delicious food... and a found curiosity

Yesterday evening DH and I went out to eat for our Anniversary - (which was actually last week, but the weather was awful last week so we waited). Anyway, the last few years we always go out to eat at our same favorite Italian Restaurant... (and almost always get the same thing). Here is a few pictures of our entrees and dessert. Sausage, cheese, and pasta for DH and Chicken Campanella for me... and a serving of bread pudding to share.

His meal was wonderful (I took a tiny taste) and so was mine. What you can't see on mine is every kind of veggie mixed in... artichoke hearts, spinach, red peppers, broccoli, zucchini,  squash, black olives, etc. and it's served in a creamy wine sauce under all that chicken ( I do get GF pasta and it's still delicous).

We're both lovers of bread pudding (although some places make it too sweet). This restaurant does a really good job... and their service is great (family owned). My own bread pudding with whiskey sauce is pretty good too. Do you make bread pudding?

And of course they serve more than enough food to take home and have for a second night!

😊                            😊                              😊                               😊

OK... on another thought... I was cleaning out some drawers and boxes the other day and I found this 'card' from Lladro.  It's one of those things that you can slide around in windows by finding the year you were born, following with the month on another slider, and then setting the alphabetical key on the back to the numerical date - and it tells you what day of the week you were born on in that year. 

I always remember the words:

Monday's child is fair of face

Tuesday's child is full of grace

Wednesday's child is full of woe

Thursday's child has far to go

Friday's child is loving and giving

Saturday's child works hard for his living

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day

is bonnie and blithe,  and good and gay.

Don't know where either this calendar or this poem comes from, but found it interesting... 

(I would have changed Wednesday's child to 'full of show'... no one needs 'full of woe')

Anyway, that's my post for today. 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hugs (virtual),

Rian

a forgot to mention, not a bucket list, ... and updates

our pillows don't say this... but it could be true

Back in October DH and I went on a road trip to New Orleans with his brother and wife. I may have posted about this... but what I didn't mention (or don't remember mentioning) is that while staying at a new  Hampton Inn Express in Baton Rouge, I found the perfect pillow!

Well, perfect for me that is. Everyone is different. But I've had difficulties with pillow for ages... all seem too firm or too soft... or just not comfortable. I even tried one of those contour pillows once (ended up giving it away).

But this pillow is perfect (or as near to perfect as its going to get for me). So I ended up googling Hampton Inn Express pillows and sure enough they had information on their pillows. It's through Hampton Inn Express Pillows.com. So I sent off for one and love it!  

This pillow and the new split adjustable mattresses (which we also just bought last year) have made sleep much better for me. DH and I don't have much trouble sleeping in general. We go to bed around 9 or 10 pm and get up between 7 and 8 am. But I do have some back aches and pains due to spinal arthritis and have found that I sleep better with my head and legs raised a bit. 

Anyway, I just thought I'd share this bit of info. Reading other people's experiences helps me sometimes to try something different. Doesn't always work, but there's always the chance it might. ; )

Tandem Skydiving pic

Also someone else's blog mentioned 'bucket lists'. I don't have a bucket list, but there are some things that I've always thought I wanted to do... but still haven't gotten around to it. 

One was try sky-diving (maybe on my 80th?) and the other was fly-fishing. My daughter did a tandem skydive in 2015. I watched and wanted so much to go up then... but was told then with 'older folk' one needed a doctor's OK. And when I was growing up in New Orleans my dad and uncles had a fishing camp on Grand Isle and I loved to fish. It was relaxing and enjoyable and even though he took my brother more than me, I was the one that really liked it. DH isn't a fisherman and certainly doesn't want to sky-dive. But we'll see. 

Update 1: Guess I should mention that when I went for my hearing aid consultation and testing, she said that I had wax in my right ear, but none in my left. But when she checked my hearing, my hearing was better in the 'wax' ear (right) than the other (left).  I thought that was strange, but she said 'not really'. However, she did want me to have that taken care of before the next appointment so there would be no wax when tested next time with the hearing aids in - I think.

