Tag Archives: dentist

Midweek musings

Posted in California, cooking, home improvement, home stuff, swimming, Uncategorized by

The dentist was long yesterday but it worked out fine. The fillings were taken care of. She’s a good dentist. I just wish that Medicare had some dental option. It was very pricey:(

Today I’m heading to the pool for a swim. I don’t have anything else urgent that needs doing so I’ll come straight home. I want to make a few of the condiment recipes in the new cookbook. She has a recipe for olive oil mayo that looks easy and I have the breadcrumbs with rosemary and parsley dried and ready to whiz up. I also plan on making the garlic confit with some cherry tomatoes I have some that need to be used up. BTW, if you’re a Costco shopper those cherry tomatoes, Hirros, are absolutely delicious.

I plan to vacuum as well and do some dusting. We heat mostly with wood ( no central air/heat) and it does create dust. We do have a wall heater(propane) that we use on very cold mornings.

It’s another cloudy day but not too cold. I think the temperature is around 55 degrees.

Well, I best be off to do my daily routine so I can read in a bit.

Frugal Friday

Posted in budgeting, California, camping, cancer, cash envelopes, frugalism, Lake tahoe by

First off, I want to thank a reader, NW, for a very generous donation that took me by complete surprise. I do have my Paypal linked to my blog but haven’t thought about it in years. It was such a kind thing to do and will help most certainly with the trip to Stanford, gas, lodging, and food. So thank you again for such kindness. Honestly, I was blown away by your thoughtfulness.

My dentist appt was a cleaning and then x-rays. It was pricey and I had to put that on a CC as my cash envelope had been emptied when B went to the dentist. I hope by the next appt, I’ll have my envelope fully funded. Oh, I have a tiny cavity she(The dentist) wants to fill so I’ll do that in October. We need to get through these appts of B’s and see how that goes.

I went to Costco after I had my doctor appt in Sacramento. Yikes, the traffic going into Sacramento was awful and took over an hour. Usually it’s 45-50 minutes. So coming back out it went smoothly swung into Costco. I spent $188 total. $15 was nonfood, $20 was wine, and the rest was food. I used my cash envelope.

We filled up the VW this week and that was $45.

We went to the nursery and bought 2 bags of potting soil and 3 pots and that ended up $60.

After that was a stop at Panera, and that was $28. I had cash in my coffee date envelope but forgot to use it so I’ll need to move that to back to the bank. Although I haven’t put any money into dining out for this month so I could wait and deduct that. I usually only do $50 as we don’t really eat out that often.

Overall, a frugal week. I didn’t need gas in the Santa Fe so that was nice.

Today I do plan on swimming as I haven’t been all week and I can feel it. I don’t need to get gas or get anything from Winco( across the street from the pool).

Next week is open with no appts so we’re thinking of driving up to Tahoe which we had planned on doing for our anniversary. After Labor Day is the start of the off-season although September is still busy up there. We still have our Nevada Beach reservations for the end of September but the Stanford trip is right in the middle of that week, so I’m guessing we’re going to have to cancel. We could trailer up and stay 2nights, but then we’d have to come back down for Stanford 2 days, and I just don’t see us able to go back up for 2nights. We just don’t have that kind of energy. I don’t want to cancel yet in hopes we’ll get a cancellation at Stanford. I love it up there at the end of September. The air is so crisp and the lake so blue. Plus, we get the annual parks pass discount so where can you go on vacation in Tahoe for $150 for 6 nights. But if we don’t get into Stanford sooner then I’m not sure it’ll work.

Being in limbo with all this is pretty tough and I have to say my anxiety is fairly high. I guess since we can’t really control these things, I need to let it go some. Easier said than done.

Enough of that, I made a frittata last night to use up that spinach I had. Tonight is pizza night. I think I have one last dough ball in the freezer I can use.

Simple Sunday

Posted in California, cooking, Uncategorized, Walking by

The full moon was spectacular over the park this morning. I think the actual full moon is this evening but nonetheless, it was impressive on the horizon.

