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Someday...........

there WILL be bran muffins in this house. Sadly, that's not today. I am so disgusted. I cannot find the @#$% wheat bran. I paid for it. I even think I might remember seeing it. However, if it's in this house, it can't be in the kitchen. I've even checked the cupboard where the pasta is stored. I checked the pantry. I checked the rolling pantry. i checked the tea cupboard. i checked the coffee cupboard. I checked the counter where the Kitchenaid and the InstantPot live. I simply cannot find it. Yup, I'm disgusted. I just don't know with whom to be disgusted. Do I get angry with myself for mindlessly putting that wheat bran somewhere I can't even imagine? Or, do I get angry with the store for charging me for wheat bran that never made it into my van, much less into my kitchen. And for those of you who are wondering, yes, I checked the van. Is this a sign of encroaching senility? Or a sign of ephemeral hallucinations? Geez.............

God blessed me............

the day I learned to pressure can meat! I got a wild craving for chicken salad. Guess what? I have jars of cooked chicken meat on my shelves! I even tried an internet tip (I'm pretty skeptical about those) and it worked. I shredded the chicken with my Kitchenaid. Spent a few minutes quartering grapes (already washed and pulled off the vine thanks to my "meal prep" work) and chopping some celery. Threw in some Tarragon (my favorite herb/spice for chicken salad) and some mayo, mixed it up and ate two servings of chicken salad! Delish!

Now, my silicone cupcake thingies are on the front porch so bran muffins are coming soon.

Whatsoever things..........

I went to lie down and try to take a nap. I found myself thinking with renewed wonder of how much my mother didn't trust me. I will never understand why and I really wish my mind would stop shifting and sifting the pieces to make them fit into some sort of pattern. There is no pattern. I am convinced there will never BE a pattern. I need to just accept it and move on, but that has been difficult. Here's a question for you: Can you like or love someone you don't trust? I think not because the moment you realize they can't be trusted, you begin to guard your heart and pull back from the relationship. So, did she like me? I don't think so. I don't think she ever accepted that I was a separate person, able to live a separate life, and not do it by all of her rules and standards and still be a happy, Christian woman. I did not measure up to her standards which were the ONLY standards, dontcha know............

Yes, I am a senior citizen, a grandmother, and still I am hurting that I could never manage to establish a proper relationship with my own mother. All my life, I have seemed to do pretty well with other people's mothers. They seem to take me for who I am, not who I was, not what they wanted me to be. They don't dish up a steady diet of condemnation and disappointment which rips me to the core.

I hope someday this torturous stream of thought will dissipate. Maybe it won't even haunt my sleep. I'd love for that to happen before I get to heaven.

At home

Three day stint finished. Home today! Yippee!

I'm awaiting an Amazon order. I have been craving bran muffins. I also think they'd be a good solution to eating something worthwhile for breakfast. Don't have a favorite bakery. Only know where to find one and it's off the beaten trail. Will bake some myself. This has been a series of roadblocks.

1) No wheat bran. Got some Sunday.

2) Decided to make some blueberry corn muffins. Ran out of cupcake/muffin liners. Made some blueberry corn muffins instead, used the 5 remaining liners & just greased the other 7 muffin cups. They tasted great but they were way too crumbly to eat on the go.

3) I got disgusted when I ran out of cupcake liners and finally ordered some silicone ones that have been on my Amazon wish list for, literally, years. Now I think i have all the ingredients, but the Amazon delivery is keeping me waiting.

I think I am going to go ahead and get the dry ingredients ready. I WILL have bran muffins before bedtime.

I need to get back to canning. There are many foods I don't have on hand. If I'm going to can fruits and veggies (mostly veggies) I need to do it now while they're lower in price at the stores. I have plenty of jars on hand and I think there's something in the Canner's Creed about it being a sin to have lots of empty jars in the summer time. So, I'm going to go through the Sprouts weekly ad and see what's on special and then go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation website to learn the basics of how to can whatever is on special. Next, I will need more than a single day off to do the actual prep and canning. The nice thing about Sprouts markets is that they are smaller than, say, a Kroger-affiliate store so I can most likely do what needs done without my legs kicking a fit. Also, i know that the one to the north of me just a couple of miles has a parking lot I can manage as well.

