Sunday, September 29, 2013

Cancer Free!!!!!!

Cancer Free!!!!! On Monday, Dad went to the Cancer Center for PET Scan, MRI, and blood workup.  On Thursday, Dad went to his oncologist’s office to receive a checkup, and the results of all the tests performed on Monday.  The oncologist looked at my Dad and said “Congratulations, you no longer have cancer! As precautions, and to be proactive, we will still need to watch and run tests every 3 months to ensure this cancer doesn’t come back”.
My husband and I put eyes on my Dad on Saturday morning.  He looks really good.  What’s amazing; he now has all kinds of brown hair on his head (before it was gray and he had very little), and his face looks vibrant and glowing.  He no longer looks like his age, 71 years old.  He looks like he’s 15 years younger.  Dad’s lost all kinds of weight; he used to be 6’2”, 240 pounds. Now he’s 6’0”, about 125pounds. 
Dad is in good spirits, he’s kicked cancer’s butt!!!!!!
He will need to put some weight on, gain back his strength and get some well deserved sleep.  As for his height, he lost 2 inches from the surgery to his vertebrae, and cancer.
To all of my Blogger friends, thank you for your support, kind words, and wisdom; all which helped my family through this stressful medical situation involving Dad.
 
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Wednesday, September 25, 2013

******Give-Away******

Give – Away
Complete Wilderness Training Manual
Be Prepared
By Hugh McManners
And The Pocket Medic
From Adventure Medical Kits
 
The official Boy Scouts of America guide to mastering outdoor skills and staying alive in challenging environments, complete wilderness, a training manual enables everyone, expert to novice alike, to answer the call of the wild with confidence. 
Provides step by step instructions, with clear photographs, and artwork, to explain the key principles of survival.
 Understand how to find food and water, construct an emergency shelter, and safely navigate all kinds of hostile terrain.
 Learn to expect the unexpected and be prepared for any situation.
 Also included, the Pocket Medic from Adventure Medical Kits.  This kit contains items for wound care, burns, and blisters. The Pocket Medic has sterile gauze dressing, antiseptic wipes, adhesive fabric bandages, triple antibiotic ointment, moleskin, ibuprofen, After Bite Sting and itch relief wipe, Splinter picker/tick remover forceps and safety pins.
Rules
To enter, place a comment below on how you feel these two items will benefit you. Once you’ve typed your comment and transmitted your comment, you will be entered in the give – away. 
All Entries must be received by Friday, October 4, 2013 by 11:59 PM CDT. The drawing will be held Saturday afternoon, October 5, 2013. All names will be placed in a bowl, and a name will be pulled from the bowl Saturday afternoon, October 5th. If your name is picked as a winner, I will post your first name on my blog site along with my e-mail address. You will have 4 business days to respond to me by e-mail. If there is no response, your entry will be null (void), and I will be required to pick another winner.
How to Enter
All entries must be made on the comment form of this post.  Only one entry per person. Good Luck Everyone!!!!

 
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Sunday, September 22, 2013

Garden, Hot Pepper Jelly, & Goodbye to Man's Best Friend


 

My beans are doing very well, for only being in the ground from seed three weeks.   I have several flowers, and soon will have beans……hopefully before it starts getting too cool here in Oklahoma.

We have a couple more Japanese eggplants getting ready for harvest in about a week. 

The peas are a little larger, still no indication of potential blooms. 

There were a few days where we received some good rain, and a slight cold front roll through.  Temperatures at night are now dipping down into the 50’s.
*****

My husband, Bulldog Man, came home with a bag full of jalapenos from one of his friends at work who had a garden.  I needed to do something with the jalapenos, so they wouldn’t spoil, since they were extremely ripe.  I attempted to make hot pepper jelly.  Hopefully, it will taste good.  Here’s the recipe if you’re interested.


           Hot Pepper Jelly    Recipe by Kraft
2 red peppers seeded, chopped fine

2 green peppers, seeded, chopped fine

10 large jalapenos, seeded, and chopped fine

1 cup cider vinegar

1 package of Sure Jell Fruit Pectin

½ teaspoon butter or margarine

5 cups sugar in separate bowl

 

Directions

Place peppers in pot, add vinegar, and stir in pectin.  Add butter to reduce foaming.  Bring mixture to full rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Stir in sugar.  Return to full rolling boil for exactly 1 minute.  Remove from heat.  Skim off any foam with metal spoon.

