Day 33 and Some Really Good Soup

Yes, it’s Day 33 of self-imposed quarantine, a dreary, windy day with remnants of a storm system passing through the area. We’re lucky that the storms left us relatively untouched. Everything’s very wet, but still intact. Areas near us suffered terrible flooding and high winds are expected today. That usually means lots of downed trees.

For lunch today, Mom is reheating some lovely chicken gnocchi soup we had in the freezer. It’s a recipe I found online after Mom and her sister, Sandy, had enjoyed the soup at Olive Garden. I’ll include it at the end of this entry in case you’d like to give it a try.

We’re still well, thank goodness, and still being super-cautious, staying home and carefully handing incoming deliveries with all the suggested precautions.

We continue to eat delicious home-cooked meals, even shying away from having an occasional pizza delivery. “Better safe than sorry,” we say to each other. If you are #stayinghome, it’s a lucky thing to be quarantined with an excellent country cook like Mom.  🙂

I wonder what the first thing will be that we do when it’s safe to be out in the world again. I’m betting Mom will want a trip to Walmart. I am looking forward to a Big Pal and tea. (For those of you who don’t live in my area, the tea at a local burger/hot dog chain called “Pal’s” is famous. I’m a confirmed addict.)

I think a lovely drive will be in order, and it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to visit Aunt Sandy and her family in North Carolina.

I’ve never been a fan of shopping, especially grocery shopping, but I’ll be glad to be able to stroll up and down the aisles, selecting the familiar items we always buy and taking note of new and interesting items available. Who would have dreamed that I’d consider it a treat to be able to select my own produce? Strange times, folks, for sure.

If you’d like to give it a try, here’s that recipe I’d promised:

Creamy Chicken Gnocchi Soup

Ingredients:
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• 1/2 cup onion, diced
• celery seed to taste
• garlic powder to taste
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 1 quart chicken broth (this can be adjusted to make soup thicker or thinner as desired)
• 1 cup shredded carrots
• 1-1/2 cups fresh spinach leaves chopped
• 1 cup diced cooked chicken breast (I used rotisserie chicken)
• 1 16-oz. package potato gnocchi (we found it on the pasta aisle)
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
1. In a large pot melt butter in oil. Over medium high heat saute onion until tender. Add celery seed and garlic powder. Add the flour to create a roux and cook for another minute.
2. Slowly add the half-and-half and chicken broth (I’d start with 3 cups of chicken broth and adjust it to the thickness you want from there) and stir until it starts to thicken. Add carrots and cook until carrots soften. Add spinach, chicken, and gnocchi; simmer for about 5 minutes or until gnocchi is cooked and soup is thickened. Salt and pepper to taste and serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Happy Easter!

A week got by me….I’m not sure how!  Mom and I have become accustomed to staying in.  Coronavirus has sent most of the nation (those of us who are being cautious, at least) into self-quarantine.  We’ve not left the yard since March 11.  Luckily, we had plenty of food and supplies on hand.  We’ve only needed to have groceries delivered once so far, and I think it will be at least another week before we’ll need anything else.  (Truth is, we could get by for another 2 to 3 weeks, but there will be some things we’ll want more than need.)

It’s a different kind of Easter this year, that’s for sure.  Because of social distancing necessary to curtail the spread of the virus, local churches are offering services online.  Some are even offering “drive-in” services.  Our Easter was low-key, as most of our holidays are now.  We had a delicious barbecued pork roast for dinner and have dozed a lot this afternoon.  The weather is gray and dreary; strong storms are predicted this evening.  That’s okay, though….good weather for naps.  🙂

I should have accomplished a lot of things during this month of isolation, but I’ve pretty much frittered it away.  I brushed up on my bread-making skills, have knitted a bit, did some work on my genealogy, did some yard work, and performed the usual housekeeping duties.  Other than that, it’s been a fairly uneventful month.  I’ve promised myself to be more productive in the coming week, but it’s not the first time I’ve promised myself that lately.  Time will tell.

Right now seems like a good time for a brief nap.

Moving…the Saga Continues

So, on February 14 we were in the new-to-us house.  Boxes stacked everywhere, but we were moved in.  Mom stated  that her goal was to be complete unpacked by her birthday (March 6).  I laughed and told her I admired her optimism!

