Category: My Life

This week’s Thursday Thirteen is about the last 3 and a half years of my life and what I have been doing. So, sit back with your coffee and here goes.

1. Hubby and I took a trip through the Panama Canal. It was a great trip, except when I started looking at the pictures taken of me, I realized I had gotten pretty heavy!
2. The cruise was in November. So when we returned, I decided to enjoy the holidays, and then starting the following January, I would go to Weight Watchers.
3. I remember going to my first class and weighing in. I am vein enough, that I will not tell you how much I weighed, but I will tell you that I cried as I stood there on the scale.
4. I weighed and measured everything. I lived and breathed the plan.
5. A year later I reached my goal! I felt like a new woman! (I was close to 60 pounds lighter!)
6. That was the beginning of the end.
7. I started to believe that I had licked my weight problem.
8. I ate treats and snacks and fried foods like crazy.
9. And we won’t even mention the fine German beer I had when I was visiting with Uschi.
10. Before I knew what hit me, my Dad passed, and I went to class and I had gained 14 pounds.
11. I kept going. Everyone was so wonderful and supportive.
12. For an entire year I fought the battle. Up and down, but really not getting anywhere
13. Until today. I reached my goal! I am back where I should be and I am going to do it long term! I know the facts of life this time and I am willing to do the work to stay there!

Our host is Gattina. Come join us and tell us what YOU did this past weekend! After all, you never know when you will need an alibi!

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The weekend was a quiet one. The heat was almost more than I could stand, so I spent most of it hugging my air conditioners. That made the 100 degree temperatures bearable!

Since the garden is still over producing, I have spent time picking vegetables and giving them away. Last night, I made a new recipe with some of the eggplant, and although it was edible, It wasn’t really what I had imagined. Sort of soggy eggplant rollatini. Needless to say, with more eggplant growing, I just tossed the leftovers, as they were not very appetizing for me and Hubby is not a big eggplant fan anyway.

Tonight I’m making Hubby Shish Kebabs! We have so many vegetables to use up, I thought it would be a great dinner. Shish Kebabs with potato salad!

I tried to catch up on sleep this weekend, but Greta woke me early both days! I will attempt to catch up during the week, as I am still feeling over tired from the sinus infection.

I will close by mentioning the beauty of the day on Sunday. Hardly a cloud in a very blue sky and 82 degrees. When I watered the garden I could hear the children laughing and playing on the beach and that made me smile!

And…here we go!

1. Life is Good.

2. The beach is one of the best places to people watch EVER because people are usually relaxed, and on vacation and having a good time There are usually a lot of laughs and smiles.

3. if I was going somewhere, the one thing I have to bring is my toothbrush.

4. One must live every moment, for life is over soon enough.

5. Next year, I want to be sure to make plans to see my friends, Uschi, and to go to the beach.

6. I stopped looking for love and I found that it found me.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to hugging an air conditioner, tomorrow my plans include another slow day of drinking lots of fluid and staying inside away from the 100+ degree weather and Sunday, I want to try a new recipe for chicken!

Thursday was an incredibly, hot, humid and hazy day. Out temperature was over 100 degrees (F), and the humidity was so high. You could see the air!

I’d told Hubby we needed to get up early and go shopping for food, so right after breakfast we headed out to the shops. We got hot-dogs, hamburger, and eggs and juice and all the other items we might need to get through the next 10 days. The stores were surprisingly full, but the temperature inside wasn’t so bad, but coming outside after doing the shopping was like walking into a furnace!

Hubby and I stopped just briefly to have some lunch, as all perishables were safely in ice coolers, and then we came home and quickly put it all away.

Tonight I am just exhausted. It is supposed to be like this on Friday and Saturday too. Looks like me and the air conditioners will be spending a lot of time together!

1. July 20th marks the anniversary of the first time man stood on the moon. Flash forward 42 years to July 8, 2011 which marked the start of the final Space Shuttle mission. Should we continue to explore space? Should nations devote more or fewer of their resources to exploring space? Would you want to go into space if the opportunity arose?

Yes, I think we should continue exploration in space. So many things have been learned from all the trips on the Space Shuttle, etc. I feel badly that basically Washington has shut it all down now, all the while building bridges no nowhere!

2. What are three things in your freezer?

Blueberries, Norwegian Haddock, and Weight Watcher Dark Chocolate and Raspberry ice cream bars!

3. If you could see any band/artist perform live tonight who would it be? It has to be someone living…no Beatles, Elvis, etc.

