Calm, Cool, and Collected Hodgepodge

 

1. What's a characteristic you admire in others? Elaborate.

I wish I could stay even-tempered no matter what’s happening around me—calm, cool, and collected in any situation. I also wish I felt more self-assured, or maybe just had more confidence in myself.

2. Do you have a favorite mug? Let's see it. Why is this one your favorite? 

I do not have a favorite mug because I rarely drink from a mug. Mark has a couple of favorite mugs - he wants a big cup for his coffee because he uses a healthy large amount of half and half in his coffee.

3. July 15th is/was National Give Something Away Day...will you (or did you, depending on what day you answer these questions) give something away? If so what? Do you regularly give away or do you tend to  'accumulate'? 

Now I want to go clean out a closet! Mark and I try not to hold onto things. We try to clean out stuff once a year or so. I've got a 35mm camera and some amazing lenses . . .I should give them away. Maybe I'll do that. I did give a piece of furniture to the Community Furniture Bank this week!

4. You're planning a trip. Do you prefer exploring big cities or smaller, more off the grid towns? World Atlas lists these 12 'off the grid' towns to see in 2025. How many on the list have you seen? Of those listed which one would you most like to visit? Tell us why? 

Boothbay Harbor Maine, Middlebury Vermont, New Hope Pennsylvania, Rehoboth Beach Delaware, Brevard North Carolina, Saugatuck Michigan, Medora North Dakota, Ouray Colorado, Lamoille Nevada, Neah Bay Washington, Hood River Oregon, or Cambria California

*You can read more about each destination by clicking the link above. 

I love to travel, but I’ve never really thought about whether I prefer big cities or small ones—maybe I lean toward smaller? I’m not sure! I haven’t been to any of those places, but they all seem really cool. Rehoboth Beach and Ouray both look like fun spots to visit. I’ve also never been to the Pacific Northwest, so several of those destinations are definitely on my list.

5. Have you ever...ridden a motorcycle? yes been to a Disney park? yes met a celebrity? yes won a contest? yes Tell us something about whatever you answered yes to on this list. 

I went on a date with a guy who drove a motorcycle. It was fun riding behind him, but I don't think I would want to do it all of the time. 

I've been to Disney World twice. The first time we went was when our kids were about 10 years old. My sister and her husband (ex - he who remains nameless ha!) and son met us. We planned that vacation for months! We stayed at Port Orleans and had so much fun.

About a year and a half later, Mark had a meeting at the Contemporary and we pulled the kids out of school and we went with him. It was late October and we rode and rode and rode the rides while Mark was in his meetings. The kids rode Space Mountain about 10 or 12 times in a row one night. I made it through 3 times and then I said, "I'll be standing right here."

I've met Bob Goff. In case you don't know him, he is an author and has several book studies on DVD. One of his studies is why I'm back in college at the fine age of 67. The study is Dream Big . . .and I did Dream Big!

I also got an autograph from Jerry Clower one time for my father-in-law. 

I won a Pappy van Winkle contest and won a bottle of Pappy for Mark.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

It’s so hot here in Alabama, I’m starting to understand why Southern porches were made for sitting still with sweet tea—any movement feels like a negotiation with the sun. Actually, I am so thankful for Willis Haviland Carrier who was an American engineer, best known for inventing modern air conditioning, inventing the first electrical air conditioning unit in 1902. Thank you Mr. Carrier! I appreciate you!

Weekend in Review - Monday! Monday!

 Our weekend started on Thursday night! We met Mark's sister and her husband and his twin brother and his wife for dinner. I wrote "sib dinner" in my calendar!! We met at Giuseppi's Cafe. You may remember that Mark doesn't like Italian food . . .but he ate a Muffaletta and was perfectly fine.

I ordered Chicken Piccata . . . I think it was linguini? I did not even make a dent in this bowl!

On Friday, I did homework for HOURS. I finally hopped into the shower around 4:00. I didn't dry my hair - just let it air dry. Mark worked in the yard and was still messing with the sprinkler system when our neighbors pulled up in front of the house and said they were going to grab dinner . . .and for us to come along. Mark ran in and hopped in the shower (in, out, and dressed in 10 minutes). I changed clothes and off we went. It is good for us to be spontaneous. It would have been so easy to say, "nope. we can't." For once, we didn't see anyone we know while out and about! 

We ate at La Paz in a neighborhood near us.

Saturday morning found us on I65 South headed to our daughter's house for our middle granddaughter's birthday. We walked through the door and she asked Pops to go play in her room.

We had not seen our youngest in a while. She is walking now and is so cute!!

She is climbing up on every chair and is so proud of herself.

The party was at the home of the other grandparents . . .and they have a pool!

