Sunday December 17th 2023

Tweety, BSN, RN · Dec 17, 2023

Good morning!

Joe, hope you enjoy your new camera.

Dianah, that's a critically acclaimed series. I see all three lead actors got Golden Globe nominations this past week. Steve Martin is one of the creators and producers and says when it ends it will be his last. He's 78. What a career he's had.

It's windy this morning. We got plenty of much needed rain. Unfortunately some of the lower lying areas that usually have street flooding flooded but most likely it's all receded by now. Fortunately I don't live in those areas and life was pretty normal.

Nothing much happening around here today.

No Stars In My Eyes · Dec 17, 2023

Well, good morning! I was awakened by the phone about an hour ago; my good neighbor checking up on me. Well, I have been saying I need to start getting up earlier, and here I am! Rather than going back to sleep (such a temptation) I am trying to wake up properly, with a big cup of coffee. Then I'll get dressed and see what I can putter around with in order to get closer to my moving into the bigger bedroom. I make such a mess 'cleaning up', but nevertheless, I am slowly achieving a small toe-hold in the project. Good thing I don't have a deadline to make!

It is 51 degrees, with rain, rain, rain, rain, and some more rain. We need it though, and I actually enjoy a rainy day....especially if I don't have to go out in it!

Last night we watched House Hunters again, on HGTV. I like the show "Help! I Wrecked My House!". My fantasy is winning a sweepstakes and having Jasmine (the woman that is head of that show), bring her whole team up here and gut Nannie's house to see what they could do to get some more natural light inside....some of the rooms seem like small, dark caves to me sometimes. It is an oddly designed house, IMHO. Don't want anything fancy, just help pare things down to manageable and not such crowded living spaces. But I am fortunate that I have a solid roof over my head and don't have to pay rent or a mortgage!

I may go through hubby's pipes and start researching their values on line. Or I may continue to collect and corral stuff that needs to be gone through, like, maybe consolidate some of it for later perusal. He had collected a LOT of little STUFF! !I do need to clear up spaces so furniture can be moved from one room to the other. I have come to the conclusion that it wouldn't be too much use to try to straighten up my current room. I can get the big stuff moved and then take my time getting the room set up for me, emptying out the small room a little at a time. But it is nice not to have to be searching for papers for a change! It's slow going, still, but it will all come together.

Meanwhile I am not getting anything done sitting here in bed! So, on with the day!

No Stars In My Eyes · Dec 17, 2023

Chugging right along....I just located my original Soc Sec card, and a 3x5" copy of my birth certificate. When hubby's birth cert. arrives (soon!) I can call to make an appt w/ SSA! A lotta "w00ts' happening this week!

Back to it.....

Ado Annie, ASN, RN · Dec 17, 2023

All good things, Stars!

Joe, what kind of camera did you get?

Leo was actually quite good. Hubs didn't watch. He'd had a frustrating evening with his mother and wanted some alone time.

This morning I went to church. Will finish decorating the best I can. We are too crowded/cluttered as long as there are 5 adults living here. I brought home some choir music to bang out a couple of the parts on the piano but the tree is in front of the piano (the only place we could figure out for it).

For my own mental health I have muted stepson's texts again.

No Stars In My Eyes · Dec 17, 2023

I condensed all the pipes into 2 large shoe-boxes, filled an old 4-gallon milk (cardboard) box from a grocery store, and a large shopping bag. Missing a few of the interesting odd/peculiar pipes I had given him; no clue where they were or are. Nothing valuable except to me, sentimentally. I found 'em at flea mkts., I was attracted by their weird designs, so even if they weren't smoke-able, they were given to him as stocking gifts at Christmas, or as a birthday present to him from one of our previous dogs. Good for a smile, y'know. As my mother used to say, "Just for something fun to open."

I also sorted I don't know how many pipe tools, like to stir and/or tamp down tobacco in the pipe; also lighters (flame aims down into the pipe bowl) and regular lighters and butane lighters, and even a book of matches, which you hardly ever see anywhere any more! Found more odds and ends to donate... ball caps, ear- warmers, 4 pair of gloves. I opened the heat vent in that room, because it felt chilly up there and I didn't know why until I looked. He was always complaining about being too hot in his room. One other good thing...the window in that room is the ONLY one in this house that actually can be opened and has a screen in good operating condition (ie you can also raise or lower the screen, and there are no holes torn in it as you often see in old window screens.)