Update 2: On another note, DH and I went to our first Senior Center class yesterday. It was a 'weight room orientation'... where Troy showed a group of us what all the machines in the SC gym did and how to use them. We each took a turn on about 10 machines. I'm not sure how often I'll use more than the stationary bikes and the tread mill. To be honest, I prefer to just walk the walking area... takes 16 times around the building (inside) for one mile. 

And just a FYI: DH and I have our 56th Wedding Anniversary coming up this Saturday! We don't have any special plans, but will probably go out to dinner one night this week. 

Again... thanks for reading. I do appreciate you letting me share. I've always journaled, etc. and find it helps to get my thoughts out - however, mundane, crazy, or silly they might be. So thanks for accommodating me in this endeavor.

Hugs (virtual),

Rian

my new 'ears'...

my hearing aids - look something like this 

Just a short preliminary update on my new 'ears'. Went for my  appointment to have my ears and hearing checked yesterday. 

I had had my hearing checked at an ENT's office about 5 years ago. This was after a car accident that left me with ringing ears. I wasn't sure if this ringing was a result of the collision or the impact of the air bags or what. But I was told that my ears weren't damaged.

However, it was noticed that I did have some hearing loss at the time. Since I didn't notice this myself, I decided to wait... hoping maybe Medicare would eventually pay for part (it still doesn't).  But having been told recently by family and friends that I needed to do something about my hearing... and having read that hearing loss could lead to dementia, I decided to act.

So, after about 2 hours of testing, assessing, talking, and looking at results, I was given my first ever hearing aids. Then retested as they were synced with both me and my iPhone to make sure they were comfortable. 

One of the questions before the testing was whether I noticed hearing loss in one ear over the other. I hadn't. But after testing, it was obvious to me that my left ear had more loss than my right. Also that part of my problem was not so much volume but clarity. All of this could be helped with the proper tuning/syncing of the hearing aids.

After inserting the aids, she worked on volume and clarity and then had DH stand outside the room (and not facing me) and ask questions. I heard him perfectly. The only thing was that my own voice sounded strange... like it was coming through a microphone... amplified. She worked on that too. Finally got it to a level where it still sounds a little strange, but acceptable... and I was told that if I wear them everyday, my body/brain will adjust and this will no longer be noticeable.  We'll see. 

I wore the hearing aids home and first thing I did notice was when I got out of the car and crossed the lawn full of leaves was that the crunching of the leaves was so loud. Who knew that leaves could be loud?

Anyway, this is just my first report. I will update as the days go by. Hope this isn't too boring or TMI.  But I wanted to record this experience.

Thanks for letting me share this with you... and if you are interested, I will continue to do so, but if not, that's fine too. I understand. 

Hugs (virtual),

Rian

too cold for me...

It's 11 F this morning and snowing. It's a light snow, so although it has stuck on the streets and lawns, I don't think it will continue. Inside we have heat and power, so no problem there. We don't have hot water due to having to let the faucets drip constantly to avoid frozen pipes. So I have to heat up water on the Aga to wash dishes (and ourselves).

I worried about the ferals last night as since this is the first time we've used both heat lamps and straw, I was concerned about fire, so turned the heat lamps off during the night when we couldn't keep an eye on them. But we turned them back on this morning and all seems well. 

straw put out for ferals 

2 of several using straw

feral waiting for breakfast 

ice from ferals' water bowls

OK, since we've basically stayed home these last few days due to the weather and/or preparing for the weather, I've spent my time doing things that needed to be done eventually. One of these was cleaning out the pantry for 2024. Here are a few pics of my newly organized (somewhat) pantry. Mostly I wiped down the shelves and threw out old out-dated stuff.

We don't use a lot of canned food... some soups (DH loves soups for lunch) but those are in the back cabinet in the laundry room... with staples like sugar and flour. And I use my cup cabinet to store my gluten-free items. Those bags hanging on the right I made to hold  potatoes. Inside the doors there's a calendar on the left and a grocery list on the right... which gets added to by anyone as needed.  

