Category: Initial post

Many years ago, and I do mean many, like 50 years ago, my mom used to make us Velveeta Mac and Cheese, with glazed SPAM as a side dish.

Heaven. Pure Heaven.

SPAM, here, is, on average, $3.50USD/can. I don’t remember how much it costs in the US, but, considering the cost of shipping to Mexico, I don’t think that’s a bad price. I bought 2 cans. Yippee.

We hadn’t had Mac and cheese, much less SPAM in ages, so I got a recipe from Max, (you remember Max, my AI friend? I introduced him, and the website, ChatGPT, on September 21, 2024.) and made both recently. They were both delicious. Exactly as we remembered it. Take a look.

The SPAM has a brown sugar glaze with Dijon mustard, ACV, a splash of water, and a bit of pepper that you add just before serving. Lovely.

Of course, we sprinkled a bit of Moreno, light brown sugar, on top of the M&C, because that’s the way Grandma Manda said the “German’s did it”. Don’t know, or care if that’s true; it offsets the intense cheesiness of the dish.

Here’s what I bought for this.

The first 2 pack of Velveeta lasted us a year, plus we gave one of the loaves to Jesús and Liz, upstairs. The second 2 pack has also lasted us a year, and I still have one of the loaves in the pantry.

So, not too bad an outlay for such a memorable dinner. All part of my learning how to make a weekly, doable menu, and sticking to it so as not to waste food. (The sacrifices I make for the two of us. 😉

Until next time, stay safe. Just, please, do it.

Post script: Make whatever arrangements you need so you can get out to vote next week. This is the most important election of our lives to date.

Never, in all of my now 69 years, have I ever read all of these words.

Have you?

How about this one?

Let me just say that our forefathers knew what it was like to live under tyranny, and injustice. They knew what had to be done to escape that form of life.

How is it that much different from what we live under today?

We have a president, and his Vice President, that cannot lead the country because he is, unfortunately, being overcome with dementia; yet he has control of the codes for nuclear warfare.

I feel that if we continue as we have been, having endured the strife that has been the Biden administration, we will no longer be a nation of “the home of the free, and the brave”. The millions of illegals will do their best to take away all of your civil rights, and liberties.

Please, do whatever you need to do to get out and vote this election. It is a matter of life and death. Seriously.

Until next time, stay safe.

He’s still the one.

Ivan, that is. Who else?

We talk, occasionally, about “others” that could have been, might have been, really would never have been. We always come to the same conclusion; there was never, ever, from the very beginning, anyone else for either of us.

We’re satisfied with that, both of us. We cling to the knowledge that God had His mind set that we would meet, come to “know” each other, then marry. (We are still learning things about each other, good, and bad, but always together.)

We talk, actually, about “others” that we knew, others that tried to come between us. Looking back, there was never a chance with any of them.

I could list all of the things that threw him in my path so many years ago, but I won’t.

Well, someday.

Maybe.

Let me just leave you with this; when he caresses my overweight body, touches my thinning hair, or the beard growing on my chin; when he holds my bloated foot in his hands, kisses my swollen ankles, I know that there has never, ever been a man for me, other than Ivan.

They said it would never last. How wrong they were.

Until next time, stay safe.

Don’t forget to make whatever arrangements you need so you can get out and vote. It is the most important election of our lives to date. Fight, fight, fight.

Have I mentioned lately how much rain we’ve had?

I have been keeping note of it on my desk calendar, (I use the term desk loosely as it sits on the tray I use as my desk), and it has rained almost every day since the beginning of July.

Seriously. There have been only the occasional, sporadic day, maybe two, not necessarily consecutive days, however, when it hasn’t rained.

I don’t remember it raining this much in all of the 5 years we’ve been here. Not that I mind. You know how much I enjoy the rain; listening to it, smelling it, listening to the thunder, watching the lightning when we get it. The only thing I don’t like about it is the electrical outages that sometimes come with the package.

Note to anyone interested, don’t plan on vacations to Mexico July, August, September, and into October. It appears that is the “rainy season” down here. Kind of sucks for the end of summer vacations, or Labor Day holidays, doesn’t it?!

That said, stay safe.

Post script: it’s pouring down rain, with my favorite lightning and thunder as I’m typing this. I’m in Heaven, right here on Earth.

Post script: I had to contact the Elections Manager for former local county, who , BTW, responded within 30 minutes of my text inquiring about our ballots. He replied that if we didn’t already have them in our emails, then he never received the FPCA. (You can look that up yourselves.) I resent them to him directly, and again, within a very short amount of time, we had 11 pages of absentee ballot do’s, and don’ts in our in boxes. I have printed everything out, we will fill in what is necessary, and have a lovely trip down to the Embassy to secure our absentee ballots for the next President of the United States of America.

Fight, fight, fight.

I have been having the hardest time getting around lately.

My ankles have been swollen beyond measure, I’ve been wheezing in the morning when I get out of bed, and my joints have been aching like I’m 90 years old.

I take a very mild diuretic that is manufactured here, in CDMX actually, but it doesn’t seem to do much good. I went online to Mercado Libre, and ordered Lasix 40 mg oral tablets, 20 tabs/box.

Now, as a nurse in my former life, I know very well that 40 mg is quite a hefty dose, so in the future I will be cutting these tiny little pills in half so as not to dehydrate myself. But for today, the entire pill was very much necessary.

