Author: sandcastle

Some of you know our daughter left the farm on which she was working and started traveling again. Now she has found a way to travel and get paid for it. She has become an over-the-road trucker. Yes, that means she drives semi-trucks around this great country.

Here’s “her” truck. (OK it belongs to the company she works for but it is assigned to her for now.)

 

That silver step you can see is the second step up and it is at my waist height. So when we met up in Benson, Arizona, and she invited me in, I couldn’t climb up there.

This holiday weekend she managed to get routed to Minneapolis so she could spend time with us. Dave hauled out our step ladder so I could climb up and see inside her truck.

She lives in her cab just as if it was an RV. She has a good size bed:

 

And several storage compartments:

 

She removed the mattress from the top bunk and now calls that her attic:

 

She has a 12 volt cooler and a 12 volt oven and a butane burner so she can cook but not a lot.

Just like me when I came home this spring she wanted to use our kitchen to experiment with cooking.

So we made mayonnaise which she decided wasn’t worth her effort in the truck. She doesn’t have running water so her cooking needs to be things that cleanup easily or that make cleanup worth the effort.

The she used my food processor to chop an onion and an apple. She dumped that into a zip-top bag with a pound of ground beef  and massaged the bag to mix them together. Then turned the bag inside out dumping the ingredient into a loaf pan that fits in her oven and used the bag as a glove to shape the meat into the pan. That worked amazingly well. So now she knows she can make meatloaf and only have to wash the pan. That was worth doing. Now she just has to decide whether or not to buy a small food processor or just use a knife and cutting board.

We did lots of other things while she was here.

She exercised with me while watching two of my T-Tapp videos and has already begun doing some of those exercises in her truck.

We played cards. She’s been playing gin rummy on her phone just her against the computer. She discovered it is different when three people play but she still won.

We went to White Castle for lunch. Those of you not from the Upper Midwest might not be familiar with these tiny burgers. They are not like any made anywhere else so she wanted to eat some while here. They were, of course, as good as ever.

She cleaned some excess stuff out of her truck and added it to our pile for donation.

Dave helped her learn how to better use her computer but they did not get one software application to work even with Dave’s expertise.

We took her to Camping World where she bought stuff for her truck.

We demonstrated how our GPS works and she played with it a bit. She’s not very happy with her truck’s GPS so she’s looking for something better and liked the fact that ours lets you define your rig’s size so it won’t route you under low bridges or across light ones.

She took advantage of the opportunity to wash her blankets and stuff she doesn’t like to do at commercial laundries.

And we talked. And talked. And talked.

It was a great visit. And I’m exhausted just writing about it. No wonder it took me a couple days after she left to be ready to write this. 🙂

TTYL,

Linda

For many years my feet and ankles have swelled in the evenings. This last winter when I was preparing to go out to dinner with friends I discovered not only could I not buckle my sandals, I couldn’t even make the straps reach around them.

So I did what doctors always tell you to do. Cut back on my salt and elevated my feet in the evenings.

Didn’t help.

Yet, I’m now having trouble keeping my slippers on my feet and at 7:00 pm after eating a heavily salted supper my feet and ankles look like this:

 Do those look swollen to you? Me neither. Yes, they are up on a hassock but I put them there just to take this photo. First time they’ve been up all day today.

What changed?

This:

 I ordered these exercise DVDs just before I headed home for the summer and they were waiting for me when I got there.

I started right in doing these exercises every day to jump start the program and I now do them several times a week.

One of the advertised benefits of this program is better “Lymphatic Function”. Wanting to know what that meant I Googled lymphatic and learned this from Wikipedia, “Lymphedema is the swelling caused by the accumulation of lymph fluid, which may occur if the lymphatic system is damaged or has malformations. It usually affects limbs, though face, neck and abdomen may also be affected.”

So this program and my improved lymphatic system has removed my daily swelling of my feet and ankles.

And stopped my feet from sweating all the time.

And improved my posture.

And the way my clothes fit.

And my mood.

Want to know more? Go here: http://www.t-tapp.com

And help yourself.

TTYL,

Linda

 

 

WARNING: This post will includes lots of mucus so if you are squeamish do not read this one.

I’m one of those women who always has at least two hankies in my pockets. That’s because I have what my ENT called chronic vasal motor rhinitis. That means my nose runs. A lot. Think streams of clear mucus coming from my nose with regularity. Every time I eat something hot or cold. Every time I go into or out of a building where the temperature changes. Every time someone wearing too much scent passes by. And sometimes, it seems like, just because it feels like running. So I carry hankies to keep my nose from dripping.

Walk around my house and you will see many boxes of tissues. Because I can only keep so many hankies on hand. I wear them out. Not many people wear out hankies but I do.

And that’s only one part of my issue with my nose. Another one is morning congestion. When I get up my nose starts to run. But only what I call the front sinuses do that. Behind those are what I call the back sinuses. The back sinuses are not connected directly to my nose. Nope. They are connected to my throat. Those are the one that create post-nasal drip. Except, in the morning mine don’t drip. They stay stuffed up. I cannot blow them clear because they don’t connect to my nose. So I snort. Fortunately, I am able to do this in the privacy of my bathroom. Snorting brings the thicker mucous from my back sinuses into my mouth. If I swallow that mucus it overly lubricates my digestive system. So I prefer to expel it from my mouth into a tissue. Or, rather, several tissues. Between my front and back sinuses I go through about a dozen tissues every morning. It’s not lovely but it is a fact of my life.

I hate that I have this runny nose in public. I would go someplace private to blow my nose if I could. But when it decides to run it does it very well which leaves me no time to hide.

So, if I am somewhere you are and I have to blow my nose, please understand that I am not trying to gross you out–just the opposite. And if you hear someone snorting, know that the person is likely doing the best they can to deal with allergies. Yes, it is gross. Yes we would like to not have to do it. Especially in public. But, please, try to think of it as a handicap and forgive us.

TTYL,

Linda

 

I’m fine but very busy relearning how to live in something as big as this two bedroom apartment in a city with all its resources. I’m using all my energies making good food and doing a new to me exercise program. More about both of those later.

For now, here’s a post I just read during a break that I feel compelled to share:

Death, Life & The Legacy Of Clutter

Hope all is going well for all of you.

TTYL,

Linda