A worthy video!

I know that I have not posted in SO long a time, that folks may have thought they had perhaps missed my obituary. Not so...

A friend was "conversing" on Facebook yesterday, and a friend of hers recommended this video for her. I had immediate need for this subject... and so I googled the speaker and found and watched the video.

Excellent, excellent video - maybe more for women than for men, but we all could probably benefit from viewing Brene Brown's talk.

Heads up! this video is 20 minutes in length!

Brene Brown on vulnerability

My life is (once again) in turmoil. So I will probably not have time for posting much in the upcoming days. I am once again moving on... life throws me curve balls, and here I am without a glove to catch 'em...

Women NEED to read this!

Ladies -- no matter what your age is, you need to read this woman's blog. I know you may think you are too young to be widowed, but the truth is, no one is too young for that unfortunate occurrence.

Pleas, PLEASE do yourself a favor and read her blog. If nothing else, it should make you more compassionate for those who are widowed.

Read -- Through a Widow's Eyes.

That's all I am asking. I was 59 with no kids, my sister 51 with one child (age 17) still at home, and since my unfortunate event, I have been (through various blogs) introduced to others who are a LOT younger with VERY young children.

So consider this a public service announcement. I have become an advocate of widows since it happened to me. I may not be banging gongs on street corners, but in my own quiet way, I am in ALL of the corners of ALL widows (and widowers).

Thanks for reading this blog, and for (I hope) reading Through a Widow's Eyes.

Sorry, my apologies...

So, so VERY sorry that I have not posted in a long time. I seem to either (1) not have enough time; or (2) be totally uninspired and NOT willing to bore readers with a "nothing" post. However, my several weeks of recent silence is really due to (3) a crummy, awful, energy-robbing "bug" that I have been fighting off and on and on and on, for several weeks. You know -- one of those things that makes you think that tomorrow you will SURELY feel better. I tried holing up at the house, trying to avoid contact with others (to avoid spreading this thing around and to concentrate on taking care of myself). And sometimes, out of desperation, just going on and socializing anyway.

Truthfully, many, many others in this park have been experiencing similar problems and we have been exchanging tips and ideas for fighting it off. I guess the best route is the old tried-and-true: lots of rest, drinking lots of liquids and "dosing" myself with OTC drugs as needed. My best "drug of choice" is a generic version of Benadryl (currently it's a Walmart version) - I chop the caplet in half and then swallow one of these babies every 3 to 4 hours. That makes it possible for me to go for several hours without a facial tissue attached to my nose constantly. (Isn't THAT an attractive mental picture?) Add to that, a cuppa hot tea with honey and the juice from a lemon wedge, which is very soothing to my scratchy throat AND is a source of that "lots of liquids" that I mentioned earlier.

Hmmm... let's see what other fun items I can share with y'all.

My s.o., Mr. L, admits to a weakness for snacks, and altho' he loves to snack, he's asked me to hide them (the snacks) from his ready reach. And in this little place where we live outside of Tampa, that is DEFINITELY a challenge. I thought I had found the perfect solution. And that lead to THIS --

Yes, my "perfect" hiding place was the oven. I thought for sure that I would easily remember to remove the snacks before I pre-heated the oven. Preparing to bake some tilapia for dinner Thursday evening, I set the oven temp and turned on the oven. After several minutes, my (slighty stuffed-up) nose detected an unfamiliar odor, leading my brain to think, "I wonder what that smell is?"

And THEN the light bulb came on, as I realized what it probably was. I madly reached for the oven mitt and opened the oven door. The good news? I retrieved the two containers of mixed nuts (two different blends) before they were melted/welded to the oven rack and also before the containers were destroyed. The bad news? See the photo, with oven mitt and its permanently-attached ring of blue plastic from the lid of the nuts. Geesh... BTW, the tilapia was delicious. Sometimes it just isn't easy, being me...

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Well, in all honesty, it's beginning to look a lot like autumn. Leaves are turning yellow and red here in the Tampa area. And even though we have had some cool and some downright cold temps (yes, compared to the average temps here), we still are having some warmer and sunshine-y days. And tomorrow I will be golfing with "the girls" (none of us having seen girlhood in 50 - 60 years) and I am hoping it is warmer than the predicted upper 60's when we tee off.

