Down in ol' Mexico

Needed to go down and pick up a few meds so we asked friends who stay in Harlingen if the wanted to join us. Brian and Mary Carlson met us at the gate. We walked down to Hector's. Hector is our meds guy in Progreso. Then we lunched at Jessica's, a favorite spot of ours. Panchos Tex-Mex is our favorite on the menu. It was a fun day all around.

The music is excellent so Brian and Mary tripped the light fantastic.

Butch has wanted to buy a hat for mowing in the summer and he seems to think this would be a good choice. I think they would be hauling him off to the Funny Farm. 

Beckett does it again!

Beckett is the youngest grandson of Leo and Keri and he has a real knack for doing interesting faces when getting his picture taken and here he has done it again! I couldn't resist adding the bubble.

Dashing about

We made a quick trip to McAllen (actually Pharr) to restock our cash supply then we came back to Weslaco and went to an 11:30 AM film feature showing the movie 'Hostile'. I expected it to be gruesome and bloody. There was some blood of course but the story of the cavalry and the Indians was treated even-handedly. The acting was top notch and I thought it was excellent. It was a 3 hanky movie and I think Butch used up 4. He is a softie.

Back in Jefferson, Leo and Keri's kitchen project has begun and we are enjoying the photos step by step. Our favorite cook getting a new kitchen has to be beneficial for us too. I am certain of it. Wink, wink.

Busiest time of year

From now till Mid-March is busy for us down here. It slows up considerably after that. Butch used to complain that we didn't have any free time when I was President. I knew then and I know now that it wasn't me being busy. Next week we plan to go to Mexico with friends, Mary and Brian Carlson, who stay in a park in Harlingen. We boiled it down to Friday next week.  Monday is crafting for me but that is a deal where I can be there or not. No problem. Tuesday is Coffee hour and that is my duty as VP to attend. Butch plays golf. Wednesday he plays in a pool league in the afternoon. Thursday he plays cribbage and they are in tournament mode now so he cannot miss it. And that brings us to Friday. Most of the activities wind down or end mid-March.
Trivia is becoming very popular. I wish I could find a better time for it but we are squeezing it into the only time open as far as I can see. Sundays after ice cream. 6:00 pm in Allen Hall.

Dog Poop Blues?

Get Poop Off Your Shoe

You get home to find you stepped in dog do-do while on your evening walk. No problem! Just spray some WD-40 on the sole of your shoe and use an old toothbrush to clean the poop out of the crevices. Rinse with cold water and your shoes will be as good as new.

A new portrait of us

Our picture that I use for this blog and other places where we need a picture is from 2013 so I decided we need a new one and I had my friend Deon take one.

Extra time lately

Homemade Floor Cleaner For All Types Of Floors
It is easy to see I have had some extra time lately by the bent of my posts. I have based them on conversations I have had lately with people on various subjects and this one falls into that category.
Tried and true homemade floor cleaner. I have used this mixture for several years now. I mix it up and divide it into two spray bottles. One for the Motorhome and one for the tiny house. Sometimes I make a half batch. It is a great all-purpose cleaner and sanitizer. Read all the directions for best results. Common sense, so don't over think it.

How to make homemade floor cleaner from HousewifeHowTos.com
You probably already have all of the ingredients needed to make your own homemade floor cleaner — one which gets your floors just as shiny clean as the commercial stuff.

So, why would you want to? Because it’s for your own good.

Commercial cleaning products contribute greatly to indoor air pollution. For people with allergies or asthma, indoor air quality is critical to good health.

Now, add in pets or young children who spend a lot of time on the floor. Do you really want their paws or pacifiers having that much contact with harsh solvents?


If that’s not enough to convince you, consider this: it costs just pennies to make enough homemade floor cleaner to clean your floors for months. That’s right: pennies. Why shell out $3 or more for a commercial cleaner that’s bad for you and your family when you can whip up your own with ingredients you already have?

You only need this one homemade floor cleaner to clean every hard flooring surface in your home. It works on laminate. It works on hardwood. It even works on vinyl, linoleum, and tile. Yep, you can use it on marble or granite: the vinegar used in the recipe is so diluted that it won’t damage them. It even works on cement!

Have I mentioned that, after powering through grime, it also leaves a gorgeous shine?


