Farewell to our darling son for now...

Bittersweet is the way the feeling is when a loved one leaves after a visit...
Although, what rings in my ears is my darling Dad's incantation of after three days company is like fish...

"The traditional saying, "Fish and company stink after three days" refers to the dislike of the two. Most people wouldn't want fish lying around after three days, as it becomes unwelcoming. (Because of the smell.) The term is applied to 'company' or 'visitors' because most people don't want visitors that long. Visitors start to become fish like because of their overdue stay. However, the smell has nothing to do with the visitors unless they weren't provided with showers. :)
Benjamin Franklin made the saying. :)"

Thanks to: http://www.answers.com/Q/What_does_fish_and_visitors_smell_in_three_days_mean

Now that is not to say that our son smells, oh no he most definitely does not; if anything to a mother and father he smells oh so sweet... still…And if anything his three days here were way too short in our feelings for him, we miss him already!

He did call when he arrived home, just like we asked, as we had asked our young men when they were first grown and on their own and even now twenty years later we do it too, as our parents before had asked us…and so the tradition lives on.

Moving on…

Since Hubby was kind enough to manage dinner I, after, Number One left got on the phone taking my new year’s health care coverage back into affect for the upcoming year and spoke with an agent who suggested I call Blue to see what they had to offer and now for over an hour have been on hold with Florida Blue on their line that is toll free and available for questions about the policy changes. I was happy to hear from the agent that apparently according to her estimates stated that my subsidy should be one hundred dollars more this year than last, YEAH!

Now to find a policy that suits my needs…and at a price that we can afford without breaking the bank with these additional expenses.

The background hold music crescendos and mellows out as I write this tonight, it is there hold music at Florida Blue that periodically tells me how important I am to them and they will be with me shortly?????????

Hubby asked me to ask them; what is their definition of “shortly”.

For the last little while they have not spoken to me, perhaps they have gone for the day but left their hold music on?

Fortunately we have call waiting on our house phone too, so Number One was able to get through… but now I just feel stupid. This background music was there during our dinner that Hubby made of Alaskan king crab and shrimp with fries and salad from the grocery, all on sale yesterday!

Actually I even made the salad and cocktail sauce and lemon butter while waiting for the answering of my call, still waiting or not?

This is CRAZY!

And feels sadly so familiar from about a year ago that is when this nightmare of coverage for all began!

Oh to be less stressed  and how I long for being in some type of time warp where when a policy was something you just had and never heard the words “deductible or co-pay”… because everything appeared to be covered and at a nominal fee or by our employers; no later surprises…!

On that heartbreak of remembrances that will never be again…allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

PS I think it is about time to hang up and YES I WILL!

Tomorrow’s another day and after all I could contact Healthcare. Gov via their number, ha!

Where to turn for some sanity, where oh where?

Bah, HUMBUG EARLY!

Last night's surprise festivities!

I could not say what Number One picked up for a surprise his Dad/my Hubby and so I kept the secret with PICS for tonight from last night, okay?

 Any-who that is what did transpire then and today was another day for doing things, and so we did. Hubby and Number One maneuvered the four pilings down to the dock into position to where they will be going... then it was lunch time. You see, over night we had lotsa rain and very cool temperatures in the fifties! We never got down into the forties as predicted, but tonight that all might change!

Thus the late morning beginning to "the lift fixing project".
Plus Hubby is insisting that Number One should just visit not help.
Today was business as usual sort of, although we did go out to lunch at the Thai Cafe and then ended up buying things we needed across the street at Publix like food.

Dinner was a steak barbecue in spite of the inclement weather, cold drizzle, but even at this hour still not below fifty here, just at fifty degrees!

The cold that has gripped the nation has made its way to our top part of our state and not far from where Number One lives above Tampa, which is halfway up in nearly the middle. This state, Florida, is three times the size of New Jersey and many forget that...we live in the southwest corner on the Gulf Coast, not that far from the bottom of our state, around one hundred miles or so.

Living on the water, as we do here does explain why as of yet we have not had that severely cold weather.
Warm waters still in the Gulf probably are the biggest reason why, temps still in the seventies.

At least that makes it more understandable or possible.

On that note of covering all the bases, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

PS the birthday cake was a mini Caravel ice cream cake, enough for three with two helpings, the second is tonight!

We had a busy day as per Hubby's desire...

