Saturday, April 23, 2005

One good turn deserves another... right? - From my LJ Blog

Apr. 23rd, 2005 @ 10:53 pm One good turn deserves another... right?


Current Mood: sleepy



Today was busy but good. My mom is with my aunts in West Palm Beach trying to relax and speed along recovery after her knee surgery.



(Daisy and I drove her to our normal halfway meeting place, the restaurant “Maneros” in Stuart on Wednesday. I know I’ve mentioned their Gorgonzola salad before. I had that and a NY Strip Steak cooked to medium rare perfection and creamed spinach)



… anyway. Her car is living at my house until tomorrow when my dad will bring her by here to get it.



Grammie is sick and has been all week. She is a miserable sick person :-( She doesn’t want to take medication to feel better, and doesn’t want any help, doesn’t want to eat… oy… Anyway, we usually go shopping on Saturdays that Shaun is not working, so I called her this morning to see if she was up to it, and she said no… and I asked her if she needed anything.. no… she said well, I need juice, but I’ll get that the first of the week… oh, and stamps, but don’t worry about that… I asked her if she wanted company.. she said no… …. I am pretty sure no with her means… “I don’t want to be a burden so I’ll just suffer”… So I got into mom’s car



(Mom’s car has the sticker so she can come and go through the guard house where Grammie lives without Grammie having to call her in.)



…and I drove to the grocery store… got some ginger ale and root beer, ice cream (I know she’ll at least eat that! ) Some Advil multi symptom cold medicine, stamps, cran raspberry juice and a few other things since I know she likes them and they are on sale… and tilapia and veggies to make for lunch.



I got to her house and surprised her… She was not mad… whew… then she saw the grocery bags! ROFL… She started yelling at me… said she had enough food to eat for weeks and didn’t need anything blah blah blah… She was happy to see me though… I stayed for a while, she said she had just eaten a big slice of my pumpernickel toast not long ago and wasn’t hungry, so I told her I’d take the fish and veggies home and cook them at my house tonight so I didn’t have to mess up her kitchen and we’d reheat them for lunch tomorrow. She was happy with that!



So… to make a short story long… ROFL….



I dredged the tilapia in cornmeal and fried it in corn oil, seasoned with salt… served with Crystal Hot Sauce… heaven!



I took an eggplant, peeled it, cubed it, cubed zucchini, yellow squash, asparagus, onion, sliced fresh garlic, added a few springs of fresh thyme, tossed with olive oil and salt and pepper and roasted in the oven. (this is one of her favorites).



I had that for dinner.



I bought fresh asparagus on Wednesday for .88 per pound!!!! I made Cream of Asparagus soup with that… mmmm it is good!



Now I’m ready for a nap!



Oh yeah… Back to mom’s car… I noticed that she was supposed to have the oil changed in JANUARY! And it hadn’t been done, so I thought I would surprise her and I went and had that done, and of course… the battery died… so I had to get a new one of those… plus her car was out of gas and it takes Premium… and she drives a boat for a car… I stopped filling it at $20 – I was afraid to find out how much it would cost to fill it up at $2.48 per gallon for premium!



ZzzzZZzzZZZZ



And... Shaun is out tonight at the CK.... I wasn't feeling up to going out after the day I had... so he went without me. Which is fine, but hopefully he won't stay out really late. He's got to work in the morning....



Shaun and I had a date night last night. Well it started out that way anyway. We went to Red Lobster for dinner, and it was great. Pretty good service, even though I think they hire their servers from the funny farm. They are WAY to cheerful! We were going to see Kung Fu Hustle, but the line was too long, and we both hate full theatres, so we passed on the movie. It was nice anyway.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

What a beautiful day! - From my LJ Blog

Apr. 16th, 2005 @ 05:03 pm What a beautiful day!


Current Mood: content



It is such a nice day today, I want to just lie on my bed with the windows wide open, 72° breeze passing through the house and read today.



Unfortunately… life is in the way….



I just finished balancing my checkbook… on Quicken.