How To Make Homemade Floor Cleaner
Ingredients:
2 cups warm water
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol 
3 drops liquid dish soap (See Note below)
5-10 drops essential oils (optional)
Important notes: We all like to swap things around in DIY cleaning recipes, but before you do there are some things you should know:

• Don’t use a dish soap that contains moisturizers, antibacterial ingredients, or “oxygen bleach”. I use Dawn Original (Classic), which is similar to Sunlight or Fairy in the UK.

• Do NOT swap Castille soap for the dish soap — it’s an oil-based soap and will, therefore, leave streaks and smears.

• If you use essential oils be sure they aren’t compounds (i.e., those with fragrance added to grapeseed or some other form of oil).

• You CAN use this on granite, marble, and natural stone floors. I’ve been doing it for years without a problem. The reason is that the vinegar in this solution is diluted by the water and other ingredients, so it doesn’t remain acidic enough to cause etching.

How To Use Homemade Floor Cleaner
Follow the recipe above. This works equally well regardless of whether you use a bucket or spray bottle to dispense your floor cleaner as you mop. Of course, you’ll have to dump out what’s left in the bucket after use, while anything left in the spray bottle can be stored in a dark, cool place for future cleanings.

So now what will you do with those different bottles of cleaning products taking up space on your shelves? Use them up if it bothers you to have spent money on them, or get rid of them now and make the switch to homemade floor cleaner. Just, please, dispose of them properly.

Quick and Easy meal.

Two of my staples at Costco. It is my go-to quick meal.

I saute onion, green pepper and sometimes a 3rd veggie in a small amount of olive oil until partially cooked. Then I add some canned meat such as roast beef, pulled pork or chicken or
perhaps a cup or so of coarsely chopped rotisserie chicken. Tuna would also work.
A good place to use the leftover meat of any kind. Then I open one or the other of the packets of rice
pictured above. After I warm it up and if it seems dry I add broth or water. Only about ¼ of a cup.
Very Tasty and gets Butch fed before heading to the pool hall. Yes, he likes it!

FYI of Various Topics

A niece of ours recently suggested to me, putting informative posts all in one spot. I mulled it over for a while and decided it might be a good idea. I have had a page devoted to tips for a long time. I am not good at keeping it current. So with renewed vigor, I will try to do better.

Find Tip page here.
https://brooker3.blogspot.com/p/tips-to-remember.html

Going Old School for TV

On more than one occasion we have been asked about how we get by without satellite or cable TV. I found this website that would be very helpful for anyone considering it.

Before determining what type of antenna you will need, find out how far away you are from the TV stations you want to watch.

I used this site " www.channelmaster.com/Antenna-Selection-a/134.htm" to get an idea of the stations close to me. I soon realized that most of the stations were 43 miles from my location. In total, I had around 29 channels at my disposal. 

What I loved about this site is that it gave me feedback about the signal strength for each channel in relation to my location. Also, it recommended the location of the antenna for the best channel reception.

Miss Elise on Christmas morning

I have a new editing program and I chose this picture of Elise to play around with it. I recently discovered that Elise will be in another play in April. We plan to be back for it. "Oliver" is the play and she has the part of a young boy with a cockney accent. I have every confidence in her that she will do it well. 

The great relief of the mundane by Colleen O'Brien

The great relief of the mundane

January 10, 2018Greene County News Online

~a column by Colleen O’Brien

A new acquaintance told me a story of her “coming through” major cancer surgery, as she said. She had been ill a long time, she had been doing chemo a long time, she had lost her hair a long time ago, along with her strength and her will. She thought she would be dead within the year.

The chemo and surgery worked, however, and she “came through” a healthy woman.

“What surprised me most,” she said. “was that I once again had the feeling that I’d had all my life of having no time line with a period at the end. We know death will come someday, but it is in the future, it’s not close. I was suddenly thinking like I’d thought before I was diagnosed. I had my life back and it was just like my old life – not having to think every minute how long I had left.”

She said the normalcy of life after cancer was what thrilled her. She was grateful to be alive, yes. She was hopeful her cancer was banished forever. But she did not feel she’d been saved for some special reason; she simply felt that she had returned to her life, to the way she’d felt all her life. With one difference: now, she recognized what a normal life was – to plan events and trips, to work, to do nothing, to wander through her mind, to think about things that didn’t matter, to live as she always had in the minutia of the day.

