Hi Everyone,

People in my area are getting hysterical about this hurricane. Long lines at gas stations and no bread in the stores. I have my protein bars and protein drinks & could last for at least 3 weeks.

I really believe that TV LOVES to stir everyone up. We'll see - maybe I will have to eat my words, but I do NOT believe that we will see major problems in my area - about 60 miles west of the ocean. Most likely, if anything, we will lose electricity.

Monday is the LAST DAY of my course! YEAAAAAA! I will be able to get back to reading and posting regularly. I miss you all when I cannot.

Take care everyone,

Lynn

Good morning! Everything is slow this morning---- ok maybe it is just me!!! Needing to start thinking about winterizing the pool. Don't want to leave it open when we are gone. But I don't want to close it up to early and then want to swim for a few more days before we leave.

Rie, I have been meaning to ask you about your Walk It Out--- I have tired to find it and I have had no luck. Where did you get it? I have checked on Walmart.com and several other sites but can't find anything about it. It sounds like something that I would like to have.

Hello to everyone else this morning and hope everyone is staying safe! Need to get some lunch going and then I want to get to the store--- Rocky Ford Cantaulopes are in!!! LOVE THEM!!!

Be back later....

Oh my gosh, I really need to read all the posts daily. I had about 45 minutes to read all 3 pages of post and two bio's, now I'm out of time to post myself. I made and froze (7) 12oz contaniners of applesauce as one of our apple trees are starting to drop the fruit. I also shredded a dozen zucchini's and froze that in 16oz bags. Thankfully we're getting our second round of raspberries, should be ready next week. We don't freeze these at all, just pig out on them and the strawberries.
DH wants Omelets for supper and I saved some shredded zucchini to fry with sliced onions and tomatoes to put in the omelets, top with cheese. I thawed out some ground turkey and mixed in the sausage seasoning to make sausage patties less the fattening pork. Easy enough for a tired old gal like me, my feet start to ache when I spend that much time out in the kitchen.
Time's up, gotta head back out THERE...
Happy week-end everyone.

I just got this in an email from a stationery site that I like-- I thought that ths is was interesting and you could actually have your medical info. on this and in case of an accident everything would be right there. Just thought that I would share it.
http://thundercloud.net/sale/2011/do...acelet2011.htm

Karen - http://www.amazon.com/Walk-Out-Ninte...rec_03_04_t_lh

I actually bought mine at Game Stop. It is like a video game and walking program all at once

Hellllloooo GGs

Just to let you know I'm still around. Last Sunday, I finally carved out some time and spent hours typing a GG post and for some reason it didn't take. Since then all has been hectic, and I finally have some time this evening to write a post and something bizarre happened to my Word document and it's all gone. Grrrr. Suffice to say, even when I'm not posting, I'm thinking of you all and hoping you are going OK. Especially for of you in the path of Hurricane Irene - stay safe.

I hope to be a bit less frazzled this week, and post more regularly.

Lots of rain and wind. No electricity. Lots of roads closed. Other than that, fine.