Our two oldest granddaughters had lots of fun swimming. Other kids arrived shortly thereafter.

Our oldest is 9 and our middle is now 6. The 6 year old idolizes the 9 year old.

I've been in the fruit kebab making era. The wooden picks had tiny disco balls on the end.

The party was a combo "hello kitty" and "toy story" - our granddaughter couldn't decide. Our daughter saw these decorations on a "free" site - they were brand new and free!!

Aunt Alice and Uncle George sent her a new "fancy" coloring book.

You can see all three granddaughters in this photo!

She had asked for Jessie and was so excited that Uncle Glenn and Aunt Lauren and Emma bought it for her.

She also received a Woody doll.

. . .and a Barbie pony

Aunt Becky sent Bullseye - the horse!

A former lunchroom lady makes these birthday cakes from scratch. It was perfectly even all the way across until Mark cut his piece. Our daughter and daughter-in-law both sent this photo to me!!

I can't believe she is six years old!

Rather than drive back on I65 north, which is horrible during beach season, we took the scenic route and drove 231 to Sylacauga and then 280 to home. It took us less than 1 1/2 hours to drive to their house, but projected time for our return trip was well over 2 hours on I65 North. It would have been lots of stop and go traffic . . . and it irritates both of us. We decided 29 extra minutes would be worth it.

Sunday morning found me at work and Sunday afternoon, I did 4 hours of homework while Mark and his siblings and our son worked on cleaning out his mother's house. They are finally getting it ready to go on the market.

I hope you had a great weekend! I always enjoy reading about what other folks are doing!!

Sunday Chatting

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

This week is less a steal than a cheat. These are AI-generated responses to the request: "What should I ask to get a stranger to open up?"

Spill It!

1. If money wasn't an issue, would you move to a new home? 

We do love our home BUT I might move to a bigger house. Yes, ours is plenty big but I would love a Butler's pantry and a bigger laundry room and a bigger closet (or two) in our bedroom. We have a very small lot, which was one of the things we loved, but I think Mark would like a little more yard. I don't know why. He would like a bigger garage. Some of the houses in our neighborhood have a bonus one car garage at the side of their driveway. We don't have room for that, so a bigger one would be nice. Since money isn't an obstacle, I would hire someone to pack it all up, move us, and unpack us!

2. Do you listen to different music when you're happy than when you're sad?

I used to listen to music more often than I do now. Sometimes when I'm upset, I listen to music and it is definitely different from happy music.

3. What's your favorite way to unwind after a tough day? 

I love to change into comfy clothes and get in my recliner and read a book or watch something on TV. Sometimes I might add a fun beverage. I also love to get together with good friends and laugh and talk.

4. What's the first book you remember from childhood? 

When I was preparing our Sunday school lesson, I was thinking about the book "Heidi." I'm sure there were books before that one, but I definitely remember that one. We spent a lot of time at the library.

5. What made you smile today? 

I'm typing these answers on Friday night. I may have smiled a few times when I was doing my homework. This semester is Human Sexuality. It is a lot of anatomy and I just keep smiling and chuckling thinking about me . . .if I had taken this class back when I was the "normal" college age. I'm going to go ahead and project to Sunday, since that is when you will be reading this. I will work the welcome desk at church and I get to see lots of cute families and I will teach Sunday School and see lots of our friends . . .all of those encounter will include smiles.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

Adulting 101 Hodgepodge

I'm joining up with Joyce and friends for this week's hodgepodge. You can visit her blog or you can answer in the comments below. I'd love to hear your thoughts!!

1. What's an adult problem nobody prepared you for? 

I had NO idea that I would still feel the need to parent our adult children . . .and that they would not want our advice. Seriously! I know good and well that Mark nor I took his parents advice, so I imagine his parents may have felt the same way. We try to bite our tongues and keep our mouths shut . . .but sometimes, we don't :-). 

2. How tuned in are you to all the recent food related health news? Have you gotten rid of your scratched cookware? Did you pay attention to food additives before they made the news? What's one healthy eating/cooking/food shopping habit you need to adopt?

I try to keep up with food safety news - recalls, etc. We try to eat a healthy diet - fruit, veggies, lean proteins. I don't pay nearly as much attention to food additives as I should. I do worry about red dye - weird one. One of my favorite things to do is meal prep, but I haven't had as much time lately. I need to work out a schedule where I make the time to do it. I still have some scratched cookware, but our cookware is relatively new All Clad. I've been reading up on the use of semaglutides. The uses of the drug interest me.

