It’s Been A While

It’s been a while since my last blog post. I mean, not a really long time, but longer than I had planned. 

I’ll try not to let it happen again but I’m sure I will.

I have trouble writing blog post when things are not comfortable in the world around me. I like to blog positive, happy or fun post. 

Oh, I have a lot to say about the things going on in the world today but I try to stay away from political topics or bad news. We get enough of that on TV. 

I also had a pretty busy week last week so I was never in a quiet frame to write a post. 

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I have been crocheting “ear savers”. They are these little bands that fit around the back of your head with a button on each end. Medical workers use them to hold their mask on without having to put the masks around their ears. They have been wearing mask so much that their ears are sore. These are a big relief to them. 

There is business in my town called “Morgans Shoes and Bootery’. They also are a big supplier of professional scrubs. This is where most medical workers and others buy their uniform scrubs. This means they are probably in need for ear savers too. My handmade ear savers are a big hit and they sell out quick. They have been ordering 50 at time from me. I can have them ready usually within 3 days. 

I also had a couple of job interviews last week. Both interviews went well and they seemed to like me. 

One already denied me and I am currently waiting back from the other. My search continues. 

With all the craziness going on right now, a lot of businesses have put a freeze on hiring. Hopefully things will get better. I’m tired of being home all the time. However, I love all the quality time I get to have with my husband. 

New Normal?

“Welcome to the new normal” or “Be prepared for the new normal”.

I am hearing that a lot lately and I’m not on board. 

Maybe I don’t want a “new normal.”

When I hear that phrase, it makes me think people are accepting the way things are right now and willing to just live with it. 

I don’t think we should give up so easy.

Not that I liked the “old normal”, I mean, that didn’t really work for me either. 

Why can’t we strive to make a “better normal?” 

Who wants to wear an unnecessary mask everywhere they go? (Don’t get me started on that!) 

Who wants to have to worry about where their next dollar is coming from?

We need a better normal or just go back to how things were. I don’t know.

But I refuse to make this mess we are going through right now a “new normal”.

It sucks.

Over 50

I can officially say “I am now over 50”. I had my 51st birthday yesterday. It does not matter how many stay in orders, epidemics, and virus scares the world has throws at us, It still happened. We are all guaranteed a birthday every year as long as we live.

(Excuse the hair. I had just finished up a 3 miles walk.)

We normally go to the beach for my birthday, but under other the circumstances, we decided to wait. 

My daughter came home with a handful of goodies. Gifts in one hand and a Cannoli cake in the other. She also wanted it to be fun and brought birthday banners, and balloons. Later my daughter’s boyfriend came over and brought flowers and gave me a Hobby Lobby gift card. Isn’t that sweet?

My state still has a stay in order. Our Governor refuses to let things open up right now even though we have very low numbers of Covid19. 

Well, we didn’t let that ruin anymore plans. We piled in the car and drove about 6 miles into South Carolina where they are now allowing restaurants to have indoor seating at 50% capacity. 

We headed down to a little BBQ place out in the country called Courtney's and enjoyed a meal at the table. I will admit, it was a little weird walking in while cars were wrapped around the building for pick up orders. Once we were inside, there were only a few families there. We had to order at the register then find a seat. We sprayed our table down with hand sanitizer for extra precaution (per the boyfriend) and waited on our food. 

Things were a little different such as ketchup was in individual containers and drinks were in styrofoam cups. I like it that way though. I have always been skeptical to eating condiments that set on the tables for everyone to use from.

Afterwards, we came back to the house and had cake and ice cream while sitting outside. It was a nice evening and we sat there until dark. It was a nice birthday and I felt loved. 

Sometime before this month ends, my mom will be doing a big birthday dinner for my sister, brother, daddy and me. 

We all have a birthday in May......Good bye Diet.

New Glasses From Firmoo

I remember having a pair of glasses in the 5th grade for reading. They were pink with a little Pink Panther emblem on the side. I hated them. I thought my eye sight was fine, but the Optometrist believed my reading ability would increase if I wore them. Kids that wore glasses were made fun of in those days. I somehow lost them on the school bus and never wore glasses again through my school years.