And we also took into consideration according to the arrival of our Number One Son, who also picked up some necessary items for us when we would start our endeavors. Number One brought Hubby some other things too…two propane tanks, two exterior extension cords 100’ a piece , always find a need for them some how, hmm?

Not me but them, men, I suppose…

Any-who, by then it was time for lunch and Hubby, who loves ribs, chose Sonny’s Barbecue this time for his birthday lunch.

After we had to stop down by the dealership to bring them the title from ole Blaze, and you know the weird thing was that eight years ago on 11-15-06 she had been paid off, and this Saturday was again 11-15 when we bought Connie, short for Conestoga wagon, ha! Now I feel better what’s the chance of that happening, really?

Any-who, I had heard that Fishville had had their Christmas lighting ceremony and so we went over there today and sure enough all was done, but this year with a theme…you’ll see at the entrance…

 

On that note of again allowing my pictures to express a thousand more words allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all those overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Reassurance is an odd duck...

In life we tell ourselves things to remind ourselves that when we make a decision just before and even after that it is/was the right one, true? No backsies after, after all most of the time...

And without decisive people in this world no one would ever get anything done so not to decide on anything and nothing would change or get done, perhaps? Nothing would get done.

I would be lying if I said that every decision in my life when made was the right one, and even the law of averages tells us all of us that it is impossible to be that sure and right each and every time with each and every decision that we make and not be proven it might have been a mistake, true?

That said why do we as human beings, some of us, seem to always second guess our decisions in life after the fact?

Come on people I know that I am NOT alone here with this unsure way of thinking?

Mommy and Daddy, spouses, other relatives or even friends cannot always be the only ones to take total responsibility in all matters of living/life?

True as a married couple all important decisions should be a joint proposal and therefore decision…and that is how we all seem to feel the unified choice has been made and accepted by both parties; now that sounds like a legal contract?

But aren’t most important decisions?

Of course from engagement to marriage to buying a home to purchasing cars and furniture as well as having children all decisions in any relationship should be made jointly, and we have in most everything that we have done over these nearly forty-four years of wedded bliss we have been having a meeting of the minds or at least a definitive acceptance after all was said and done when one makes a choice on our behalf.

So although, I had difficulty sleeping last night due to our most recent purchase and know that if all else fails we could probably move into the van to live… KIDDING!

Maybe or maybe not.

Today after tossing and turning sort of night I crunched some of our own numbers again and realized that we are fine and will be for a very long time…Any-who at the length of time we kept our last car I probably won’t even be here when this one will be able to be traded in, Geez it should be paid off in half that time, I hope, today they give you a mini sort of a mortgage, only if you qualify and we did, of course…or we should hold onto it for another fourteen years! Kidding! Or maybe not… After all by then I would only be seventy- eight and Dad lived till seventy-nine, but Mom only seventy…Oops there I go again, stop that me! Too MAUDLIN!

I really, really, really could still be here and I definitely hope that I am!

On that note of a better sweet dreams sleeping night tonight, since there are no backsies anyway and all decisions are final and it is ours no matter how much my silly self worries about it and so it is a BIG waste of my time, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask all you to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Oops we did it...

...AGAIN!

Of course we were just going to look after the Farmer’s Market and lunch once more at Jack’s on Marion… but we did promise we would stop by the Palm Auto Mall to see Rob Cornell our sales guy and we did.

He is the one that was checking the prices for us in our ballpark range for either a Town and Country or Caravan, we ended up, after all the numbers were crunched, with going against our initial plan of just looking again and waiting until the fall, and OOPS we did it again! And yes, we did buy a new mini van, and not a 2014 but a 2015!

It has all Hubby’s wish lists bells and whistles that he had wanted plus more, back up camera, tow package , automatic doors, GPS, Blue Tooth, Sirius radio and on and on and on and on…and yes in a price range that we said we could handle within a dollar. Happy Birthday HUBBY!

And so we did it!

Buyer’s remorse followed almost immediately, but that’s just me, and no I am happy we did it, it is more reliable and less likely to break down and so many other logical things that you remind your self of when trading in a 14 year old car!

And ole blaze has been replaced with even less than her bragged about mileage of less than 43K with a mere 18 miles when we left the Punta Gorda sales office, but now about six miles more added to the NEW odometer with gas mileage about twice that of the ole girl… of what we were getting and highway is even better and so perhaps we may leave our ten mile radius by home sweet home?