3. What's getting worse and worse as you get older? How about better and better? 

I'll start with the better and better -- I care less what others think of me. I still want to be nice and look nice and be kind and good and love all of my neighbors, but I don't have time to worry if you are talking about me. In the other direction . . .I guess my memory is getting worse and worse and some of my aches and pains are getting worse. Those things are annoying!!

4. Are you more of an indoor person or an outdoor person? Elaborate. 

I'm an indoor person because of my allergies. I would love to be an outdoor person. Mark would double over laughing about me being an outside person :-) because he knows I'm not.

5. If you had an expert personal assistant today, what would you have them do?

I would have them meal plan and prep for me. Could a personal assistant do that?? I could also use some help running errands -- Mark does a lot of them since he is now retired, but he has been really busy lately. I might also ask them to dry and style my hair every morning . . .and keep the house clean . . .and the laundry done. I need a wife! haha! I did all of those things when I was a stay at home mom. Mark does do a lot of our laundry. I put my work clothes in a special spot in our closet and I wash those each week, but he does a great job on towels and underwear and his clothes.

6. Insert your own random thought here. I'm very pleased with my grade in the Family Life Education class plus it was actually very interesting. By the time you are reading this, it will be Wednesday which is the beginning of the next minimester. I will be taking Human Sexuality for the next 5 weeks. Mark has made so many jokes about the course content. You can imagine. In the fall, there are two 8 week semesters. I think I remember my advisor telling me that the online schedule doesn't exactly line up with the on campus semester system. I qualify for two significant scholarships IF I take two classes in that first eight weeks and two classes in the second eight weeks. I think I'm going to try to do it though I am TERRIFIED of the work load. That means that by Christmas, I will have accrued 18 more hours. I transferred from community college with 60 hours and I have to have 60 more hours to get my B.A. at Samford . . .and if I can do it, by Christmas I'll only need 42. 

On a more fun note, our middle granddaughter will have a birthday this week so we will go to her house this weekend and get to see BOTH of our children (and their spouses) plus all three granddaughters!!

Fourth of July Weekend in Review

Happy Monday to you! We had a really low-key weekend. Mark went to the farm on Thursday and Friday and finished the flooring in the kitchen. I have got to find an old photo of how the kitchen used to look so y'all can see for comparison.

While he was at the farm, I was still riding high on steroids so I cleaned the house (somewhat). I read a little and rode the stationary bike. I ran to Publix for a few things.

We had plans for dinner on Friday, the 4th and Mark texted at 1:00 that he was headed home from the farm. The drive takes a couple of hours so he would be home in plenty of time to head to his sister's house for dinner. Mark didn't check Waze before he started home. Big mistake. There are two ways to drive to and from the farm - I-20 or Highway 280. He detests Hwy 280 because there are 23 traffic lights over a several mile stretch. He got to I-20 and traffic was stopped. He called and I looked it up and I-20 had been closed for SIX - yes, 6 hours, due to an 18 wheeler accident. They literally had a crane in the middle of the interstate trying to get the 18 wheeler out of the hole and everyone had to exit into a small lake town. There were two lanes merging into one exit lane, along with the dingbats who decided to make the shoulder a third lane. Right at the last moment, Mark saw the workmen picking up the big orange traffic cones. They were opening the interstate! A normal hour and 45 minute drive became at least a 3 1/2 hour trip, but he made it home in time. We were only a few minutes late. She made stuffed mushrooms as an appetizer using an old recipe of mine that she found in her mother's recipe drawer. I took a big green salad and I even made the homemade lemon dressing. Susie had smoked a couple of chickens and slabs of ribs and she had baked beans and corn on the cob. She made date bars for dessert - Mark loves them! The four of us were a small group, but we enjoyed each other's company.

Saturday morning found us staying in the bed until 7:30. I felt like we slept away the day. I usually get up at 5:00 and due to the steroids, I had slept very little the previous two days so I'm assuming I needed that rest. When we got up, we heard about the flash flooding and I was so sad. My mother's heart just grieves with these families. We have no true personal connection with any of the families, but one little girl was from here.

Mark worked in the yard - digging up around the sprinkler system in order to add two more sprinkler heads. Some of the new landscaping was not getting enough water. He also did some "park fishing" - he was testing out a rod, reel, and line.

We invited our good neighbors, Lu and Dave, over for dinner. They brought some produce fresh from their tiny garden. She brought some potatoes to roast and some of them were purple. They tasted almost like a cross between a sweet potato and a white potato! They brought some chicken from the day before and Mark grilled salmon, halibut, and Lingcod. We talked about travel and family and friends and had a nice quiet evening.

