Hmm

I never realized simplifying my life could  be so complicated.

 Holy cow!

In my next life, perhaps I will be a cow belonging to a vegetarian.


Thanks for plopping by today. 
More coming soon as I recover.
 

The sun came up.
Birds are singing, cawing and tweeting.
Whether they are searching for a mate or defining territory, they sound wonderful.
It's a sleepy world.
No cars or trains.
No human voices.
Life is goof.

I'm too sleepy to check the bird ID to see exactly who this is hanging around my tree.

THANKS for plopping by today.

Never Easy

 I knew someday that you would fly away
For love's the greatest healer to be found
So leave me if you need to, I will still remember
Angel flying too close to the ground

Fly on, fly on past, the speed of sound
I'd rather see you up than see you down
So leave me if you need to, I will still remember
Angel flying too close to the ground.

Excerpt from Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground
Written by Willie Nelson




Grief is never easy.

Anything Is Possible

E for effort.

Hopeless?

Not hopeless.

A little cheer in your life  can make things look radically different.

Grief and Chaos

We are coming out of our last super cold snap that plunged temps to freezing again.

Incredibly, this flower bloomed overnight.

One lonely flower on a raggedy unkempt overgrown bush.

I had just received some devastating news.

Then I saw this miracle.

This exquisite perfect  flower.

It brought me tremendous hope.

Life goes on.

And it's beautiful.

Balmy Weather Soon

If it gets any colder, I am going to Florida.

Oh wait.

This is Florida.

Welcome to Florida, the sunshine state.

I woke up alive and I am so super lucky and deeply grateful to have HEAT and clothes.

RV's are notoriously drafty. I am using both electric heat and the propane furnace to stay warm. It's almost 60F degrees inside now. Maybe I will nudge the thermostat a wee bit higher. I topped up the propane tank recently.

Soon as I wake up, yeah, I am up, just not awake. Anyhow I wistfully think I might crank up the stereo and dance in hopes of warming up further.

Ever seen a puffy arthritic middle aged body stuffed in 5 layers of clothes plus 2 sets of socks stuffed into ankle boots try to disco dance in a small RV?

It's hilarious!

Like being stuck inside my own cartoon.

The straw hat that helps hold heat in my silly head is especially trendy with a scarf wrapped around my neck.

For reasons I can not fathom, the RV industry built millions of RV's that are not the least bit efficient when it comes to energy costs.

Another mystery is the mass production of imported polyester clothing. I miss good old made in America, 100% cotton. Since my childhood I've had severe skin reactions to polyester. Much of my childhood I wore hand-me-downs. They never fit right and my tireless mother was always trying to alter them to fit. I guess my body isn't built to standard size. Off and on I had this horrific skin rash coming and going. Then one year when school started, my mother decided to sew up new outfits for me to wear to school. Maybe I wouldn't have this red scaly skin problems. I was ecstatic. New clothes, not hand-me-downs!

The local fabric shop had just got in a beautiful line of  polyester fabrics.She made me these gorgeous dresses to wear to school. I felt so special.  We didn't have a clothes dryer, my mother hung clothes out to dry, summer and winter, then tirelessly ironed the wrinkles out of them. Polyester meant virtually no ironing! My busy mother was ecstatic. But my skin tuned beet red and began itching and breaking out. It was very difficult for me to make friends at school. There I was with red blotchy skin and a chronic itch. Nothing like watching someone stand there and scratch and itch like a flea bitten dog to make the other kids and adults stand back 10 feet away wondering what kind of cooties I had.

My mother dragged me from doctor to doctor to dermatologist before they finally figured out it was the polyester fabrics. Meanwhile I felt like a lab rat subjected to a mountain of fruitless tests and treatments. My beautiful dresses were given away. My mother spent days and nights sewing up  new school clothes for me in cotton. This time she made blouses and skirts. My skin cleared up and my overworked mother was ironing clothes again.  The school had a dress code that wasn't casual like today's standards. In those days, bluejeans were not acceptable wear for school kids. Girls weren't even allowed to wear pants to school! Boys had to wear dress pants, not bluejeans. Older boys had to wear a shirt with a collar and a tie too.  In later years, bluejeans became acceptable wear at school for both girls and boys.

Awhile back I bought a warm tunic that was labeled deceptively. The label on the back of the neck said 100% cotton. After I broke out in a scaly itchy red rash, I discovered that a second label was hidden inside near the hem that read 100% polyester. Turns out the little semi-circle insert in the back of the tunic up around the neck area was 100% cotton but the rest of the shirt fabric was 100% polyester. I felt like an idiot that I had not noticed this before.

