Tag Archives: fall weather

Simple Sunday

Posted in budgeting, budgets, California, cooking, Uncategorized, Walking by

I had a really nice walk this morning. No one was there except a beautiful ‘priestess moon’ and Venus. Really nice.

I’m back from the gym and need to do some tidying up. I’ve kept up with things this week, so there’s not a lot of extra stuff to do.

I’m using the last of the apples from our tree to make more applesauce. We had a great crop this year, so it’s nice to have our own applesauce. Last night I made a very yummy dish that was called grilled chicken with a Boursin sauce. I had bought the 3 pack of Boursin cheese a while ago, and it’s pull date is coming up so I googled recipes. First you grill the chicken with some onions, then remove from the pan and add some chicken broth and then the package of garlic and herb Boursin. Stir until cream and well incorporated, add the chicken back in and cook for a bit more till the suace is nice and thick. It was quite good.

Yesterday, I also made up a dozen double-stuffed potatoes for the freezer. It’s one of our favorite things to have on hand. We had one each with our chicken.

I tallied up the Costco shop, and here’s how it breaks down:

non food came in at $200.

Long term food came in at $48

and regular food came in at $140.

So I’m pleased, and I’ll put the $140 in next month’s budget, which will start soon.

A couple of pictures. Flowers from my son and his partner, a vintage Halloween pumpkin, and my new heater that looks like a small fireplace. I needed something out in the sunroom as the little ceramic one I had died.

We’re in store for another beautiful day.

Frugal Friday and misc. stuff

Posted in Blood test, budgeting, budgets, California, cancer, decluttering, frugalism, Multiple myeloma, Myeloma, Uncategorized by

We ended up having a lot of rain!! But now it’s blue skies and the temperature is lovely. We should be having day temperatures in the 70s. We have some outside things to do, so that’s perfect. I need to paint the new gutter that S put up and tidy the patio up for winter.

I have a small pile to go to the thrift store and will probably do that on Sunday after the gym. I’m still going through different areas to find more things to add to the pile.

My son and his partner came over on Wednesday afternoon, along with the partner’s parents. They are lovely people, and I wish B could have met them. But they were here for the dad to check out my son’s Subaru. The dad is very mechanically minded. My son is giving( with my permission, as it is my name) the Subaru to him for free. They checked it out and will take it hopefully soon. As soon as that’s done I can take it off the insurance and that is going to save me over $700. I’ll call allstate as soon as it’s signed over.

My daughter and I went to Costco yesterday to finish shopping for the stuff I didn’t get last time. Most of it was non-perishables like the smoke alarms( wow, they were expensive even on sale), TP, and laundry soap. water, and a few other things. From there, we went to my favorite pizza place for a slice of New York pizza. It was fun. I also got the car washed since Quick Quack was just across the street. Costco ended up a little over $300 but I need to break down non food and also long term items and see what the total was.

My food budget for the month came in at about $350, so I’m really getting the hang of not buying so much. The Costco trip I’ll be putting on next month’s budget, which starts next week.

In not-so-happy news, my labs came back with a 4-point increase, so myeloma is definitely on the move. I checked in with Dr. L, and we decided to go one more month and see what the next increase is. I’m disappointed, but it was to be expected at some point. I just wish I could have had at least some period of time with things ‘normal’ after B died. Well, at least I’m asymptomatic which is good. Also the ratio of kappa / lambda was the same so that’s good. The plan will be to try to do biweekly,depending on how next month goes, and if that doesn’t work switch to darzalex fast pro. I’ve made it 20 years with Myeloma and know I’m one of the lucky ones. Still reality sucks that I have to deal with this. 😦

Simple Sunday

Posted in budgeting, California, cooking, decluttering, home stuff by

Sunrise is 6:38 am, so I walked at 6:15, and it was just getting light, but I still turned on the flashlight, although I didn’t really need it. No one was there, which these days is pretty rare. Anyway, our beautiful fall weather starts today and goes on for at least the next 10 days or so. I’m hoping we can get more yard stuff done since it’s cooler.

Today, I’m not going to the gym but plan on going through each zone and tidying up and dusting, etc. I’m going to start in the sunroom and work from there. I also need to get out to the trailer and see what needs bringing in. Plus, do a wipe down of counters, etc, and fluff up the bed. My son is planning on spending the night and go to work from here so that’s a good motivator.

Sachi and I continue to watch Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It is so good. The actors really have the mannerisms of the original down, so that is fun to watch. I finished Professor T, I think. It was on Prime and just as I was trying to figure out what at the end of Season 4 I had watched they took it off. So now I have to figure out where it is and see if I want to pay for it. Such a pain when Prime does that.

