Monday, June 27, 2011

No soup for you!

Tomorrow is a  meeting with the guy who will install the brick in the front of the house and around the fireplace at 9:00 fricking AM.

Since I have retired I have become the laziest tart in the valley.  I go to bed at 11:00-12:00 PM and sleep until 10:00 AM.  AND if it's a rainy cloudy morning I will lay there for another half an hour.  Just listening to the rain and the sound of my pond tinkling in the back yard while I snuggle up in my really soft comforter.  Who knew I would love retirement this much?  I bitched about it for an entire summer last year because I didn't quite get it....but now I do.  Sometimes I feel guilty that I should be doing more and at least go down to the laundry room to see if the dryer has quit and bring up the clothes....but most time I totally forget about it and have to restart it to get the wrinkles out of the clothes. 

I don't try to make projects anymore.  That was driving me crazy.  I just let what has to be done and what I want to do lead me on. 

I intend to get a little more motivated once we start selling the house, but for now I am enjoying this parcel of time I have left in this house to smell the roses.  Actually I don't have any roses, but I do have hundreds of plants coming up in my garden that I thought had died.  Yes, they chose this year to come up!  They must be bidding me farewell.  Or just sticking their tongues out at me for not taking care of them when I was here.  I will have to do a little pruning because it has got out of hand with all their rage.

Made a pot of soup today.  It started out as a normal pot of soup...until I upped it.  I had a lot of left over spinach from the salad I made for Hippy Chicks birthday...plus some bok choy from a dish I made last week, and with carrots, onions, peas, beans, potatoes and a couple of slabs of smoked ham. I added some summer savoury...lots of black pepper ....and it still doesn't smell like soup.  I added some chicken stock to it...and it still didn't smell like soup.  Not the soup I am used to.  Well at least I got rid of the spinach and bok choy I had left over.  I love bok choy in a stir fry... but this was soup.  Bok Choy probably recognized I was was trying to make a Mennonite soup with Chinese ingredients...and kicked the Mennonite out of the soup.  Can't veggies get along?  It tasted okay...just okay.  The fresh buns we had with it were the best.

Gotta go...I have to get up at 9:00AM tomorrow so that means I have to be in bed by 9:00PM tonight.

Balonie...just making a pit stop on Joan's blog..

Sunday, June 26, 2011

A real post

I made this on Friday for Hippy Chicks (65th. birthday)

Salad  It's a Asparagus Tortellini Salad.  It was a big hit.  I have a really bad habit of not following a recipe.  I always manage to change it up to suit my tastes, but this time I stuck to the original recipe (and it was hard to do)  several times I had to remind myself to STICK TO THE RECIPE!  I'm glad I did.  No wonder every time I try something new ... it tastes like something I had before.  Of course it does because I eliminate half the stuff ... and add in the stuff I know I like.  Control freak!

Haaaa... looks like she is trying to find her bi focal range while reading a birthday card....yup that shit happens when you git...65.


My nieces wedding social was last Saturday.  Wedding socials are very noisy and I basically came home hoarse and deaf.  Old people should stay at home.  She was beautiful and very happy to see all of us old farts attending.  Most of my cousins were there and it was good to see them all again.

                                                            Lisa & Jordan (almost newlyweds)
                                   L-R Shane & Cheri (Lisa's sister) Jordan & Lisa, SIL Joan and bro Garry.
                                                               Some of my crazy cousins
My bro

So it has been a busy few weekends.  I'm really tired of talking to people lol. 

The house is coming along fine.  They put in the granite counter top last week and it looks awesome.





They are just starting to put the trim on the windows and doors.  I will have to take a picture of the rounded corners throughout the house ... they look really neat.

The blue jays and the crows are screaming at each other in the back yard... its sounds like a war zone. Time to get out the broom!!!


Thursday, June 23, 2011

Hey ho....just another day in the life.

Busy busy with the new house...lots of things to figure out and decisions to be made. 

Gord is usually my stumbling block..head   Today it was the color of the baseboards and the window framing.......ohhhhhhhhhhh my god you would think this was the end of the world!  I chose a very neutral off white color that was suggested by the designers....he saw the swatch and said it looked grey........it wasn't grey asshole...it was a neutral color that would look good with the window frames. 

