afternoon to my odd jobs.

Today, Michael came over and unloaded a goodly amount of his tools.  This included a cool multi level, multi positioning ladder, a power drill, more drill bits than I've ever seen and boxes and boxes of different colored and sized mollys.  I swear he giggles a little laying out all of his tools.  This was just the tip of the iceberg!

But it was a successful fix-it day.

I have a glider on the front porch that turns into a shelter for my outside cats for the winter.  We wrap it in a tarp, bungee cord and strap it all together, fill the underside with straw and call it good.  We had tarped this glider about a month ago, but it wasn't "right".  So first thing was we unwrapped what was done previously and futzed with it until it was perfect!  Then I put a bunch of fresh straw under neath and they will be as warm and dry as I can make them.

On to my dryer.  This took an additional trip to Home Depot.  No home repair is complete without at least ONE trip to Home Depot!  Living in my first home, there is still so much for me to learn.  My dryer really hasn't been drying well and my friend Chuck had come over to tell me that the vents coming out of the dryer were sooooo clogged.  He cleaned out what he could from the first part but the second part was just going to be easier to replace than to clean out.  Michael took over the repair on the second part and got that vent replaced for me.  That sounds easier than it was.  I think the worst part is this vent goes through the old coal room in the basement to the vent outside.  I hate that coal room!  You have NO idea how many spider webs are in that coal room!  That means it's also full of spiders!!!  See why I never want to go in there?  Anyway, Michael has no fear of spiders and he got me all fixed up.

He shut the water off to my outside water spigot, and we weather protected the spigot for winter.

I've blogged recently about changing the batteries in my smoke alarms to find out the smoke alarms were outdated and needed replaced.  I have four new smoke alarms plus one new carbon monoxide alarm that needed installed.  I spent a little more but these new smoke alarms have lithium batteries that are supposed to last the 10 year life span of the smoke detectors, so no more changing batteries.  Sweet!

So that was enough for one day.  Unfortunately for Michael, my list just keeps growing.  As long as we're at Home Depot, I always have to look at chandeliers.  I have hated the chandelier in my dining room since I bought this house.  I keep looking for a replacement and I think I've finally found it!  That's now on his next list!  I also hate my kitchen faucet so I'm always on the look out for one to replace this one.  It will be on the list soon!

Thank you my brother.   It was a fun afternoon (for ME anyway!) and a lot of stuff was knocked off my list.  I'll let you know when I recharge my Home Depot card and I'm ready to shop again!

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

As Long as I'm Complaining . . .

I gotta tell you, all of this bitching about a Starbucks cup is beyond asinine.

Here's the story as I know it:

Every year during the holidays, Starbucks changes their regular looking coffee cup, whatever that might be, with a "holiday cup".  This year's cup is . . . are you ready???  RED.


A RED cup.  And people are offended that it's not Christmasy or Holiday enough.  Seriously??

It's a red cup.

It's a business.

It's a business with a red cup.

No matter how I rearrange the words, I can't find anything that offends me.

Starbucks made a business decision to make THEIR holiday cup theme this year . . . red.  That is creating hoopla.  You have got to be kidding me.  Idiots are actually offended by a red cup for the holidays!

Here is my opinion.  Starbucks is a business and they are within their rights to make decisions about their business in whatever way they choose.  If they want their cups to be red, white, blue, have a Christmas tree, some holly, a menorah, a horse, a dog, a rainbow, a partridge in a pear tree.  It's THEIR decision.  If this offends you, don't go there!

Personally, the price they charge for a cup of coffee offends me.  My response is that I just don't go there.  I don't give a crap what color their stupid cup is or what decorations are on it!

If this really offends you, just don't go there.  And once you're done having your hissy fit, open your eyes, read a newspaper, watch the news, just look around.  There are real things happening all too often out there that are way more offensive that what color cup your overpriced coffee comes in.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Hey Time Warner Cable, I've Already Fired You. Now Please GO AWAY!

One of my guilty pleasures is my love of my television.  I spend a lot of money on my cable bill because I LOVE my DVR! 

The only thing I watch live on TV is sports.  Baseball games, football games, boxing.  Anything else, I want to tape it and watch it later so I can fast forward through the commercials.  I know, it's the little things that make me happy!  This is one of the monthly bills that I happily pay and don't complain.  I get what I want and I'm willing to pay for it.

I'm sure I've blogged before about my issues with Time Warner Cable.  My ex used to work out of the house and he was online all day long.  The internet used to go out on a daily basis which made it very difficult for him to work. 

My DVRs would NOT record.  For every 10 programs I set to record, I'd be lucky if one of them actually recorded. 

Their customer service department is famous.  They are famous for how horrible they are at service!  I hounded them and hounded them.  I have had more technicians here and all of my equipment has been replaced more times than I can count.  Finally, I fired Time Warner Cable and replaced them with Direct TV.  One of the best things I ever did.

To get the internet portion corrected, I had to go to a town hall meeting at City Hall and explain in front of City Council to a representative of Time Warner Cable all I had gone through to try to get them to fix their crap.  I went on and on with all of the appointments, all of the replacement of hardware and to that day the internet was still going out on a daily basis.  That finally got SOMEthing done.

In a few days, I had numerous Time Warner Cable trucks parked up and down my street.  There was more than one employee up a pole checking on their lines.  Finally, after all that time, they found a problem with THEIR equipment on a pole down the street. 

The fact that I was continually complaining and making them come to the house to check it out didn't make it important enough to actually fix it.  It took a town hall meeting to get action.  Ridiculous.

Anyway, TWC is now going balls to the wall to try to get my business back.  I am receiving letters from them every 10 to 14 days.  They are very official looking, stating to be "from the desk of Michael Diamond, Senior Vice President, Marketing".  Fancy, huh?