Needless to say, it took longer than March 6 to get rid of all the cardboard boxes, but we finally made it.  There’s a large deck (10′ x 30′) on the back of the house that needed to be cleaned and stained.  The vinyl siding on the house needed to be cleaned as well.  Unfortunately, our experience in getting that chore accomplished didn’t go as smoothly as the updates inside the house had been.  The first young man I approached about doing the job simply never showed up.  He’d call and say he’d been delayed but would be there the next day.  The “next day” never happened.  I gave up and called another gentleman I found online.  The reviews looked good, so I had hopes.  Unfortunately, we had one of the wettest springs I ever remember, and it got tricky finding enough dry days in a row for the work to be performed.  The weather finally cooperated, and a crew arrived to clean the house and deck.  It seemed to go well, and we waited for the deck to dry sufficiently for it to be stained.  When the owner of the business arrived to look at the deck, he wasn’t happy with the job his crew had done with the cleaning, so it had to be cleaned again.  It took AGES to get it done, and the owner wasn’t good about keeping me informed of what was going on.  I was not a happy camper and wound up “throwing a hissy”.  Interestingly enough, the hissy worked, and the owner himself completed the job.  Lesson learned.  It looked okay, but not worth the aggravation he put me through.  If I had it to do over, I’d have done it myself.

The next large project involved getting the driveway extended.  The road we live on is narrow and heavily traveled.  Most of the traffic moves really fast, too.  I was edgy about backing out of our driveway into the road, so I wanted to extend the driveway into the back yard and have a turnaround area put in so that I could pull straight out into the road instead of backing out.

This photo shows the back yard before the crew arrived to extend the driveway.  The large patch you see in the lower left corner is where the previous owners had an old, rusty outbuilding.  Removing that was part of the contract when I bought the house.

The company I hired to do the driveway work was great to work with.  They came as quickly as the lousy weather would allow and performed the work as we’d discussed.

Now I could feel much safer leaving our driveway; I was very pleased with the work they performed.

Now we needed a carport.  We worked with a dealer  to find the size and style needed.  Little did I know how quickly the work would be performed!  The truck arrived VERY early in the morning and they unloaded quickly.  The first of the three photos below was taken at 7:00 a.m.  The last one was taken at 8:33 a.m.!

And so all the large outside projects were finished.  By this time we’d finally finished unpacking and the house was now our home.

The summer passed quickly, hot and miserable.  I would mow the yard in the heat, dripping with perspiration and drinking lots of water.  I have to say, though, that I enjoyed it.  After spending as many years as I spent behind a desk, it was lovely to be able to do really physical labor, the kind of work you can rest after doing.  Office work is much more difficult to wind down from, and I enjoyed the change.

Mom and I fell into a loose routine.  Our leisure time is mostly spent in different parts of the house.  Mom enjoys reading and watching HGTV and crime shows on the TV in the living room while I knit and watch a lot of Netflix in my little den I made in one of three bedrooms in the house.

More tomorrow….that’s enough for one day.  🙂

 

I’m Baaaaack……..

Yesterday on Facebook my Aunt Michael (*waves to Michael*) commented that she missed my blog.  I told her I almost forgot I HAD a blog.  Now that I look at the last date I posted, it’s no wonder I nearly forgot it!

I have to admit that the time that’s passed since the last time I posted here passed in a bit of a blur.  When we last met, I’d just signed the paperwork to purchase my new home in Church Hill, and I felt fortunate to have 60 days in which Mom and I would pack our belongings in preparation for the Big Move.

Well, it’s lucky we had 60 days, because it took every last bit of time for us to get it done.  We culled a lot of things, but still had literally a mountain of boxes to move!

We stacked boxes initially in my den in the apartment; Tilly loved climbing on top of the stacks and looking down at us in disdain for making such a mess.  In this photo you can see the ceiling of the den just inches above Tilly.  Looking back on it, I still am amazed that Mom and I packed all that stuff ourselves.  And I understand why I do a full-body shudder any time anyone mentions moving.  I rarely say “never”, but I don’t ever plan to move again!