Life is goof.

Note to self:
Smile! Laugh! Giggle!

While writing this the sun came up and here is my view out the window. Clear sunshine and it's now a balmy 27F degrees.

Oops!

If you received a chef knife post in your email subscription, it was posted to there by mistake. Sorry about that.

Some days I make mistakes.

Other days I am purrfect!

Not sure which daze those are.

Yesterday I said "I wish I could sit by a river. or lake or ocean."  I was daydreaming out loud. Well watch out what you wish for!

Today a friend took me out to eat at River Ratz which is on a river. What a treat that was!

On the way there, I noticed a utility company was digging holes on the side of the road. Then we passed a cable company digging a hole on the side of the highway. Next I saw a man digging with a post hole digger in his yard. A few more miles and a construction crew was digging a big hole at the corner of two streets. Astonishingly before our 12 mile trip was finished, I saw yet another person outside digging a hole.

I guess it was a holey holiday.

That's my little old wheel estate minus her spare, minus her bike rack, minus her cargo carrier.
Now she is 3 feet shorter!

Life is goof.

Thanks for plopping by today.

Warm and C-c-c-cozy

Harley dog studies how to put out fires with the extinguisher. Such a smart doggy!

December was a wonderful milestone.
8 years living 24/7 in my little old 1994 mini motorhome.
Harley turned 8 years old.
8 years since I arrived back in America (yet I am still lost and confused).

This is a very complicated country to live in designed for the well off. But somehow I've managed to live on a super efficient erratic tiny income so it's all good (or goof!).

I woke up alive and that makes today the best day of my life ever.
Seriously.

It's a miracle.
I am super grateful to have this gorgeous day on planet earth.

If I am going to whine. I would tell you it was 36 effing degrees in Florida when I woke up. But I woke up and piled on warm clothes plus turned on the heat. So why whine now?

Blessed wonderful warm heat. 

RV's are notoriously hard to heat when temps plummet. If the furnace or heater or both are broken, then it's even harder.

But thanks to repairmen and tons of research, I now have heat again and it feels just awesome. I guess I should say my tons of research yielded me a great education but still I couldn't fix it. At least I could tell the repairman everything I had tried in hopes he didn't feel the need to duplicate my efforts.

As a super duper bonus my errant heavy duty old sentimental jacket miraculously appeared. It was stuffed inside a pillow case tucked away on a shelf in back of the upper bunk over the cab in my wheel estate.

I have no idea how or when it ended up inside a pillow case. Normally I keep it in a zippered bag between uses, then stuff that in a cabinet over my bed in the rear of the RV. One of those zippered type bags that come with a bedspread. It's a fat and fluffy jacket so it doesn't fit in my tiny hanging locker. Awhile back when it was cold I found the empty bag. I went on a search for my jacket and just could not find it anywhere. I was pretty sure I wore it in the mountains during hurricane Irma.

For months now I've wondered how on earth I could lose something so important to me as my only warm jacket.

Finally I bought a heavy used wool green pea coat. New warm wool coats are very pricey so I bought used. Yes, I get cold super easy. My Caribbean blood just doesn't want to warm up when temps plummet. I've worn the green pea coat several times riding my red bicycle. I  was told I looked very Christmassy. So funny! Then angels gave me windbreakers. Holy cow. I now had so many jackets to choose from that I felt very spoiled. The windbreakers don't take up much room. Some fit, some were a bit big. Then I ran into someone big and cold, so I gave them the big windbreakers. Spread the wealth, share some cheer.

Life is goof.

THANK YOU for plopping by today.

Shopping Amazon

With Any of my links

Helps us stay warm and happy

THANK YOU!

Slow Motion

I've been moving in slow motion but soon I will be back up to speed.

One can only hope.

Thank you so much for the encouragement to keep on living, giggling and writing.

I appreciate the wonderful comments and email.

Life is goof!

Keep it simple.

Resolutions for 2018

New years Resolutions...

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.

[reprinted from The Works of Mark Twain; Early Tales & Sketches, Vol. 1 1851-1864, (Univ. of California Press, 1979), p. 180.]
Available from amazon.com


Now onto my resolutions...

I promise to switch my username to “password” and my password to “username” to confuse the hackers.