Lynn

G'morning, all...finally have a chance to sit down here at the computer and say hello. Friday I had a meeting in Boston at 10:30 AM, and decided to take the rest of the day off when that was over with. I've had a couple of nearly sleepless nights during the week - getting only 3 or 4 hours of sleep, for some reason - and have been pretty zombie-like as a result. So, on Friday, I'd about had it...headed back to Worcester, and thought I'd stop down at the lake for a little vitamin D, plus I had a book in the car, so I figured an hour or so reading/snoozing in the sun would be good medicine. And it was - sort of - but was still feeling pretty out of it, so headed home, thought I'd get into my PJ's and lie on my bed until dh got home from Old Sturbridge Village. Well, I ended up sleeping for fourteen hours straight - except for a brief few seconds when dh woke me up to ask if I was okay. Me: "Yuh-hmmmm....fine...tired...snuffle." Him: "Okay - get some rest." At which point, I went right back to sleep - slept from 5:00PM to 7:00 AM, and was reluctant to wake up then, to tell the truth, BUT yesterday was dh's birthday, and we had a lot to do, so I got up despite thinking I'd just as soon spend all day Saturday sleeping as well. HAD to grocery shop for the week, which we did in the morning. No gift to buy, thank goodness - I got him a deluxe membership in the Worcester Art Museum with a Groupon a couple of months back - 50% off a $200 "friends of the museum" membership. But we had a bunch of other errands to run, which we did, and then at 4:00, I took him out to dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant where we had a great - make that GREAT - meal (I must've consumed about 2000 calories between the steamy rolls dipped in spiced olive oil and the chocolate hazelnut crostata - which we shared - for dessert.) So <shrug> I made it my high calorie day (with happy thoughts of Nancy's weekly "pigging out" throughout all of her months of weight loss) and enjoyed every last minute of it. I'd told dd3 that we'd go by her house at 6:00 - they were planning cake & ice cream & party hats and gifts for dh (he didn't have a CLUE: we usually celebrate his birthday and dd2's together because his is August 27 and hers is the 31st - I told him that everything was a little disjointed because of the hurricane coming and all...and nobody's schedules seemed to be coming together, so we were all going to do cake & ice cream for him and her on THURSDAY after work) and so I had to see to it that we didn't leave the restaurant ahead of time; thus the dessert...whew...trying to choreograph these things can be stressful...so, anyway, we were ostensibly stopping at dd2's to drop off diapers, and he was VERY surprised - YAY! Oh - and I weighed myself in the morning before all of this, and have...(tah-dahhhhhh!) lost 14 pounds! If I can manage 2 more this week, I'll be feeling pretty okay for the wedding next weekend. NEXT weekend? Oh, MY! I can hardly believe it. Still kind of tired, though...got home at 9:30 last night and went right to bed. Up just a half hour ago or so, so plenty of sleep again; I sure hope to catch up on some of what I lost during the week. I am taking tomorrow off from work - personal day - but there's a chance that the offices may be closed anyway because of flooding. We've had heavy rain since yesterday afternoon, and apparently, it's going to get worse before it gets better. I just watched some footage of flooding conditions up the coast, and it looks bad. The whole of Massachusetts seems to be right in Irene's path. Oh, joy! I hope Lyn got off the Cape yesterday and is in Canada by now! Lynn, it looks like ole' Irene has been through your area, but I'm not hearing much about inland PA...hope it skirted you! Oh..I see you just posted and are okay. Good.
Omigosh, MustangK! Thinking of winterizing your pool already???? Too soon! Too soon! You KNOW you're going to want to hop in again before you leave on your trip! Yikes! MustangK without her pool is a fate too frightening to contemplate!
Your ramekin dessert sounds dee-lish, Rie/Val! I think I would like just a pinch of cinnamon, too. I do an apple crisp very similarly, minus the rhubarb, and with some original Fiber One cereal added to the oatmeal. I also throw in some dried cranberries. That probably adds the tang that the rhubarb gives to yours.
Mary, my oldest dd is the one that I have a strained relationship with, as well. It's only been over this past summer that we've spent a little time together - she and dgd stayed in our guest bedroom when dd2 was having the baby earlier this month - and seem to have found some common ground. I'm glad that we are at least communicating pleasantly together, but I suspect that there's a bit too much water under that particular bridge for us ever to be as close as I am with the other three chicklets and their families. She was always the rebel, always critical of whatever move I made - or didn't make. Turns out, I think, that she is simply way too much like me for us to get along as well as we might.
Gayle and Mustangk - and Rie/Val - in January of 1978, we had the worst blizzard to hit Massachusetts before or since. My dd2 was only 3 months old, and I had just gone back to work - I was working as a social worker at the time for the state Dept. Of Social Services - so she was with the nanny, and my older two girls were in school. Ds wasn't even thought of yet! Anyway, it hit with unexpected fury and the snow mounted up at an unprecedented rate - there had been no thought that morning to shutting anything down or canceling schools, so everyone was caught trying to get home from wherever they were. The plows simply couldn't get the roads clear, and a lot of people were trying to walk through the storm. It's lucky that I wasn't commuting like I do today - my office was probably 4 miles from my house - and a bunch of us actually flagged down a taxi driver who was adventurous enough to try to get us over to the other side of the city, at least. He got us about part way, and I walked the rest with snow practically blowing me over at every step, and having to climb through 3 or 4 foot drifts. The schools had let out early, and when I'd last spoken to Nanny, the two older kiddos were home safe. I hadn't heard from dh (ex) but that was par for the course with him, trust me. So, I made it home finally, got thawed out, and the kids, nanny and I camped out by the fireplace (the electricity and phones went out later that night) all night. The snow was still falling the next day, and I'm pretty sure the day after that. dh (and in this case you can be sure that the "d" stands for something other than "dear") made it home sometime over the next day or so, and the whole city was out of commission for an entire week. The volume of snow was incredible. It went all the way up the back of our house, and had the whole front of the neighbor's house across the street covered. Our house was split-level, and the garages were at the bottom towards the far end, so that our driveway was sort of below the level of our main living area. It was filled with snow right up to my kitchen windows, a whole floor and a half above ground! We did the beans - and soup - and hot cocoa in the fireplace, too. Luckily, we'd had a big ole' wood stove installed in our basement the year before, and vented throughout our heating system. We had plenty of wood in the basement, and so we stayed warm despite having no electricity to run the furnace.
We ended up with several neighborhood families staying with us - by the end of the week, our living room floor was a dormitory, covered with sleeping bags!
Welcome back, K3!!!!!! So happy that Irene left you alone! She's pummeling us, but I think the coast has gotten the worst of it. We'll see where things stand later in the day around here.
Smart shopping, Nancy! Love the blouse!
Those puppies sound very entertaining, Rosey. Me? I'd take the novel and a glass of iced tea, with a purring kitty cat curled up next to me. I'm lazy like that.
Marie, your losing track of time while ellipticalling sounds like a concept so foreign to my nature that I can hardly imagine it. Clearly, I need something to read - and some way to read it - while I am attempting to exercise. Must I buy a Kindle? Or do you think that a technophobe like me could learn how to use an Ipad?
PT? Wherefore art thou, woman???? Hi, Freda - <looking around> is that all of us? Oh, I see you over there in the corner, Koala...Hi to you as well. If I've missed somebody, it's because you're staying too well hidden...come out, come out, wherever you are!!!!
Have a good Sunday, all!
Z