I hired a contractor to do a few things in the house before we moved in.  I was very lucky to have a guy who 1) was good at his craft; 2) was reasonably priced; 3) was available to do the work in the timeframe I had available; and 4) was a genuinely nice guy who actually showed up when he was supposed to!  He and his son worked together and did everything we needed done before we moved in.

We could’ve moved into the house and had the work done a little at a time, but it was so much simpler (and less costly) to do it during the 60-day time we had before moving in.  I asked the contractor to repaint all of the rooms except the laundry room and a small area just outside the bathroom where we planned to put our chest freezer.  The areas that required the most work were the kitchen and bathroom.

We could have used the kitchen as it was; the cabinets were okay and the appliances were serviceable (just needed a good cleaning).

Mom (an avid fan of HGTV) said she’d really like to have the cabinets painted.  Light grey on the top cabinets and darker grey on the bottom.  So, our contractor removed the doors and took them to his shop and painted them.  We used the appliances for several months, then replaced them with stainless steel.  The result was worth the effort.

In the bathroom there was a well-used fiberglass shower/tub that had seen better days.  I told Mom that if I was going to replace it, I might as well replace it with something that we could use easily in the years to come.  So, the shower/tub came out and was replaced with a fresh new walk-in shower unit.  We both take showers instead of baths, so this works well for us now and will be much more convenient in the future.

We quickly realized we were going to need a storage barn, so in January we purchased one that was delivered on the 22nd.  I was amazed that ONE GUY moved it off the truck onto a mule, moved it down the very narrow driveway, and installed it in the back yard.  I was really pleased with the way it turned out.

Moving day was planned for February 13; we had so much to move that the mover I hired couldn’t get all of it on his very large truck!  So, they moved the last of our boxes on February 14.

I’ll post more of our adventures tomorrow;  it’ll take me several posts to catch up!

 

 

You’re Not Going to Believe This….

After nearly 46 years of having a Bristol address (sometimes Virginia, sometimes Tennessee, but always Bristol), I’ll soon be moving away from the Birthplace of Country Music.

I just signed the final paperwork for the purchase of a home in Church Hill, Tennessee.  Let me tell you, folks, this has been a real education. The first lesson I learned was that you might be able to use photos on the internet to learn what houses you DON’T want to buy, but you can’t trust them to learn what houses you DO want to buy.

I tried to find something I could afford in Bristol. I didn’t want to live in Bristol, Virginia, because I didn’t want to pay the taxes that they’re going to have to collect to help pay for the debacle known as “The Falls”. Haven’t heard of it? Trust me, it’s a real horror story of poor decisions made by small town government. So I narrowed my search to Bristol, Tennessee and surrounding Sullivan County.

I was horrified by the condition of some of the homes. You’d think if people wanted to sell their house, they’d at least sweep the floors, wouldn’t you? I quickly learned that nothing in my price range was going to be suitable without investing a lot of money in repairs.

So I widened the search to the Kingsport area. I grew up in neighboring Scott County, Virginia, so Kingsport was familiar to me. The real estate prices there were more reasonable, but I still hadn’t found anything that would work for us. They were either too small, too neglected, or had too many floors.

Then I noticed some listings in Church Hill. Fate was on my side this time. I found a little ranch house on a quarter-acre lot in a neighborhood that reminded me a lot of East Carter’s Valley, where I grew up. It had a large master bedroom with a sizable closet that was perfect for Mom. It had a large living room that would comfortably accommodate the furniture we’d accumulated through the years. The kitchen was small, but perfectly adequate. There were two small bedrooms, so I could take one for a bedroom and the second one would become a small den where I could watch movies and knit while Mom enjoyed her Investigation Discovery and HGTV in the living room.

And so I made an offer and began the journey of becoming a homeowner for the first time. It’s been a month of inspections, applications, fees to be paid, emails to answer, contractors to consult, and lost sleep. Fortunately, I’ve been dealing with an extraordinary realtor and loan officer who have both been instrumental in my keeping my sanity.

We’d already started packing non-essentials before the closing, so we have a jump on that. Fortunately, we have a little time since I needed to give a 60-day notice to vacate the apartment. We’re going to need every moment of packing time we can get, trust me. Mom and I are both pack rats in our own way, so we have plenty of stuff.

But soon we’ll have it all behind us and will be able to enjoy our new home. For now, I’ll close this post and pack a few more boxes today. Or take a nap.

