Archives for January 2025

Hi Babe,
Had a much better night sleep, didn't crawl out of bed until after 9:00 because of the cold temps again, then spent most of the day making turkey soup and working on the computer. There's actually a lot of snow occuring in north Florida, that's how bad this weather is right now. Tough to even want to go outside! So thankful I have electric and have had my fireplace running all day and night. Never got out of the 40's and supposed to be down to 30 overnight, and the rain is supposed to turn to sleet, but at least it's not snowing! It's not getting above freezing for a week back in New York, and not much better up on the mountain in TN we used to call home, which is just enough to make me feel grateful for being in the 40's. Anyway, a pretty lazy day, read, watched TV, decided to not even take a hot tub since I'm warm and cozy inside, don't need to fight the cold rain just to get in a hot tub! Heading to bed soon, after a couple of cups of my homemade turkey soup and some homemade shortbread cookies. Packing the pounds on, I'm sure! I'll just have to make up for it when it finally gets warmer next week. Good night, my darlin'! Love you!

Hiya Darlin',
Had a lousy night sleep, finally had to take some aspirin to fade off, and was up with the alarm at 6:25 so I would be ready to leave by 7:30. Cold morning again! Dressed in multiple layers, including long underwear and a turtle neck before heading out. First stop this morning was the dentist for a checkup, which revealed a couple of cavities. I also need a crown, but that will have to wait until next year. Fortunately, she had time this morning to do it, so I didn't have to come back, but my 8:00 appointment wasn't over until nearly 11:40, which gave me just enough time to drive to the doctor's for my noon appointment. All good there, just need to get my labs done and a couple of maintenance tests, and got a referral for a dermatologist for a little skin tag that's been bothering me. Was done before 12:30, which, surprisingly, gave me time to get my shopping done, including horse feed at Tractor Supply and my regular shopping at Walmart. Next up was an eye appointment in Ocala, which is the closest eye place on my plan, all good there for now, just a little normal aging stuff. Found a Shell station where I was able to get diesel for just $3.38, whereas just about everyone else was back up into the$3.60's and more. One last stop at Yvette's to pick up my tall kettle with the sieve so that I can make some turkey stock for soup. This will be a great week for soup, since most days the temps will barely get out of the 40's, plus rain, so I don't expect to get much done outside this week! Put all my groceries and horse feed away, stacked up the leftover board scraps from Saturday's project, though I purloined one long board and a couple of smaller ones for resting my jack stands on, and finally settled down for the evening. I had forgotten to put on the hot tub this morning, so not even close to temperature, so I'm skipping that tonight. Heading to bed early, though, I'm tired from this long day! Good night, sweetheart! Love you!

Hey Sweetie,
Woke up way too early as a really bad storm rolled through. Lots of thunder and lightning. It was so bad I even let Lola come up on the bed when she asked, she was literally trembling. Didn't take her long before she was head level with me, but since today was laundry day anyway, I didn't mind. Hope she doesn't get the idea that's going to happen often, though! The storm lasted for a good hour, so I mostly read. Spent a good part of the day working on the trail maps for the Taste of Goethe before settling down for the afternoon. Did a couple of loads of laundry, emptied my blackwater tank, cleaned the bathrooms, watched a couple of episodes of my latest TV binge, made some more shortbread cookies, and am heading to hot tub, shower and bed early, as I have to get up an hour before dawn tomorrow. I made all of my annual doctor appointments tomorrow, plus I need to do some shopping, so a busy day that I need to get plenty of sleep for! Though it was nearly 70 today, it's going down to freezing overnight (naturally, since I have to get up before the sun!) so I put the heavy blankets on the horses. Just another day in the life! Good night, babe! Love you!

Hi Babe!
Though I hadn't really planned on it, the weather forecast, which is essentially dismal for the rest of the week, coerced me into thinking that today was a good day to get the manure bin done. I have the materials, but have had a surprisingly lackluster response to my call for volunteers to help, so I figured, what the heck? It's not like it's difficult construction, it's a manure bin, right? So after doing some morning chores, which included making some chaney root tea and bushhogging the horses' pen to break down the manure, I took off the bushhog and put on the awl, with help from Teri from Wisconsin, who was kind enough to ask if I needed help before she went off on a ride, I started building the manure bin. I started out using the diagrams that I received from the folks who helped me build them in past years, but quickly decided it was too big for the space, so I reduced the size proportionately, from 16' to 12', and started working. It took me all afternoon, and I still have to add more screws and possibly fix one post that got a little out of plumb, and one board that still needs to be added (which is odd, because we bought extra of EVERYTHING except the 1x6x12 which I needed), and, between threatening drops of rain, managed to almost finish it off. Won't take long to finish it, but the forecast for the coming week actually includes snow (yes, I'm in Florida), so I'm not sure when it will be done. Tomorrow is all about rain, but that's fine, I have to finish the trail maps for the Taste of Goethe, so it's all good. You know what they said, it's good enough for the government, and I'm just a volunteer, with no construction experience other than watching others, but it's workable, and I guess that's all the matters! I celebrated with a martini (still trying to finish off that bottle of dry vermouth we've had for YEARS!), a nice hot tub, which was much appreciated, my shower, and soon to bed! Good night, my darlin! Love you!