I made a roast chicken the other night, so for leftovers, I made some asian wraps for dinner, and we had those as we watched the show. I have a lot left leftover chicken, so I think I’ll make a soup and end up freezing some. I have a pan of lasagna in the freezer, and I think I’ll pull that out as it’s been there a few months.

Tomorrow is my dentist appointment for a cleaning. It’s early, but still not enough time to get to the pool to swim. I just plan on coming home unless there’s something in Auburn I need to do.

I have a good-sized load to take to the thrift store, so I’ll do that after one of my appointments this week. I added the dehydrator since I don’t plan on doing any herbs this year or ever, actually. I enjoyed all that in the past, but now it just feels like too much effort for just a little payoff. Oh well, everything changes. Nothing stays the same that’s for sure.

Simple Sunday

Posted in California, home stuff, Sashiko, Uncategorized, Walking by

A lovely fall morning. I feel pretty good this morning. Most of the dex has worn off and isn’t affecting me too much. We had a nice walk without anyone there again. It’s kind of weird since the two nice ladies haven’t been there all week. Maybe they’re on vacation. It’s pretty dark when we get there but daylight savings is less than a month away so that’ll change things.

I decided NOT to go into Anytime gym this morning and instead power washed the outside windows with the outside Windex. I’m really late on this since I do the windows once a quarter but not last quarter. It’s very easy to use the spray bottle attached to the hose.

I also started a loaf of whole wheat sandwich bread. Not sourdough just yeast. I almost always use King Arthur’s recipes. This one called for a 1/4 c veg oil which I thought was a lot but did it anyway just to see how the recipe turns out.

I’m rethinking a bread machine to make dough but not really sure yet. There are a couple of ones that I like that are in the $125 range so not like a Zojurushi. Unless I found another used Zoju I wouldn’t spend that much money for just doing the dough cycle. The one I looked at a Youtuber was using and liked that the pan was ceramic not teflon so that was interesting to me. We’ll see. mixing in the Kitchen aid is just as easy for the most part.

Here’s the quilt frame set up with the Japanese quilt on it.

I’m not trying to do perfect rows or anything, just quilting using the Sashiko stitching.

It may take a while….

Simple Sunday

Posted in books, California, cooking, Flylady, reading, seasonal things, Uncategorized by

Fall is definitely here and with it colder weather and lots of pretty colored leaves. In the park, the trees are red, orange, yellow, and gold colors. Up here on our hill, we mostly have shades of yellow and gold. We had a lovely walk with no one there again. Sunday is my favorite day to walk. We’re consistent in walking 45 minutes. Then poof! I’m done. It’s the same with swimming. 40 minutes give or take and then that’s it.

I ordered 2 more cases of Ball jars and lids. They didn’t have the pint ones so I’ll check around for them. I also got a table runner in a tartan red plaid for Christmas and a candle(balsam). Speaking of Christmas, I’m pretty sure we’re not going to go up to Tahoe to cut a tree. The permits are in South Lake and that would mean going twice up there, once to buy the permit and then second, going to get the tree. There are no online purchases this year. Again, I don’t think we’ll do much in the way of gifts. Both my children buy whatever they need/want anyway. I’ll probably do a few gift cards though.

Here’s the applesauce from the other day.

I only got 4-pint jars but it is very tasty. I’ll see if my son can pick up a few more apples from his friend’s trees.

This week is another quiet one with no appts. I will go to the gym at least once and then swim at least twice. I’m doing a small Winco trip on one of the swim days as it is just across the street from the pool. We’ll probably do Costco in two weeks. As always, it’s the coffee we’ll need.

So we have a ‘new’ very friendly cat that has shown up!!!

Meet Chester!

He looks just like Gus! But his face is squarer ( is that a word?)more square. He’s very friendly and wants attention. We’re not sure where he came from but he seems to like it here.

This is Gus the tiger boy!!! He is bigger than the new cat that we’ve named Chester!!

I’m glad the week is over. I had those few days I didn’t feel well and it was just kind of an off week. Flylady zone is the living room. I did the windows and dusted. I put out a few Halloween decorations( my vintage ones) and added some mini pumpkins.

We finished watching “Severance”. If you like futuristic, dystopian stuff, then this is for you. Very intense and you’re not really sure what is going on. I have some Ann Cleeves on hold at the library I’ll pick up this week. ( she writes the Vera series).

Simple Sunday

Posted in California, Flylady, Lake tahoe, minimalism by

Things are back to normal around here. All the camping stuff is organized back in Rubi, the linen sheets washed and put back on the bed and kitchen is tidied too.

Our weather is definitely fall like and it’s getting darker earlier in the evening and getting lighter later in the morning. We walked this morning starting at 6:08 and it was still somewhat dark so we used a flashlight. AH was there, (when is he ever not there) and didn’t have a flashlight. ( Jerk!!)