Saw a hawk get one of the next-door neighbor's chickens that was out of their pen, and it was wandering in our back yard.....briefly! Poor li'l thing, but that's one satisfied hawk! Maybe it was food for the hawk's kiddies to share?

I'm starved to death and it is approaching THAT HOUR. Except I don't have to ask Nannie what she wants, because as they used to say about "Mikey" in the old TV commercial, ---"I don't want it/ I don't want it either; I know, let's give it to Mikey, (she) "he will eat anything!" All that is left for me to do is close the curtains, and prepare Nannie's tray; then figure out what foods to fix her for her supper.

Hope Nannie doesn't stay up until 11 PM tonight. Last night when I told her at 10 PM that it was her bedtime, she told me "I'm not even sleepy." Maybe if I turn the TV to one of those real life murder mysteries, she'll get discouraged and say she wants to go to bed? One can always hope. Momo knows when it is 10 PM, and thus, our time to go upstairs, have a snack, and warm up under the covers. But, of course, Momo has more sense than Nannie, and a dog's 'clock' is in its head. (and tummy!)

Nuthin' to it but to do it! Later!

Tweety, BSN, RN · Dec 17, 2023

Stars, you got the commercial wrong. The line was "he won't eat it, he hates everything" but then he liked it to the surprise of his brothers. Don't ask me how I remember that but it's one of this iconic commercials for us boomers.

You're lucky that Nannie isn't a picky eater. My dad was always like that. Always ate what mom put in front of him without complaint. We weren't picky kids either.

Since we talked about budgeting a while back I did sit down and do a budget for 2024 taking into account a restart in contributions to my Health Saving Account, inflation in food, high insurance costs, doggie food and their healthcare plan, increase in utilities and insurance, and then I got depressed. I really have very little disposable income left. There is a travel budget I can tap into if things get tight but Sheesh. Sometime mid-2024 I'm due to the see the financial advisor for retirement planning and will present a new higher figure I want out of my accounts and see if he says I can still retire in 3 years or not.

I did manage to go to the gym and grocery store and clean toilets. Such an exciting day. LOL

Ado Annie, ASN, RN · Dec 17, 2023

it's odd that sometimes when I reply more than once in a day I have an option to"clear the editor". And sometimes I don't. Oh, well.

As Hubs is "Mike" he has always been very familiar with that commercial.

Trying not to feel too humbug about my little humbuggy family.

Made real hot chocolate today (it started out at 34 degrees) but by afternoon it was 60 and didn't feel like hot cocoa weather.

No Stars In My Eyes · Dec 18, 2023

Oh, thank you, Tweety! I didn't realize I had it all turned inside-out about the "Mikey" commercial, And for including the video of the ad, too; I hadn't seen it in a long-long-long time. I forgot it was for LIFE cereal, too. Cute kids then, I wonder if they are balding hulks now? Yep, age gets almost all of us, sooner or later.

Wonder what we'll watch tonight? Maybe Sound Of Music? Last time I thought Nannie would like to watch it, about the time that Maria was called before the Reverend Mother, Nannie had had enough of it, and she went to bed. Could I be so lucky as to have that happen tonight? I dunno!

Ado, I'm sorry you have a humbuggy family; hope you can stay above the ....is it fray, or frey? Anyway, I sure do understand. Once upon a time I was pretty humbuggy about Christmas myself....then I just decided to give up and let it go, because so many get a lot of joy out of the holidays. Now, Nannie was the exact opposite, she was soooo into decorating every room and the outside of the house, and the den had a 'village' that took up a full 1/4 of the room! To me, the worst thing about Christmas is having to dismantle what you had to put up, and store it away again. Nannie's got three of the closets and the top shelf of both linen closets, and the larger of the drawers beside both of the bathroom sinks, and some tall-ish, big, tupperware containers full of Christmas. That's not counting all the little houses and stores of her village in the curved glass breakfront whatchacallit.....and all the boxes they came in. WHEW!

Anyway, I guess I will watch the movie, because I always enjoy it. Oh! The woman who plays the Mother Superior in Sound of Music is the same actor who is the one (of the three older women in the ad) who buys all three of them cushion/pillows they can sit on while they sled down the snowy hill.( Awkward sentence.) If you've seen the commercial you'll know which one I mean, and if you haven't....Oh Well! But every time that ad runs I've been thinking to myself, "Who IS she?", and when the nuns started singing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" I had the epiphany: "THAT'S HER!"

Enough blathering, the 'Captain' is whistling in his children now....?

Ado Annie, ASN, RN · Dec 18, 2023

I love that movie but always forget how looong it is.