This image gives you an ‘idea’ of our driveway, though this one only shows what amounts to 1/4 of the length and steepness of ours. Ours also doesn’t have any of the egg crate stuff shown here. Ours is STEEP, 650+ feet, gravel, rutted from all the rain, worse and worse as you get closer to the street, etc.
Last year we got an estimate for repair. We had a couple of people who worked together. The guy who would have done the work had his equipment burn up – down to the ground. So the project was essentially delayed until further notice. Well, further notice never happened, so we have started over.
At the beginning of the week a friend of ours recommended a guy and his dad. He said the younger man did the hauling of materials and his dad did the actual work. I called and left a message on his home phone – the only number I could find for him.
Today he called my cell and left a message that he had just gotten the message. I now have his cell phone number, the one he uses all the time. :0)
He and his dad – BOTH named Joe Comer (they are called “Joe” and “Little Joe” in Greenwood) texted me that they could come today. They have just left.
It looks like they can help us! We accepted the estimate for the materials and the work. They will try to be here next Friday, May 17th, (weather permitting) or the following Monday to do the work. HELP IS ON THE WAY!!!!!
I’m feeling really good this morning. It took me a while to wake up, but I’m feeling better and better as I do.
buzzfeed.com
I again hit the ’25-pounds-off-my-heaviest’ mark this morning, so that makes me feel as if the changes I’m making gradually are helping me get on a steady pathway now. I’m still eating from a package of deli turkey (the worst culprit on my ‘too-much-salt-included-in-my-food list’), and some salami, but I won’t buy more once I finish those. The low-carb Mexican chicken and veggies frozen dinner from Stu’s Clean Cookin’ was too ‘hot’ for me (I’m a wuss gastronomically) so I will choose something else next time. The young man who helped us with our purchases there is really nice. It’s so pleasant to find a person who takes pride in his job and makes shopping such a pleasure.
Good Parenting Brighter Children
SPRING YARD PROJECT – I think I finished the spring project of the main pruning and weeding of our brick planters around the yard – plus the pots on our deck – yesterday. I plan to concentrate on the veggie planters today, taking care of tomato plants, harvesting a bit more (my lettuce is starting to bolt with the high afternoon temperatures now). I sprinkled some zinnia seeds in a couple of planters yesterday. I’ll start buying some flowers next week. It looks like someone cares in our yard now. My husband was complimentary about my weed whacking efforts a couple of days ago, saying I had made it easier for him to mow, and, due to his good efforts, the yard is freshly mowed. :0)
PROJECT REFURB – Every couple of years I try to do some refurbishment of some of the yard critters we’ve made. Being outside is really tough on them. Cloth disintegrates, googly eyes fall off, the critters get dirty, sometimes moldy, paint fades or peels, etc. I either try to repaint them where they are in the yard or bring them one at a time into the shop, give them a makeover, and then put them back out.
This is a critter we made years ago. It seems especially apt these days, as pigs are flying all around, with things we never thought would happen in the world. We spent a long time suspending the flying pig from a big branch over the driveway several years ago. It did really well up there, but finally was down in the driveway one day as we were trying to leave for errands.
He needs a full makeover. I have him in the shop now, where he has been sitting on my work table for several months. I need to clean him up, unbend parts that were damaged when he fell, give him a total repaint, replace his eyes, etc. I’m planning to ask my husband to drill holes in a boulder beside the driveway toward the top where we can attach him to the boulder. He’ll look like he’s ready to take off, and we won’t have to stand on ladders trying to find a good strong branch and try to hang him from a line again. I’ll post pictures as I work on him.
Our weather here is beautiful now, with lots of sun and a bit less humidity. It’s a great day to be outside working in the yard or in the shop, working on the flying pig. Enjoy your day!
My new electric meat slicer was delivered yesterday. I reorganized part of my kitchen counter so the slicer is now on an easily moveable place mat so I can slide the slicer out a bit for use, with a NON-slide place mat on top of THAT so the slicer won’t slide when I’m using it. :0) I just ordered a cover that’s made for this particular slicer, rather than the towel I’m using now. I’ll read the manual for this later today.
Here’s the cover.
I’m set up now so I can cook and slice most any meat to eat for my lunches, taking the place of the deli turkey I THOUGHT was healthy, but turned out to be sky high in sodium. (Same with salami. )
I did find some lunch meat that’s half the sodium or less than what I’m finishing up now while I’m gearing up to do all my own.