Today I rely on prescription reading glasses. I absolutely can not read anything that is less than 2 feet from my face. They say it comes with age but who’s counting? With that being said, I am excited to have partnered with Firmoo Optical and scored this nice pair of prescription glasses and I did not even have to get dressed or go out of my house. 

I simply went online to Firmoo Optical and searched from their wide selection of fashionable frames. The hardest part was making my mind up on the ones I liked best. Once I settled on frames I wanted, I followed the simple instructions and added the numbers from my prescription, then entered my shipping and payment information.

If you are ready for a new pair of glasses, look no further. Firmoo Optical is safe and secure. You can even download your photo and try on frames to see what looks best on you. There are also photos of customers wearing the frames so you can get a visual of what they will look like. I personally did not load my photo and try them on. I took my chances by seeing how the frames of my choice looked on others. 

I admit, I was skeptical of ordering glasses online, but when my glasses arrived, I was impressed with the quality of the frames and accuracy of my prescription. It only took two weeks for them to arrive. They came is a protective box and included and soft drawstring case. These glasses are light weight, flexible and feel great. I love the thin metal sides and the two toned frames. I paid extra to have blue light blocking lens added them. Blue light blocking protects your vision from long use of computers and other electronic devices. I would highly recommend this feature. 

Right now, Firmoo Optical is offering a free pair of single lens glasses for new customers. All you have to do is pay the shipping cost. 

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For your free pair, Shop Firmoo.com

and Use Code: AUFF at checkout.

My Style shown: S3500 

Brown/black with blue light blocking lens.

Unisex size Medium.

 These glasses were provided to me free of charge 

in exchange for my honest review. 

All opinions are 100% my own.

Mothers Day #28

I have had 28 Mothers Days. My Mom has had 55 (before you do the math, I have an older brother).

Every year just seems to get sweeter and sweeter. I’m not sure if life gets better or the older I get the more sensitive I get. 

My daughter came to spend the weekend. I always look forward to that. She will come home again next weekend to celebrate my birthday. We got Mexican take out on Saturday night and then went for a walk in the neighborhood. On the way back from our walk, I stopped by an abandon house that was grown up with weeds. The yard was trimmed in knockout roses. I stole a few cuts to add to my table. I also had little Mothers Day pot holders for the moms in the family just for fun.

It was a good Sunday. We have been having drive through church services since the stay home order, but this Sunday we were back inside as usual. 

I am not sure if this was actually allowed in this phase of the pandemic but everyone kept their distance and plenty of hand sanitizer was available.

It was a good Sunday service as we celebrated the Moms.

Since we could not take mom out for Mothers Day, I decided to cook instead. I have been up since 7:00 this morning. I had 10 pounds of potatoes to peel and 38 chicken legs to skin for dinner (Chicken legs are about all we could find as the stores were low on meat). We also had macaroni and cheese and green beens. It was nice to see all of us together again and I think that made mom the most happy. 

My Mothers Day gift from my daughter was a gift certificate for a candle making class and a new shirt.

I love being a Mom and think I have the best daughter ever!

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY! 

Whittle a Little

I remember back when I was about twelve years old, my daddy gave me a pocket knife. Ever since then, I have always liked pocket knives. I remember it had about a 2 inch blade, a pearl handle and his company name down the side. There was a little beaded chain at the end so you could hang it from your key ring. I played with that little knife a lot. I used to find sticks and sit and whittle them into arrows. I would also find gigantic acorns and hollow out the inside and make beads. Through the years, daddy would give me a pocket knife. I wish I still had them.

I have a few pocket knives that Nick actually found on the road during his walks. My favorite is a little pink one. 

Speaking of walking, I told Nick during our walk the other day that I was looking for a stick so I could attempt to carve a crochet hook.

Nick thought I was crazy and said, “we can’t afford a hospital visit to get a finger sewn back on”. He wasn’t even aware that I liked to whittle. I reminded him that if I have the idea in my head, I was gonna make it happen. So I picked up a few sticks from the base of a maple tree and carried them home. 

