A Sweet Kind of Hodgepodge…

 

Y’all, it feels like 110 degrees, outside, ( it’s actually only 96) so I’m relaxing with the Wednesday Hodgepodge, inside, with the air conditioning on the low 70’s!  As they sometimes say here in the south, “My mama didn’t raise a fool!”

With all that being said, in the absence of a pool, I’m going to dive right into today’s Hodgepodge!  Today’s meme is based on the theme of “sweet”.

If you’d like to join in the fun, simply click Joyce’s button at the top of this post!

1. The sweetness of summer…where have you found it recently? If you’re in the Southern hemisphere, feel free to tell us about the sweetness you’re finding in winter.

For the past two Saturdays I’ve found sweetness in spending time with the entire family and getting to see some place different!  Both weekends, our son, Brad, and his wife, Jennifer, graciously offered to host everyone at their home in the country. (It was the first time any of us had been there since they moved in.) 

The first weekend we celebrated the Fourth of July, and the second weekend we celebrated Brad’s thirty-fifth birthday.  Of course, in these days of covid 19, we celebrated outside, socially distanced, with many fans blowing on us, but it was very sweet, none-the-less.  The grand kids all had a great idea, and celebrated with a water sprinkler underneath Evan’s trampoline!  I can’t believe how big they’ve all gotten!

2. Take your sweet time, sweet tooth, home sweet home, short but sweet, the sweet smell of success, sweet talk…choose a sweet idiom and tell us how it fits your life currently?

I’ll have to say “home sweet home” since that’s where we’ve been for the majority of the past four and one-half months!  I can count, on one hand, the number of “outings” we’ve had!

3. Sweet as honey, sweet as sugar, or sweet as pie, which phrase do you use when a sweet phrase is called for? What’s the last sweet treat you indulged in?

I don’t think I really use any of these phrases, but I’ll choose “sweet as sugar”.

The last sweet treat I indulged in [yesterday] was strawberry shortcake.  I made one, and it was delicious!

4. First thing that comes to mind when you hear the word fidget?

I think of those silly little “fidget spinners” that were all the rage a few years back.  I have a red one that lights up, somewhere…

None of my children were fidgety, but Brad was what I always called “a diddler”.  He was always touching things.  Now Brad has a little “diddler” of his own, now.  Isn’t Evan cute with his two front teeth missing?

(photo borrowed from Jennifer’s FB page)

5. Share with us one of your favorite childhood travel memories.

Sometimes, during the summer, my parents would let me go to Jacksonville, Florida to spend a week with my brother and his wife, who were nine years older than me.  I think I may have been about ten or eleven when this summer tradition began.  I loved the feeling of “independence” and always enjoyed the activities that my sister-in-law planned for me. (It might have been a trip to the beach, shopping, or something as simple as playing a board game.)  I haven’t thought about those trips in a long time, but I have fond memories of those days!

Random:

As of this week, our vegetable canning season has ended. I can’t tell you how happy I am about that!  I also can’t tell you how horrified we were when one of our freezers broke in the middle of canning season!  Do you realize there are NO new freezers to buy, at this time?  (There are no swimming pools either, but I don’t want one of those anyway.)

Fortunately, we’d kept a very old freezer that had belonged to Ed’s parents.  We plugged it up and it still worked.  A major crisis was averted, at least for now.

In the meantime, we called a repairman to see if our 46 year-old, broken freezer could be repaired since there are no new freezers to buy, at this time.  It turned out to be a simple fix, but not really a cheap one. ($147)  So far, so good, the freezer’s doing its job. Would you believe we’ve been through FOUR new freezers during the life cycle of this little 46 year-old freezer.  Crazy, is it not?  They don’t make stuff like they used to!

