Month: October 2023

(I can’t tell if I posted this or just thought I did, so here it goes; maybe again.)

I can’t believe how much more energy I have these days; even without much nightly sleep.

We go to bed somewhere in the neighborhood of 2:30am – 4:30am, and I sleep until somewhere between 8:30am – 10:30am. It takes me awhile to wake up, about half an hour to an hour, but once I do, I’m a force with which to be reckoned.

Kind of.

Really, though, once I’m up, have weighed myself, had a shower, and a cup of coffee, look out mama. Here I come.

For the past few days, I have been focusing on the kitchen; cleaning it, like Fall cleaning, deep cleaning it.

The only problem with deep cleaning, getting the floors sparklingly white, glitteringly white, is that, once they are clean, sparklingly, glitteringly white, is that I get crazy about keeping them that way.

These past few days I have been vacuuming, and wait

you’d better sit down for this part. I’d hate for you to hurt yourself when you pass out.

Ok. Let’s start again.

I have been vacuuming, or sweeping, as need calls for it, then mopping, yes, mopping the floors in the apartment; the entire apartment. After that, however, I spend the next several days licking a finger, bending down, and picking up that bastardly little piece of nothing that has the audacity to dirty my floor. WTH?

When the above has not taken place for a bit, (the cleaning), and there’s some dastardly pieces of dust, or what-have-you, on the floor, well, so be it. We are both able to walk over it, again, and again. Without much remorse.

Now that we are eating better, the increased energy has me doing the laundry in such a way that I wash, hang to dry, fold when dry, and actually put away said clean clothes.

Okay that last bit wasn’t exactly true. I absolutely hate, with a passion, putting away clothes in this apartment. Seriously, we have so many clothes there’s no place to put them.

We each have 2 large chests of drawers, but can’t seem to find space, or time to put them in the drawers. WTH?

We’re retired; we shouldn’t be having this kind of difficulty. Wash, dry, fold, put away. It shouldn’t be that difficult.

I find that, at the end of the day, when I should be relaxing, and trying to sleep, (right), I still have enough energy to clean one of the other bedrooms, or rearrange the furniture in the living room. Alas, it is, usually, about 1:30 in the morning, and who wants their neighbor rearranging the furniture at that hour?

Regardless, I do manage to get a few things done in a day; not as much as I would like, however, as I am no longer on any schedule, or time clock, (except in my nightmares about work). I can do what I want, when I want, if I want.

That’s all for tonight friends. It’s almost time for me to …….

Not.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

There are several Spanish words I’ve learned over the years that I have either great fun with, or much trepidation with when saying them.

Apúrate (a-POO-rah-teh) being my favorite fun word. It means ”hurry up”, or “snap to it”. Isn’t that fun? It rolls off the tongue without hesitation, and gets the point across. Bam. Hurry up. Apúrate.

Federal (feh-theh-RAL), is one of my all time least favorite words to pronounce as the second syllable stumps me every time. The more I say it, repeatedly, however, the easier it is when I’m done abusing my tongue. I try to say it as infrequently as humanly possible.

Pejelagarto- (peh-heh-lah-GAR-toe), another favorite that I learned just recently, while watching an episode of MasterChef Mexico 2015, about foods prehispánico. The pejelagarto, is an amazing “fish”. I won’t explain it all here, but copy, and paste the word, and do a Google search. Look at the photo above, especially at the teeth. Some of the contestants had to clean, and cook the little buggers. No thanks.

Guajolote- (gwah-ho-LO-teh), turkey. I enjoy saying the more difficult to pronounce words, as my father-in-law used to tell me how wonderful my pronunciation was. It was very encouraging to me. Guajolote is, simply, an everyday turkey, like those roasted for the holidays.

Huacolote- (huah-co-LO-teh), is, simply, a beautiful peacock. Similar pronunciation, difficult for us elders to remember the difference, but still fun to pronounce.

I suppose that should be all of the fun words to explain to you folks for today. Not to worry, however, as I will continue to update, and educate those of you that are interested in “fun words”, as I find them.

