Christmas? Next Week? WTF!!!

I can't believe next week..will be Christmas. I've got stuff done.. but it feels like time is flying by so quickly.

Its just work ...home...work...home..

Its maddening.

My house does look pretty but I am still trying to deal with WAY TOO MANY books that don't have anywhere to go.

Also I've been reading more ebooks because its just easier most of the time. I would love to have a day to just sit on my couch and be cozy with a book and not worry about cooking or holidays or anything like that.

I really need to get my holiday baking going on though and that requires time.

I'm doing buckeyes
cream cheese cookies
Andes Candies cookies
Palmiers
Mocha Chip
Cranberry cookies
Oh and Maccaroons

Possibly a no bake coconut cookie.

I just need to get started...Like yesterday

Photo Recap Part 1

I pulled up my flickr account for the year and I was trying to find the photos that impressed me the most.

I'm so happy my cameras got some use this year, as it has been 10 years since I was able to really enjoy that hobby. (I would still rather have my mama though than all this pictures)

Its funny though, when I took these, I was so proud of most of them, and now looking back many have lost their luster for me. I'll post some more from the later part of the year in the coming days.

The Birds

The starlings were on the move yesterday. When I was getting ready to leave for work this was the view from my porch

A few minutes later some friends joined them

As they were flying it looked like a moving black cloud. They landed on rooftops, trees and power lines.

It was quite a sight!

Noisy too!

Things That Make Me Think Of You

It doesn't matter how long it has been since Mom, Dad and Gran have been gone, there are certain things that will always make me think of them.

For Daddy...

Eggo Waffles (I could not walk down the freezer breakfast aisle in the grocery store for a very long time without tearing up at the sight of the round things)

Corn Curls (I was snacking on these today and thought of how much Daddy loved this snack)

Boost: Every damn time I see an ad for these awful drinks I cry.

Cookies: That blue Sesame Street character couldn't hold a candle to him. In the last year of his life I couldn't make or buy enough cookies to make him happy.

Mexican and Chinese Food: He loved all things Mexican and OMG how he loved Sweet and Sour Chicken.

OK but food isn't the only thing that makes me think of my daddy.

Being stuck at an intersection when someone is turning left...I can always hear his voice calling those people "Left hand turn artists."

Driving up 5th St hill.. again his voice..."Comin' up the hill with this ole will."

For Mommy...

Celtic Music... I will never ever ever listen to Place in the Choir or Rattlin' Bog without cryin'. I just can't.

Lead Me, Guide Me: My mama and daddy's favorite hymn. Again...can't listen to it without crying.

Mary, Mother Of The Church. I have such mixed feelings about our church...I find myself crying every time I walk in the building. My mama worked so hard when she could for that parish..and they forgot about her when she was sick...just as our priest at the time, failed my dad. Still when I see the church, I can feel their great love for God there and I can remember all the good times that were associated with the work they did.

Nut roll: The holidays aren't the same without them.

You'll Never Walk Alone: Someone was singing that song on Ed Sullivan this morning on Decades..and I could almost hear mommy singing it (badly)

Longwood Gardens and Phipps Conservatory: These are places I'll always associate with mommy. She loved going there so much...the same with Lancaster and Erie..

Presque Isle: When I was a baby, they stuck a spoon in a tree there, when changing my diaper...it was still there the last time we checked!

Grandma

Wheat Pennies!!  My gran was a coin collector! Oh and 2 dollar bills!

The Laundry...Honestly when we did the laundry together on her old ringer washer, I didn't hate it. I enjoyed the time we had together.

Christmas Eve...I will never forget dinner at her house and looking out the living room window for Santa with my nieces. Even when that dinner moved to my parents house and then mine..her traditions followed.

As John Lennon wrote..

All these places had their moments

With lovers and friends, I still can recall

Some are dead, and some are living

In my life, I've loved them 

End of the Year Goals

I want to get back into doing my yearly recap. That is my main goal. I have had a decent year considering all that is happened

I also want to find photo prompts. Something that will make me use the camera more. I want to see things, but I also what to try to take pictures of things around me.


Like today...because I had to see something different, I drove to Perryopolis and found the Gristmill

Trying To Get Through It All

I don't have an excuse for being absent, except work and the fact that as soon as I sit down on my couch I fall asleep.

Is it depression?

Possibly.

Exhaustion?

Quite likely.

All in all, I'm just sick of things. I'm trying so hard to get stuff done. To make my house look nice. To keep it clean.


All I want to do is sleep.

I can't even read.

I think I need an energy boost or something.

