PLESENTRY

I wanted to title this "outing" but then I realized it has at least one meaning that is NOT what I meant, so I changed the title. Yesterday I took DH out to eat. We went to Mimi's which is one of out favorite places, They always treat use kindly and the food is yummy. I decided to get one of the specials that I had not eaten before, mainly because it featured Asparagus as the veggie, and it is, hands down, my favorite. It also featured a chicken breast and mushrooms. I should have chosen the other special, beef pot roast, and asked for a side of asparagus. There pot roast is out of this world. The chicken was overcooked and dry, the sauce was not so much, It was some kind of sauce made with Dijon mustard, and weird spices. The sauce was alright, but too vinegary, much too strong a taste for chicken. I like their food because it has a down home taste that I like. Not that dish. It is getting harder and harder to find "farm food" nowadays. Chefs are destroying food a lot of times by tinkering with a good thing to make a nasty thing that is way worse than the original. I really do not like hot spices or vinegary things. Phoooy! At work they use Bullseye BBQ sauce. I detest it! We have a signature sauce that we make called "Rocky Mountain BBQ Sauce". It is much better because it is sweeter and not as spicy. When we make it though is make me cough, because of the vinegar in it. We make it once or twice a week. It starts with 75# of brown sugar, then catsup, celery seed, chili powder and a few other things, (I can't remember them all). We also stopped by to visit with Otto and Florence. Otto is getting hospice care and is in a hospital bed in their TV room. They have gotten him an electric schooter and a walker, so he can sometimes get around a little. It was nice to visit with them for awhile. I did not get to the grocery store, so we are out of milk, Alka Seltzer, (my before bed drink, I love it, always have) Kitty Litter, and hard candies. At the present time I am craving Skittles, a chewy candy, I cannot find Jaw Breakers anywhere, except for Atomic Fireballs which are not what I want, The ones I like are made by the same company that makes the fire balls, but I can't find them anywhere. Anyway It was a pleasant outing. I haven't been out to do even that much for months. I need to get a life! It is scarey and exciting to be moving. The new house should be ready in 2 or 3 weeks. My spell check is doing funny things tonight so please excuse the spelling,

HOUSE

WE GOT IT!

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

Well July has gone. We are now on the downhill side of summer and winter will be here in about 3 months! We only have one more week of EFY to cook for. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I would like to take some vacation time, but I ran out of vacation and sick time sometime last fall or winter. I get about 3-4 hours of both every 2 weeks. I have had a lot of business to do lately and some illness also.
Each time I have to take a long lunch break or see the Doctor,or take DH to same,or run out of work before the time does I have to take some Vacation time or sick time. I seem to always use it lately. This is something that plagues me every week and often daily. I always seem to get to work later than I plan to. So I go to work upset at my self for not getting to work when I plan on it. I really prefer to work a later shift because the morning is so crowded with students and full time people that it isn't long before I am screaming in my mind for relief. I do not do well in crowded places. Noise bothers me also. And the heat, in a kitchen full of steam, ovens, steamers etc that the air conditioning, if it exists, is useless, When it is 100 degrees outside. don.t even try to guess the temp in the kitchen. Look at Marbles blog to get an update on the house hunting, or maybe it is in one of the other blogs. I have had one of my light bulbs flashing at me. It is one of those curly Q florescent bulbs that is supposed to last up tp ten years and save multi millions of dollars over the lifetime of the things. The only thing "green" about those light bulbs is that that is what color they make my skin! It is not a flattering color for skin.

