Exceedingly Mundane

Some more things going on around here… mostly just for me and my poor memory!

June actually seemed to go by pretty quick. Now July is here, and typically, July and August are my least favorite months of the year. BY FAR! I will be so glad when September gets here! Holidays, football, birthdays, September through New Years is my most favorite time of the year!

* Tim got the stove installed early on (it was ready for me to use on Saturday June 8), and I quickly began work on christening it. The first thing I used the oven for was homemade pizza. I have had to learn to use the smooth top ceramic burners, but I think I have it figured out now. They seem to take longer to heat up, but boy once they do, they stay warm. I made sloppy joes for Tim a couple of weeks later, and my recipe calls for simmering the mixture for 20 minutes. Once I got the mixture to a boil, then lowered to low, it was more than a simmer. I actually had to turn the burner off for a few minutes, just so it wasn’t bubbling furiously 🙂 I really like it though, and have been using it a lot. It’s so much better for baking things. Before, when I’d bake cookies, brownies, bread, etc, I’d get uneven results. Sometimes things would be overdone on the outside and still doughy in the middle. Now, I get a very even bake. I don’t think the oven is technically convection, but it does have a fan in the back, and I hear it running even after I’ve turned the stove off. It’s a Whirlpool Gold with Accubake, and Tim says that means it is convection. Whatever it is, it sure is a heck of a lot better than my 20 year old stove!

* I’ve also pulled out my Cuisinart ice cream maker and made a couple of batches of ice cream. Nothing like homemade fudgy brownies and homemade vanilla ice cream in the evenings!

* In spite of the new stove, we’ve still been eating out occasionally. We sometimes go to Corner Bakery after church on Sunday mornings. A couple of weeks ago, we broke out of our routine and got crazy and went to IHOP! We still enjoy going to the little Mexican place by our house, Cazadores. We went last Saturday night, and Tim got something new, the paradilla (spelled??) platter. Basically a huge platter, like a fajita skillet but not sizzling, filled with all kinds of meat. Chicken, beef, shrimp, chorizo, short ribs, pork, lots of stuff. It was really good. He brought home two take out containers of meat and fixings, and got several more meals out of it! We’ve been doing a Friday night date night at home a couple of weekends in June. One Friday night we went to Pizza Hut and got pizza, and came home to watch tv. Another night we ordered Five Guys over the Internet and ran in to pick it up. Nothing like greasy fast food on a Friday night!

* I read about 18 books in June! That might be a new record for me! I am still using GoodReads to track what I read. I’m doing really good this year and hope to read close to 100 books. My all time high is 104, which works out to 2 books per week, at 52 weeks a year. It would be nice if I broke that record, but I probably won’t make it. Of the books I read in June, my favorites were probably the 3 books in the French Twist series by Sandra Byrd (Chrisitan chick-lit) and my least favorite, I nearly abandoned, and wished I had. I got a digital download from the library of Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella and I disliked it quite a bit 🙁

* Also in June, Tim played a lot of golf! On the first day of the month, a Saturday, he went with some golfing buddies over to a course in Louisiana called Black Bear. He had a really good time, but I had a long day. I think he was gone about 11 or 12 hours. He also played with his buddies on two Saturday mornings at 7:22. Nothing like getting up early on our one day to sleep in!

* Tim also helped our neighbor Ms Maridine with her computer, and also with the locks on her house. We saw her quite a bit and she took us out to lunch at the Strawberry Cafe to say thank you to Tim for all his hard work. We went over and helped Elizabeth one night at her new house. We took Fred with us on Father’s Day to Linda’s house, so we could visit with Tim’s dad on Father’s Day. We had a nice visit that day, and Fred enjoyed the trip. Also, I took Fred to see the new pulmonologist Dr. Westbrook twice, on two Mondays in June. He has one more appointment (I hope!) on July 15th. We also went on June 30th to a get-together at Tim’s Aunt Annie Myrl’s house. Mitchell’s sister in law Mary and her daughter Cheryl were here from New Mexico. I don’t think I had ever met them, so we went to visit and catch up with Tim’s dad’s side of the family. We had a really nice time 🙂

Let’s see… there’s probably more that happened in June, but that was the highlights. And of course, the anniversary of my mom’s passing, it was eleven years this June. And Fred closed out on his house around the end of the month. House paperwork and errands kept us busy for a while, but thankfully we did everything remote and didn’t have to make a trip to Hattiesburg.

We have the annual Fourth of July get-together at Tim’s Aunt Becky’s house tomorrow. We’ll go down, and take Fred, he enjoys going with us every year on the Fourth. I made brownies to take, as usual. Maybe one day I’ll get brave and take something new!

I’ll try to update more often, wanna keep up with all what we are doing and what’s going on. Even though I do stuff on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, I think the old blog is still the best venue for keeping track of the little and big stuff. Here’s hoping I can do better in the future 🙂 I’m sporadic, at best, these days, LOL!

I want to blog, I actually have time to blog, I just can’t seem to get motivated! Then, I realize that so much is going on, and I’m not getting it recorded in any way. And my memory is so bad, I know I won’t remember stuff and everything that is going on if I don’t write it down or take pictures or even better, blog about it!

This has been an eventful year for us. First my dad fell for the third time in February and that started a long chain of events. Then we lost Beau in March. Sigh. On my dad’s stuff, we’ve already gotten a lot accomplished on that front. We moved him in February close to us, we’ve emptied his house, updated it, listed it and now sold it. The papers were done last week and he received his check on Friday. That was sort of sad. Even though it wasn’t the house I grew up in, my parents lived there for 21 years (well, my mom about 10 of those and my dad all 21). Last week marked eleven years since my mom died.

Tim stays busy this time of year, as always. He works from 7AM to 4PM and then leaves for the golf course almost every day. He gets in around 9 PM right now, while the days are still long. I always struggle through July and August, they are definitely the two hardest months of the year for me. They are hot, they are long, and there is just nothing going on. Tim plays golf and I wait for football season to start! LOL!

Other than the stuff going on with my dad, we haven’t done a lot. No vacations and it doesn’t look like we will go anywhere this year. I want to get another dog, but Tim does not. We’ve looked at moving to a new house, now that my dad is settled, but we haven’t done anything on that front yet either. We did finally get a new stove here at our house, Tim ordered it online from Lowe’s on a Memorial Day sale. It was delivered in early June and Tim spent two days, cutting cabinets and countertops and putting in the new stove and vent hood. The stove and oven, I love! I’m enjoying learning to use the smooth top and the oven portion is a ton better! It still heats up my kitchen, which is awful this time of year, but oh well. I just tend to use my crockpot and griddler more this time of year anyway.

I am still going through spurts of trying new recipes, versus cooking old favorites, versus just not feeling like cooking at all! Tim, thankfully, usually takes us out to eat once or twice a week, usually on the weekends, so that gives me a nice break. Maybe if I find more motivation, I can blog more about the recipes I’ve tried and even the books I’ve read! For another day 🙂