I will let you get back to your everyday lives. I hope you are enjoying said lives, as we are here.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

There are subtle differences in the different brands of Brandy that we drink.

I have discovered one tonight.

For the last little while we have been drinking the Presidente brand, but the type of Presidente has been Classico. Most recently I have switched to the type called Solera.

What a difference.

I don’t know if Ivan has discovered it yet, but a few weeks ago, I squirreled away about 6 ounces of the Classico, just for experimental purposes. 😉

For the last 3, maybe 4 months, we have been enjoying the Solera on the weekend evenings. Smooth, oaky flavored, easy to go to sleep with, and sleep all night. Yay!!

Tonight, however, I drank the 6 ounces of the Classico, and it was like taking amphetamines.

I cleaned the bathroom in our room, and am contemplating cleaning the kitchen in a few minutes. No wonder I haven’t been able to sleep at night!!!

Well, I’m stuck with it for tonight, so I guess I’ll try to clean the kitchen quietly, with the lights dimmed, and no vacuum to sweep the floor. Damn. Going to have to use the broom.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

The other night, when I looked down on my lap, my new nightgown showed that I’m no longer 14 months pregnant.

Room, in my nightgown!!!!

Seriously, I have inches in which to breathe.

It’s been at least a year, maybe 2, since last I had that.

This may not seem like much to any of you reading this, but it is very important to me.

I have said in a recent post, my lower legs, ankles, and feet have been too swollen to move much, so I have become extremely sedate. Since then, my right foot became so painful that I thought I had broken it, when it wasn’t actually.

Now that the weight is slowly coming off, the swelling in my legs is less; not completely gone, but less. The amount of belly sitting on my thighs has decreased exponentially (don’t you just love that word? I sure do.), and the pain in my feet is almost nonexistent. Thank you NOOM. And, thank you exercises.

Again, I am going to say that I will NEVER, EVER allow myself to get so fat. This has been a horrible waste of time, trying to undo what I have allowed to happen. It has brought my world to an almost stand still. Never again.

On that note, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: on this 14th day of October, (at the time of this PS), I am still exercising every evening, so it’s been 16 days, (no Sundays), of continuous exercising. I’m still at it. Not a lot of outward change, but definite inward changes being felt. Plus, a ton of low back discomfort.

Nothing like a wonderful, loud thunderstorm to make me relax, and be at peace.

We have had a bit of rain, off, and on, over the past few weeks, and I absolutely love it when it thunders. Not much fun when the electricity goes out, but who can quibble over such piddling details?

Not me, certainly.

As long as I can hear it rain, then claps of thunder that rumble on, and on; what more can a human ask?

Now, if those bitches would leave me alone I’d be in paradise. Which bitches, you ask? The no-see-ums. They don’t seem to be bothering anyone else that I know, so what’s so wonderful about me?

Nothing. But they bite me just the same. Here are a few examples. And, for those of you who have never had bites from no-see-um females, let me impart a few facts.

1: the bites are various sized clumps of red, raised pustules that burn, itch, and become increasingly more painful, and itchy over the first week!!!

2: they, evidently, like a warm, moist clime Well, duh! I try to keep the bedroom cool, as cold as I am able, but he prefers it a bit warmer. I sweat. All night. Even with our sliding window open close to the max. (24”+).

3: after the first horrendous week, the lumps continue to itch, if touched, and slowly, and I mean slowly, turn to a dark red, scab up, but begin to itch again at week 3.

While I recover from these bites, I hope you are having a wonderful fall season. Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: they struck again the other night. Just when I thought it was safe…..

AGAIN!!!

What is wrong with me?

Once again I typed an entire post, made a small change, then accidentally discarded it instead of saving it. Who does this stuff?

Well, me, obviously. That’s twice now, and, though I was tired of it immediately after the first time, I’m really tired of it after the second time.

I was telling you about how I no longer sleep more than in 2, sometimes 3 hour increments. I was also telling you about a 10 hour ASMR video I found on YT which plays an awesome rain, and thunder storm, not violent, in a city park somewhere where people are probably actually sleeping, listening to the storm.