Oops! Hi Bobbi!!!!!!

Good morning GG's,

Nice sunshiney day. Only 81* so far. Yesterday it got up to 107*

Zoe ~ your January 1978 blizzard sounds like part of the same one that hit my parents in Ohio.

Zoe and Mary ~ I can identify with the "strained" relationship thing. Mine is with my youngest child (daughter ~ Jennifer). For me it is not that she is too much like me ~ just the opposite ~ she is so different than me. She is uppity and thinks quite highly of herself. I have heard the word entitled used ~ that fits her. I don't understand why she thinks she is so much better and so much more deserving than her siblings or other people. She will ask about her brother ~ then make unkind, cold comments. (She is entitled to her opinion, but she could keep that to herself ~ because it is hurtful to have to listen to her snotty comments.) She made the comment once that she was the only one trying to make something of herself. Probably part of the problem was that DH (in this case the D is not for Dear) played favorites and she was the favorite. The other two (Jason and Sara) were going through that rebellious teenage stage and my husband couldn't deal with that ~ so lavished all his time and resources on the "easy” one. Thing was that she was doing some of the same stuff they were doing (sneaking out, smoking, joy riding in the car) but was a better liar than they were. When the other two were confronted with being caught ~ they would fess up, she would stand right there and keep lieing to my face like I was stupid. That is in part why the strain between us. It made me furious that she would be caught and continue to lie. It made me all the more want to catch her in her lies. If she would have confessed like the other two did, I probably would have felt I should go easier on her, but had a hard time to do that when she treated me like I was stupid.

