Author: iagardener55

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.

I’ve called the credit card companies to get our online access back in place, and, so far, so good.

Two of the three I now have access to, but the third is going to take time to “authenticate” me as the holder of the account. Ugh! I hate calling the customer service people.

The very nice lady I spoke with this morning had a very pronounced accent which was really difficult to understand until I relaxed enough to pretend I was back at work, trying to understand the different accents of the surgeons with whom I worked. Then, it all became clear.

She sent me a temporary password, which, when I typed it in, was supposed to start with a lower case letter. I tried, several times, to make it a lower case, but to no avail. I even tried to copy, and paste; that didn’t work either. She kindly asked me to open another search platform, (I use Safari), and actually type the password in. I opened Google, typed in the password, and voilà, it worked.

I now have access to our Credit Union account; just like that. What a wonderful woman.

I wonder why, though, the Safari platform wouldn’t allow me to type in lower case? Hmmm. A thought to ponder; another day, perhaps.

Until then, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves. Pay attention to any CoVid updates, or just be proactive. Stay safe.

I bought a cordless, rechargeable hair trimmer set the other day, but it doesn’t arrive until next week.

I’m going to keep my hair short from now until the unforeseeable future. I had been getting it cut when we were going to Los Altos every few weeks, but it’s been more than 6 months since we were there last, probably longer, and my hair is pulled back into the ugliest, thinnest, shortest “ponytail” possible. It’s more the size of a baby pig’s tail, to be honest, and I hate it.

As I have said here, multiple times, I inherited both of my grandmother’s hair; thin, and sparse. Thanks for that.

When I comb through the little bit that I have I get at least a dozen hairs in the comb. Not for much longer. I’d rather have short/no hair than to keep pulling what little I have left out of my head every time I brush, or comb it. It gets really old watching it all fall out.

I’m going to be proactive, and keep it short. I’ve never been one to fuss over my hair, probably, I suppose, it’s because I’ve never really had hair with which to fuss.

Anyway, enough said. By the time you read this I will have cut my hair back to however long the deepest blade cuts, and that, as they say, will be that. I will no longer have to wait for someone else to cut it. Plus, I don’t think we’re going back to LA until October. By then my mind would have definitely left me.

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

PS: happy belated birthday to our son. Gosh, he’s getting old. 😉

PSS: the hair trimmer came a day early, fully charged so I cut me hair. More later.

When one hears that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, or that it is only “skin deep”, one needs only to look at two people who, together, through youth, childbirth, life, and aging are still together, and still in love; see through the whole process of aging, coming through to the other side, still in love.

I saw this amazing photo of Pierce Brosnan, and his beautiful wife of 22 years, Keely Shaye Smith, on a “short” somewhere on line, and had to take a screenshot of it.

If you look closely you can see that her hip proceeds behind her elbow; as does mine.

Many years ago I gave birth to two amazing people, now parents themselves.

Since that time, I have grown into my body as it is now. I no longer look as I did even 5 years ago, and probably never will again; not if I stay healthy that is.

Ivan still looks at me with love, and affection, and tells me so. I only see a fat, balding old woman staring at me in the mirror. I try not to look.

It upsets him to see me dislike myself so I do what I can to hide it. It only works when I’ve had enough sleep though. Since that is in short commodity, it usually fails.

I look at the above photo to give me strength, and a reality kick. I am who I have become. Period.

Perfect in my own way, as there is no one else like me in the entire universe.

Ok. I’m feeling a bit better about myself so I’ll say, until next time

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves. Check to see if you need to mask up again. Please.