STRESS AND HOW

Well, you have probably all heard by now, but the hospital has bought our house( eminent domain) so we now have to find a new place to live. This is NOT something I need right now. Sat. we looked at a few places. There was one large modular home that was a one story rambler that had 3 bedrooms, two baths and allowed us to have pets. I liked the look of it in the photos and the price was good. There was only one huge disadvantage to it, it was in a neighborhood called "Leisure Village". When we got there we discovered that "Leisure Village" was a trailer park. No deal, we didn't even get out to look at it. This particular house was the largest of all the ones we looked at, and definitely not a mobile home. It was brand new also. But as I say, "trailer park ". We looked at some town homes also. The first one was locked, but the Realtor the was helping us had some kind of skeleton key that he retrieved from a box. As he opened the door he said "Now I know why there are so many "For Sale" signs in this complex" there were 32 carpeted stairs to climb before you got to the house. That was a no go. There is no way that DH can climb 32 stairs, or the dog, an it isn't all that easy for me either. The nest house was a 2car garage 3bedroom 1 bath room free standing house. It didn't have a fenced yard and the one bathroom thing was a definite no go. DH and I have so many conflicts with the bathroom. He seems to always have to use it just when I am trying to get ready for work, especially if I am running late. I am almost always late for church. Its at 1:00 and I still am late. I told him today, for example, that I would need it at noon so to please plan the use of it accordingly. At 12:00 on the dot he got up and went into the bathroom and didn't come out for a half hour. I liked the last house we visited. It was a 2 story town house with 3 bed rooms and 21/2 bathrooms. It even had a fireplace, I loved it, but unfortunately Raymond could not get up the stairs. He did get up the stairs and down again from the inside, but the outside stairs were without railing and quite steep even though there were only 2 stairs. I thought DH was going to have a heart attack before he got off of those 2 outdoor steps. He even screamed in fear. That was the first time I have ever heard him manifest that much emotion since I have known him. Our Realtor said we could put in a wheel chair ramp (he isn't in one but they are always a good idea in my opinion).We could also get a chair that fits on the stair rail an you can sit in it and push a button and will take you up the stairs or down them. I think I would like that too,seeing that my knees are creaky also. It looks like we will have to keep looking. We can stay here for at least a year so we will be in a home until we find a new home that will suit us. Of course mom has got her self involved in looking for a home in Afton, But I told her that I didn't want to come live there. at least not now. Then other members got involved, I suspect that mom was involved in that also. Bless her heart she means well, but I am approaching 60 years old. I think I can do something on my own now. Please don't tell her what I have just written, I don't want to upset or insult her, but I do wish that she would recognize that I am a grown up now. I appreciate everyone who has offered advice and help, but we have a Realtor who is helping use find a a house and help with the money situation, so that we can get a nice place to live in and it will be ours until w die, that is unless some other entity pulls another "eminent domain" on us where we finally settle in. This area is growing so fast that I don't know if we can find somewhere to live that won't be in danger of being in the way of progress at some future time.

Called To Serve...

...lunch that is. I had just finished my own lunch when I got a phone call from work. Like a idiot I answered it instead of pretending that I wasn't home. It was a case of someone not downloading the update of Sat, Take out orders. (We do them a day ahead of time, at least the veggie trays etc. the hot foods are done the day of). Well there were 4 meat and cheese trays and some veggie trays and fruit trays that we hadn't done, so I was asked to come in and help the new supervisor do them. I wasn't even dressed yet, in spite of it being after 12:00 noon. Any way I managed to get there about 12:45. It took a little over 2 hours to get them done, that was with 2 people doing them. If I would have done them it would have taken about 4 hours to do them. As it was, Alan was able to fold all the meat and place it on the trays in the time it took me just to weigh the cheese for the meat and cheese trays. We have to weigh out the cheese slices, then take out the individual papers that are between each slice of cheese, and then slice the stack of cheese diagonally so that we have two stacks of triangle shaped cheese slices. There are 3 different cheese varieties on each tray. We then have too arrange the cheese slices on the trays between the stacks of cold cuts. Since this was right in the middle of the day it kind of ruined the rest of the day for me. I didn't get to bed until 5:30 a. m. this morning and the dog woke me up at 9:00 to take her potty. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon and evening sleeping and eating a fish TV dinner. Why, you might ask, did I not get to bed until 5:30 a. m. This is a good question. The answer is I have no idea but it is not uncommon for me to not go to bed until 3 or 4 in the morning. I do sleep sometimes in the chair in front of the telly, but not always, Sometimes I am simply not sleepy. In fact I am more often NOT sleepy at that time of the day than at any other time. When I get up in the the morning I most assuredly sleepy. What do I do?

SNARF

After cooking all day,making dinner for several hundred EFI (Especially for Youth) conference goers, It disappeared in 30 min! This was for 700 participants. There are actually 1000 of the rambunctious youths in the group, but only 700 came to dinner. After tomorrow, we will have only 9 more weeks of the little darlings! Todays dinner was actually the easiest, because it is roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans. It is the only day of the three where we do not have to use the fryers to cook the main entree. When we use the fryers, we are cooking as they come for an hour and a half. It is too hot to do that.

Dredded Gumboo

Well. I have been sick with an awful intestinal something. I stayed home today. I lost 8# from noon yesterday until noon today! I definitely have less water in my system. I went to the Dr. today and my blood pressure was 110/70 definitely not high blood pressure, but probably a little dehydrated. I guess I will survive, I had a fever of 101%