I told my husband that he didn’t accomplish some great thing because Jen had turned out ok. I felt like I had been of more help to Sara and Jason ~ by not giving up on them even though they had gone through a difficult time. Jen was the only one who went to college. She got her degree Psychology and Political Science and ended up working as an insurance adjustor at Nationwide. Jason never finished HS, but I feel like he is successful in his own way ~ he is a very hard worker (has won the employee of the month award a couple times) and even though it is not some kind of glamorous job (warehouse work) ~ he has held down that job for 8 years now. Sara went into banking and has done well there ~ branch manager, then Assistant Vice President (she brought in one of the largest accounts in the history of her bank) and now the head of a department. So, Jason and Sara have “made” something of themselves ~ Jen needs to get down off her high horse. I’m sorry to have vented ~ that topic just struck a sore spot. Thank you for listening.

On a more positive note ~ the last couple times I have talked with Jen ~ we have actually had nice visits. Maybe there is hope.

Guess I’d better get off and get some stuff done. Hopefully I’ll get back later and get some personals done.

Hope you all are having a good day. To those of you in the path of Irene ~ hang on tight ~ stay safe.

Hello again GG’s,

Rie ~ way to go on the 12,500 steps ~ awesome. Hope your back is on the mend. Hope you sleep better tonight.

Donna ~ sorry you are having an achy head and feeling blah, blah, blah. Rest yourself up. Hope you feel better.

Zoe ~ sorry you were pooped out as well. Glad you were able to get a nice long rest. Congrats on the 14 pounds ~ awesome.

Lynn ~ glad you are weathering the storm well. Not having power is not much fun, but thankfully that is all and nothing worse.

Koala ~ glad you checked in ~ don’t you hate when you get a nice long post and then lose it. Hope your next week is a little less hectic.

M-Karen ~ did you get some of those cantalopes? And your Sunday with the family time ~ did you all have a nice time?

Bobbi ~ always busy ~ I admire all the cooking and things you do. Your creations sound yummy. Now rest your feet a little

Mary ~ glad you got good news about your husband’s tests and eyes. What a relief. Glad you are enjoying your kindle.

Karen FL ~ how are you doing? Are you continuing to heal and feel better? Glad you had a good time at Bridge the other day.

NC Nancy ~ nice job finding all those bargins. You put together another nice looking outfit.

Rosey ~ your time out on the deck with your coffee and the chickadees sounded heavenly. Hope Gizmo doesn’t get squeeked by Sadie ~ LOL.

Marie ~ hope you have been having a nice weekend. You needed a break from the frustrations at work. I finally got it about your cold ~ don’t know where my brain is sometimes ~ LOL.

Freda ~ when I’m off, you’re not ~ hope you have had a good weekend at work. Was that cookbook ~ Glycemic Index cookbook for Dummies a good one ~ thinking I might try to see if my library has that.

Lyn ~ did you get off on your vacation before Irene came knocking? Hope so and that you are having a nice time.

Welcome Avimen. Hello Tea granny, Sherry, Wannabe, Teati, Fitchy, Dancer 41, MomTCS, and Puneri ~ hope you all are doing well.

Well, I’d better go get some more stuff done.

Take care all

Just a quick check in only for now as I have to go do my bargain shopping...usually call it GG (for Grocery Game) shopping but that would be too confusing here! LOL Joe's eye is about the same, it goes back and forth, but at least that is still improvement, so we continue to have hopes it will heal in time. I think it's probably somewhat of a strain on him as his eyes look tired to me. Just today I was remembering that his eyes have been looking unusually tired for some time now, I just thought it was his age or the fact that sometimes he doesn't sleep well, but I suspect now it was this. Otherwise we are fine. Talked a long time to my son's gf yesterday. He is away on a military training for three months, so they are both lonely. He has also been sick but texted me today that he is better and was actually going out...something he hadn't done even though he's been gone almost a month! Perhaps I'll get back here later on today.