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!

Just leaving this photo out there

This is how Naughty Dottie rolls

Summer Recap

I can't believe how fast the time is gone. 2019 is more than half over, but it has been a nice summer, even if I haven't had much time off.

Here are some of the things I've done since Memorial Day

The flower show @ Phipps which was just a bit before Memorial Day

New haircut

Linesville Spillway, Hermitage & Edinboro, Erie trip with my family

Bella Terra Winery in New Stanton

Tubby Hall Park in New Eagle, PA

Trip to Wheeling with my sister

New addition to my brood

Missing Mama

You have no idea how much I miss my mom.

There's so much I want to tell her. To talk to her about.

I want to tell her about all the recipes I've tried.

The things going on in my life.

About my job at Lowes.

I know if there's a heaven, she knows, but my faith is easily shaken these days. This world doesn't make it easy to have faith.

I used to feel my father's presence in my home, but when mom passed, he went with her.

I found myself thinking today of when they told us she was dying. My sister and I stayed at the hospital and I just kept repeating "I love you." over and over and over. I think she wanted to bop me, but I have always had the fear that the people I've loved the most didn't know how much they were loved, be it my mom, my dad or my grandmother.

I can still hear my own scream when I went to my gram's house and found her gone. It was probably the worst day of my life, because even at 101, she was spunky.

I know I'm depressed.

I know I have to move on, and I'm doing it, but there's such a huge hole in my life where she once was.

Random Photos

I've been busy working lately.

A LOT

About 28-30 hours on top of my 40 at my regular job. It kind of keeps me from having much to say..So let me share some of the photos I've taken in the last week or so as proof I'm still alive

My new butterfly bush, which will go in the area that my beloved Oogie is laid to rest.

Lowes has some gorgeous sunflowers

Caught a monarch last Friday outside my office

My new addition. This is Miss Oogie, named in honor of one of the sweetest boys ever. She's a doll baby and so full of love.

My planner for next year.

One of my favorite bridges, The Wheeling Suspension Bridge

Random Thoughts About My 2nd Job

1. People will stand in a line with a light on even if there isn't a cashier standing there. I truly don't understand that. Wouldn't you go somewhere where the body checking you out was located?

2. Why do people think that knowing the price is going to magically make you able to ring up those dang screws, lock nuts and washers?  Also, note to the place I work how the hell are cashiers supposed to know which are which? Which is why those bags and pens are really necessary in that area. Why can't more people use them?

3. Breaks don't exist unless you get a lunch.

4. Customers are almost always rude unless you are in the garden center. Flowers bring out the best in our customers.

5.  For the most part all of my co workers are super nice and I've made some great friends there.

In My Life....I'll Love You More

My sweet little Oogie passed away on Sunday morning early. He fought so hard to stay with us., but a URI that one of my younger cats had got him, and he was too old and weak to recover.

My heart is heavy. This is my second baby to pass this year, and all of my other kitties are close in age to him. Soon to be 12 at the end of the month.

Oogie was my sweet boy, and I loved him so very much. His presence in my house will be greatly missed, but I know mommy and daddy and all his little furry friends who went on ahead of him were there as he crossed that rainbow bridge.

Gardening Is Not What I Do Best

So the violas are about at the end of their life span

So I bought some gorgeous cone flowers at Lowes. Coneflowers are my new favorite flower, as my zinnias hate my guts this year.

I have a makeshift flower bed or two, because no one really taught me how to do anything like that.

So yeah, I'm cleaning the weeds, of which there are many.

and

MOSQUITOS

Yup

One little SOB bit me three times.

So I went in the house..and didn't come back out.

I left the planting to my brother in law and nephew.

Nope..won't make a gardener out of me, no matter how much I love flowers.

Randomosity Strikes Again

1. Heat does strange things to people. Working retail I found that the people that went out in the heat to get garden stuff were pleasant. I had the nicest conversations with them while working. Inside the store, was a total other story. Granted there were some really nice folks that came through my check out line, others not so much.


2. I'm obsessed with covered bridges. I love them. I must photograph them. I must spread love to each and every one I find.

3. Flowers are my new thing.

I <3 coneflowers="" most="" p="" the="" this="" year..="">

4. I can cry at the drop of a hat these days. I am in no way near the end of my grieving for my mother, though it is slowly creeping up to a year since she's been gone.  9 months on Wednesday actually and it still feels like yesterday. I still look for her and want to talk to her. The other day after I had been to a minute clinic, I went to call home, even though I was trying to call my sister and there in the middle of CVS I was ready to start crying.

There are places that I go that I really want to talk to her about. When I stepped out at Dobbin's Landing and saw Lake Erie for the first time in 9 years, I started to cry, because I wanted to share it with her because I know how much she loved that place.

5.