Place in prepared pint size canning jars, remove air bubbles, clean rims, and put top and ring in place, put jar in water bath and process for 10 minutes.

 *****


Update on one of our animals, Bug.  On September 11, 2013 we had to put down Bug.  Several days before, Bug jumped off of our couch, and pounced hard on her two front paws, causing the impact to be pushed into her spine causing paralysis.  We brought Bug immediately to our veterinarian and she advised this is a common problem with small dogs with long bodies and short legs (watch out for your little dog’s people).  How do you prevent a dog from being a dog?  You don’t……  The Vet placed Bug on steroids, a pain killer, physical therapy, and laser therapy, after doing an exam.  While completing an exam the doctor ran her fingers down Bug’s spine, she yelped, and bit the Vet.  The Vet proceeded on pulling hair in the pads of her back legs, and she moved briefly.   We setup a plan of action to take care of our little girl.  Surgery was not an option, it would be severe, and there would be no guarantee she would be okay; and we were told this could happen again.  We set Bug up for laser therapy every other day.  When we returned for our second laser therapy, the Vet once again checked Bug’s back.  This time she didn’t yelp or feel a thing, a test was done on her back paws, no signs of movement or pain there either.  Another laser treatment was performed; we went home and followed our instructions from the Vet, medications, and physical therapy.  We continued the physical therapy; there was no movement from Bug at all.  The only change now, she refused to eat or drink, and it was obvious even though she was still with us, her spirit was totally gone.  We brought her back to the Vet. After a discussion with the Vet, it was in the best interest to put Bug down.  There was nothing more we could do for our little girl, and we didn’t want to see her suffer. 

She’ll be missed dearly!
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Thursday, September 19, 2013

Funny!!!










Found on Face Book
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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Potatoes, Seeds, & Retirement


Here’s a small harvest of some of my potatoes; notice the unique shapes.  I’m not sure why they grew this way but hey, they’re potatoes, and what can I say?

*****

I try to share my seeds whenever possible, this afternoon I sealed and labeled several brown envelopes with seeds to share with some of my friends.  They’ll go out tomorrow, being that I’ve already been to the post office this morning. 

 

*****

 

I overnight express mailed my retirement paperwork to the state of Florida this morning.  In a couple of weeks, I will officially be retired, and will start collecting my retirement.  Bulldog Man and I sat down prior to filing, and had a lengthy conversation about retiring now, versus retiring when I hit 62 years of age. We analyzed the situation, and decided now was better for us than later. There have been 8 cities and towns that have filed bankruptcy in 2010 in the United States (2 of the filings were rejected).  In addition, 28 utilities, water districts, hospital authorities, and other municipal units have gone bankrupt.  With this information, along with the way our economy is going, I’m better of collecting retirement now with a small penalty than to wait until I’m 62 years of age, when there may not be anything to collect.

If you were planning on retiring and collecting your retirement at the normal age of 62, 65, or 72, do your homework before hand, to make sure you’ll have money in your retirement account. 

Have you checked your retirement account lately?  Don’t be surprised when you go to retire, be proactive, and on top of your future.

 

 

 


**Pic Source: consumermiser.com


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Sunday, September 15, 2013

Grass Again!!! Pasta Primavera


Yesterday was such a beautiful day; temperatures were in the low 70’s when Bulldog Man and I pulled out the lawn mower, bagger, and weed whacker, to tackle the grass on the property.  We were able to bag most of the front, part of the side, and all of the back of the property. 

In another couple of weeks, we won’t be worrying about cutting the grass.  It will start turning colder and the grass with die off until spring.  Both Bulldog Man and I will be looking forward to the break of cutting the grass.

We picked a few of our chocolate peppers (actually, Bulldog Man hit the plant while cutting the grass around the garden boxes and one of the limbs’ broke off).  Instead of wasting the peppers, we harvested the seeds (I have even pulled some for SciFiChick), and chopped the peppers up to place in dinner. 

What’s for dinner???

Pasta Primavera!!!

Talk about delicious and somewhat healthy, I made a pasta primavera with pasta, various vegetables and some parmesan cheese.
 