This is like the 5th time I’ve tried to use quicken… lets see if this lasts longer than 6 months! I don’t know what my problem is… it’s like starting a journal! ROFL!



I actually went back and added in all transactions since the beginning of the year (with the help of the automatic download from bank feature) and I think I have everything set up. It gives me a nifty snapshot of my net worth and I can see exactly what bills are due and what has been paid. I really like it – as long as I can keep up with it.



The other thing it does is a budget… now I haven’t been very good at sticking to a budget lately… but I’m hoping this will help me see the error of my ways… it’s kind of hard to not feel guilty about spending money on stuff you don’t really need when your DEBTS are staring at you in red…. With a big minus sign next to them… oy!



I went to JoAnns fabrics yesterday and got the little do-hickey I needed to fix the sewing machine I’m “storing” for grammie. It works like a charm now, and I fixed a pair of pants! I really need to change to black thread, but I’m scared to death of trying to thread the machine. I really need to make a sketch of how it should be done, before I goof it up. I know like 3 people who have perfectly good sewing machines but don’t use them because they don’t know how to thread them! That isn’t going to be me!!!!



On Tuesday while Grammie and I were waiting for mom to get out of surgery, I had her re-teach me how to crochet!!! I have a set of about 9 hooks in a little plastic box, and I brought those and some yarn, and we just went to town. I made a cute little something or other, that is skinny on one side and wider on the other… I was crocheting too tightly in the beginning… I taught her how to knit too. We had a good little bonding session!



Grammie takes dish towels and cuts them in half and crochets a little top on them with a button so you can hang them from your oven door in the kitchen. I’m going to have her teach me how to do those next.



I gotta think of something to sew. I guess if I’m going to start sewing, I’m gonna have to break down and buy an iron… ROFL!



Well out side with me. I’m going to either trim the hedges and pull weeds in the front, or I’m going to try and do something with the garage. Wish me luck!

Saturday, April 9, 2005

Cooking is my stress buster... - From my LJ Blog

Apr. 9th, 2005 @ 12:00 pm Cooking is my stress buster...


Current Mood: cheerful



This is going to be a good weekend, I think.



I’ve been grocery shopping today and I got enough groceries for an army.



Mom is having knee surgery on Monday, so I’m going to cook up a bunch of things for her and dad to eat so she doesn’t have to cook next week very much.



I’m planning on making the following:



New Orleans wine sauced chicken

Cheese tomato soup

Vegetable beef soup

Barbecued short ribs

Broccoli Casserole

Rice and Bean vinaigrette salad

Cheeseburger meatloaf

Mashed potatoes

Homemade pumpernickel bread

Egg salad



We’ll see how far I get 



CJ

Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Quicken - From my LJ Blog

Apr. 5th, 2005 @ 09:56 pm Quicken


Current Mood: annoyed



Quicken actually has online tech support chat. Free... how cool is that.



Too bad they can't help me!



They tell me that because I download my credit card transactions, I can't enter the finance charges in the reconcile box. How dumb is that. Pretty dumb if you ask me!?!



Then they tell me to "Kindly leave a note" on the feedback page, and after entering my life story, and hitting submit, it tells me it can't connect to the database.... grrrr!

Sunday, April 3, 2005

Life - From my LJ Blog

Apr. 3rd, 2005 @ 11:43 am Life....


Current Mood: blank



This last week has been so terrible and so good all at the same time. I don't even know where to begin. I can't even begin. Suffice to say, Shaun and I had a conversation Tuesday night that has been a long time coming. I think everything is ok now. But basically he just had to get a lot of stuff off his chest and it confirmed a lot of things I already knew but chose to ignore.



I am happy we had the conversation. I'm happy that he finally feels like he can talk to me about anything and everything. I think we will be stronger for it. But it took a lot of talking and reassurances to make us both feel better.



We still have a few unresolved issues... like when we're going to start a family. But all in all, we are going to be ok.



I had a chat with Summer yesterday about another thing that came to light in my conversation with Shaun Tuesday, and hopefully she can help out on that end.