Since I cannot select the Beatles, I will select Paul McCartney. Truly, the Beatles together or separately were the most influential band in music history. At least in my humble opinion!

4. Ice-cubed or crushed? Or are you one of those people who don’t like ice?

I guess I do not like ice. I like my drink refrigerator cold. I have very sensitive teeth and so if things are too cold I am in pain.

5. The owner of a small restaurant outside of Pittsburgh recently announced he was banning children under six, saying they regularly disrupted other customer’s meals. You can read the story in more detail here but isn’t this a perfect topic to discuss in our Wednesday Hodgepodge? Have at it friends…what are your thoughts?

This would not be a problem if parents taught their children how to behave in public places. Now that I have jumped in, let me also say, I raised two girls. They were taught from an early age to sit quietly in restauransts. No they were not perfect and early on we had a few meltdowns, which meant I took the offending child into the ladies room and spoke to them, to regain control. We never brought them to “fancy” places in the early days, but as they grew we did. I also brought with us coloring books and crayons to keep them occupied. Most of all, I never allowed them to disturb other diners. That is just plain rude.

Unfortunately, many of today’s parents do not teach manners, and let their kids run wild! I’ve been out, trying to enjoy a lunch when kids have been literally jumping off their chairs and running around the restaurant. As much as I love children, when I am paying good money for a nice meal, I want to do it in a pleasant atmosphere!

6. What was your first car? How did it come to be yours?

It was a 1966 Chevy Impala, and I traded my 10 speed bike for it. It was not the best car, but it got me places and back in the day when gasoline was cheap. $5.00 was food and gas and perhaps a movie!

7. If I had a nickle for every time I cried I’d be rich.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Since I am going to the beach soon (two weeks) I simply must get a little sun on my pasty white skin! So today, I will have Hubby rub some sunscreen on me and then go out and mow part of our back yard. That should do two things. 1. Give me a little exposure to the sun. & 2. Give me a little exercise.

Our host is Gattina. Come join us and tell us what YOU did this past weekend! After all, you never know when you will need an alibi!

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The weekend was a busy one for me. I started it off writing my report for the Library and then going back and making revisions. There are some new items to be written in and I am still unsure at the format the other Trustees may want me to use. Oh well, I’m sure they will tell me.

I also spent time water the garden, picking vegetables and then giving them away. My garden is over producing to the point that I simply cannot eat it all, so begging people giving people my vegetables is a perfect solution.

The weather has be HOT, HOT, HOT! the last few days. In the nineties with a lot of humidity. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my air conditioners?

I tried a new recipe for Summer Squash Fritters. It looked good, even the batter looked good, but….it was terrible. In fact, it was so bad I wouldn’t eat it, and neither would the dogs.

Sunday I was determined to work in my office. I worked in there for 2 hours and have gotten a lot done. I think I can get it finished this week. I’m so excited! Finally, I will have my office done!

I will leave you with this picture of me when I was 10 years old. I found a stray cat in our yard and brought her inside. (It was very cold!) The next morning we woke up she had delivered three kittens and died. So we bottle fed the kittens and found homes for one of the kittens and I kept two of them. Ebony and Endora.

I picked up the latest copy of a magazine that I really enjoy. In fact, I subscribe to it because I like the news and recipes and fashion. As a subscriber, I get a reduced price and a few bonuses along the way.

Anyway, I picked up the latest issue and started to turn page after page after page. There were many nice recipes, new fashions, and of course advertisements. Then I hit page 52 (which is off because I am age 52!) and my world was shattered. The column was about what to eat in your 20’s, 30’s, & 40’s.

In your twenties you should be eating eggs, vegetables, chicken, coconut water,Greek yogurt, and quinoa. In your thirties you should be eating oatmeal, nuts, tuna, edamame, avocado and lentils. In your forties you should be eating ginger, cherries, salmon, kale, extra virgin olive oil and green tea.

But I’m in my fifties! What am I supposed to be eating? Or is it that after you turn fifty it’s all over anyway, so you might as well give up!

I thought about his for a while, and actually started to feel bad, then my phone rang and it was a man doing a survey for our local electric company. Now I love my electric company, they do a good job, (the rates are bad, but heck they are bad every where!) and they’re very friendly when I need them. So I answered his survey. At the very end he asked how old I was. Now what on earth does my age have to do with electrical current?

You know, my age never bothered me until I read the article, but today I was actually feeling old. I told him how old I was and why I was feeling bad about it. He laughed and then said, “It’s okay, that’s young! I’m 63!”

After that I felt better and went about my day.

Of course I still worry about what I should be eating to be the best me in my 50’s!