Hi Babe!
Had another great night sleep, probably stayed in bed too long, but it's hard to muster the energy to get out of warm bed when it's barely 40 degrees, especially when an unexpected rain rolls in, though it only lasted a few minutes. Yeah, I know, much worse for those north of me, but still, bad enough! Got the horses fed, chores done and breakfast finished before deciding that today I would replace my stove burners today. I had one of the guys from the trailer place look at the problem I was having, i.e. they were flaring up so high it was turning my pots black, and he said they just needed new burners, which are an easy parts replacement. I ordered those online and received them last week, so I decided I would do that today. Of course, one little job leads to another and another... It took awhile to get the rusty screws loose to get the two burners out (I hardly use the third one, and it works fine, so I decided not to replace it), and once I did that, I set out to clean the top of the stove. It was rusty and dirty, so I started cleaning, then putting a layer of Ospho rust remover on it and let that dry. I used a wire brush to clean a lot of it. As I was moving stuff off the counter area, I noticed the seal around the kitchen window was getting bad, so I cleaned that up and resealed it. I hadn't cleaned the knife block in a long time, so I gave that a good coating of Old English. I could still faintly smell the dead mouse from last week, so I did an extra scrubbing down there, then cracked open my Great Stuff and filled the hole that the meeces had evidently chewed through to get into the cupboard. Then I remembered that I thought I had another hole that needed filling under the shower, but when I took the vent off, I saw I had already done that, but vacuumed and cleaned the vent while I was there. Did a bunch more cleaning while I was at it. Finally got back to the stove, took off all the dials and washed those, finished wire-brushing everything down and vacuuming that out, finally put the new burners in, and voila! They both worked perfectly! Job done! Then, since I had the vacuum out anyway, I did the new carpet, to get up all the biscuit bits Lola insists on leaving all over the place, and that I keep stepping on, ouch! Put everything away, opened some mail from yesterday, and generally ended up having a productive and busy day. My usual evening routine, hot tub included, and headed to bed soon! Love you, darlin'! Good night!

Hi Sweetie,
For some reason, Lola was extremely restless last night, and I ended up having to let her out after 1:00. I kept listening for her to come back, and got up a couple of times to try to get her in, but she was having none of it. I finally woke up after 5:30 to her scratching at the door and got up to let her in. Needless to say, it wasn't the best night sleep I've ever had. Went about my chores until ranger Rick came by, handed off some bags of recyclables I collected from Helen yesterday, then headed straight up to Williston to get new batteries in the truck. I was thrilled this morning that, after leaving the charger on the truck all night, it started immediately, and all of my dashboard stuff had returned, so I obviously didn't blow the computer as I feared! Got the new batteries installed at Advance Auto, which now carries the Diehard brand. I had tried to order them online to take advantage of a 20% winter discount, but of course, they were exempt from that. Fortunately, the gal at the store was nice enough to give me a 10% discount, and installed them for me as well. Starts right up now! I stopped at the trailer place on the way back to have them check the new brake controller I installed yesterday, was very glad they seem to be working just fine now. Looking forward to actually using them with the trailer! Got back to camp, then had a family that was camping ask if their kids could pet the horses, so I did that with them for a few minutes, just before rain was due in. Then we got socked in with rain for the entire afternoon, so I watched a movie, baked some shortbread cookies (I had run out of Lorna Doones and thought I'd give homemade a try, and they came out pretty good!), and settled down for the evening, including a hot tub. Heading for bed shortly! Love you, babe! Good night!

Hiya Babe,
I've really been enjoying some good night's sleep lately, pretty happy about that! Being Sunday, I slept in a little bit, it was cold again this morning, though it finally warmed up to something decent in the afternoon. I spent the morning doing laundry and some serious housekeeping, then I installed the new brake controller that I got, just before DeDe got here, and we headed out and cut some trees out of the trail on the connector that comes from across the road to orange. We were going to try for another one way up north, but here quad was giving her a bit of trouble, and we spent some time trying to figure out what that was. We finally decided her husband would come get it, and she stayed behind to have a glass of wine or two with me, because, once again, my truck wouldn't start. Even the BeatIt charger wasn't enough to get it going. I got the tractor over there and let it run for awhile, but that didn't do it, and finally, I put the charger on, and eventually, after another glass of wine, I was able to get it started. I drove her home, then stopped at Chelle's to drop off the projection screen that was donated the other day, and at Helen's to pick up some cans that she collects to donate to the forest (they have a little recycling project), but the whole time I was driving, my entire dashboard wasn't working. So, another problem to solve. I'm thinking I need to finally go get these batteries changed over, and hopefully it will fix my computer problem. If not, I have another issue to address! It was nearly dark by the time I got home, so I fed the horses, put the truck on the charger, fed me, settled down for the evening, got a hot tub in, watched a rather boring movie about life in Wyoming in 1910, and now I'm ready to call it a night. Good night, darlin'! Love you!

Hey Darlin',
Had a fairly quiet morning with reasonable temps after the rain came in during the night, but the temps kept dropping during the day, so I blanketed Apollo. I had already blanketed Flash last night, since he always seem to get a bit more chilled than Apollo. Did a few brief chores on the computer before heading over to Willards for TOG meeting. We got all caught up and are making good progress toward everything. I presented my map plan, which met mostly with approval, with the only bone of contention being that the hikers are only going to go by one food station, albeit they will go by it twice. The trails just don't really allow for a second food station, at least nothing that's very practical. Got back to camp and did some more computer work, doing things that came up during the meeting, and finally settled down for the evening, putting a second blanket on the horses since it's going to be down to freezing again tonight. I even skipped my hot tub, just wasn't in the mood. Heading to bed and shower shortly. Good night, sweetheart! Love you!