Sunday morning found me back at work. It was a very slow day at church. We are normally a hopping place on Sunday mornings but we have lots of members who have lake houses and beach houses plus a lot of our congregation has been traveling internationally this summer. My co-worker and her husband and two boys are out west doing a two week trek through some National Parks. I worked from 7-11 and then I headed home. It is so hot here that Mark had actually stayed home from church so that he could do as much sprinkler repair as possible before the heat index hit over 100. We ate leftovers for lunch and we took a nap and we ran over to his brother's empty house to check on it and get the mail. I'm ready for Mark and his siblings to sell their mother's house (they are working on it) and sell Bill's house so they can stop messing with them.

me at the Welcome Desk on Sunday morning
very little make-up!

We enjoyed Susie's mushrooms so much on Friday night, I drug out my original recipe and made stuffed mushrooms for us for dinner. We were laughing about how that was my "go-to" appetizer that I made everytime we had company as newlyweds. They are so easy - a little bacon; a little cheese; a little chopped mushroom stems; a tad of Grey Poupon and a tad of mayo. Mix, stuff, and broil.

We watched the last two episodes of Justified last night. I wsn't sure how they planned to end it, but I actually liked the ending.

Now it is Monday morning at 5:33 a.m. and I'll be headed back to work in a couple of hours.

Did you have any fun this weekend? Tell me about it - I would love to hear!!

FAB Sunday Stealing

 

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

Since it's the 4th of July weekend, we're going to keep this simple. We stole this from a blogger named Idzie, who called this the F.A.B. (film, audio, book) meme.

F.A.B.

F. Film: What movie or tv show are you watching? Breaking Bad (can't decide if I like it or not), Young Sheldon, Justified (I'm writing this on Friday morning. We may have finished Justified by Sunday. We both hate for it to end.) We just finished Bad Sisters (loved the Irish accents). We are still watching the Mentalist. At this point, we can get up and wander around while watching. I can't wait for y'all to tell us what you are watching! Mark starts feeling panicked when whatever we are watching comes to an end.

A. Audio: What are you listening to? I'm not listening regularly, but I have "How to Win Friends and Influence People" on audible. I listen randomly. I thought it was funny that I've been listening to the book and when I was watching Young Sheldon on Friday night . . .Sheldon was reading the same book!

B. Book: What are you reading? I just finished the second book - "Kills Well With Others" by Deanna Raybourne. I mentioned the first one a week or so ago - "Killers of a Certain Age." I'm reading "Reckoning Hour" by Peter O'Mahoney. This is the first in the Dean Lincoln Legal Thriller series. I think it was my free kindle choice for the month. It is ok so far. 

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

Currently on Saturday

First of all, is today really Saturday? I took a couple of days of vacation and I can't keep track of what day it is!

Currently, I guess it is Saturday. It is 89 degrees and it feels like 94. The sun is shining and the sky is blue with lots of white clouds.

Currently, I am enjoying a few days off. I've still checked my work email every day but unless it is urgent, I haven't' answered it. I have to go back to work in the morning (Sunday) so I'll be back in the groove next week.

Currently, I just finished a book, "Reckoning Hour" by Peter O'Mahoney. It was pretty good. I think I'll read "The Pastor's Wife" next. The author is Lyndee Walker. Both O'Mahoney and Walker are new authors to me.

Currently, I've been making and eating a weird thing. I take about a cup of plain fat-free Greek yogurt. I put a piece of parchment paper on a small cookie sheet and I spread the yogurt out all over the sheet. It is a very thin layer of yogurt. Today I sprinkled a little non-caloric sweetner on the yogurt. I didn't do that with the last batch. I'll let you know if I can tell a difference. I think sprinkle a ton of blueberries on top of the yogurt. Then I melt 1/4 cup no sugar added Lily's dark chocolate mini morsels in a measuring cup, along with a teaspoon of coconut oil (how is it oil if it is solid??). I drizzle the chocolate over the berries and yogurt.  I place the cookie sheet in the deep freeze for a couple of hours and after it freezes, I break it up into pieces and put it in a freezer bag. It is so good.

Currently, I am buying . . .well the designer and I are looking for two pieces of furniture and a wall hanging. I ordered some accessories to put on the hearth since we aren't lighting a fire at this time of the year. When those items arrive and I arrange I can show y'all a photo if you want to see. I don't think they will arrive before next weekend.

Currently, I am very sad as we've read about the flooding in Texas. We got a text from work today that a church member's daughter is at a camp adjacent to the damaged camp. The daughter is a college student so I'm wondering if she is a counselor. Her parents arrived in Texas this morning. I also received an email sent to the student body at the college I attend, Samford University. One of the little girls that died is the child of one of the professors. She was 8 years old. That has just shattered my heart. Mark finally told me to stop looking at the news online because I just kept crying.

So . . .currently, what are you doing? What are you reading or eating or making or buying or feeling?