Roaster Oven Woes

So I've been debating how I am going to cook the Thanksgiving turkey. My old roaster pan rack died and, well, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do; buy a new one or use my roaster oven.

I haven't used the roaster oven in awhile. This little oven is so old, it doesn't even have a rack. Yeah.

So to see how the thing worked, I went out and bought a nice 4.91 lb chicken. From everything I read, this would take about an hour and a half to 2 hours tops. One video said even less.

Can I just say NOPE!

I had that bird in the oven around 6:20 pm last night. We didn't finally eat the damn thing until well after 9 o'clock.

I think my lid must be bad.

My choices then. $29.99 for a Circulon roasting pan or the same price for a Oster roasting oven.

I opted for the pan, because I will probably start buying whole chickens, as the little SOB that refused to cook last night was fabulous.

Just an FYI

If you want a moist and beautiful chicken

Salt, Pepper, Butter and Paprika are really all you need. Lots and lots of butter.

I patted down my bird

Than took half a stick of butter, and gave that bird a butter bath..stuck some butter being the wings and legs and the remainder inside the cavity

I used Nature's Seasoning and Paprika and a little bit of Kosher Salt on the bird

The chicken wasn't a fail, as it was delicious but the roaster oven got a big ole F in my book.

Catching Up

So much has happened since the 18th when I last blogged. The wedding was lovely, but filled with a lot of tears. I wish mommy could have been around to at least hear about it.

Last Thursday was also the one year anniversary of her passing.

I took the day off and went to the park to commune with nature. And get some good coffee

I took loads of pictures

So The Wedding Is Tomorrow

My nephew is getting hitched tomorrow.

Can I just say I want it to be over.

In my 45 years...I've managed to avoid weddings at all costs. In fact the 4 weddings I did attend all happened before I graduated high school. My brother's 1st wedding when I was 2 months old, my sister's friends wedding, my sister's wedding and a wedding of a cousin. That's it. I've avoided all others.

I hate them.

I think they are a colossal waste of money and time.

My household is in an uproar and I just want to de-stress and get back to semi-normal. Also I just want 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

A Child Of The Water

I was thinking on things these last few days, and I realized most of my favorite places involve water. Not necessarily the beach, but a river, a creek  or a lake.

I do love the Atlantic City beach..but I've always loved Lake Erie. I've a renewed love for our Monongahela River, thanks to finding the 2 boat docks in Mon City. The Aquatorium has a beautiful view of the valley as does Tubby Hall Park

The Ohio in Wheeling is beautiful especially by my favorite suspension bridge

Lake Erie was always a favorite spot of mine from the time I was little

Look at my view from high atop the tower

Oh and there's Pymatuming and the fishies and geese!!

Guilty Comfort Food

We made this fabulous beef and noodles this week. We being my nephew and sister, since I worked.

Its a very simple recipe of only a roast, noodles and a simple broth that's made in the last hour of cooking.

It was absolutely fabulous and something I know my mama would have adored and would have had us make over and over.

Mama was a big fan of chuck roast. but most of us didn't like the basic recipe. We all love Mississippi Roast and any variations.

This one was such a winner and I wish I had the recipe years ago, because I know it would have made her so happy, especially since EVERYONE loved it. Heck. I'm pretty sure my dad would have loved it too. Those thick egg noodles would have won him over in an instant.

If you want to try it..and really, you do, here's the link to the recipe https://www.thecountrycook.net/crock-pot-beef-noodles/

Pain...I has it

I hate having 2 nights off from job 2 in a row.

Why?

That gives my feet time to feel like they can stop hurting. Or rather my one foot that hates the concrete floors at my store.

2 days off and I'm pain free, until I step inside.

Then....

ARGH!!

And there's really no shoe that makes it feel better, especially when you are standing in one spot all dang day..or half a day or whatever.

A Cemetery Tale

No Oct is complete without a cemetery story, right?

Well I have one and its not really a spooky one, but a strange one.

I was taking photos down at the Monongahela Aquatorium a few weeks ago, and a guy was telling me about the witch's tomb that's located there.

Poor Josephine Colvin, is the witch in question. If you look up her obituary, there's no way she's a witch, but her family does have a huge and unusual monument.

I was also at the cemetery for another reason. A friend of mine passed away in 2016. I didn't know about it for until last year, as she had severed ties with me for political reasons years before. I always thought of her and I was heartbroken to learn she had passed. We may not have always seen eye to eye, but she was a good friend and we had some great times together.

So as I was traipsing about the old section, a little blue car comes flying up the hill from the lower end of the cemetery.

