Recent Posts

71

Managing a Household / Saturday, May 25

« Last post by Cheryl on May 25, 2019, 07:58:56 AM »

Good morning!

I’m up and ready to go.  I’ve had my coffee, washed one load of laundry, got another one going, fed all the animals, went for my walk before it got too hot, and now I’m ready for a shower. Emily leaves in a few minutes for her weekend babysitting job, Tony’s working til noon, and I need to make sure I don’t need anything from the store.

Gotta run!  I need to hang out clothes and unload my dishwasher.  Hope you all have a great weekend!

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Managing a Household / Re: Friday, May 24, 2019

« Last post by gaggleofseven on May 24, 2019, 11:49:16 AM »

Hi Alice, Cheryl, and everyone stopping by today. We are getting some sunshine today, which is a nice change from all the rain we’ve been having.

I sure am looking forward to the long weekend! No big plans, but it will be nice to relax and spend time together. Even on weekends, it is hard to find “unscheduled” time. There always seems to be so much to do - lists and errands. I don’t know why our weekends have become so full, but it certainly is not relaxing.

Dinner tonight is unplanned at this point, but will probably be spaghetti or hamburger patties.

Have a great day!
Jennie

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Managing a Household / Re: Friday, May 24, 2019

« Last post by Cheryl on May 24, 2019, 07:58:09 AM »

Good morning, Alice and everyone.

I’m so glad the weekend is here. Even though I don’t have big plans I always look forward to the weekend. It is really getting hot down here and my husband will be trying to do more work on our roof tomorrow afternoon.  I know he’s going to be miserably hot up there in the sun with it reflecting off the metal. He will need to pace himself and take lots of water breaks.

Alice, could the beans you were using be old?  I have had this happen a time or two and I figured I must’ve bought a bag of older beans from the store. 

Last night for supper I pulled all the leftovers out of the refrigerator and heated them up and repurposed a couple of things too.  We had leftover taco meat, refried beans, and a couple of shells.  That was enough for Emily to have 2 tacos.  I took about a half of cup of cooked chicken and made chicken salad with it.  I toasted some leftover Italian bread and made one and a half sandwiches.  Tony had the chicken salad sandwiches.  Then for Maddie, my granddaughter, I warmed up the leftover chicken nuggets and French fries she didn’t finish the night before.  That used up all the leftovers except for half a can of pork and beans and a hotdog.  I cut up the hotdog into the beans, added some diced onion, barbecue sauce, and a little garlic powder to make homemade beanie weinies for Tony to take for lunch.  I am trying to be better about using up leftovers and repurposing them into other meals.  I ended up eating a couple of Maddie’s chicken nuggets and a tiny piece of leftover steak. 

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Managing a Household / Friday, May 24, 2019

« Last post by Alice on May 24, 2019, 07:18:48 AM »

Good Morning,

It's Friday, finally. This has been a very exhausting week. Not so much in what we've done but more the mental stress of lots of things that were happening. The final thing for this Friday is a late day Dr. appointment for my face allergy. It has spread a bit to my chest and I feel something on the left side of my abdomen. It is pretty itchy so maybe I can find something that will help through my Dr.

Last night I tried to make baked beans from scratch in my instant pot. It just did not soften the beans up even after 80 minutes in the pressure cooker. I transferred the whole thing to my slow cooker and set it over night and still the beans didn't soften. The beans look like baked beans with the dark coloring but the beans just aren't soft. I think I have to call this one a fail and throw it all away. 

We had leftovers for supper last night from the previous night which was mashed potatoes, leftover pulled pork and one chicken leg and a side of asparagus. It was a pork roast from Aldi and it was really good. Tonight I have to start from scratch and make something but I'm just not motivated. But I don't want to go out to eat either. Something will pop into my head during the day today.

Tomorrow we hope to clean out the barn/outbuilding and then put items back into place now that the leak is fixed. It will be a dirty job but the intention is to sweep and clean and sort through stuff.  We have a nice faux leather lazy boy chair in the house that we really want to sell. All the mechanisms still work but I replaced it with a slightly smaller chair. I have cleaned out the linen closet and am sorting through bed sheets. My daughter is getting married so we moved her twin bed out and put our queen size bed into her room so when they get married and they come to visit they have a couple's room. We upgraded our mattresses so our room is has new mattresses. My son also is upgrading his twin bed to a queen and his mattress will arrive on Tuesday. Then we will have another twin bed to move out. My other daughter still has her twin bed and she only visits during the summer and Christmas break since she lives out of the country. And, I have another twin frame stored in the basement if we ever need to have an extra bed. I've got a lot of stuff throughout the house that we really need to review and get rid of and I think that's what the weekend will be about.

It will be nice to have an extra day off on Monday. I have big goals for the weekend and I will hold myself accountable to get them all checked off my list.