I have been listening to it, every time I lie down to “sleep”, and it seems to be helping. I have tried a couple of different apps to help me turn off all of my thoughts, but nothing has worked like this has. The unfortunate part is that the phone face stays lit up in order to play, so I have to put my phone under my pillow, or under something on my bedside table. Oh well.

Recently, I slept 2 hours, then was up for 2 hours, slept 2 hours, up for an hour, then slept for 3 hours, I think. When my sleep is disrupted this many times, it’s hard to remember when I went down, and when I got up. I have taken to taking screenshots on my phone for each occurrence, to help me make sense of the disruption.

Oh well. Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

I will finish this evening, (9/27- my first evening exercising), having done 3 short exercises, hourly, meant to give me some exercise, and increase mobility.

It’s something I have decided to do on my own, making up the brief exercises I feel I can do to start. As I continue, if I can continue, I will increase the degree of difficulty as I go along.

I started at 09:30 on Wednesday, 9/27, with simple squats x 20, and toe touches x 10, that I did every half hour for 2 hours, then every hour until 18:00. I ended the day having done 120 squats, and 40 toe touches. This is what it looked like. (Toe touches were a waste of time.)

On the 28th, Thursday, from 13:00-17:00, I ended the day, having done simple arm exercises, every half hour, as seen below; 200 arm circles, and 100 lateral raises. Not bad!

On the 29th, Friday, as I am typing this post, I finished the day with 3 full minutes of planks, and 100 push ups. These I did hourly from 16:00-20:00. Yay!!!

I decided after the first evening, I was able to do a bit more, sat at my iPad, and came up with what I feel will give me a solid base. As I just indicated, I will move up from there. Here is what it looks like.

By the time you read this I should be well on my way to being just a bit more mobile, and able, hopefully, to walk around the park again.

Either that, or I’ve quit the whole thing.

Hoping for the former.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: I will tell you that, when you read this in the morning, I will have exercised 8 days, and am loving it. I have discovered that I can no longer do 30 minutes of continuous exercising; not yet anyway. But I can do one set of 10-20 of 3 different exercises every half hour, or hourly. When I break it up, anything is doable. Try it.

What is it with companies these days?

I received this notice the other day, and just about stroked out. Take a look.

If you look towards the bottom right of the notice, it said they were going to remove $899.99 from our bank account within 24-48 hours.

I about s&^t myself.

I immediately fired off a text to the wonderful young lady, Debbie by name, at our Credit Union, to please not allow this transaction to be completed.

When she got to work, she sent me a note saying that no where does it indicate that they know anything about where we bank, or any credit card used in any prior transactions with them; BTW, had we had any prior arrangements with them? If not, we should consider this a scam, do not call them, do not give them any information, and she would stop anything if they, somehow, actually tried to put this through.

My God.

First off, we rarely have that much money in our checking account, well, not for more then a few days as bills are paid from it. But, secondly, we were scammed a few years ago, before we left the US. That was a nightmare, left me tell you. And, yes, I fell for it. It took me weeks to get it taken care of; had to involve our Representative, and our Ward person. What a mess.

Just wanted you folks to be aware that even a trusted name like Norton can be used against you. Be vigilant people. Don’t believe everything to see, or read, or hear. If you don’t know if it’s real, find someone who is intelligent that you trust. Go from there.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Something else I don’t think I’ve shown you; you might want to try something like this.

While I was watching one of my favorite YT chefs, Chef Jean-Pierre, a while back,

he showed us how he keeps his bench scraper under the side of his cutting board, to offload cut items from the board to the pot, or pan, even garbage bin.

He never uses his knife to scrape up the aforementioned cut items as it dulls the blade, and is a potential cutting hazard.

I use a rubbery cloth under mine, used to keep my board from moving, however, it didn’t allow for the scraper to fit under the board as I wanted. So, I cut out the shape of the bench scraper, and now it’s a proper fit. See what I mean.

Well, that’s all I wanted to tell you about today. I hope you give it a try, especially if you cook much with fresh ingredients. It works really well, once you stop using your knife as a scraper, that is.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.