Must do some vacuuming today. I'd also like to do the kitchen floor. Might also use some of my canned chicken to make some chicken salad. We'll see what else I can manage. I'm sure filing and budget stuff SHOULD be a priority..............

 

An eventful day--by my standards

First, I went to bed early last night, hoping to get a decent amount of sleep before an early wake up time. 2.5 hours later, i was still awake. By then, I'd tried about every sleeping position I could think of other than under the dog. Nothing worked. I got up to use the restroom and figured out if I didn't piddle around in the morning I could allow myself to wake up later. I reset the clock and went back to bed. Imagine my surprise when I woke up at 7:47 on a day I was due at work at 8! Not good.

I went in anyway, 2 hours late. I was asked to stay an hour later and I did just to pick up an extra hour's pay.

When I left the store, it was "only" 100 degrees. Manageable for the van's a/c! And, i had forgotten to set the thermostat to a higher temperature before I left for work, so the house was reasonably comfortable when i got home. That was a blessing.

I had one very cranky old man customer. He was mad at me because I couldn't give him a military discount based on rules that haven't applied since 12/31/17. When I explained what is required, he got madder. He decided he didn't want any of the items he'd intended to purchase and stalked out of the store, muttering about me! I wanted to say "Hey, mister, if you were in the military, were you a general or a private? Did you have rules you had to follow?" I didn't, I just wished him a nice day. The customer behind him was unusually nice to me. I appreciated that.

For snacks today, i ate some grape tomatoes and some grapes. Dinner tonight was a cucumber salad. Not a fabulous showing, but not awful either. Beats nothing in the vegetable or fruit category.

So, another early day tomorrow. I don't like it, but I've gotta do it. Lord willing I'll be there on time tomorrow..............

A Happy Birthday

So, I took the cake in today. I had been told that one of the Full Time Head Cashiers was bringing balloons. So I held off on the cake til 12:30 when she was due. Well, yes, she brought a balloon, one of those you buy filled with helium and saying Happy Birthday......... That didn't make for much of a party! So, finally I walked my young friend to the break room where i unveiled the cake I had hidden under one of my sweaters. She cried! I guess her father finally did decide he could fit her into his busy schedule, but it was kind of like an afterthought. I felt so sorry for her--it was her 20th birthday. She's a great kid and deserves a daddy who is involved and proud of her. She works hard, helping cover the costs of college. She has worked her way up to a responsible, supervisory position at the age of 20 and she's darned good at the job. She's about the same age as my oldest DGS. I was so happy to be able to show her someone cared.

She has been very kind to me. It is she who has seen to it I get many chances to go to Lumber which helps me a lot. Her goal someday is to be a police officer. No doubt she'll excel at whatever she chooses to do. I think she's the kind of person who won't settle for anything less than excellence.

It was hot again today, though about 5 degrees cooler, with wind to help evaporate the sweat. A blessing for the heat tolerance, a curse for those with allergies..........

I have slowly trying to up my fruit and veggie game. Don't know if I can make this a habit, but I hope I can. My practice on returning home from the grocery store has been to put perishables into the fridge, canned goods into the pantry, and so on. If the meat needs to go into the freezer, I will pull it out and use the Food Saver to vacuum pack it and get it where it needs to go. Then I have declared myself done and sat down. I am trying to change all that. First, I've been trying to carry more fruits and veggies with me to work for snacks. I've found blueberries, grapes or raisins from fresh grapes via the dehydrator, and grape tomatoes work. One of the main problems is that I really can't "bite" anything. The moment I do, my bottom plate comes loose. That's sometimes painful, but in any case, inconvenient! I have much the same problem if I get something that I have to chew a lot. And, anything "sticky" sticks to dentures. The second problem, besides finding things I can take to work, is having something for dinner that contains a veggie or fruit. Most veggies have to be peeled/chopped/sliced/diced, etc., before they are cooked. The last thing I want to do when I get home is stand on my feet in the kitchen and do that. So, I'm trying to prep most everything when I bring it home. Lately, because of the pain in my legs, I've been ordering my groceries over the internet and the store then sends someone to go gather my order and someone to bring it out and put it in my car. This is especially helpful because it's usually hard to snag a handicap parking place--there just aren't enough. So, but for the heat, I don't arrive home from the store, exhausted and sore. Seems like a good time to do all that prep work.