So finally got some Christmas cards written and addressed. Since this is a more metropolitan-style community than Duluth, there is a marked absence of mailboxes. The mailbox (L tells me it is a "snorkle" box) closest to us is across the highway - 6 lanes with speed limit of 50 mph -- and if you want to cross that road as a pedestrian, you risk being a statistic. So ya gotta hop in the car, and wait and wait to nose into that traffic. Three lanes each way, and I hafta go east (right), then in less than a block, cross three lanes to the left-turn lane, make a U-turn (it's legal at that place) and then cross three more lanes (westbound, this time) and make a right into a parking lot. And I did that just before 4 pm. Only to find that this mailbox has ONE pick-up time -- and that WAS at 10:30 am.

Click HERE to see the map. I enter at the green B, go right, U-turn at Osprey Lane, go left on 54, and then right turn into the parking lot. Most traffic is going 50 mph-plus.

Geez, all I wanted to do was get some Christmas cards in the mail. So BACK in the car and a drive up to the Land o Lakes (yes, that is the name of the city) post office. Technically, we live in Land o Lakes (by geography), but our mailing address is Lutz. L, my former postal employee guy, says that is because our mail is routed through the Lutz post office. Lutz, btw, is pronounced, LOOTZ.

If you want to see our humble winter abode, zoom in on the satellite map a bit. We are at the corner of Pond Drive and Lake Drive (far right side of the rv park), in the northwest corner of that intersection. If you zoom in enough, you can see our F350 on the Pond Drive side, and the Rav4 on the Lake Drive side. Hah -- it's official. It's on sat-tuh-lite!

Now I'm looking at two small boxes that need to be mailed. I'm afraid that this good idea of a few presents will be costlier than what we have invested in the gifts so far. Since it would be nice to have those gifts reach the recipients before Christmas, we may be paying a premium price for this procrastination.

I have set an alarm for 2:30 am, in case we decide to see the lunar eclipse. Maybe I'll come to my senses and just turn off the phone's alarm and go back to sleep.

And since the Vikes have gone down in defeat in this Monday night frost-box game, it's time for me to close up operations, too. 'Night.

Where have I (we) been??

Well, what a long, strange road it's been.
We left the Duluth area October 31st and headed for Chicago. L wanted to go to a exhibition of packagers and cappers and so on, called PackExpo. Some very neat machinery to assist in filling, capping, labeling and packaging of goods, and OF COURSE all it takes to automate is lots and lots of cash. Still, nice to see what life could be like if this business was very profitable.

Then we left on November 1st on a 2-day drive to Texas' Hill Country. Sigh... I feel like I'm home, when I am back there. Hard to believe that I had last seen Texas in August of 2009, when my house closing happened and we loaded up a full-sized U-Haul truck and headed to MN.

We spent several days in Texas, and L got to the Alamo and was impressed at the length of the battle (several weeks, for those who do NOT know that), and just how out-numbered the Texans were in that struggle. He even actually enjoyed several bottles of Shiner Bock beer (great stuff -- y'all should try it!). I believe we left Texas on Nov. 6th and arrived back in Lutz/Land-o-Lakes on the 7th. And "enjoyed" a flat tire on the trailer about 70 miles of so away from our destination. Always something interesting with at least one of our "fleet" of vehicles, at some point in our travels! Last year we had problems with the F350 on our return to MN in April.

L had been working with someone at a major home-shopping-type network for about a year, trying to get them to carry/distribute his glass cleaner product. And try as he may, he could not get a purchase order from them before we left for Chicago and Texas. But we got to FL and THEN the p.o. came thru. Well, there were so many loose ends that L felt compelled to go back to Duluth and do what he could to shepherd this order into production. That order was for 2,500 single-unit orders, all going to Germany for a European "cousin" of this shopping network. His operation is SMALL, folks -- hand-labeled, hand-capped bottles... very labor-intensive. It required using some outside labor for labeling, and then overtime for those of us who could/would be able to produce this quantity.

Without going into a lot of detail: we DROVE back from FL to MN, non-stop (except for refueling and potty breaks), leaving FL at noon on Nov. 16th (Tues.) and arriving at 3 pm the next day. Completely exhausting -- I fell asleep behind the wheel as we were getting VERY close to Duluth. Fortunately, he was NOT sleeping and guided the car back from the right shoulder to the right-hand lane lane. I snapped awake at that point and yes, we DID switch out drivers at that point. I had been awake over 30-plus hours by then. I do NOT sleep well in cars, no matter how tired I am. Unless I am behind the wheel for 5 hours at a time or more , apparently.