We’re enjoying watching the Rings of Power on Prime. It’s before LOTR and tells the back stories of Elves, Numenor, Dwarves, and when Gandalf fell from the stars( He’s the race of Wizards ). It is beautifully done. We also are on the 3rd movie of the Hobbit Trilogy. It gets a little long but still great. We always watch it around late September or early October. I usually read the books too but I think I’ll go back and just read the Appendixes which is where the new Prime series is based on.

This is a tough time for finances as all our fall annual bills come in and EVERYTHING has increased. Our PO Box fee went from $106 to $166. How can they do that??? Our house insurance( with us being in a fire zone) also increased by $600. I’ve had to put the insurance on our card and it’ll take a month or two to pay it off. sigh….. sigh… I hate that. It just seems everything is so expensive.

Yesterday after the pool, I came home and made the White bean Ragout from my new canning book.

So this is cannellini beans precooked, tomatoes, garlic, onion, veggie broth with a dash of chicken broth ( sorry B, just a little for flavor)…and chopped basil.

I’m really enjoying learning this process. I did freak out once as it was supposed to have made 6 qts and I got 4 so somewhere I didn’t add enough liquid although I did measure what the book said. I messaged the Happy Homemaker on Facebook and asked her and she said sometimes that happens and as long as I pressure canned at the right pressure and time it’s fine. ( which I did, it’s 15lbs of pressure for 90 minutes. I thought it was very thoughtful she answered me right away.

The next thing I want to try is Boston Baked Beans.

Tomorrow I have a dentist appt. We cancelled our Delta Dental after our dentist office went out of network so it became pointless to pay $71 a month and not get any benefits.

Then later this week our old Koffee klatch is going to meet up. Since it’s been 2 1/2 years it’ll be strange to see people. One person has moved down the ‘hill’ as we say up here in the foothills. Two people have spouses that are seriously ill now so that’s a hardship for sure. Still it’l be nice to see everyone again.

Saturday musings…

Posted in cooking, swimming, travel, Uncategorized by

Overall, a really nice week with absolutely spectacular weather. Cool in the mornings and then lovely warm afternoons. We are seeing lot of yellows on the oak trees and shades of gold with a little red occasionally. Down at the park there are lots of trees with red,yellow, and oranges thrown in. The park has liquid ambers which do change into beautiful fall colors, chinese pistachio turns a brilliant red. I think there’s maples and a gingko tree as well. We are due for some rain possibly tomorrow even and then it looks like the storm door may open next week.

We are still planning our trip to Capitola the following week even if there’s rain. That’s one reason we bought Rubi is so we can go even if it’s rainy outside. I ordered a gas fire pit to take with us so we can have an evening fire. In Tahoe there were and even still now, no open fires even in campgrounds and no charcoal even. We saw a few RVers with the gas fire pits and they were cute. They weren’t too expensive( $140 from Amazon).

Yesterday I had to go into the dentist as I had part of a crown come off. The new dentist looked at it and took x rays and said the metal part was still in tact so it’s ok to leave at this point. I still need to replace it but I’m hoping January sometime. So that threw my day off some since it was the middle of the day. But I feel relieved it’s ok at least.

I ended up making salmon for dinner with brown rice from Trader Joe’s and a salad. I could’ve done pizza but didn’t feel like it. BTW, the rice at TJ’s in the freezer section is spectacular for quick meals. It microwaves up quite nicely. Tonight I’m baking some chicken with a side of delicata squash I bought at our local farm. I was so impressed with their hard squashes I bought 5 and I think next week I’m going to go back and buy another 6-8 so I can have a winter stash. We didn’t get any squash this year out of our garden. My daughter has Johnny’s garlic almost all planted and because we had such success with the onions in the barrels, we’re doing all the garlic in there too. I’d like to try and do some gardening in the galvanized troughs and see how that does. We do have problems with voles and earwigs that eat most anything. So this might be a good solution.

‘This week I’ve been painting the bathroom. We’ve done all the rooms this year except this one. I used the same paint which is called ‘rarified air’ and is lovely pale blue/grey. Then since I was feeling ambitious I decided to paint the claw foot tub too. It came out really nice. The original red I painted it has really stood up since it’s 26 years now since we put it in but I’ve wanted it black for a while. Eventually the tub and bathroom will be re done. But not this year. I have photos but they’re not uploading for some reason.