So, any ideas of snacks I can take with me of the fruit or veggie variety, lay 'em on me. I forgot to mention that I can't take things like a sliced peach because I would end up spreading peach juice all over the customers stuff and the register.

For the next 2 months, my blog posts will start with

It's so darned hot out there. Miserable. I had to go pick up groceries and put gasoline in the van. When I got in the van a little after 5, the thermometer said it was 108. It was almost a toss up as to whether or not I'd be able to turn the steering wheel. I was grateful for hands that have gotten used to holding onto hot jars in the process of canning. Sometimes as I'm driving, the thermostat will jiggle down. Not today. I sat in the shade at the grocery store for quite a while and the best I saw was 107! I had to get out of the van to get gasoline. It broke my heart that I got out, hooked up and then the machine couldn't seem to process cards. So, I had to get back in the van (by now HOT again) and drive to another pump, stand outside again and finally pump my gas.

The grocery store just about gave me a heart attack. Our new part time head cashier had a birthday yesterday. Friday she was walking toward me and I could tell she was on the verge of tears. I asked if she was okay. She was upset. She had thought she might see her father for her birthday, but that didn't work out. Then she had thought her "main squeeze" would spend the day with her, per promises he had made. She had to trade days off with someone else, but she had wangled the day of her birthday off from work. The "main squeeze", however, neglected to request the day off so he was scheduled to work. I got the very strong feeling she thought no one cared. I felt bad for her, so I was going to get her a birthday cake for consumption at the store, just to let her know some of us care. It took me two days of asking and waiting and I still didn't find out for sure if she works tomorrow. In the meantime, one of the other cashiers learned what I was up to and offered to pay half for a cake. So, I was going to order it, pick it up, and pay for it and she would reimburse me. And then one of the other head cashiers volunteered to bring some balloons.

I didn't know what to do. I wanted the cake to be for the first day she worked after her birthday. But, i didn't want to show up to work with a cake and find out she wasn't on the schedule. Finally, I decided I had to get that cake ordered because I was running out of time. So, when I ordered my groceries, I ordered the cake. However, when I picked up the grocery order, there was no cake! Thank God for the kid who brought the groceries to the car--he went in to the bakery, found out they had a half sheet cake sitting there, came back out to ask if I wanted it, and then went back in to get the cake, then came back out with a chocolate frosted 1/2 sheet cake properly personalized. Additionally, because the order was fouled up, I got the cake for $10 off! i call that SERVICE!

 

Fetch and Carry Day

Home today. Yesterday was sleep day. I seem to need a day to recover from my time at work. I ended up with a morning nap and an attempt at an afternoon nap. In the afternoon, I felt tired before i laid down, but once I gave up and laid down, I could not sleep. I must admit I gave it a valiant effort. Today we are doing the "fetch and carry" thing. Picking up things that are in the house that need to go to the garage. Picking up groceries I will need to carry into the house. Fetching gasoline for the van. Carrying trash/recycling to the outside bins, and so on.

I sat here for hours this morning, trying to figure out what I wanted for breakfast. Nothing sounded good. Thought about oatmeal--Nope. Thought about boxed cereal but I don't own any that isn't 400 years old and most likely rancid, so--Nope. Thought about scrambled eggs--Nope. Thought about making hash browns but I didn't want to peel potatoes so--Nope. Finally decided I'd have a piece of toast with some poached eggs. I used to do soft boiled eggs. When  I was doing them fairly often, I got pretty good at. Got the whites cooked with just the yellow soft, just the way I like 'em. However, now I don't do them often and I've learned that some skills need to be maintained. I've found it's much easier to produce eggs I want to eat when I can see what I'm doing and poaching makes that easier. I feel somewhat virtuous for not giving in to something sweet.

Spent some time maintaining the Master Bath. It was a good day for it. I am wearing an old pair of shorts and an old shirt I don't really care about. i needed to pour some bleach in the toilet and I have forbidden myself to do that if I am not dressed appropriately. I am lethal with a gallon of bleach in my hands. Months ago I went around and caulked around a bunch of windows. I used the invisible silicone caulk. What I've learned since then is that it has stayed tacky. So, good luck actually removing the dust from the windowsill. I'm pretty sure that I'd need sandpaper for that which sounds self-defeating--possibly making more dust than currently exists. Now i am faced with a dilemma.