And this next pic is just me preparing to add veggies to a roast... but I wanted to show you the green bell peppers and red hatch pepper - as these were home-raised. We had to take the bell peppers in before the freeze even though they weren't very big yet. And the red hatch pepper came from our little hatch pepper bush which is still inside and doing well.

My other chores were dusting the front room (there are lots of shelves and knick-knacks so that takes a while) and cleaning out the shelf over the laundry room sink. I did get it all done and still had time to sit and read by the fire. So... all's well that ends well.

warming my feet by fireplace

Thanks for reading (nothing too exciting just excerps from my life). Hope  you stay warm and safe!

Hugs (virtual),

Rian

just a share... and with the freezing weather forecast

 

Read this recently and just wanted to share:

and an old picture I've shown before:

The weather is supposed to be going down to the teens and single digits Sunday and Monday here. So we've been putting out boxes and blankets for the ferals... as well as extra food and water.  We also have a heat lamp on the back patio for them.

And definitely check your car motors before starting the car. Staying inside a warm car motor is dangerous, but the feral kittens do it quite a lot around here.

and...

I know I do...

Hugs (virtual),

Rian

Starting 2024... with books and a Rx

Well, 2024 is here!  And I have to say that I'm glad. Hope I continue to be glad as the year progresses. But... since 2020 through 2022 was a basic 'no go' and 2023 was a 'maybe it's really over', I have high  hopes for 2024 (remember that song, "High Hopes"?) 

The end of 2023 (the week after Christmas) had me with severe stomach pains, a doctor's visit, and a CT scan. Turns out I had a flare-up of Diverticulitis (not sure you call it a 'flare-up' when it was your first ever episode). I'm on a Rx now and all seems to be under control.  Have any of you had this diagnosis? My brother-in-law has had this condition for years and recently had surgery to correct this. However, I've been told that some cases (hopefully mine) never get that severe.

OK, enough of that. The next picture is one of my new books (given to me to read by a friend) for this month. I'm happy to sit in the afternoon with my cup of tea and surrounded by these books as I chose which one will be next. However, I'm still in the middle of 2 - 'Rusted Wasteland Steele Protector' (AI), and 'A Dangerous Place' (the  Maisie Dobbs series). Both good reads.

books to read

By the way, how many of you actually stayed up to watch the New Year come in? DH and I stayed up and watched the Ball drop in New York... and I made my MIL's home-made eggnog spiked up with a little bourbon. So we toasted in the New Year earlier than midnight.

Then on NY's Day I made our traditional pork roast, black-eyed peas, southern cabbage with bacon, and corn bread (while DH watched football on TV - although happily he cleaned up after I quit cooking to take a nap). And that to me signals the official end to the holidays (except for maybe taking down the Christmas tree which we will have to do this week - sadly). 

And I will say that as much as I do enjoy the magic of Christmas... and all that it entails, I am glad to see the end of it this year. Guess I'm showing my age, but all of it is a lot of hard work. Maybe it's time to slow it down and just make future holidays quieter. We'll see.

Oh, and you can see my 2 Nintendo Switches in the background with the books in the previous picture. I do still play Animal Crossing with my granddaughter, her mom, and a friend. We can each play from home and visit each other's islands. I'm not much for games in general, but have to admit that this game is well done and keeps my creative juices running.

Also... I'm finally checking into getting a hearing aid. My consultation (although we 've already consulted by phone) and appointment is later this month. I'm actually getting excited about it. Really tired of not hearing or catching the words in a conversation, asking people to repeat themselves, or just not following what is being said. Time to do something. And I read recently and it was confirmed by the Audiologist I spoke to that if one doesn't correct their hearing problem, there's evidence that this could lead to early dementia. That isn't good... so I'm going with getting it correctly sooner rather than later.

So, no NY's resolutions, but some plans for starting 2024 right... more books and a hearing aid! And if I can actually get myself going, more decluttering!! 

Here's a cartoon I thought was cute... and funny!

Hugs (virtually),

Rian

January 1, 2024 Rabbit! Rabbit!

 

Rabbit! Rabbit! White Rabbit!



and...

Hugs (virtual),

Rian