Monday, October 22, 2018 - Catching Up; Thinking of My Mama Today

Monday, October 22, 2018 - Catching Up; Thinking of My Mama Today

When I woke up and looked at the alarm clock, it was already past 6:00 a.m., I realized I forgot to reset my phone alarm after Jaxson left.  I guess the extra sleep was needed, since I usually am already awake before my phone alarm sounds.  

I turned on the coffee pot, did my morning exercises (for my neck, back, and legs), and by then it was time to enjoy the first cup!  I have been a little lax in doing the exercises the past couple of weeks and I can already tell a difference - not a good difference either.  They take so little time (10-15 minutes) and I feel so much better when I do them.  I hope to build this habit back again.  I grabbed Dean's laptop (so much easier to use than mine) and got to work catching up the past several days of blog posts.  

Today is my Mama's birthday.  She would have been 80 today.  We lost her in February, 1993 to breast cancer.  Even though it's been a long time and it's not as hard as it was right after we lost her, some days I miss her a lot.  Her birthday is one of those days.  I was born a little over 3 hours after her 18th birthday.  I always felt special that our birthdays were only a day apart.  I feel extremely blessed that my Mama knew Jesus Christ and lived her life for him.   So, until we see you again, Happy Heavenly Birthday Mama!  I love you!

Dean had a few errands to run today.  He took the truck to Coop to have the inside dual tires moved to the outside, and then waited while they balanced them.  While he was gone I sorted the laundry and got the first load going.  

I worked on the blog off and on all afternoon between, washing, drying and folding clothes, making the bed, doing the dishes I left setting in the sink last night because I was too tired to do them, and then straightened up everything else that needed it.  When Dean returned sometime after 11:30 or so, I had just finished eating breakfast. Since it was close to noon Dean made a sandwich and watched his favorite noon show - Gunsmoke.  

A short time later he called the Chevrolet dealership in Parsons to make an appointment to have the oil changed in the truck.  Surprisingly, they had an opening at 3:00 this afternoon, so he left a short while later.  

I had just posted the first of three posts I will be working on today when he returned.  It only took them about 30 minutes to change the oil, so he was only gone 1.5 hours.  He came in and set down to visit for a few minutes before he headed outside to unload everything from the basement so he could take the air compressor out.  He has been storing it behind the wall of the basement, but he has found it to be a bit of a nuisance for some uses, so now he'll need to find another place to store it.

Tonight for dinner I made "faux beef tips" for dinner.  I used stew meat, seared it in the instapot, seasoned it with seasoning salt, garlic salt and some pepper, then added 2 cups of beef broth and a package of Pioneer brown gravy mix following the directions on the package.  I set the Instapot for 24 minutes on high.  Once the 24 minutes was completed I did a natural release for 18 minutes before turning it off.  I added some water to a heaping T of cornstarch to thicken the gravy up.  The meat was so tender!  

Dean said it would be awhile before he would be inside so I waited until he was almost done before making rice and warming up some corn to go with it.  I will definitely make this again.  It would be good on noodles or mashed potatoes as well.  My sister Cindy shared a similar recipe with me over the weekend.  It sounded too good not to try it.  Thanks for sharing that idea Cindy!

We have a very busy day planned for tomorrow, and we need to leave the house by 7am, so I'm going to get some sleep.  Good night.