I also found some low carb, much-lower-sodium frozen dinners at Stu’s Clean Cookin’ in Greenwood. I will try all of these, but some are higher sodium than I would like for the long run. It will depend on how the food changes come together (shown clearly on MyFitnessPal.com) before I make long term decisions.
Meanwhile, my doc has increased my thyroid hormone dosage, so that should help, as well, though it will probably take several 6-week trials before we zero in on my new good dosage.
I’m finally getting my act together on eating healthier, plus I’m working in the yard most every day and doing a session of yoga stretching in the afternoons at least 3 times a week if not every day. Hopefully, the lard will start coming off in a more steady manner and my next routine blood tests in October will show significant improvement. :0)
It looks like my lettuce is coming to an end. I’m seeing signs of bolting already, due to the temperature getting up into the 80s most afternoons now. Lettuce is a cool weather crop, and we have about 4 days of spring between too cold to plant with overnight freezes to too hot for lettuce…
I’m going to work in the veggies today, pruning, weeding, tweaking, and I’m hoping to finish the last two brick planters.
We have a stunningly beautiful morning here, and I’m looking forward to working outside for several sessions.
This reminded me of a song we used to sing a hundred years ago or so –
“Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree, Merry merry king of the bush is he. Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra, Gay your life must be!” (Except for some reason, we sang, “That’s not a monkey, that’s me. Ha. Ha!“
I’ve never actually HEARD the sound the Kookaburra makes, so I looked it up. (Isn’t the Internet wonderful?)
It’s almost like a ‘wonder-of-the-world’ thing to see the SUN shining this morning. It’s BEAUTIFUL. We came through some really pervasive yellow and red blobs on the TV screen weather warnings of ‘severe thunderstorm warning’ and ‘tornado watch’ with some heavy rain and LOTS of lightning last night, but no damage we’ve found yet. We’re very lucky and very thankful.
Since my energy level has been really low lately, I was happy when our doc saw that my blood test showed that my thyroid replacement hormone dosage was too low. She increased it, so I’ll get another blood test in 6 weeks and we’ll decide if any further increases are needed.
I was expecting my electric meat slicer to be delivered tomorrow. It was just delivered by our wonderful mailwoman today! She is a really nice lady and drives up our driveway as if it isn’t a mess. AND she brought the slicer! I’m going to rearrange things on my counter so it can live and be well-used on a regular basis there. I’m thinking I’ll see if I can order a cover for it, as well.
I MAY have a line on a father/son team who can repair our driveway. I got their name from a friend, plus the name of the chat that is used on streets that my friend said we should put on the driveway.
Today we’ll go to Stu’s Clean Cookin’ in Greenwood to get some frozen dinners. My husband has always liked their dinners, but they didn’t meet our needs a while back, so we stopped going. I discovered last night that they have new low carb offerings that are also quite reasonable on sodium. HOORAY! Soon I’ll be able to cut my intake of salt in my food by at least half, if not more.
I plan to harvest lettuce and spinach from the garden and finish cleaning up in two brick planters today. Then I THINK I’ll be ready to go buy some flowers to plant. :0)
I hope you’re doing well and can make this a very enjoyable day.
I’m trying to eat 20 or less grams of carbohydrates per day. I’ve cut out added sugar, and try to buy no-sugar-added or zero sugar products. I’ve cut out most starches, like most everything white (potatoes, rice, pasta). I’m not eating desserts.
I told you recently that I’ve discovered I’m eating too much salt, even though I quit sprinkling it heavily on almost everything I ate for years. (This has been a huge, difficult change for me). I have now found that even though I’ve stopped adding salt to everything, I’m eating it IN the food I’ve been eating – particularly deli meats.
I found an article that listed some much lower sodium lunch meat offerings, including the brands of Boar’s Head, Hillshire Farm, Applegate Naturals, and Oscar Mayer. Today, if we get to the store, I’m going to look for these with my lower sodium “READ-THE-LABELS” cap on firmly. Meanwhile, I’ll buy some frozen turkey breasts to cook. I have ordered an electric meat slicer that is supposed to be delivered Friday, since it looks like I’m going to be cooking and slicing my own meats for lunches in the future.
As of this morning, I’m 24 pounds down from my heaviest (nothing to write home about, but a good start). This new emphasis on avoiding sodium might result in decreasing many of the bad effects of eating too much salt, as well as hopefully resulting in a steadier loss of the lard.
“Eating healthy” is a very complicated subject and seems to be different for each of us. Cooking for two complicates things, as things I’m willing to change my husband firmly isn’t. I’m trying to research and improve what I’m eating or avoiding to make the best result for me.