 

 

I’m Still Standing…

Just when I thought I had rejoined the world of blogging–working in the garden plus new health issues caused me to take another hiatus.  I’m happy to say, the garden is now history and, once again, I’m feeling better–or at least I was before I began trying to write this post.  It seems WordPress has changed [more than a few things] during my absence, but I digress…

When Ed planted our garden, this year, I began to pray for God to bless us with a bountiful harvest so we could share it with others.  I’m here to tell you, God hears and answers prayers!  God blessed and we shared our veggies!  I remember one day, in particular, when Ed brought me one-too-many buckets of squash, I stopped him at the door.  I refused to let him bring them into my already crowded kitchen!  The veggie table was full, as was the refrigerator!  Fortunately, just down the road, others were more than happy to take those squash off Ed’s hands. We shared our veggies with family, friends, and with people we didn’t even know.

The vegetable table was always filled with something!

I don’t know why, but my health always seems to pick the worst possible times to go wonky.  About the time we were finishing up with canning green beans, (just before Memorial Day) I began to have an earache.  That stupid earache plagued me the entire summer!  After four trips to three different medical specialists, taking two different rounds of antibiotics, using two different kinds of ear drops, six weeks worth of Sudafed and Flonaise, and a whole lot of miserable days later, I’m finally feeling better!  I haven’t had an earache in three whole days.

In other news, Ed finally began to clean out his parents’ house back in May, with the help of our daughter. (It’s about time, his mom has been deceased for nearly seven years.)  Our daughter listed the furniture on Facebook and it sold quickly. Only Ed’s old piano, a swivel chair, and six kitchen chairs remain, along with all of the dishes in the kitchen cabinets…  Dishes are “my thing” and I’m not looking forward to going through those cabinets!  I’ll want to bring most of them home with me, and I have no more room!  To solve the dilemma of what to do with “stuff” we can’t bare to part with, we’ve ordered a storage house…  Is anybody else out there guilty of hanging onto “stuff”?

Saying “goodbye” to my old friend “Classy” after 19 years

Speaking of “stuff” we can’t bare to part with, I finally gave Ed permission (for the third time) to sell “Classy”, my 2001 black PT Cruiser.  That car was my all-time favorite vehicle, and I’d had it since March of 2001!  (I wanted that car so bad I actually went to the dealership, alone, to talk with a salesperson about buying it.)  I thought I wanted to keep “Classy” forever, but things change, and reality eventually sets in. We’d had “Classy” up for sale a couple of times during the past year or so, but had always ended up removing the “for sale” sign after a few days.  Somehow, it never felt right to sell her.  I began to pray about this, and God answered my prayer again.  Shortly after Ed put the sign on the car, for the third time, a woman came by ready to buy the car!  Not only was she ready to buy it, she seemed as passionate about the car as I had always been.  We sold the car to her, and I’ve had absolute peace about the sale. In fact, the other day, we saw her driving the car in town and I didn’t even feel bad!

In addition to dealing with a garden, relentless earaches, cleaning out a house, and selling a beloved car, Ed and I have also been trying to survive this era of Covid 19 and all of the craziness that is accompanying it!  Like many, we’ve been mostly housebound for the past four and a half months.

For us, shopping consists of using Wal-mart pickup service or an occasional trip to the neighborhood dollar store for milk or bread. Once or twice we’ve put on our masks and actually shopped for ourselves someplace other than Wal-mart.  It felt so liberating!  Of course, we’ve had to make a few doctor visits during this time, too, which were a bit unusual. (wearing masks, waiting in the car until called, etc.)

Our church closed in March, along with all of the others.  We learned how to enjoy Sunday School using Zoom, and Sunday services via Facebook.  Once our church reopened, after several weeks, we attended services a couple of times.  We discovered we didn’t really feel comfortable attending services with the virus still making the rounds, so we’ve continued watching from home.  We were glad we made that choice when the virus began to hit some of our area churches–ours included!  When will this virus ever end?

Something else I’m ready to see end is the nonsense we’ve been witnessing on the news over the past few weeks… I do believe our country has gone mad!  When did wearing a mask become such a controversial thing? When did it become “acceptable” to deface or destroy public property?  When did only certain lives matter?  These are definitely deeply disturbing times we’re living in…and on that note I’ll end this post!  I hope to write again, soon.