 
 
Pasta Primavera

3 carrots cut into thin strips

2 medium zucchini cut into thin strips

2 yellow squash cut into thin strips

1 red pepper cut into thin strips

1 yellow pepper cut into thin strips

3 chocolate peppers cut into thin strips (I put these in because we broke a branch on our plant)

Olive oil to your taste (preference)

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon dried herbs de Provence

1 box of bowtie pasta

Cherry tomatoes cut in half (you select how many to put in, I used 12

Parmesan cheese (to your liking)

Salt and Pepper (to your liking)

 

Place all cut up vegetables, except the tomatoes, on a baking sheet, coat the vegetables with Olive oil, red pepper flakes,  herbs de Provence, salt and pepper, and bake at 400 degrees until cooked thoroughly, about 20 – 25 minutes.  I like my vegetables slightly crunchy.  Boil water and cook the bowtie pasta for 8 minutes.  Strain pasta when done cooking and make sure to save a cup or two of the pasta water.  Place pasta in large bowl, dump roasted vegetables over the pasta, put your tomatoes in the bowl, and mix gently.  Add Parmesan cheese to bowl and serve hot.  If you want to have more liquid to your dish, pour a little of the pasta water you saved over the dish.
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Thursday, September 12, 2013

Join, Welcome, & Thank You; How I Met Trouble




I would like to start my post today by welcoming a new Blogger

to my blog.   Welcome Jaz from the Octoberfarm blog. Thank you for joining my blog, please sit back and enjoy the ride.   Friends, please check out the Octoberfarm blog, you won’t be disappointed.  Jaz is a wonderful person, who makes all these delicious looking meals that will make you drool.



*****

I promised a couple of dear friends I would explain in a post on how I met my husband, Bulldog Man. 

About 13 years ago, I was living in Florida, enjoying my life, and raising Tank, as a single parent in a professional career, and thought I needed something to do, or a hobby to preoccupy my spare time.  I had heard about chat rooms on the computer, but was very hesitant because of my line of profession.  Back then, my computer provider was MSN.  MSN had this screen, outlining various chat rooms based on hobbies, likes and dislikes.  As I scrolled down the list, a couple of chat room names appeared interesting.  One in specific titled “The Coffeehouse” caught my attention.  I entered the chat room using an alias name.  I sat quietly in the background reading the comments and analyzing the chat room.  Then I typed a comment in the chat room just to see if I would get a response.  To my surprise, I was welcomed by a few people.  Several men and women introduced themselves.  While reading comments typed on the screen, I learned a lot of the people in this room were people my age, just looking for something to do in their off time.  Of course every now and then you’ll find some strange, off the wall, individual (pervert) who didn’t want to socialize about hobbies, family, or things of interest; he/she had other interests if you know what I mean!!!!  Those were the type of people you just deleted and banned from the chat room. 

Okay….now on with the story. Over a 6 month period, I befriended several wonderful people in this chat room, 3 women, and 2 guys I’ve kept contact with over the last 13 years. We’re all good friends.   One of these guys was my husband, Bulldog Man (he wasn’t my husband at that time).  He really seemed like a nice man, we talked several minutes each day about how our day went at work, our kids, and how we were feeling at the time.  Over a 3 month period, our conversations were more in depth, it was like we were best friends, and had known each other for years.

Another 3 months passed, and we decided to swap telephone numbers.  Instead of having long winded conversations on the computer, we would have our conversations over the telephone; yes they were still long winded, for hours each night.  Then one night, Bulldog Man informed me his job was sending him to Tampa, Florida to work on some equipment. He asked me on his days off if he could drive down to our small town outside of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida so we could meet in person.  My heart was racing, what do I say?????  I turned to my sister; she was living with me at that time.  She told me to invite him here, and we will just be real careful.  I needed to be careful because even though I had talked to this man for 6 months on the computer and telephone, he was still a stranger.  I invited him down.  He would arrive in Florida in a week and a half.  This gave me time to talk with all of my male buddies, you know those body building type (in size), law enforcement buddies, about the situation. This way my big body building friends would be close by in the neighborhood to help me if, God forbid, something were to happen, or I just didn’t like the guy, and wanted him to leave. 

 The weekend of the visit………..

Bulldog Man called me on the telephone to let me know he was leaving his motel in Tampa and hitting the road to come to my place.  I said to drive carefully, and I would see him when he gets here.  I did ask him to call me when he made a pit stop, this way I had an idea where he was at on the road, and I would have an idea when he would arrive, time wise. This way I could have my body guards ready. bahahahahaha……poor Bulldog Man, he had no idea what he’s getting into J

Bulldog Man called me 2 ½ hours later, I knew I had about 1 hour before he arrived; I notified my friends to let them know when to expect him.  This way they could be close in the neighborhood, with their cars and handcuffs.