On that note of praying we did do the right thing, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all kindly to count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

PS If at all wondering which of the two we bought, it was the Dodge Caravan in Cashmere colored, a vehicle we had never had before… new to us anyway!

Not a good day...

Days come and days go... THANK HEAVENS!
The going part that is…but wait, there is more…

Well as days go and it did start out fairly normal for us, anyway.

Both of us awoke at our normal times for me just after six and Hubby around eight-ish and then we both decided to have our lighter breakfasts around nine of Carnation sugar free chocolate instant breakfasts, his straight up with fat free milk and mine with a banana and fat free milk, and I proceeded to shower and to get ready for my independent exercise day today. I know, before exercise it is to loosen up the muscles; a trick I was taught way back when.

Any-who, oddly enough when I got out of the shower even after I blew-dried my hair, even with the air conditioning on in our home, even though it said outside was in the low sixties, and inside ala air that had shut itself off it was  around seventy-five, but I was sweating profusely. Instead of checking my temp I checked my glucose, which was only 114 that is more or less within the normal range less than two hours after eating. I had recalled vividly our neighbor in the shopping center where our restaurant had been, he, Bill, had the mattress store right next door had been diagnosed with diabetes and he also would sweat quite a bit. Dr. Nord had said I am a type 2 diabetic but with diet, exercise and Lisoprinol it was being maintained. So when I get a symptom that seemed logical to me thus the glucose finger stick test meter.

But that was not it, and so I said I must still be warm from the hair dryer and although the thermometer was reading sixty-eight outside and usually we thin skinned Floridians would normally be wearing a sweater and I chose not to, but brought it along with as well as my cooling vest this time, not on but with…got it?

Oddly enough by the time I got into our car and to the rehab/gym my head’s perimeter was moist even with the auto-air on to; you know at my far head behind my ears and at my neck…

My determination got the best of me and when I saw a different type of stationary bike that I hadn’t tried before that was available, they have three different kinds, I hopped aboard the one yet to be tried by me.

Today was the day that I was upping my ante with an additional five minutes! This one also had plenty of computerized choices in its settings and once explained by Joe, one of the PT’s, I took a five in resistance, which gave me what I felt was preferable for this newbie who had only been short lived back in the saddle again…I accomplished my goal of fifteen minutes, upping it from the no resistance ones with less time on both Monday and Wednesday of only ten minutes. I nearly fell off the bike from exhaustion and numbness but landed on my walker/transporter’s seat and walked it while sitting on it over to my next conquest.

I had put my cooling vest on in the car and walked in with it and wore it the whole time but was still now very sweaty, and yet my determination went forth to another contraption, piece of equipment my ole pal the total gym. I also drank from my thermos of my kept cold club soda.

My personal goal upon this object of torture was to increase those 3X25 reps to 4X25 reps, or totaling 100, and so I did.

By now I was pretty wiped out and very sweaty/ glistening?

But I did walk out ala standing using the walker and so I left determined to go to our next decisive location, lunch at Firehouse Subs and salads restaurant on our way back up to look at some more possible automobile choices. They have that salad I so love that is a mere 390 calories that is so big that we take nearly half of it home with us!

Anyway, we ate our lunch with ice waters again, this time Hubby had a brisket sub and when I tried to get up again I could not!

And by the time we got to the car via Hubby pushing me we had a debate on whether or not to look at any cars today.

You see, Hubby had wanted me to take a test ride/drive with him in any we may have chose but I said no that I couldn’t.

And when we got there the salesman took us a few MILES away to where they keep their 2014 vehicles but we followed in our car and once there it was the wrong one that we had been told about, so Hubby and I opted to go home and forget about…

He had to wheel me in the house and  while in the car I had called my neuro, Smiley, but his nurse did not call me back until a couple of hours later and asked if we could come in on Tuesday up to Sarasota, and I said, by this time I was able to walk again, but each time it happens I worry that I won’t be able for good, she left me open to rescheduling if need be…Hubby has come to the conclusion that I should nix the gym for a while and just walk around more here and when we go places, of course with my super duper transformer walker/transporter, just in case…

And so I made the deal with him for Monday to stay home and that’s okay since it is his birthday and our Number One Son is coming down…we will see what we will see, the pool is down to seventy three over ten, make that twelve degrees too cool for me to go in… and perhaps maybe Hubby will eventually make that solar panel that he made for us and our neighbor up north in good ole NJ back in the 1980's that is still functioning and then with our solar blanket who knows I could be swimming in December and beyond!