I can't tell you how many hours we put in, getting this order ready for pick-up. And the labor costs were higher, due to the last-minute nature of this order. But the important thing is that this order WAS generated, and now sales in Germany will tell when the next order will come through. The rep that L is working with, hopes to bring this product also to Great Britain and (we hope) to the U.S. market, as well. Those of you who ARE familiar with L's line of products will NOT see this under his own label, if it is ever on national-shopping network(s). It is under a private-label product line. It was strange, I must say, to see the instructions converted to German, on this new product's label!

Please note that we did NOT drive non-stop on the way back to FL. We left at 1 am on Saturday, Nov. 27, arriving back here in FL around 8 pm on Sunday. And I'll try to post some more detail on that.


BTW - we were SO fortunate to experience snow on this visit to MN, too. Sigh... is that REALLY a necessity?

Random Thoughts

We went to a college hockey game Saturday night. Fun. Haven't been to a hockey game in years - think the last one was the minor-league hockey team that was Houston-based, the Aeros. Funny thing... I was just checkin' out the Aeros website and see that it states, "primary affiliate of the Minnesota Wild"! Anyway, last game attended there was back in the 90's, I am guessing. The college game was played at an older arena, with a new one scheduled to open Dec. 1st. And I was scanning the seated crowd and was struck by the fact that it appeared to be so white (as in Caucasian). After spending 25 years in multicultural Houston, this is still so jarring to me.

This area has a LOT of blue-collar workers and those who work with their hands. The recession has been tough on the surrounding towns and residents. Homes are posted for sale and stay on the market for months and months. Sometimes a "For Sale" sign is removed and you are hopeful that someone has sold their home. But it is eventually re-posted with a different realty company now on the sign. And lake homes (such as the one where L lives) are especially tough to sell, as people give up luxuries during tough times.

It was L's birthday on Tuesday, and his daughter and her family had us to their house for dinner. Nice treat, where you don't have to cook anything! And another dinner on Sunday, this time at his son's home. They also invited L's daughter and her family (5 in the family for them), plus another couple - L's son works with the husband - so there were 11 to feed. So a SECOND treat, where we had no food responsibilities except to show up.

After eating and visiting with everyone, we drove in the direction of home, stopping at the Inn to watch the remainder of the Vikings - Packers game. Ugh -- a tough loss, and I did not like that so many of the Packer fans booed Brett Favre at the end of the game. Brett was on the Packer's sidelines, exchanging handshakes and so on with former teammates, being very gracious in defeat. Oh, well... I am sure that the Vikings have their share of bad sportsmen in the stands.Sigh... Being a Viking fan means you never ever really believe in your heart that they can "win the big one". Unlike the Twins, who have, at least twice in the past century (OMG - it HAS been that long) won the World Series. There are countless jokes told and retold, about two Minnesota Scandinavians being sent to Hell, and they are not discouraged by conditions there. Raised in so much cold weather, they are actually enjoying the heat. So the Devil changes tactics and makes Hell a frigid place, so cold that they will start complaining. But not the Scandinavians. As the temperature dips lower and lower, they begin to rejoice, hugging each other, hooping and hollering. The Devil is astounded and taken aback. "What", he asks these two,"are you so happy about?" One of them turns to him and replies, "The Vikings won the Super Bowl!" The Devil: "How do you know this?" and they reply, "Hell froze over!"

I am looking forward to this weekend and our push towards Tampa. Warm weather, you are only a few days away (with stops in Texas's Hill Country and in New Orleans, on our journey to Florida)!

Autumn color

It must be very tedious to see these same-ol' same-ol' autumn color pix on various blogs. Sorry... I cannot help myself. The color is so much better if you'll click on the individual photos to make 'em bigger.

Yesterday (Thursday) was an absolutely, knock-down gorgeous day, weather-wise and color-wise. I grabbed L's camera (since I have lazily "forgotten" to charge my camera up recently), snapping photos on the way to town (about a half-hour drive), and then a few more on the way back. Leaves were beginning to fall already, and with cooler nights ahead, more of 'em would be following their fallen comrades. So there was no time for delaying the photo op!





This tall yellow-leaved tree is standing behind L's old Toyota Tundra pickup.If you enlarge the photo, you will see a tiny little white orb near the top of the tree, on the left side. It's the moon, trying to peek out through that beautiful blue sky!











This was the view I had when I headed down the driveway Thursday morning. Nature can brighten your mood, can't she?












Color, color everywhere. I took another photo... Just a bend to the left in the road, but so much more, on a bright and sunny fall day.












I'll leave you with this, another bend - to the right this time...