Feel Like Complaining

Just a bunch of stuff to fill a page. Our garage got a new lid on it last month. A very long awaited one. It has looked bad since we moved in almost 15 years ago. Seven years ago after a big wind storm our insurance company bought a new roof for our house but not the garage. I'm not sure why, it looked worse than the house. So there it sat with all it's shingles of the South side of it and I felt sorry for the neighbors to have to look at it every day. Since we didn't need our tax refund from last year for college expenses we decided to invest in a new roof. It looks nice and I'm not embarrassed anymore. Apparently I'm allergic to shellfish of some kind. Too bad I can't narrow it down to which one. I bought a bag of all types of frozen fish, shrimp, and shellfish to make some soup. It was OK, not great; but me not wanting to waste anything ate it two nights in a row. By the third morning I noticed a rash on my stomach right where my pants ride. As I checked ...

Way before my daughter left for college I heavily resisted reading about the 'Empty Nest Syndrome'. I knew what it was, I knew I'd feel it and I didn't want to feel sad before I had to. But one day I did. All of the websites had basically the same information but one I landed on (and now can't find again) said something a little different that I really understood. It said that it might not be so much that we miss our children but more how we feel about our own life and what it means for us when they leave. It's a new phase in our lives; we're dealing with our parents and our own aging issues. I was not a young person when I had my daughter and so I could not relate with anyone my age about having a newborn. Now the same is true, everyone my age is a Grandparent taking on whole new (fun) roles. I'm kind of stuck in the middle; an empty nester with an aging parent AND Grandchildren. So WHO am I? I didn't know who I was before I had her; how in ...

We have another elderly neighbor (age 89) and his wife that live right across the street from us. In fact when we moved in 15 years ago, the entire neighborhood was full of older people. One by one they have died or moved on and homes are replaced by younger people. I guess we're the middle-agers in the 'hood now. Anyway, Hank was helping hubby out by taking him and our broken lawn mower to the shop. They got to talking about their mutual disdain for the slobby neighbors. Come to find out, he also has been filing complaints with code enforcement. It's nice to know that we are not the only ones who feel this way. This is a recent picture showing how they clean out the garage, by throwing everything on the sidewalk and wait for people to come along and root through it. That pile of brown stuff are bushes, pulled out over a month ago and just left there. This was after some stuff had already walked away. One night when hubby came home from work, he took the heavy wet ca...

His first name was really Lilburn but we didn't know that until he died. He was 93 and a neighbor. It's funny how you interact more with someone that lives across an alley and 3 houses down than you do people right next door. Johnie was probably about 79 when we moved into our house. He walked everyday, sometimes twice. Even in the winter he took his daily walks. He said his wife kept the house too hot so he got out to cool down :-) If we were outside he would stop by the fence and chat. Whenever we saw him walk by we would say "There goes Johnie!" He and his wife, who was legally blind, lived alone and he took her everywhere. Once he came over to instruct hubby on how to replace the innards of a toilet tank to keep it from running. He was nice like that so we made him some cookies and he called US good neighbors. For a few years we swapped the bounty of found cans. Our daughter was collecting the tabs to donate to the Ronald McDonald house and he collected the ca...

Since I walk a lot, the past few years I've seen a lot more gardens popping up. People are getting very creative putting gardens in the front and side yards and even some have elaborate raised beds. Through the summer I watch them grow along with our own, and compare the bounty they offer. We harvest ours every couple of days or at least check on the progress. One thing that really surprises me is that 75% of the gardens I see are never harvested, leaving the tomatoes to ripen, drop to the ground and rot. Zucchini's grow so big that they are inedible. We don't usually grow a garden out of necessity but I imagine some do. To me, home grown vegi's are like gold. Other than a great taste, there is just something so satisfying about going into your own yard and picking something to prepare that you nurtured from a tiny plant. Every day I see such waste with withered fully ripened tomato plants or beds so full of weeds that you can't even see the plants themselves....