I went outside on a beautiful sunny day and began to whittle a little. After a couple wasted sticks and an hour of chiseling and carving, I had created my very own hand crafted crochet hook. My fingers were sore and blistered. I felt pretty proud of myself. I gave it couple more days for my fingers to rest then made another one. The 2nd one was a little bigger and easier to carve. 

I had to try it out so I crocheted a little mug rug for a test run. 

It worked good but was a little rough gliding through the stitches. It needs to be smoothed out a little more and some adjustments need to be made so it will be more comfortable with my grip.

I may just leave them as they are and put them away. I accomplished what I wanted to do and that satisfies me. 

What do you think? 

Have you ever carved or whittled anything? 

Cinco De Mayo

Happy Cinco De Mayo yall!. Do you celebrate this day? It’s not a big deal for us but it is a fun excuse to eat Mexican food. Ha.

The day did not go exactly as I had planned. My plan was to order some street tacos from a real taco truck. You know, those little taco trucks you see in parking lots or on the corners of intersections. I have never tried one and I thought this would be the perfect time since it’s also “Taco Tuesday” at most Mexican restaurants. 

So we headed out to find a Taco truck. I do not think Nick was onboard but he was trying to make me happy. I did not want to go across town because it was getting late. We found a little truck in a parking lot near by so we pulled in and got in line. We were only 2nd in line but there were about 7 other orders ahead of us and it was coming up a storm. When we felt the first rain drop, we left without ordering. Boohoo. I WAS SO CLOSE!

We resorted to plan B and drove to a little joint uptown just another block away. We walked in to order takeout (Thats all anyone could do). They would not take our order as they were overwhelmed with orders and told us they are about an hour and half behind. So we left. Next we called another Mexican restaurant. They had a 45 minute wait. I JUST WANT A TACO! 

We gave up and headed home. We decided to make some Mexican style street corn and cheese quesadillas. They were just as good (I think) as a taco for anywhere else. This was the first time making this kind of corn. I popped two cobs in my air fryer and cooked it for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Instead of making my own rub, I cheated with a pack of mix. 

I just had to add 3/4 cup of mayonaise to the mix and it was ready to rub on cooked corn then topped with cilantro. Delicious! 

Now for some fun facts about Cinco De Mayo:

• Cinco de Mayo is NOT “Day of the Dead”.
• Cinco de Mayo is not a federal holiday so the day is just like any other day for most people in Mexico. (Think about it. You do not see Mexicans celebrating, they mostly cater to everyone else celebrating).
• Cinco de Mayo is NOT Mexican Independence Day- Mexico celebrate independence day on September 16th. 
• Cinco de Mayo started in the US in 1960 after Latino activist raised awareness for the holiday. This Holiday is now widely celebrated because of the growing Hispanic Population. 

Did you do anything to celebrate? 

I still want to try a taco truck one day. 

Twenty Six Years

Can you believe it’s already May? Man, the years are just slipping by. They say “time goes by fast when your having fun”.

Well, May 1st we celebrated our 26th year anniversary. It has been fun. 

We got married 26 years ago at 1:00 on a Sunday, right after church service in front of about 50 friends and family. It was nothing fancy and everything sweet. It was followed by dinner with close friends and family. My Mom made my dress and the wedding cake. It was all so pretty.

It was a sweet wedding and we have been best friends ever since. 

We had plans to visit a swanky little place here in town for dinner, but with the whole stay at home order, we had to resort to another way to celebrate our anniversary. Nick headed out to the grocery store to scoop up a couple steaks and baking potatoes to put on the grill. 

We finished our daily routines early and headed to the shower. I spent some time fixing my hair and applied a little makeup. Then I slipped into a my red dress and headed to the kitchen. Nick came in smelling fresh and had put on a button up shirt and khaki pants. We were ready for our anniversary date. 

We sat close at the table while we enjoyed our meal and had some laughs. After dinner we asked Alexa (virtual assistant) to play some slow dance music and we danced in the living room. One thing led to another and before we knew it, the night turned late and the day had ended. It was a great day and one of the best dinner dates we had in a long time. 

Now I am ready to tackle everything else May has to offer. It is full of family birthdays including mine! 

I will be 51 years old on the 16th. Wowzah! 

We always said we want to grow old together. Well, here we are living the dream.