OK, didn't think much of it, though the cemetery isn't a race course, as my father would say. I finished taking my pictures and went to look up the location of Mary's final resting place. I started to drive looking for Sec 26. I found it and pulled over and began to hunt down her grave.

I make a bend and there's the blue car and another SUV pulled together and two people around 55-60 I'd say, sucking face on the hillside.

I think I gave them a scare as I came swishing about through the leaves.

I can't imagine anyone finding the cemetery a romantic place to go for some stolen kisses, though from their age, I'd say they were meeting there to hide from their spouses. It wasn't very long after I walked by that they got in their cars and headed off.

Weirdness

I did find my friend's grave though, and I had a good cry over her.

Easy Eats

In the last year I've been trying to keep track of my expenses and whatnot in a notebook. My mom often did something similar.

There was always a notebook or slips of paper with what bills were being paid when..and what was needed at the store.

Mine is a kind of documentary of my life right now.

I have a page for my month's bills

I've got recipes for anything I can whip together quickly. So yeah not everything is 100% healthy.

I did concoct a pretty good meatless dinner with Knorr's teriyaki lo mein, some frozen stir fry veggies and a few cans of water chestnuts and bamboo shoot. Yum!

I also eat a lot of scrammbled eggs these days too. Anything you can whip up quickly.

One day life we be normal again right?

I miss eating normal food.

Getting Out And About

I went all around Westmoreland County on Saturday and saw a lot of things that I had never seen before and I definitely want to revisit in the future.

This was the first time I have been to St. Vincent's in Latrobe. Such a stunning church.

I lit a candle for my mama in the grotto. My church going has lapsed and I feel terrible about it, but I found some peace there and felt my mama's love.

The dorms at the college were really neat too.

We had lunch at the Original Pie Shoppe in Laughlintown. Oh and the cookies there are AMAZING!

Ligonier was really a beautiful place too. To think I've driven by the fort a few times, on route to Idlewild, but was never in the town. Mommy would have loved the Gazebo.

Oh and just a cute roadside attraction from Latrobe where the banana split was invent.

A Place Where I Can Find Some Peace

Narrow Daylight has always been my favorite Diana Krall song.

And the line "A place where I can find some peace" comes from that song.  In the last month or so, I've discovered a few places where I find peace and they are all near the water. I guess I will always been drawn to water. All of my favorite places have either rivers, lakes or oceans nearby.

I love the Aquatorium in Monongahela and Tubby Hall Park in New Eagle as well as the boat launch at Cedar Creek.

I just love the water and the peacefulness of it all. It reminds me that there is beauty in the world, if only we look for it.

Trying to be healthier

Let me tell you, eating healthy is damn hard when you work 13 hours most days and don't get home until almost 10 pm.

It sucks.

I have made some steps to make sure the 20 lbs I've lost in the last year and a half stay off.

1. Eating yogurt more often. I try to do a serving of Greek yogurt during the week as a snack at work.

2. No more soda. This is so hard for me, but soda is damn expensive and I have cut it out of my life a few times. Bad things usually brought it back in though...like mom's kidney's finally failing

3. I've really cut down on my fast food intake as well as eating out period.  Not that that means much of anything. It just means I'm saving money on take out but then again, I'm not really eating a lot of really bad stuff either.

4. Snack food intake is down. Definitely not going through potato chips like I used to.

So I am winning a little bit right?

So I Went Hiking

I am not a nature girl. I just want to put it out there.

My New Year's resolution was to get back into my photography, which is one of the hobbies that I enjoy the most.

So yeah, I've been going a lot of places, a lot of them local to get the cameras used again.

I was at the Aquatorium in Monongahela on Thursday and yesterday I went to Cedar Creek to walk the Gorge Trail.

Oye.

By myself.

I got lost.

I am enough of a girl scout to know the way I went so it was just a bit of frustration, but still, after a day that was supposed to be calm, my nerves were frazzled.

I parked my butt down on the boat dock and stuck my feet in the water

I think there's a Zac Brown song...uh no....as is not on the sand

You can see my Cedar Creek pictures here

Keeping Things Up To Date

Let's see

1. Miss Oogie tested Feline Leukemia positive..trying to keep her from the other cats..I really don't know what to do, but I don't want to surrender her to a shelter, because I love the little dickens.

2. More pictures..

3.  Second job has been stealing my sanity, but I love all the friends I have made there, which makes it so worthwhile.

4. I have tomorrow off, so I'm going to head to Cedar Creek Park with my camera!