Our home builders are very good to us... and suggested we see one one their show homes that had that color on the baseboards and window frames.  That meant another road trip...because this house was about 20 miles from our house...yay I love road trips...and having lunch at a greasy spoon after that.  Excuses to eat grease is right up my alley. 

We walked around the show home and saw immediately it was the right shade.  Actually if Gord didn't want all the stuff he wanted  for our house....this house would have been perfect for two retiring old farts like us.  It was a small bungalow with a really nice enclosed patio.  But he is determined to spend all our money before we die....thus the big house is where I will kill myself cleaning it.  I want this written on my tombstone...

Her lies Joanie Balonie
full of macaroni
Gord killed me
And didn't give a shit
Cleaning the big house
Threw me into a fit.

I promise to be a better blogger after all this has gone down with my brother and  then with the house...plus now we have to sell it.  Lot's of shit still on our plate.

Bro was ambulanced to the hospital earlier this week.  again....apparently the discharge doc...forgot to put his diuretics in his med prescription when he went home..   FFSAKES..... He has congestive heart failure for shit sakes...how could they have missed that?   SIL was surprised that he didn't have a med like that in their regime...but thought perhaps is was a new med was taking care of that she didn't know about. 

They took out 16 litres of  water out of him.  His is back home now.  Sigh.......a little lighter.

I have a few pic's to post from my nieces social on Saturday...but I don't have them on this computer.  I will post them tomorrow.  Most of you will have seen them on facebook already.

Balonie...

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Hiya...I am getting my mojo back..weaving in and out

Gord went to a seminar tonight...so I made my own supper.  I made potato salad with lots of eggs in it..the way I like it...and lots of sour cream and mayo...green onions ... some vinegar...and some sugar.....If I would have made it like I did years ago it would have had whipping cream in it.  But of course I don't have that in my fridge anymore.  I still need some meat with my meal...because that is what I still like to do...last week I went to Foodland...a store that still sells shit that is not good for you.  I bought a canned chicken.  I remember when we were young and mom had to make a quicky meal she would bring out the canned chicken.  I loved it then...and I just sort of like it now.  It's just like the canned hams.  We used to have them all the time when we were younger...and I have to say...I still like them...BUT when you read the labels...FFsakes the salt in them is so high ...it could put you in the ground man.  Way down. 

So now I only eat a can a week.....kidding...

I was just thinking ...........I have a pressure canner, I could can chicken. .... if I could catch them...heh... I have a small electric stove in this house that is not good for the pressure cookering  and it has a glass top...in my next life at the new house I have a huge gas stove.  A stove that scares me, but could hold the pressure cooker and jars of nakid chickens.   I have so much to look forward to.  Like a gas stove.  OMG....life might be a little shorter that I anticipated.  When I blow up the whole famdamily. 

Balonie.....trying to use her head. Without too much success just yet....

Road Trip



We did a little road trip on our way to see the slab of granite.  First stop was Lockport.  It is a huge dam on the Red River where boats have to go through the locks to get to the other side.


We went to Skinner's for dinner here.  Skinner's is supposed to have the world's best foot long hot dogs.  SUPPOSED to!  I used be really good...but our hot dogs were nuked...yuk...fries were still good.


This is part of the river running towards the locks.





This is the entrance to the locks...see that cement thingie on the right down behind that boat..it's fun going through them.  We did that a lot when we had a boat.  It's kind of scary because the locks empty and down you go until you reach the level on the other side.  If you are good ... they let you out the other side.  You have to be sure you got your boat secured because once you are in there it can get crowed with other  boats and you don't want to be bumping into them....that has happened...wasn't my fault I thought someone else was holding the rope.


The Quarry ... all the granite lined up in a row.


                                                              We picked our slab.


                                           Then we went home and drove past a bee field.  The end.

Exciting huh?  I burped that ugly hot dog all the way home.










Thursday, June 09, 2011

Bro is home

It's only been a few day yet but so far so good. 

I have been so crazy busy with the new house....and am so glad he is at home because I don't know how I could visit as often as I did.  We live a long way from the hospital. 

I put up a few more pic's on my house website....it's on the sidebar.

Give me a few days and I'll try to fill everyone in on everything.  I know I have been really shitty about posting lately.  I try to read all your blogs in the morning with my coffee....and then it's time to get busy and get about my bussynes.. huh?  I haven't lost my sense of humour yet... it was close....but I found it under a pile of laundry I forgot about.  Tired ...yes..!!