My weather sources are not in agreement today. One says we’ll get some light rain this afternoon. Another says we’ll be under a severe weather watch from 2 till 10 with hail 2-3 inches in diameter and 60-80 mph winds. I would LIKE to be able to choose…. if we’ll have wind and hail of this degree, there is no point trying to spread SHEETS over my garden plants. They just won’t do the job.
We have a routine doctor appointment today at 1, and then we’d LIKE to shop afterwards, weather permitting. We’ll see what Mother Nature has to say.
Yesterday I weeded the pots on the deck.
Soon I need to find some flowers to plant here, and in various pots around the yard.
I also need to refurbish some of the critters we’ve made that are dotted around the yard and on the deck. These need to be cleaned and then a freshening of the paint.
Here’s another that needs to be refurbished. (I still have the flying pig in the shop, though, and that will be the first redo.)
I hope this will be a fun day for you, no matter what the weather.
When I got up to let Amber out, I saw a roadrunner in the front yard! He was skittering along some rocks that divide our ‘civilized’ front yard from the ‘wild woods’ beyond.
As I watched, he crossed the whole front yard and then went into the side yard. He was just beautiful.
I love the way they run, head down and body straight, and then suddenly stop – head up and completely still for a second – and then flatten out and run again.
“Back in 1999, a destructive tornado (eventually rated F5) was bearing down on the Oklahoma City, OK area on May 3rd. Forecasters at the National Weather Service in Norman, OK had a Tornado Warning in effect, but felt that it was not enough. They needed to enhance the wording in the warning somehow to catch the attention of people in the path of this monster. That is when the Tornado Emergency was hatched.”
Nikolas Noonan – Unsplash.com
The whole central part of the U.S. was under weather alerts yesterday and all night. This was the first time I have heard the term, “tornado emergency.” I don’t really want to ever hear it again.
We were only under a tornado WATCH here – and we are most of the spring and summer, so I could just keep a watchful eye and ear. I watched a couple of real time weather websites and found out that others around us were really in imminent danger.
It turned out that a small city in Oklahoma – Barnsdall – not far from Tulsa, where I used to live, was hit really hard. Bartlesville, OK had damage, too. One person was killed. I’m still researching to find out more, but that’s what I’ve learned so far.
I checked on ‘my people,’ and all are okay, thank goodness. I haven’t found any damage here, so far. Apparently lots of people north of here are without power.
We’re supposed to have a good day today with another chance of severe weather tomorrow. I would be really happy if things tame down soon.
“Ghosts, after all, cannot mount daring rescue missions, they cannot pilot spaceships, they cannot fight, and they cannot save their loved ones, no matter how badly they may want to. But I could, Ellie will say, if you show me how…”
“Her story is not about a chair. Her story is about her strengths and how they rose out of her instinctive vulnerabilities.“
Watercolor Dreams – Book 1 of Jake Moriarity series – R. G. Ryan – @RGRyan777 on X
“Jake Moriarity…a lost soul in a desperate search to find this lost girl. Moriarity can save her, but first, he has to find her. And the only thing he has to go on is like a watercolor painting that has been left out in the rain with all the colors running together.“
___________
I’m an avid reader. I love to get lost in a book – a world different from mine – a place to escape and live in another’s shoes for a while. I have several favorite authors and a good collection of a bunch of their books. I re-read them in an ongoing basis, adding to my collection if my favorites are still with me and writing, treasuring the worlds and characters they created if they’re not.
Rarely I find new authors who speak to me. Somehow in the past year I’ve found THREE – Simon Panneton, Ryan Rae Harbuck, and R. G. Ryan. I found them on X and follow them – and have actually exchanged messages with them. I’ve found them to be caring and interesting people, in addition to writing books I love. Isn’t that amazing and wonderful?
I’ve read the three books I’ve listed above and highly recommend each of them to you. I’ve provided a link to each book so you can find them easily on Amazon. Each will touch you and leave you changed – enriched – MORE.
As you know, I’m in a never-ending effort to lose the lard. I’ve been logging what I eat on MyFitnessPal.com in an attempt to eat mindfully, keeping my carbs for the day at 20 grams or below.
I suddenly ‘realized’ (I know, I’m slow on the uptake at times) that even though I’ve given up adding salt to anything except the hard boiled egg I eat with lunch, I’m eating too much sodium. This is carried by the deli turkey I eat, mostly, which I thought was healthy.