I had my heart set on arriving home early in the day with my groceries. Then I thought about how hot that would be and decided to go later. Besides, I had to order a birthday cake for a co-worker and I felt like I needed to give them time to get it together. Now the problem is that I want to bake and cook a big meal for the freezer. But, I want to do it NOW and I can't because both things I planned on making require ingredients I need to get from the store...........And, as I typed that, i thought about a favorite quote from a former supervisor: "Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance." Yeah, I guess so............

 

 

So hot

It was 90 degrees at 7:30 AM. Eventually we hit 109. I got home around 2:20 and immediately dropped the thermostat so the a/c could cool the house to a more livable temperature. Two hours later, it had only cooled 1 degree. Certainly there have been hotter days, but after you get to a certain temperature, it's my theory that 5 or 6 degrees don't make that much difference. It's just HOT. I ran down to 7-11 around 8PM. It was still 100 degrees out there!

Tomorrow I work early again. In fact, I'm working early 5 out of 6 shifts. So glad I went to the trouble to say I preferred to work mids, LOL.

Today went pretty well at work. No cranky customers, though an awful lot of people in a BIG hurry. Our new part-time head cashier was covering the front today. She's turning out to be really good at the job, as best I can tell. She's young and has lots of energy which is important in that job. I have gotten to where I heave a sigh of relief the moment I spot a head cashier, ANY head cashier, up front. Anyway, I got my breaks on time and got out of there on time. Once it's quittin' time, I am so grateful to climb into the car. That standing for 6 hours is pretty hard.

The other day I had to be at work at 6AM. Here's the rub. I stood there til 7:45 before I had my first customer. What a waste of good sleeping time! I did get in a little extra prayer time which helped me to feel better about the lunacy of it all.

I get a kick out of my co-workers. They simply can't fathom me. I still carry a flip phone--it's old but it handles calls just fine. I don't have texting on my phone plan. I can't connect to the internet on the flip phone. They can't seem to understand any of that. They also can't understand why I take my breaks in my van. When I started, it took me only a couple of days to decide I didn't need to be spending time in the employee breakroom. The air in there was blue with cursing. Folks were talking about how nasty the customers were and how management doesn't care about the employees. I certainly didn't need a constant diet of that kind of input. So, off to the van I went. Now when you go into the breakroom, everyone is messing with their smart phone. Most people don't even want to be bothered to say hello. I would certainly be the "odd man out" if I hung around in there. I am really not bothered that they don't understand. Rather, these people and their phones are a source of secret amusement...........

Dog days of summer...........

The Las Vegas area has hit the dog days of summer. It is HOT out there, about 107. Everytime I live through another LV summer, I thank God that I am going to heaven when I die. I can't imagine going somewhere hotter for all eternity.........

Usually when I get to see the grandkids, it's in the morning. Today I was asked to be there from 2-4. When i arrived, the daughter of my SIL's new lady was "babysitting". She asked if I could be with them til 4:30 when her mother would be home. If i brought them back at 4, she'd have to hang around til 4:30, just so they wouldn't be alone for the half hour between 4 and 4:30. Of course, I said yes.

So, there I was "touring the city" with my grandkids in the heat of the day. The van did its best, blowing cool air as best it could, but it couldn't effectively combat the heat of the sun. I'm finally home where the a/c here isn't cutting it either. I'm headed to the bathroom to find some way to get my hair off my neck and away from my forehead. It's just too hot. My hair has felt wet for hours. I found a "banana clip" type thing for the back of my hair and stuck a roller in the "bangs". Feels much better even if it looks screwy. Parker isn't gonna care.

I took the kids to a "fancy" ice cream shop not far from their father's house. "fancy" as in pricey. Four scoops of ice cream set me back almost $20! When did prices like that happen? Of course, I haven't been to an ice cream shop in many years. Maybe prices have been like that for a while and I just didn't know it. When we finished our ice cream, I took them out to the store and showed them off to my co-workers. I was very proud of their behavior. They were polite, shaking hands when an adult offered a hand, saying "hello" when that was the proper response. The sad part is that the store is MILES from Dad's house and we had to slog our way back there in the heat.

I was informed that they'll be back in town for another 2 weeks just two weeks from now. Something to look forward to...........