BTW, we did get the laundry room back together before we left for Tahoe. The walls are painted but the ceiling wood still needs to go up and the door isn’t up. That’s because we plan to flip it so it opens the other way that what it was doing before. It looks good. I’ll get a few pictures up this week.

We decided to do Costco this morning because of the coffee on sale( Starbucks that’s $5.00 off) and the sale ends today. We got other sale items too since that is the best way to take advantage of Costco’s prices. We were in and out in 30 minutes, so a record.

The kitties are growing and lots of fun to watch although they are little terrors when running thru the house. Little Cherry got spayed on Thursday so now they are all done. They all have such unique personalities.

All the garden stuff is winding down and we have been cleaning up the yard/garden areas. My daughter does most of it but I try and do some everyday. I must have made 8 jars of pickled jalapenos. Hey, if you haven’t tried pickled jalapenos in eggs salad , give it a try it was delicious.

Last evening we had a BBQ. The first in months with the weather so hot plus fire danger. I did some burgers, veggie burgers and chicken. I plan on using the chicken tonight in some ramen. It was fun and it was nice to sit outside with the lovely weather.

I have a load in buggie to take to the Goodwill tomorrow. Included is a small very nice old dresser that has carved acorns on the handles. I’ve loved the little dresser but now I don’t have a use for it so I’m going to pass it on to someone who has space and can use it.

This week in Flylady we’re in the living room zone. We plan to take out the window cooler and I’ll wash the windows. I might look around or take some pictures to see what can be rearranged or decluttered. BTW, one of the BEST tools to see how things are in your space is take pictures with your phone. It really is eye opening.

Simple Sunday

Posted in cooking, Flylady, freezer cooking, ikea, Walking by

Perfect fall weather. The mornings are cool and days get warm. We still haven’t had any outdoor fires in the fire pit because of fire danger. We need some rain to do that.

Not now:(

Our walks are stress free since we’re the only ones there that early. The stars have been spectacular. Venus is very bright and Mars is quite red. We we’re leaving at 6 and the first person showed up so hopefully we can maintain this schedule. Frankly, it’s worth it to be out the door just a little earlier. As I said to B this morning, we can do it now but who knows the future. A year from now? or when I start Velcade? I may not be up to it so we might as well do this while we can.

This week is the Living room zone if you follow Flylady. I did ours including window washing. I need to do the outside windows this coming week. I try and do them each quarter. I use the outside bottle of windex that attaches to a hose. It works quite well.

Today is a mellow day without too much on the docket. I’m planning on soup for dinner with salad. Yesterday I prepped 15 baked potatoes( Costco, big bag) for double stuffed potatoes. That’s 30 halves. But when you pile it on you do get less. So I ended up with 20 halves. I left 4 out and froze the rest. The potatoes were really nice so if you’re in Costco, that’s a good buy. I guessing that’s because the harvest is happening in Idaho. Plus the value is incredible. 15 lbs of bakers for $5.69. I think down at the Holiday they are .99 a pound right now. Also, double stuffed potatoes freeze beautifully.

This coming week has some appts. I have a dental cleaning and we are tentatively going to Ikea to get 2 chairs for the sunporch. We’ll see. It depends how the week shapes up and my mood. The pantry from Ikea is still unavailable so that won’t be happening. But Ikea is fun and affordable.

Budget Friday

Posted in budgeting, budgets, California, cancer, frugalism, home stuff, Myeloma, prepper pantry, social security, Uncategorized by

I’m trying to come up with a good blog title for Fridays. I’m not sure Frugal Friday quite fits.

Overall, we are frugal because we have no income per se except SS. So maybe just Budget Friday would work. I’ll see. But budget-wise, all Octobers bills are in. We do have the 2 annual bills of house insurance and Allstate which is twice a year. With ALL the insurance companies getting out of insuring California property, for the most part, we are now having to do the California Fair Plan which is added to the AAA insurance. We went from our annual bill being slightly over $1,000 to now we are slightly over $2,000. Quite a jump.

Costco was just at $450, so that will go on October’s food budget. About $70 was wine and beer. I did buy a bottle of nice champagne for celebrating birthdays. Actually, it wasn’t expensive at $15.00. Plus there were a few prepper items and 2 bags of Starbucks coffee that was on sale. With all 4 of us drinking coffee we go thru quite a bit. But I don’t see us going back to Costco till the very end of October or even the first week of November which could then include any Christmas food or items. Prepper stuff included tuna, Cholula sauce, TP, another case of water, extra butter, and extra cheese. The only thing I didn’t get and I need is some tamari sauce. I’ll probably just go down here to the store and pay their price. The best place to get low sodium tamari is Trader Joe’s but I don’t think I’ll be getting there any time soon.