I promise to check for toilet paper before sitting on the throne (especially public ones)

I promise to get rid of the DVD rewinders (they never worked anyhow)

I promise to drive more carefully so others will quit chasing me down the street honking and yelling something about insurance

I promise to check the pool for water before diving in

I promise not to mail order another copy of "How to Prevent Mail Fraud" (the first two never showed up anyhow)

I promise to save money for a rainy day  (so I can shop online without getting wet)

I promise to lower my bills by digging a hole to store them in.

I promise to diet once a day (preferably while sleeping)

I promise to exercise every 5th Thursday of the month

I promise to quit walking off with other people's  pens (I will run instead)

I promise to stop sneaking jumbo sizes of hemorrhoid treatment in another's shopping cart because they jumped in front me

I promise to come up with better excuses for procrastination... later

And when it's all said and done... the only one I truly hope to keep all year long is:

Smile and laugh more!

 Recycle more with a bicycle...

Staying Warm

The repairman finally came and I have heat again. Such a luxury!

I heard a great fix today for temporary emergency heat from a guy that used this method in the RV park. His furnace wouldn't come on and his electric heater just couldn't keep up with the severe cold. Many 30 amp RV's can only handle one 1500 watt heater and not two.

We recently had temps in the 20's and 30's (Fahrenheit). He used this emergency method when he was awake to monitor it.

A propane stove or oven is not recommended for heating an RV and can be extremely dangerous because it depletes oxygen rapidly. Even when cooking on a propane stove indoors you need to use the exhaust fan over the stove. If it's not working then open a window. If you've read your propane stove manual then you're familiar with all this.

 However this is what he told me about his emergency heat:

In a SEVERE emergency use a clay flowerpot soaked in water, then placed upside down over s propane stove top burner.

Light the burner then turn the burner down to the lowest setting possible. The upside down flowerpot will radiate heat.

Turn on the overhead stove fan or open a window near the stove.

The good news is even after the stove is off, the clay pot continues to radiate heat.

I also stumbled across people writing about using tea lights (short fat candles) in a metal pie place with an inverted clay pot over the pie plate to make their own room heater as a supplemental source.

Excerpt from survival punk:
I put my own version of this in my living room last winter, using only one flower pot, 4 tea lights, and a tin pie pan with holes punched in the side to allow airflow (without the holes, the candles go out). The flower pot sits just inside the lip of the pie pan, so I wasn’t worried about balancing the flower pot across the top of a loaf pan. I set it on a plant stand in an area that a draft from the front door often cooled the room to a point where it’s uncomfortable in the winter. Not only did it make the room warmer and more comfortable, but it reduced my heating bill by about $50 per month. It definitely worked for me. BTW, I also placed scented wax in the center of the tea lights, and as it melted it made a nice scent in the room. I told a friend about it; he made one for his living room and had similar results.
Maybe you’re looking at this as replacing other heat sources, however, I used it as an additional heat source. It maintained a constant 72 degrees in the room without having the furnace kick in. I used 4 candles, twice each day, and didn’t use it during the night when sleeping in a cooler room is comfortable. You definitely know it’s working when the candles burn out without you noticing it, and before long you’ll feel a drop in the room temperature.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thankfully I survived the crazy cold snap. I started out realizing my electric and propane heater were both on the fritz. I read manuals and tried a variety of things to get something going. A friend loaned me their portable ceramic heater they claimed not to need. I called for help with an RV repairman I had never used before. He was so overworked it took him until past the cold snap to show up and get things running again. I also had a nasty plumbing leak, so he was one busy dude. I had given up on him because he kept promising dates and times and then not showing up. I was trying to reach other repair people and getting no where with that either.

I realized my wardrobe is lacking when it comes to severe cold. I kept piling on clothes but it was so hard to move around and get anything done by the time I had enough layers on to stay warm. So funny. I just wanted to crawl under the covers and hibernate until spring like a bear, but that wasn't an option. Too much to do!

But it's all good. I woke up alive and today the temps were a bit more agreeable.

I hope where ever you are you are staying warm too.

Thank you for thinking of me!

It's All Good

My simple life has been a bit chaotic.
I'm busy healing and will write more soon.
It was 28F degrees in this rural part of Florida this morning.
My RV struggles mightily to stay heated when temps go below 40F.
Apparently I need to acquire a winter wardrobe.
By the time I pile on enough clothes to stay warm, they are all mismatched so I look like a color blind blimp who is severely challenged at dressing.
I woke up alive with black eyed peas in the crockpot, so it's all good.
Having no goal is worse than not reaching one.
My goal is to smile so fierely my teeth stop chattering.

Life is goof!

Thank you for plopping by.

Finding beauty in daily life. 

An apple a day...