Alice

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Managing a Household / Re: Thursday, May 23

« Last post by Cheryl on May 23, 2019, 10:33:39 AM »

My oldest cat hates all the others.  The next oldest one is hated by the two younger ones.  Goodness, you’d think I have a bunch of schoolyard bullies by the way they act.  All I know is it’s very stressful with them in the house, but like you said, we can’t just throw them out because they don’t know how to fend for themselves.  My youngest two were raised on a bottle after being orphaned.  One is 7; the other is 4.  I really wish they had a catio or something they could go in for a little while during the day.

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Managing a Household / Re: Thursday, May 23

« Last post by Alice on May 23, 2019, 09:07:29 AM »

YES. She is a torti and they are all a bit crabby as that is their nature. She is geriatric as well. She loves to head bump us and rub lovingly against us but if you reach down to pet her or try to play with her she bites but not hard enough to hurt most of the time. We have had a few times where she breaks skin and even bleed and those are the scary days. When she does that we are ready to throw her outside to fend for herself but we know she can't survive out there. She has been barfing a lot lately and it's not just hairball, it's poop. We had allowed her to sleep on our bed and she even loves our headboard but the vomit on us and our headboard is not pleasant so we don't allow that anymore.

The other cat is a pure white cat with orange spots and she is the most loving cat you could ask for.  The two don't get along and they have been together for 9 years. I guess having a happy cat makes us happy so we just leave the other one alone.

Alice

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Managing a Household / Re: Thursday, May 23

« Last post by Cheryl on May 23, 2019, 08:57:17 AM »

Hi Alice, my cats have been through exactly what you described but this time I think it’s mainly old age we are dealing with.  She is 16 years old and has been declining for a while.  By any chance is the cat you’re having trouble with a tortoiseshell cat?  Your description of her not being very nice describes my tortie perfectly.  She has always been a little, shall we say, opinionated. For the longest, I was the only person that could even touch her but she has mellowed a bit the past couple of years.

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Managing a Household / Re: Thursday, May 23

« Last post by Alice on May 23, 2019, 07:44:50 AM »

Hi Cheryl,

I'm wondering about your cat. When we have transitional weather like rainy, drizzly, or anything from season to season our vet said that cats are affected by that and that they get kind of a cold and they just don't feel themselves. It can be treated with an injection of something but I don't know what and after the weather fully transitions the cat will feel a lot better. Your cat sounds like she is going through that. Our cat has done that several times and we even called our kids to warn them that the cat looked like she would die within the day and didn't. Yeah, I know what you mean that it will eventually happen and I'm just not ready for that. We have two cats and the one that is giving us all these problems isn't always nice but we've had her 12 years and she is still part of the family.

Today my husband is sick and I know it all to do with the full week of roofing issues. I feel fine today after my testing yesterday so at least one of us is good to go (except face and arm allergy).

Alice

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Managing a Household / Thursday, May 23

« Last post by Cheryl on May 23, 2019, 06:23:27 AM »

Good morning!

I have had my coffee and am now ready to face the day.

My poor elderly cat is surprising me.  A couple of days ago I was certain she wouldn’t make it through the night, but around lunchtime yesterday she got up and showed a bit of interest in food.  I cut up a small piece of meat and she ate that and kept it down.  Later on she ate canned cat food.  This morning she came in the kitchen while I was fixing coffee and drank some water and nibbled around on her food.  I know the inevitable will happen but I pray it will be fast and she doesn’t suffer.

Jennie - I can get my hair cut and leave the salon with what I think is the perfect cut for me, get home and have to wash and style my hair the next day, and wonder where I went wrong!  . I can never get it to look like it’s supposed to.

Alice - glad the roofers fixed their mistakes.  Home improvement projects are so stressful to me.  My husband is in the process of putting on a new metal roof for our house.  The bad thing is, he is doing it all by himself and the only time he has is late evening after work and the weekend.  He works half a day on Saturdays so it’s a slow project.

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Managing a Household / Re: Wednesday, May 22

« Last post by gaggleofseven on May 22, 2019, 07:27:43 PM »

Good evening, everyone. We just finished dinner (lasagna and salad) and cleaned up the dishes. DD stopped by to pick up a small fan I had bought for her. I am always so happy when the kids can come by, even if it's only for a few minutes. I got a haircut this afternoon. I sure wish I could style it as well as my beautician does! It always looks so nice when I leave the salon, but I can never quite replicate it at home. 

Cheryl, I find I'm not sleeping so well, now that I'm getting older. For me, I know that having a lot on my mind is part of it. I'm always thinking about the family.

Alice, so glad your test is done. Hopefully you can get some relief from your allergies. Good for you on being tenacious to make sure the roofers got the job done right.

I'm going to try to read for a while tonight, at least until I get drowsy and fall asleep in my chair. 

Have a great evening!
Jennie