The normalcy of life is not something we think about much, let alone praise. We talk about the high points, not the everyday routine. Relishing the mundane probably happens only to survivors . . . of cancer, of heart attack, of war, of car crash, maybe of close call; that slide by of the specter of death almost clipping us as his car careens from another lane right into our lane on the interstate, and for no reason at all we are allowed to drive on, unscathed.

The call to death that we all know is our end . . . when it recedes once again into a distant future is what normalcy is. To meet it up close and survive it, to remain in the world doing nothing much but one’s day-to-day busyness or lassitude – doing the dishes and the crossword puzzle, watching an old movie, playing Candyland with the kids for the thousandth time, cutting the grass. It is indeed the normal things that count. It is the small stuff that slips through our hours and our days with no fanfare and little thought that might be the best part of our lives.

Face of the Earth

No, I did not fall off the face of the Earth. It might seem like it. I have been busy doing what I want to do when I want to do it. I am reminded of a line from the TV show Will and Grace. When one of the actors says, "I am sorry I'm late. I got here as soon as I wanted to." I love the truth of that line.

When we came south I was told by Dr. Poag to get a spot on my forehead looked at when we got here. So I jumped through all the hoops to make that happen. I was waiting for a phone call from the clinic we are associated with here and it didn't happen. I kept telling myself I would call them but kept not remembering it at the right time. I was waiting to find out when I had an appointment with the dermatologist in McAllen. Day before yesterday the dermatologist's office called me to see if I was coming ...I think. I am still not sure why they called for sure but they did tell me I had an appointment yesterday at 8:30 AM. Fortunately, we did not have any conflicts and kept the appointment. I was seen by a P.A. That was okay by me. She froze 10 spots on my face and one on my arm. So I should be set now until Spring when we are back in Iowa.

I am doing computer business differently this year. No formal classes. This year I am making one on one appointments and helping where I am needed. It is working out fine.

I am doing a trivia event on Sunday nights. I am using the same format as we have on Thursday nights at Hy-Vee in Iowa.  I would rather be on the receiving end but people are enjoying it and it keeps the old brain cells jingling around. I am saving all the questions I use so maybe we could have a home trivia party next summer.

Butch has fewer pool events this season. Their pool players are dwindling. It seems to be a valley-wide problem as well. So he still plays every night from 6-8 here but the traveling to other parks is down to one league. He is okay with that because he now gets to play cribbage and shuffleboard more often.
Til next time...

Sunny South Texas is back again

Today while Butch was engaged in Shuffleboard I walked the park with my camera. As I was walking west on Pine Street an avocado tree dropped 7 or 8 avocados on the roof of a house and on the ground. If anyone had been standing in the yard they would have been clobbered by them. I think they could do major damage, like getting a baseball thrown at you with considerable impact.

 The Avocados are difficult to see but if you look closely you can see there are much more yet to drop.

Shufflers are shuffling

A breath of fresh air!

Finally a break in the weather! Today was a beautiful day. 61 was the high temperature but with an absence of breeze and full sunshine, it seemed much warmer.
It happened to be Costco Thursday so we buzzed over to Pharr. It isn't far.😉

We came back to lots of activities and folks gathered on street corners visiting. We have all been out of touch for days.

What are the Colonias?

I decided to educate myself about the Colonias of South Texas. It is indeed a sad story and even sadder when the temps are this low. I have heard about them on the news for many years but never had a firm idea of what they were all about until now.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_(United_States)


Mainly pictures
http://abcnews.go.com/US/photos/hidden-america-life-colonias-16205851/image-16205856


https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mjs/12333712.0002.010?view=text;rgn=main

Happy New Year anyway

Out of Order

Before Christmas, I became inspired and cooked for a couple of my favorite friends. I did this on the same day I caught up on some laundry. You can see the last load on the floor in the first vision of chaos.

I did manage to make some order of it at a later date. See below

Iowa/San Diego Kids

I snipped these pics from Facebook. Grandaughter Ann has 3 beautiful daughters that are getting a geographical education because their Dad, Anthony is in the navy. The lucky girls had the pleasure of enjoying the snow while in DesMoines with their Grandpa Rich and Grandma Donna.
Ann has a photographers eye for good pictures.

Nina Grace

Scarlett

Skylar

Missouri Kids Trip

Our Missouri kids went to Minnesota for Christmas vacation. Elise loves the rides at Mall of America so her Dad and then her Grandmother went on the roller coaster with her. She did not get that particular passion from this great grandma.

Here is one of the scariest pictures in the world to me. The only thing scarier would be watching my loved ones ride it.