Frittering Away

I frittered away the entire summer.  Seriously.  I just glanced at my last few posts, and the scarf I was knitting in May is still not completed.  I started two different Christmas projects that are still not completed.  Zero progress has been made on the teeshirt quilt I started ages ago.

Mom’s back and hip have been giving her a lot of trouble in addition to her chronic lung issues, so we haven’t taken any trips this summer.  Just an occasional day trip of a meal and some shopping.

What the heck is wrong with me?  It’s true that my sinuses have given me a real fit this summer, and I had an adverse reaction to my flu shot and both doses of my shingles shot, but I can’t say that I’ve been sick all summer because I haven’t.  Due to my total lack of attention to my diet, my blood sugar got all out of whack.  This resulted in a change of my medication and an admonishment from my doctor that the party is over.  The new medicine and dietary changes caused a rapid drop in my glucose levels, which is good.  However, the drop was accompanied by a drop in my energy level, which is bad.  As my glucose readings are leveling out, though, I find that my energy is gradually increasing.

So, now I think that the next logical thing for me to do is to set some goals.  Today’s goal is to chase the dustbunnies in my bedroom, do my laundry, and work a minimum of 1 hour on one of my Christmas projects (maybe 2….we’ll see how it goes).  Why am I writing such trivial goals in my blog?  To make myself accountable.  Look out, dustbunnies, here I come.

 

Daddy’s Diagram

While Mom and I were discarding some items today, I found this scrap of notebook paper:

Immediately recognizing Daddy’s drawing style, I laughed aloud as I realized that he had carefully diagrammed the solution to the golf tee puzzle that used to sit on every dining table in Cracker Barrel restaurants.  (Do they still do that?)

It was a lovely surprise, and brought back warm memories on a dreary, stormy afternoon.

I Learned Something!

I am ridiculously pleased with myself; today I learned a new life skill.  I rewired one of Mom’s lamps!

Those of you who have rewired a lamp know that this is not a difficult task.  But I’d never done it before, so I was very happy to learn something new that’s actually useful.  It involved just a bit of Googling and finding the correct YouTube video to use as a reference.

Then, after a quick Walmart run (or as quick as they ever are for Mom and me…*LOL*), I spread everything out on a bath towel in the floor of the den, and accomplished my task.

Mom’s lovely antique lamp now has a new, safe cord.

Today’s Knitting

Since it’s been five months since I’ve posted, I won’t even try to determine what I’ve knitted in that time….several hats, several dishcloths, a scarf or two.  Here’s what I’m knitting today:  a bamboo stitch scarf knit in Lion Brand’s “Mandala”, colorway “Spirit”.

I have a huge stash of yarn, but one day while I was in Walmart I spied this colorway and had to have it.  Yes, it’s acrylic, but acrylic has come a long way.  I love the color changes and chose a stitch that should be comfy, warm, and show off the colors to great advantage.

A Quiet Existence

I’ve not posted to my blog in an awfully long time….mostly because life has (thankfully) been fairly uneventful.  During the winter, Mom and I stayed in a lot, attempting to avoid catching the flu while it was running rampant.  Luckily, we did manage to dodge that bullet.

Now that good weather (except for some pretty persistent rain) has come back to our little corner of the world, we’re getting out and about a bit more.  Mom’s been having a lot of trouble with an arthritic hip, so big trips are pretty much out of the question right now.  But there are plenty of day trips we can make that will be very entertaining.

Last week, we went to Knoxville and took the Star of Knoxville riverboat luncheon cruise.  Most of the time I’ve spent in Knoxville is driving through on my way to visit family in Mississippi, so it was really interesting to see part of Knoxville I’d never seen before.

I’ve been pondering our next outing; I’ve not been to Burke’s Garden in a long time, so I’d like to go up there one day soon.  Mom mentioned that she’d like to go back to the Barter, so we’ll check the schedule there to see if there’s anything planned that she’d been interested in seeing.

A couple of weeks ago, I received notice from Spectrum that Spectrum Web Space would be shutting down on July 1.  I’d nearly forgotten that I had a website there, so I’m glad they reminded me!  This afternoon I downloaded all my files from that site and will eventually get the good parts uploaded here, time and file space permitting.