Milk-Toast

I don't know how in the world I came to think about milk-toast. Younger generations won't know what the heck it is, of course. It's a remedy for when those my age were sick. Milk, with toast torn up in it. Warmed. I think the milk was warmed first, put in a bowl, then the toast pieces went in. It was NOT good. Especially with powdered milk, which is what we drank when I was growing up. Oh, yum. Cheap. At some point in time mom would buy milk from a dairy, but that was after I left. In fact, Hubby and I did, too, when we were able to get it locally.

Believe it or not, we had a cow at one time when our kids were little. It was when Vic was a police officer and had to go away to the academy for two weeks. I had to milk the cow. Matt was a baby in one of those contraptions we used to have to carry babies in. I'll have to talk about those things another time. Anyway, Matt was our 5th child. The cow was in the barn, not far from the house. I had to carry him out to the barn and set him down away from the cow's legs and get to milking. No, I had never milked a cow before in my life; in fact, I had never even been close to a cow. It took me an hour to milk the cow, and I think I had to do it two times a day. Matt sat there like a good little baby and didn't fuss at all. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy. It's true.

Another remedy for sick little ones was Jello water. Nowadays there is Gatorade, and other drinks, to add electrolytes back into the body, easier than Jello water. 

If you overindulge tonight at a New Year's Eve party, you may want to have some milk-toast or Jello water to settle your tummy!  Enjoy!

End of the Year

It was Hubby's birthday on the 28th, our granddaughter, Macie's birthday yesterday, the 29th, and tomorrow is my sister Kritter's birthday. Vic said he always got to open a Christmas present for his birthday present! Our nephew, Mandan, has a birthday on Christmas Day. We have several people with December birthdays. Well, we have lots of family members with lots of birthdays! Over 50 in our direct family, not counting my siblings. That's a lot of birthday cards! I send them to my siblings and their spouses, too. I make a lot of them, but not all. I'm not always on time with the cards, as I age...sorry y'all! Part of it is because there are days when I just can't be present, feeling poorly. Like today. I think the holidays did me in. 

Yesterday we had Hubby's birthday lunch at Katie and Rick's. They served crab! We love crab! Deb and Farrell and Farrell's mom, Carol, were with us. Katie and Rick are excellent hosts whenever we are invited to their home. It was a fun time, jokes were told, prayers said, and overindulgence happened! 

Afterwards we went to Macie and Damian's house. (Macie is Katie and Rick's daughter, our granddaughter. Damian is her husband. (It seems weird to say that!) It was Macie's birthday, but she is recuperating from surgery (appendix) so we didn't stay long. I was fading by that time and needed to go home. 

Do you make New Year's resolutions? I don't. I never accomplished them anyway. Instead, I choose a word for the year. 2024's word was "Joy." No comment... 2025's word is "Perseverance." I printed out the definition and posted it here and there to remind me to "hang in there."

We don't do anything for New Year's Eve. When the kids were home, we would have a party for them; sometimes with friends or their cousins. We'd play kids games and at midnight we would toast with Sparkling Cider. We'd have all the goodies to munch on, and the party hats and poppers and such. It was fun! 

Happy New Year to you and yours! 

Happy Birthday, Hubby

The phone has been ringing all day with felicitations for my hubby's birthday. He is now 76 years old. Yep.  In the card I gave him, I said it was nice that we get to grow old together, but then I wrote, oh, we already are! We joke about it all the time. 

Time for Thank You Cards

Do you send thank you cards for gifts you receive? I am a firm believer that we should do so. Especially if you send something in the mail, a gift card or an actual gift. That way the sender knows it reached you. It's a good thing to teach your kids, too. So that's what I'm doing today. 

In reference to the previous post, I forgot to mention that sending checks in the mail is no longer a good idea. If someone gets ahold of one of your checks, they can bleach out the penned in amount and fill it in with an amount they desire. They can wipe out your bank account. Even if they don't bleach it, they have your bank account number and can cause mayhem with your checking account. 

I check my account every few days, to keep track, but then I will see if there is any problems with it. When I am finished, I always close it so if someone were to get into my browser, that won't be there for them to see, or use. It's no telling what can be done and isn't it crazy that we have to be so suspicious? Is nothing sacred anymore? Especially for "seniors" like Hubby and me, we aren't aware of all of the nefarious things crooks do. If you know of any new ways of cheating people out of their hard-earned money, please leave a comment to that affect. I will moderate comments so if you do, it may not show up right away. 

One of the reasons I started a blog again is to let younger people know some of the things that happen as we age. Our parents died fairly young, except Grandpa, but he had dementia so couldn't teach us. 

So now and then I will post a sentence or two about something related to aging. Today's lesson: you forget how to spell things. Or whether or not a word ends with "LY" or should it be "ALLY." In the past, I have been a great speller. No longer... I often ask the Internet how to spell a certain word, or to give me the definition. 

That's all for today; I'm going to work on those Thank You cards.

It's Me Again, Harold

I'm giving the old college try, having a blog once again. I will try hard to be better about blogging than I was on the last one, even if all I post is a sentence or two.

We had a very nice Christmas with family. Christmas Eve at Katie and Rick's. (See "Pages" for the names of our kids.)  Macie, Damian, Mitch, Catherine, Bobby, Aremy, Melanie and Emily were also there. (Not Audi's Emily.) They served prime rib with all the fixins. Baby Emilia was popular! She was 7 weeks old and had changed so much since Thanksgiving as babies do. She was holding her head up and looking around.  Christmas Day, we had dinner at Derek and Vickie's, with Josh, Natalie, Owen, Carol, Larry, Amy and Scott. Turkey dinner was served. Afterwards we went to Elijah and Josie's and saw Stella Jo and the new baby boy, Banks. Both are adorable, of course! 

At the dinner table, the subject of scammers came up. There is a scam going around where a person pretends to not figure out what is on his cell phone and hands it to you. Then once the unsuspecting person tries to hand it back, the guy won't take it. He insists you give him money or a credit card, intimidating you. Teenagers especially fall prey to this scam. Or a person walks up to you and holds his phone out but moves it across your mid-section. It is picking up the info on your credit cards and debit cards!

We have known that your credit card and debit card info can be hacked online. Banks now recommend not to use these when purchasing goods online, rather, use a service like PayPal or Venmo. When a hacker gets into your banking account, they can clean it out, leaving you nothing. 

Even cash is not safe. If you sell something and the buyer gives you cash, it is best if you have one of the pens to mark the money to let you know if it is counterfeit or not. If you deposit counterfeit money, it's on you, the bank won't allow you to use it, it's just paper at that point. 

So many evil people out in the world today; one cannot be too safe. We have been losing gasoline in our car at nighttime. Our bedroom is on the back of the house, so we don't hear anything. We will be getting a locking gas cap. Or a pit bull. Haha, not really. Rottweilers are my favorite breed of big dog, but I will admire them from afar. We don't have a pet.