I looked up “low sodium deli meat” and found a couple of brands I recognize. I went to a new store (DG Market) in Greenwood that just opened because my computer said they carry Boar’s Head Lower Sodium Meats. There were a couple of refrigerator areas not yet stocked, but they didn’t have ANY of the choices on the careful list I had with me. :0(
I did another search this morning, finding that I MAY be able to find them in the meat section of the store that has pre-sliced meat in small tubs. I’ll try that next, wearing my careful-reading-labels-hat when I go.
If I can find some low sodium deli type meats, I’ll try some. If I can’t, I plan to buy a couple of frozen turkey breasts. I keep one frozen and cook the other, slicing it myself. I’ll also look for an affordable meat slicer, since it looks like there will be a lot of that in my future of trying to avoid salt.
MIND ONE – I’m violently against the use of AI to misrepresent, like generating images that are supposed to be that of an artist of any type, writer, painter, musician, singer, etc. and setting things up to profit from it. It will be very difficult very soon to tell whether something is real or AI. Many creative people will be hurt because of this, losing income, having to file lawsuits, worrying about their reputation, body of work, etc. This is theft and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
It may be used to create fake images to sway opinions on important issues, misrepresent what is happening in the world. I’m violently against that, as well.
MIND TWO – many times I find something I like on the net and then find a comment, “This is AI”. My purpose in perusing the net is to find wonderful things to share on my blog. It may be a cute video that makes me laugh. It may be a painting or sculpture or other artwork that has no credit listed, like too many things I find on Pinterest or elsewhere.
If I like what I’ve found, I find I don’t really care if it’s AI. If it looks like pebble art and I find out that it’s AI and not done with real pebbles, I still like it. As long as someone is not trying to palm it off as their own work when it was actually created by someone else, that’s okay with me.
Some people make a huge distinction between paintings created digitally on the computer and paintings created uses brushes, or palette knives. I don’t care where it was created and what materials were used. I’m looking at the result. I’m certainly not in a position to consider one is superior to the other.
We live on top of a ridge line outside city limits. It’s a very wooded piece of land, and we had to really work to clear enough for our house, the driveway, and our shop when we built here. We constantly have to hack, saw, and dig up things in order for Mother Nature not to reclaim what we have considered “ours” for over 37 years now.
Vole – Victor
We share the land with several ‘critters’ and we try to live and let live within reason. I have our pest control people treat us for everything including elephants when they come to spray inside and out quarterly. Even though my husband points out that some snakes are good, I have to admit that I lump them all in the same category and do not want them anywhere around me.
We don’t have any choice about sharing our yard with moles, voles, and other ‘oles’ of all kinds. Yesterday I was trying to viciously cut back a bush that lives in a planter beside our front porch. I walked across the yard to dump a whole trash can full of stuff I had removed from the bush and found myself SINKING into the ground, my footsteps “squishing” as I moved each foot. This was due in large part to all the rain we’ve had. The ground is quite saturated and we’re still due for more.
The other reason is all the tunnels all the ‘oles’ have dug. We attempted to kill the grubs that all the oles eat, thinking that if we removed much of the food they want to eat, they would go elsewhere. We threw a lot of money at the problem, but it didn’t really make any difference. So now we try to co-exist.
Our dog, Amber, doesn’t like them, either. I find holes she has dug, trying to get to them, all over the yard. Filling in holes is on the list as a regular part of my working in the yard. I mainly do it to keep my husband from falling into one with the wheels of the mower.
The pictures I find of moles and voles are kind of cute, but what they do to our yard is NOT. CUTE.
We got a lot of rain yesterday. It finally stopped enough for me to tackle the huge bush (“Japanese Yew” – thanks for the app, ML) that lives in a planter on one side of our front porch. I decided to try to basically cut it down by half. It had gotten totally out of hand and cut off the view down the sidewalk when we stood on the front porch.
I got most of the upper half cut off yesterday. I’ll work on it more today to try to make it look better – not just LOPPED OFF, as it looks now.
I have most of the planters in reasonable shape now. I have one to tweak, and then I’ll tackle the pots on the deck next.
I have some zinnia seeds to sprinkle here and there in various planters. I always do this, forget about it, and then have some nice surprises later in the season. :0)
I love Pinterest. I find all kinds of wonderful things there. I share a bunch of them with you. I’m frustrated, though, that so much appears there with no credit to the creators. I share whatever is there with you – the person’s name who pinned the image, credit for the artist if it’s there, etc., but so many times there is nothing. These are beautiful sculptures, and I hope that if the people who created them see them here somehow, they realize I shared the images to honor their work.
creativeartworksblog 