On that note of oh to float with hope, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share your overages with you know how and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Fixing up the place...

Removing items that are cluttering up the works; I do believe that “purging” is the proper terminology that works here as so do I.

The mini project for today was the tall shelves over the toilet for storage. It is all my fault that when we redecorated ala Hurricane Charley and I wanted a girlie bathroom with a calming spa like feel with pastels and a seashell motif of accessories of course all the fixtures are white, my mirror is a large framed oval and I opted for a pedestal sink so Hubby’s bathroom was the masculine oak and fish motif accessories, also white fixtures except for his vanity, mirror and cabinet all in oak, as well as his wooden blinds.

Yep, my decision to lessen my storage capacity and utilize the close linen closet just adjacent to my personal bath, but still the shelves became cluttered.

For some reason I was the caretaker of all the first aid equipment, meaning band-aids Neosporin and its generic companions, as well as peroxide, in the large economy size, why, I do not even know… barely leaving room for my facial creams, make up and other womanly beautification necessities! Oh and yes I do keep my Woolite in there due to washing my bathing suit in my sink when I enter the shower in there after the pool…oops TMI?

No, just showing my logical efficiency methinks, hmm?

This is what I did do the better part of the morning, since my shelving proved to be adequate when I reorganized and my pedestal will not be leaving in the near future since I really, really, like it… I removed everything and noticed that some shelves were stained and since it seems that this Target product used heavy duty cardboard on the back of this cottage shutter styled unit after I cleaned with Lysol every one of the three shelves two behind the shutterettes made of what appears to have the feel of PVC and one open on the bottom above the toilet, I painted them all white their old color, but renewed!

Atop it had my idea of cute a wooden sailboat on a pedestal, washed and dried, and two scented fuzzy bears bought at a crafts fair, one in a sailor suit tie and hat included, and the other in a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt with a life preserver around him, whimsical and cute in my opinion, sticking with our household theme, living on the water and all… both bears are bare at this time, still drying outside and their clothes hang on my bath-seat having being washed in Woolite!

I got rid of all the boxes of band aids by dumping all the band aids into one rigid plastic opaque white snap box, from previously used Q-tips and the facials from Oil of Olay similar containers I kept too, even those onions that we use in casseroles solid white plastic containers I kept and found a use for placing those tube medicines in too! Neat and for most able to stack and see through too. Zip-lock bags were used for any paper information for thermometers, motorized facial machines, and the like, even the few washcloths I keep in there and poufs for bathing, all washed and Zip-locked after I chose one to hang in the shower/tub area.

 Medicine is kept in the kitchen due to humidity.

Just getting rid of all those band aid boxes enabled so much more found room, and it looks so much neater now; tangible evidence of productivity, Wow what a feeling!

And now we are not expecting a large family contingency for the holidays, long gone are those days sadly… I just felt it was a practical necessary way to keep busy!

Today, we finally were able to get the replacement pilings for the boat lift and Number One Son will be here Monday to help Hubby with that, the lift has been broken since last summer, and so many things happened that it was never the right time to take care of it, something always took away that’s priority!

Life happens, but now it will get done, one of the last few things of cost to up keeping of a waterfront home necessity, the boat has been sitting on the side front driveway on its trailer all this time since the concern was that the lift could have gotten worse with it on during Hurricane Season, which by the way isn’t over till the thirtieth of this month, any-who... the water is cooler, no amoebas or other hazards to worry about. Most of the work though is done from the dock with pumps, since the pilings are 19’ (2) and 20’ (2) long and only about nine feet sticks out when all is said and done. Hubby put the originals in back in 2003 for our new boat the Sea Hunt; we had had a deck boat before that, but did not need it, i.e. the lift.

So since the fellow who delivered the pilings as well as the wraps and stainless steal nails was fearful to pull in the side yard with double gates our raised beds have nails holding them together and he was afraid he could get them in his tires and so he dropped all four pilings just on the other side of the gate and Hubby has been winching them to pull them in, he wrapped the rope around the shed, our sturdy stucco one cemented to the floor with hurricane ties etc.!

And so far two have made the trek into our private yard and two are exposed to the world… tomorrow’s another day…

On that note of terrific accomplishments, not for the world but in our own little one…allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!