At just before 9:00AM on a Saturday morning, there’s a knock on my front door. I took a deep breath, and looked out the peep hole, there’s no one standing directly in front of the peep hole.  I do however see flowers, I knew he was here.  I opened the door slowly, and there he was, standing up against the wall hiding.  I thought that was strange, I asked “why are you up against the side wall of the house”.  He said, “well I thought you wouldn’t like me if you knew I was only 5’4” tall and  if you  could see my height through the peep hole you wouldn’t open the door” ( I could see the stress all over his face).  I laughed and said you’re silly, at which point the stress left his face. He handed me the flowers, before I could do anything, he grabbed my waist and planted a kiss on my lips like we knew each other for a life time. 

Bulldog Man had no idea I had friends watching out for me outside with badges and handcuffs, ready to haul his ass off, and my sister inside with her friendly baseball bat. 

From that point on we were inseparable, we married 3 years later.


This was 13 years ago. 

Pic Source: FreeBigPictures.com 

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Monday, September 9, 2013

Chocolate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A little piece of heaven………yes, I said heaven!  When I crave a piece of Godiva chocolate cheese cake, Bulldog Man knows not to come home with any old cheese cake (no I’m not pregnant).
See ladies, I have my hubby trained well.  This evening, Bulldog Man came home with a piece of Godiva chocolate cheese cake.  Evidence photo…………..

I even shared half of the cheese cake with my darling husband, Bulldog Man. 
*****
Speaking of chocolate, I planted Sweet Chocolate Peppers.  The plants started producing peppers; I was waiting for them to change colors from green to chocolate.  The past two days, the peppers started changing colors.  Soon I’ll be able to harvest them.  I can’t wait to try them to see how sweet they taste.
Chocolate Peppers (computer keeps direction flipping the picture)

This year was the first year I planted Albino Peppers.  I’ve noticed the peppers grow upside down on the plant.  Is that normal?  Has anyone else grown these types of peppers?

*****
Here’s another shot of my green beans, they have taken off like crazy, I truly hope I’m able to harvest beans off of these vines before the cold rolls in here in Oklahoma.
Green Beans (computer keeps flipping direction of picture)



*****
The peas I planted are now tall enough to start attaching to the fence trellis.  I can see something has already started to munch on the seedlings.  Out came my handy homemade bug spray to take care of the problem (water, alcohol, and Dawn soap).



This Friday, I picked up a few silver coins to put away.  The price had decreased and I thought why not……

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Sunday, September 8, 2013

Thank You For Sending Prayers


Thank you for sending prayers for Baby “O” and her family over at the Hickery Holler Farm.  Baby “O” has returned home with a monitor and will be following up with tests and her doctor.   Please visit Canned Quilter (Baby O’s Mom) over at the Hickery Holler Farm for updates. 
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Thursday, September 5, 2013

Prayers For A Blogger Friends Daughter


I ask my friends to please keep Baby “O” in your thoughts and prayers. A Blogger friend, the Canned Quilter’s daughter from the Hickery Holler Farm blog was admitted into the hospital’s cardiac ICU.
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Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Garden - Get Out Of There!


This year’s tomato seeds were taking a long time to produce tomatoes.  I have one plant, a cherry tomato plant, which has produced all kinds of tomatoes; none are red except for these (they’re starting). 


My cucumber’s seeds are popping out of the soil, of a flower pot, as part of my fall garden.  The peas are doing the same thing.  I can’t wait for a harvest.

*****

When I went into town, I found several plastic storage containers to hold my stash of empty medicine bottles and glass jars.  I always hold on to empty prescription bottles, jars, and milk jugs. You just never know when you’ll need to use them to store something, use as a cover, or transport something.


*****
And finally, I canned 5 pints of bread and butter pickles.  I’m the only one in the house who will eat pickles.  5 pints will last me over a year and I know they won’t disappear J

Little blurry picture sorry.
*****

Bug decided to jump into the raised garden bed to check things out and found a marigold plant to smell……get out of my garden bed BUG, you don’t want Mom to spray you!!!

Temperatures are hot here, slowing outside work down.  How are things where you’re at?
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Sunday, September 1, 2013

Solar Canning Lights


Look what Bulldog Man bought me at the Farmer’s Market; two solar powered canning jars!!!!  They’re adorable, I love them. 

Can you see my wheels spinning?????  Yes, they’re spinning on how I can make some; it looks pretty easy.

 
 



 
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