So far this morning I have made pizza dough, washed living room windows, cleaned the ceiling fan, and am just about ready to clean the rest of the sunroom.

Our lovely fall weather continues with absolutely beautiful days with temperatures in the mid to high 80’s. Next week does have a few 93degree days but this time of year that doesn’t seem so bad.

Budget-wise, I did my LLS for the UHC premium and my medicare which they cover for 2 months so that will be here in a week or so. I am very grateful to LLS for my grant (myeloma) as it does cover health insurance. If we had to pay OP for us both it’s almost $700 so I’m not sure how the budget would do. Probably we would be in the red. But there are gifts sometimes even with having cancer.

B did order the boards for the house ( 5 of them) so that was $120 about. But the siding needs to be fixed. Other stuff, even the fencing by the barn is optional and can be put off if we don’t have extra money.

If you’re looking for a new TV series, The Boys, is quite good. It’s super heroes that are darker more evil and is well done. We just started Season 2 on Netflix.

Well, that’s a wrap for now.

Birthday trip

Posted in Blood test, Bone marrow transplant, California, Lake tahoe, travel, Uncategorized by

We did it!!

This is our birthdays’ gift… B’s is September 22( the same as Bilbo’s and Frodo’s, ( so lucky) and mine is next week on the 30th…..  we are getting ‘older” ( ha, ha, no really we are now old!!

I had reserved 2 nights at Tahoe at Nevada Beach( our favorite). I wasn’t 100% sure that this was a good idea with Barclay just 4 months post-transplant but it turned out brilliant.

The weather was cool at night but the days were picture perfect fall in Tahoe. Plus the campground was almost all ‘old’er people and not a ton of kids running around or riding bikes. The beach was almost empty as was the beach parking lot.

In a word, it was my idea of perfect.

This was also a big deal as B hasn’t really driven any length since really his diagnosis so also a big accomplishment. Next week we see the transplant doctor and he should be able to tell us more about the BMB results which looked great. No MDS, no leukemia, the part we didn’t get yet was the donor cells amount. So hopefully that’s all good too. UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_398.jpg

We certainly hope it’s all good.

Today, Barclay has his labs in Auburn instead of UCD med center Sacramento. Then we plan to do a call to AARP to sign him up for supplemental plan F. I’m hoping to get Part D signed up at the same time.  So we may be on the phone for a while.  There is still some billing issues we’re dealing with when the Cobra wasn’t activated. I’ve called twice but it still seems to show we owe that money. I’ll wait to deal with that as I can really only handle one thing at a time.

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This is our sweet tent trailer that we really love and our anniversary present you can see there is the Honda generator. Wow, so quiet and definitely worth it.

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The handsome transplant patient 4 months post-transplant and almost a year since the horrible diagnosis. A new life.  A huge shout out of a” thank you” to his brother, Rodman, for the gift of life. A true gift.

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Here’s the happy camper with morning coffee!!

 

 

Simple Sunday

Posted in camping, Flylady, Uncategorized by

Fall is in the air around here. Our temperatures have really dropped and I actually closed a few windows. We always open all the windows in the evening in the summer and then close in the morning as the heat starts. In the fall we keep the window open all day and partially close at night as it can get chilly.

We’re also watering quite a bit less and the gardens are just about done. We turned off the drip hoses and will only water as needed. We still have tons of cherry tomatoes so I’d like to keep them going. Our water bill is high again $155. but now it ‘ll drop back down.  Since we’re on Meadow Vista water it NEVER goes below $70 since they have huge fees attached to the water. In the winter we use about $20. worth of water a month but the rest are their fees.

 

Our trip up to Tahoe in 2 weeks will probably be chilly but that’s okay. We’ve got the heater in the tent trailer and lights. With the new Honda generator, we can run lights longer if we want. It’s very quiet but there’s still a curfew of 10pm on generators. We’re in bed by 9pm so no worries.

This week is the kitchen zone with Fly lady. I’ll start this morning and then finish up tomorrow. I’d like to reorganize the pantry( restaurant stainless steel shelves). they are not too bad but I do have loads of tomatoes and peppers on one shelf. So we’ll see.

Today is also a gym day and then home.

We finally got the 2 new windows we ordered almost 5 weeks ago. They go up and down and open which the other ones did not. So it is going to be great to get air in there at night or just when it’s nice out.  This is one of the few projects we did ( okay not me, but Barclay and my daughter) this summer. We’re still hoping to take down a tree or two later this fall but so far no one has called back to give us an estimate.

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A little fall color.IMG_0650.jpeg