Me

And just like that… Coronavirus day 6

It has been an interesting last few days… to say the least. Life is never boring on a farm, that’s for sure. While we’re supposed to be self quarantining, you can’t quite do that exactly when you live on a farm. Anyway, you can’t stay indoors because there are animals that rely on you. 

My parents live the next place over and then my grandma is the place after that. So I have a couple hundred acres to keep me occupied in this self-containment time.

It seems like these days there is a bad rap on people who are farmers. They are horrid people who don’t take care of squat. Well, I have pictures and stories to prove that’s just not so. Today is a prime example.

My uncle lives with my grandma. Moved in after he and his ex-wife went through their divorce. (more…)

Time to Get Cooking… Coronavirus Day 2

So being shut in your house really gives you time to sit and think and think and think some more. Oy! I have to keep the radio or tv on or else I’m going nuts. And here we are on day 2. Okay, I might be overexaggerating right now. Truthfully, ask me on day 8 or 9 and that might actually be the truth. You never know.

But one thing that I have been thinking about a lot is cooking my way through the Julia Child Cookbook. Guys, this isn’t a new thought. Quite the contrary. I mentioned this in a blog post in 2018. OMG, I just looked up the original blog post to include with this. Get this, it was written on March 21, 2018. How close is that to current date? Today is March 15. That’s crazy.

I really want to do this. I’ve been talking to my husband a lot about in the last couple of months. I have a couple of holdbacks. First… have you seen the massive size of the cookbook? It’s huge. 2nd, While I try extremely hard not to be a picky eater, I’m afraid I might be too picky of an eater for this cookbook. (more…)

Wear the Damn Helmet

The other day, in a matter of 5 minutes I saw no less than 4 posts where WHO was calling the Coronavirus (COVID-19) a Pandemic. Okay, so what does that mean?

Epidemic – noun – a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.

Pandemic – adjective – prevalent over a whole country or the world.

Okay, what does that mean though? We know this is prevalent in multiple countries. We know countries like Italy are on lockdown and the U.S. has put a ban on travel in and out of regions around the world. But 4 different places telling us it is a pandemic, do we need to panic now or something? That really didn’t tell us anything other than something we already knew, they just declared what we already knew. I’m still scratching my head. (more…)

Book Review: Bridget Jones’s Diary

 

I know this is a movie that came out, oh gosh, way back when. But here’s the thing with this book… prior to starting Grad School, I bought this book, at a book sale at work for a quarter. It sat there waiting for me to read it for years. I’m talking years! Jump forward to grad school. I took a British Comedy class. I really had no choice. And this was actually on the book list that we had to read. Shhhh… I still never read it. I glossed over it enough to be able to talk in class about it, but I didn’t read it. I had this class the same semester that I had comps and this was the furthest thing from my mind. Oh, and watching the movie DOESN’T help unless you’re comparing how the book and the movie are DIFFERENT!

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

a 30-something Singleton who is certain she would have all the answers if she could:
a. lose 7 pounds
b. stop smoking
c. develop Inner Poise (more…)

Book Review: The Paris Wife

Earlier this year a friend of mine took some “test” on Facebook. You know, those weird tests. It was about 1,000 books that you should have read. It was interesting. I figured with grad school that I would have read more than 52 of them. 52/1000… not good odds… One of the books was The Paris Wife. I actually hadn’t read it yet, but I owned it. It was a book I came across a while back… we’re talking over a year ago. It was a physical book even. Sadly, it just sat there waiting for me to read it. Once I saw it on the list and realized I had it but hadn’t read it yet, I jumped on reading it.

Gosh, for as many books I’ve read about Paris, I need to visit Paris. Truthfully, I want to visit 1920 Paris and 1940 Paris, not current Paris. Although don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see current Paris too. I think it is just all the reading of I’d about a Paris I’ll never truly get to experience. (more…)

Keto Diet, month 1

Now… let’s put this out here first… My husband and I are doing Keto. No, I don’t need you telling me we’re stupid. I don’t need judgment. I just don’t. We did research and are doing with a doctor’s supervision so please don’t judge, yell, or tell me we’re stupid. 

Now that we have that out of the way… let’s proceed on. We are doing Keto. A lot of people are. It’s probably one of those fad diets honestly. So it’s a high fat, medium protein, no/low carb. That kills me. Quite almost literally. I love my breads and pastas. I’m not a huge dessert or candy fan and gosh I want those too. Really, I am a savory person, but right now I want sweets so bad sort of. 

So your carb intake is based on net carbs. So you take the carbs in your food, subtract out fiber and alcohol sugars, and that gives you the net carbs. You have to eat less than 25 net carbs per day. I’ve also read 20. Either way, 5 doesn’t really make you or break you. 2 days per week you are supposed to bump that up to 50 carbs to help avoid health problems you hear about. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE PASTA? That’s totally random at this point but I can’t help myself. (more…)

Orange Beach, Alabama – Part 4 (the end)

Here we are, winding down the trip to Orange Beach, Alabama. Make sure you read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Thursday morning started with breakfast. Earlier in the week, when we went to the Mexican Restaurant, I saw a place to get Beignets. Now, I know that’s more of a signature New Orleans item, but still, I wanted to try them. I mentioned it to hubby and he was all for it. So off to Café Beignet, we went. Again, we left my MIL and little one to get dressed at the hotel. Note: They never got dressed when we’d go off to get breakfast. 

Café Beignet

Rouses Market
25405 Perdido Beach Blvd
Orange Beach, AL

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Dinner Club – Taste of Italy

Back in 2009 a group of friends and I decided to start what we called Dinner Club. I have mentioned this a few times I know. It was a lot of fun. At that time we had a few “rules,” 

  1. A non-chain restaurant
  2. Local – within about an hours drive or so
  3. The dress was business casual or dressier

That was about it. Business casual consisted of the ladies in dresses of some sort and the guys in khakis and at least a polo or button-down. We had a few dinners where the guys wore suits. This is why my husband owns a suit. Although he never wore it to a dinner club.

Side story:

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Orange Beach, Alabama – Part 3

Before you start, be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2.

We had a friend tell us about an Alligator zoo we needed to take the little one to. It was about a 20-minute drive outside out of Orange Beach, but totally worth the drive. I know I keep saying that, but it truly is.

Alligator Alley

19950 Co Rd 71
Summerdale, AL

We woke up early and drove out to Summerdale to go to Alligator Alley. We almost missed the driveway. Our directions said, turn left here and we passed the entrance because it blended in with the trees. When you bought tickets to get in, they had different size cups of feed you could buy to feed the alligators. Truthfully, it looked like horse poop. I’m just saying it like it is. haha.

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Orange Beach, Alabama – Part 2

Today I have even more photos for you… as in around 78 or so. I’m sorry. Alabama was so awesome and it was totally worth the trip. I’d recommend it to anyone for a relaxing time. If you haven’t read Orange Beach Part 1, I would. I’ll try not to let this post drag on, but we’ll see what happens. I’m sorry if it does. And if nothing else, enjoy the photos!!

When hubby was in Mobile the few weeks before, they informed him that this is one of the wettest cities in the country. It gets moisture off the Gulf, etc. I’m pretty sure it rained almost every day we were down here. Never for very long and really only enough to make it humid.

Waking up every morning to the sound of thunder was beautiful. It was also fun to see the storms move across the sky. We were greeted with a rainbow Monday morning. It was beautiful. And of course, you know pictures don’t do rainbows justice, unfortunately. It always takes tweaking in photoshop to get those vibrant rainbows caught on film (or digital…).

The other fun thing to watch was all of the boats zooming out of the rainstorms. Case in point here. Every morning. (more…)