It's Summertime Already

I saw one of those funny e-cards the other day on FB. It said something along the lines of, "I forgot to be appreciative for the 3 hours of spring before summer arrived." After the long drawn out winter, I had promised friends and family I wasn't going to complain about summer this year. In fact, I believe I actually said, "If I complain about the summer heat, just slap me." Of course, I only said that because I was bound and determined I wasn't going to complain about the Okla. heat. However, I can't help but remark, "One hundred degree heat on May 5th? Really? That's how it is nowadays?" The same day we were recovering from the 100 plus days here, a woman on FB that lives in Maine was worrying about a possible snowstorm or hurricane. But, for clarification, I'm not complaining, I'm just reporting.

Here's hoping we get spring back. We just had a hailstorm hit our neighborhood. It was smallish - marble size maybe, nothing golf or baseball sized. A few weeks ago, I had a little intersection with a deer that did some damage to my car. Just to be on the safe side, I had decided to not have the damage repaired until after the traditional hail season was over.

P.S. Here's a little early evening storm report from last night. This is what the clouds looked like when the high winds started. It turns out some of our neighbors weren't so lucky last night. There was a path of torn up farm equipment and one person had damage at his house. This was after the tornado warning was lifted. We still had lots of clouds left over.

Elaine, aka, the Red Dirt Cowgirl

Ch-ch-ch-changes

We had another milestone in our family yesterday. Our youngest son, who had already moved to Austin in early January, rented a small truck and moved the rest of the furniture that his Nana had given him. Since he's never driven anything larger than a pickup truck, my husband rode part of the way with him to make sure he had gotten the hang of driving a small truck.

As he turned the corner, going south from my Mother's where he picked up the bed, I realized I was witnessing a landmark moment in my youngest child's life - moving furniture to an out of state home. So, of course I couldn't resist taking a picture as he drove. (Please note red dirt at the crossroads, this is only a mile from our last red dirt road in the neighborhood.) I followed behind until he decided he thought he knew what he was doing. Earlier in the week, the national weather predictions were for tornadoes and other lovely stuff for Texas. However, by the time we got back home and checked the weather, it seemed like the weather predictions had changed. Not that anyone was upset over the possibility of not having to worry about tornado warnings. The big deal in the national weather was more snow for the Northeast. I swear, once again, I don't know how they can stand it up there.

It had been such a busy weekend, I was so beat that I actually fell asleep before midnight. This was the 2nd night in a row - that's almost a landmark for me. So, I was asleep when my son sent me a text message at 2:12 a.m. saying he had arrived. We have promised we're going to Austin this spring - assuming spring arrives. I'm beginning to wonder. I'm starting to research Austin spots to visit. Mainly, I want to find out why Austin is weird. My husband told me last night 150 people move to Austin every single day, but only 20 people are moving away daily. It's gonna get a bit more crowded. I had heard on the radio that it has the 3rd worst traffic in America. Right now, our son is enjoying the convenience of a 7 minute walk to work. I doubt he fully appreciates how convenient life is for him right now. Someday when he's trapped on a freeway day after day, it will hit him. However, the inconvenience of a small starter apartment may finally overcome the practicality of walking vs driving. Right now he's just having fun, setting up his 1st apartment right out of college. I remember those days, and they were fun. I had bought him the large Pampered Chef pizza pan for him to have a little house warming present. There's nothing like pizza on a Pampered Chef stone, even if it's just a simple one made with croissant bread dough from a tube, which is one of my very favorite easy meals.

         Elaine, aka, the Red Dirt Cowgirl

Moving On

I've been giving myself pep talks about surviving winter. Mainly I've been telling myself it's time to quit taking it so hard and it's time to move on. I'd like to say I've risen above the occasion and have made the best of it. But, alas, I haven't. I'm taking it hard, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. We've made jokes about living in Alaskahoma, but deep down, I know it's nothing like living up north. I don't even know how they are surviving winter. I guess the less said about it, the better. Why belabor the point, it's not like we can change the weather.

Old gas station in late 1970's. This was around the corner from our first house we lived in 35 years ago when we were young married.  It was torn down years ago, a trailer now sits on the spot.

The bottom line: life moves on, things change, I need to quit obsessing on the "I hate winter theme". 

I'm starting to let the winter of 2013-2014 to wear me down. Here is is March 3rd and I'm trying to figure out new ways to stay warm. Our grandsons came on Friday night for what we thought was an overnight visit. The bad weather hit again before we could get them back home, so we have extended house guests. Of course, you don't mind when it's your grandkids. I can now say I know what thunder sleet is, we had that new experience yesterday. It hit during church and we had to wrap up church early before the sermon. We barely made it back home, driving through another episode of the stuff before we got to our house. Luckily I had a little warning Friday afternoon that they were coming for a visit, or my cooking might have had to get more creative than usual. At least we have electricity and wood for the wood stove. But, I'm ready for spring. This is ridiculous. I'm ready for life to move on. We've decided to work on our house to get it ready to sell and this prolonged winter is cramping my style.

My church has another pancake supper tomorrow night. That is, if we can get to the church. I kind of need to know, I'm in charge of the pancake batter. I guess the day is getting ready to unfold and the news & weather will tell us how bad it really is. What I really hate about the current thought in the news/weather world is how they high jack the programming and just take over. I mean it's really not necessary to have an entire morning of "Aint it awful out there be careful, to know that "it's really awful out there". I get it, and I bet everyone else does too.

I realized when I reviewed the pancake recipe from last year's post, that I don't know what I did with the 97 cent Easter baskets with lids that I used to make up all the extra batches of batter. Oh well, guess I can go buy me another batch of cheap Easter baskets. I think this year I will box them up later so I don't have to do that again.  