Mr. Diamond gives me more information that I need, except for HIS phone number or ANY address.  It's a sales pitch and the only number on the business card attached or in the letter itself is the number to call to activate service.  No where to call and ask them to leave me alone.

I did call that number they provided probably two or three letters ago.  I explained very nicely that I was not happy with their service or product.  I asked them to take me off of their mailing list as I was not interested.  Even though I was assured they would stop the letter campaign, their word is as good as it always was.

So, here is my response to Mr. Michael Diamond, Senior Vice President, Marketing:

Mr. Diamond:

I fired Time Warner Cable years ago.  Your service is unreliable, your products didn't work.  I am thrilled with my service from Direct TV to the point that if your cable was FREE, I would not let you back in my house.  Please just go away.

Regards,
A much happier customer now that I'm an ex-customer

Monday, November 09, 2015

Thank You St. Anthony!

Even a fallen away Catholic remembers old prayers in time of crisis.

Sunday, I was outside raking leaves.  In my neighborhood, I never leave any doors open when I'm outside.  The door to the house is closed and locked.  The garage door also stays closed, even if I'm right there.  I keep the garage door opener usually hooked onto the front of my shirt.

I started raking in the back of the house.  I had gathered all the leaves up in a lawn and garden bag and when full, I carried it and dumped it on the tree lawn.  Supposedly, the city is supposed to come vacuum them up from there.

I had already carried one lawn and garden bag of leaves to the front and dumped it.  I've filled up the second bag, and I was just getting ready to carry that bag to the front.  Suddenly, I realized the garage door clicker is NOT hooked on to the front of my shirt.  Shit.

By now there is a good pile of leaves on my tree lawn.  I am overwhelmed and I don't know where to start.  I figured before I dumped the second bag into the mix, I need to go through ALL of the leaves out front and look for my garage door opener.

I grabbed my rake, and begged St. Anthony to help me find my garage door opener.  I had visions of someone walking by, finding the opener and emptying out my garage in 10 minutes flat.  Hey, someone had done it before, without the garage door opener.  I'm trying to figure out how to shut the electricity off to the garage should I not be able to find it!

"Please, St. Anthony, please help me find the garage door opener!  Please, I know you've helped me before, please come help me again!"  Like I said, even fallen away, I remember the go-to guys!

I moved that whole pile of leaves two feet over, a little bit at a time.  It took me a long time but right at the end of the pile . . . there it was!  Oh, thank you St. Anthony!!


Uh, St. Anthony . . . don't go too far away.  I'm not done yet!


Saturday, November 07, 2015

Just as Good the Second Time Around . . . And the Third . . . .Fourth . . .

I don't cook often but when I do, I cook a LOT so I have leftovers.  I love the idea that I can have dinner ready in two minutes during the week.  Ok, not everything I make is as good leftover as other things, but one of my favorites is meatloaf!  It's great on the night it's cooked and even better as leftover meatloaf sandwiches.

I made a lot of meatloaf last weekend and I ate it through most of the week some dinners, some lunches.  Thursday night I had a couple of pieces of meatloaf left, some mashed potatoes and some corn.  I wanted to clean up all of my leftovers so I'm not just making another sandwich.

A normal person probably would have put all three things on a plate, thrown it in the microwave and called it dinner.  I was trying to be creative.  I was imagining all kinds of things I could make with these three ingredients.  I thought I'd cut up the meatloaf and heat it in the microwave.  The corn was mixed into the mashed potatoes and I put them in a small frying pan with a little butter to make kind of a pancake.  I pictured a nice, golden brown pancake over my meatloaf.  I was thinking I needed something crunchy to put on top but after looking in my cupboards, I came up empty.

So there was my thought.  The picture in my head of my made up dinner was beautiful!  And I was sure it was going to taste great!

Then reality set in.


The good news is that the burnt parts really filled the need for something crunchy!

So it didn't look as good as I pictured.  Um, because of the burnt parts, the taste wasn't so great either.  Meh, it was dinner!  Not my best attempt but I ate it.

Tomorrow is Sunday, my day to cook.  I wonder what this week's meal will be!

I Love a Good Surprise!

One of my chores the other night was to wash all of my jackets. The spring/fall jackets and the winter jackets. I gathered them up, checked all the pockets and threw them in the washer.

When I took them out of the washer and I found TWENTY CENTS in the machine! I was feeling pretty sassy about that!

Later when I went downstairs to take everything out of the dryer and hang them up and you'll never guess what I found in the dryer! $8.37 !!!!!!! Bonanza!!!!!!

That was definitely a GOOD surprise!

Sunday, November 01, 2015

That Time of Year

You know what happens when we change our clocks.  We're supposed to change the batteries in our smoke alarms!

I'm anal about a lot of things.  Fire safety in my house is one of those things.  I have four smoke alarms and six fire extinguishers.  As much as I love firemen (and who doesn't!!) I don't want them showing up at my house unless it's a social engagement.  Just sayin'.

I grabbed my four new 9 volt batteries and set out to replace them in all of the smoke alarms.  You know what I noticed for the first time EVER today?  You're also supposed to replace your smoke alarms every 10 years!  Seriously!  Who knew??

The first smoke alarm I did had that sign inside.  With a place for you to write what year you installed it.  I think this alarm came with the house so it's at least since 2003.  Made me look harder at the other three.  Each of them are stamped inside with a date of August 2005 with the words "replace in 10 years" right next to it.  Yes, I guess I'm due!

So, my next time at Sam's Club I will be buying four more smoke alarms.  Then my project will be to keep the batteries, replace the hardware!

Be safe out there.  Please replace all of your batteries in your smoke alarms.  While you're at it, check the dates to see if your alarms need replaced too!