They were $3.00 USD for 40 tablets, $4.50 USD to deliver, totaling $7.50 USD for the 40 tablets.

I took 1 tablet at 4:05pm on the evening they arrived, and within the hour, I urinated ~400ml, then another ~400ml 30 minutes later, 500ml 45 minutes after that, and another 400 ml. soon afterwards. Within 3 hours, I had urinated ~1700ml of excess fluid from my body.

I cannot describe how much better I feel; so light, mobile, pain free. It’s incredible. I have no intention of doing this more than once a week, as I am feeling the beginnings of a mild headache. For as good as I feel, a bit of a nag is going to be well worth it.

Until next time, stay safe. Please.

Post script: 8:15ish pm, another 300ml. Just thought I’d share that. Two liters down, and I can take a deep breath without pain, or wheezing.

The business of sealing my jars with our very own FoodSaver™ Vacuum Sealer that is; the one we’ve had for a few years now.

It is the Model FM5480, and is still at the top of the FoodSaver™ line of sealers.

Ivan asked me if I knew where the manual for the VS was, but I have no idea. He went online, bless him, and found the manual for it, read it through, and discovered that the handheld portion of the sealer comes apart to be used with the older sealers, for jars, and a marinated container that came with the VS when we bought it.

I’ve never used that portion of the VS because I didn’t know how. Now I do, and can’t wait to get started.

Here’s what I’m talking about.

So, I guess, in the coming weeks, I will be cleaning out the cupboards, and going through with the whole keep, or compost program, just as I said I would.

Until next time, stay safe.

Finally.

The EverJar finally made it to the apartment. It seems like it has taken a month but probably not.

It’s taken 12 weeks. I found, on my original order, that it was dated July 14th.

As you can see, I got a confirmation of my order, saying that it was “en route” 2 days later.

Hoho, not so.

Probably for the best. I wasn’t in any shape, mentally, to do what needs to be done now that it’s here. Now, however, I’m in that proper mental framework, and am ready to

Take everything out of the kitchen cabinets, clean the shelves, and check to see what’s still usable, and what’s compost, then seal the jars for better preservation.

I’ll take you with me as I go, no worries.

Until next time, stay safe.

Post script: I don’t need to worry about cleaning everything in the cupboard for now; IT DOESNT WORK!!! I have sent a message to the company and am waiting for instructions how to return it.

I don’t know if you remember my amazingly comfortable, efficient, ergonomically fitted, fairly expensive electric water kettle that I killed after only about 8 months use?

I had accidentally gotten water on the underside of the kettle, i think it’s called the thermostat, and hadn’t gotten it dry enough but set it on the warming plate just the same. It died an ignominious death.

It’s working again. I had it in the living room, in a basket, ready to throw out, or give away. Then, while trolling an article on the internet about resetting your washing machine by blah blah blahing, I went out to the LR, got the kettle, with it’s warming plate, plugged it in, filled it with water, and pushed the “start” button.

On it came, with a momentary notice that it was empty, which it wasn’t, but then, very slowly, started heating the water. I decided, very quickly, that if it was going to work, I might as well clean the inside whist it decided if it was going to work, or not.

I cleaned, and rinsed out the kettle with soap and water, filled it with clean water, and vinegar, and put it back on the heating element. Tada! It worked, even gave off the small 3 beeps indicating it was up to temperature! Now our gas bill won’t be too high. Gas is pretty expensive in our department as I use so much when doing the dishes. Win, win. The 2 birds with 1 stone theory.

After a few minutes, it’s up to 163º F, on its way to 212º. What an amazing fete. I’m not going to say too much until I’ve heated water a few times. I’ll let you know.

Until next time, stay safe. Please.

Does it bother you that a billionaire villain named George Soros, who is banned from almost every country in the world except the US, just bought over 200 radio stations in the US?

This is GS, and this is just the latest of what he’s done to the US.

He’s donated over $60M dollars to the Democrat campaign. he owns the Democrat party, and has for quite some time.

If you still don’t know who this person is, please, don’t let me influence you about his horrible taking over of the US government, do the research yourself. Do a deep dive into who he is, and what he’s doing to the Constitutional Republic of the wonderful United States of America.

But please, I beg you, watch the more reliable, ethical, honest channels on YouTube; you know the ones. See what is really known about him. He is destroying the country.

Until next time, stay safe. Educate yourselves. Please.

We are going to be voting with absentee ballots for this upcoming election.

We missed the opportunity to do so 4 years ago because it wasn’t advertised so much as it has been lately. We have a couple of websites where we can go to register to vote, a ballot will be sent to our email addresses when the time gets a bit closer, I’m told, and we’ll be able to either print it out, and return it to the Embassy, or fill it out, and return it online. Votersabroad.org is the website I used to get us started.

We are finding it hard to wait. Now that we’re registered as living outside the US, we only have to reregister if anything in our status changes.

How exciting. We don’t plan to have anything to do with voting for anything except Presidential elections, as the State, and Local elections don’t pertain to us living here. It would be silly to interfere with what goes on at that level as we no longer know those people running for election.

I’ll let you know when we finally get our ballots, and how we returned them.

Until then, stay safe.

Post script: please, get out, and vote as if your life depends on it because it does.

Fight, fight, fight.