Time Seems To Be A Concept I Fail To Understand

I know I've been busy, but I can't believe I lost track that I hadn't blogged here in so long, although I had made a conscious effort to save my writing for my e-book. It seems like I'm getting closer to having it ready for publication. I just had to shut down whatever, in order to channel my thoughts to my e3-book.  I've also been trying to put some time and effort in to building my food related business. Some things haven't changed: Facebook still has those mean people that want to spew their venom wherever they go and the political fanatics are still compelled to inflict their opinions on the rest of us. Plus, there are those idiots who click on 73 things to "share" with the rest of the world - and that's just on one day. I figured out how to block their generosity on my PC, but not my cellphone, so I may have to say bye-bye. They're taking up on my bandwidth and making it frustrating to read FB on my phone.

Christmas was nice, although it didn't seem to last long enough. But, all the festivities leading up to it were fun. The most heart warming thing we did was deliver Christmas boxes to 2 families that were not having much of a Christmas.

One way I've been entertaining myself in the kitchen with are Lava Cakes. As someone once said about something else, "the possibilities are endless".

Our youngest son has relocated to Austin, so I see South Texas vacations in our future. He finished his Master's program exactly 3 semesters after finishing his Bachelors. He was always sensible and practical - when he was 3 he actually told me one time, "Mother, it's time to put me to bed, it's my bedtime."  Plus, to top it off, he had 4 job offers. He took the one with a company on the top 100 companies to work for - so that seems promising. My brain is so non-engineering oriented, I'm amazed I gave birth to a child that was able to make math and science work so well for him, since I'd made a personal vow years ago to try and live my life without either.

It's been so cold at our house, let's just say it's "winter challenged", that I've been researching beach vacations for future trips. I can hardly wait for warm spring days. Actually, I'd like to experience warm winter days - I think we've had enough cold days to freeze the bugs. In the meantime, I just keep a heater close to the computer desk.





 

I've had a little excitement the past few weeks. At the end of the summer,  I got "Best of Show" at the county fair on my story I wrote about my grandparents, which of course is only truly meaningful for my family. Also in the same time span, I learned I had a recipe selected to be published in the latest Mary Engelbreit's dessert cookbook. It was my Berry Frozen Yogurt recipe that I made up a while back. Since it was an original recipe, that was pretty exciting. I had already given up that it would be selected. I had checked and checked my email account numerous times and had decided I hadn't made the cut. I had even stopped bothering to check my email for a notice, as I'd decided my recipe wasn't going to be accepted.

My mother's house got broken into and they stole all the TV's - which has been both a complication and scary. Although, the worst physical thing was the carpet getting ruined from broken glass in the carpet in 2 rooms, emotionally, it's unsettling to keep going to a house that's been broken into. You feel so violated, and wonder if it could happen again. Since I live the closest, I was the one that dealt with the insurance company. She has recently gotten her settlement, but we still have to tear out the ruined carpet. So, I guess I know what I'm going to be supervising soon.

We had our high school alumni event, which used to be a yearly event, but in recent years has become an every other year event. Plus, the event has been changed from Thanksgiving weekend to the weekend of our Fort Cobb fair which should help attendance and will give people an extra activity and reason to come home for. My sisters and I will be taking over as the secretarial committee. I have a feeling that's going to turn into a big deal - but we have 2 more years before it happens again, so we don't have to do any mailings right away.

My biggest deal of this summer & fall is that I decided to become a Pampered Chef consultant. I have read and reread the policy. If I interpreted it correctly, I don't think I'm allowed to advertise it on this page, so I won't unless I learn otherwise. However, I did start a facebook page for my business, which is allowed, in addition to my regular Pampered Chef website. I think I'm going to do my first vendor booth activity in early November and am trying to get organized for that. Also, I'm up to 440 Pinterest followers, which seems kind of amazing, since I have done absolutely nothing to recruit anyone, other than pinning stuff. I do have a funny story about that though. The last time I went to the big hobby and craft store in Lawton, I ran into a woman I used to work with at the Dept. of Human Services. I called out to her and after we said our hellos, she said, "I've really enjoyed following you on Pinterest!" I told her I probably had a serious addiction to the thing. She said she did too. I told her, that I guessed that was why we were where we were. That day, I was just trying to get some information on a better way to make a mesh wreath. For some reason, I usually can't get videos to play on my computer and most of the tutorials on the internet involving mesh also involve videos, so I had been batting zero when it comes to figuring out how to work with mesh. But I found a very helpful clerk at the big hobby and craft store that helped explain it to me and I think I've solved my problem on what didn't make sense. To be so crafty, I really can have a mental block when it comes to understanding directions.

And then...there's the consignment store booth. That store ended up opening about 1 1/2 months later than originally anticipated. All I can say is I've started and I've still got a ways to go before I'm going to be finished. But, it can't be too soon, because I've been driving myself nuts hanging onto things that I need to get sold.  
               Elaine, aka the Red Dirt Cowgirl

Summertime

I don't know where this summer has gone...but I've had some good news on the Western Front. A guy called me a few days ago and said he's going to try and open my kind of junk store in Carnegie, Oklahoma (consignment booths) and he wanted to know if I wanted to do a booth. As I still have stuff stashed here and there as I'm driving my husband crazy, what could I say but "Yes." He should know something towards the end of the week. It seems there was a little matter of a leak at the building that he was having to get the city involved in. Here goes hoping the leak gets fixed because this would be the perfect time of the year to set up a booth. The days will start getting a little cooler (I hope). Maybe we could even have a decent length of fall - it could happen. So here's to the re-emergence of my BELLE AMI FLEA booth.