The ramblings and musings of Nancie Neal
Personal posts, my life’s story
Daily! I said Daily!
And I haven’t posted more than once since the first of the year!
It seems I dove headfirst into doing some beginning of the year organizing, so it’s taking longer than I expected. But here… Here is a post.
Featured image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Happy anniversary to me!
Yesterday marked 25 years, marriage in 1999. It wasn’t a big wedding, and it’s obvious I had a family member take pictures. It didn’t matter, we were in it for the long haul and now 25 years later, we are still going strong.
It’s a New Year, and I’m not making any promises or new year’s resolutions, but I hope to be posting more as part of my daily routine – even if it’s just a few lines.
The past few weeks have been crazy-busy, but what else is new? Since it was hot, I had to be out more often, making sure the chickens had water and stay cool.
And I’ve been organizing the kitchen more. It’s nice to not have to look for something to make myself a basic breakfast.
But as much as I haven’t been blogging, I haven’t been writing much, either. It’s partly a form of writer’s block, and life in general.
My husband’s schedule is changing, and it’s for the better, but it will take me a while before I develop a routine that works with it.
In the meantime, I have some drafts I started. I’ll be working on those, soon.
It seems to happen consistently. The beginning of the year, and an illness takes hold, making me postpone everything I wanted to start, including recording a video a day…
Except that’s not the real reason I stopped two videos in. I’m too much of a perfectionist and I haven’t found a decent video recorder that would limit the amount of editing I have to do later.
TikTok, an app that I don’t care for in general, has a great in-app video recorder/editor. It allows you to not only pause the video, but to delete that last clip. If you were following a script or had a tendency to stumble over your words, you can easily delete that scene and try again.
At one time, there was a third-party stand-alone video recorder that worked similar to TikTok, but then they removed that feature.
So, I’m on the hunt for another app that works, but my goal is within a month or so, I’ll start posting short videos again.
Sunday, December 25th, Both Elizabeth: Heritage Journey (the collection) and Elizabeth: Transformation for Kindle is free!
Merry Christmas!
If you missed this, don’t fret. I give away my books as much as KDP allows. Click on my links page and follow any of my social links to be notified of free books, short stories, and blog posts.
My husband and I wanted to fill our freezer with beef. He finally fixed it enough for us to use. The cover still needs a replacement seal, but since it’s winter, we’re not worried about energy loss.
A couple of years ago, we tried the Meat Market west of Tyler.
The meat was great, but the price was a little rich for our blood, not to mention they sourced the meat from Wisconsin. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but we were working to get all of our supplies from local businesses and farms.
Then there was the butcher we kept passing by on our way to church. We’ve been wanting to stop by for a while, but it’s difficult to get out during the week when they’re open, because of Mike’s work schedule.
We did finally stop, and we got a pamphlet and I bought some soup bones, which made some tasty stew.
But it was another week before we could stop again.
I’ve always thought they were open on the usual business days (Monday through Friday) so when we finally had a chance, it was Monday… and I was wrong. But when I tried to take a picture of their hours, the owner opened the door and offered to help us out anyway, since he was in doing paperwork (a perk of a private business).
We made our order for 1/4 cow to be picked up the following week, although we could have gotten it sooner, but we had planned to travel that weekend and we picked up our order the following Wednesday. I got some free oxtail (the upper half of the cow’s tail) for bone broth out of the deal.
They gave a choice between all grass-fed or grain-finished, or whatever comes first. We picked whatever comes first, because to be honest, I happen to love the gamey taste of grass-fed and the even flavor of grain-finished equally. They each have their own merits.
So we end up getting mostly grass-fed with a few pieces being grain finished.
Half of it was ground beef, which brings me to the price.
Just under $1000 (995) dollars for a quarter cow- that’s almost $10/lb. Granted, local grown beef has a tendency to be pricey, but it was way more than the usual market price for hanging weight for *grass-fed* cows (they don’t differentiate in the price).
If you are rich, by all means, go there for your meat. I highly recommend it. The service was awesome, the staff was friendly, and the meat tasted great! As for us, I will still go there to get soup bones, and probably organ meats, but a friend of ours is splitting another cow with us for considerably cheaper for us.
You can check out their website here: https://www.cutbeef.com/
We also got a couple of free Kozies out of the deal. The insulated bag (featured picture) I bought to add to my collection of reusable shopping bags, but that’s a blog post for another time.
I woke up feeling better, but my back still gets stiff every time I sit for long periods of time.
Reaching down for anything is out of the question.
I have been taking this downtime to make plans and hash ideas.
One thing I put on my to do list is to change my blog theme, again. This one isn’t “cutting it.”
Tomorrow will be a better day.
Tomorrow changes are coming… starting with my blog.
My head felt like cotton when I woke up yesterday morning. It was my turn to deal with the virus that had been going though the family all week and it was bad timing.
I texted the ladies’ group and let them know I won’t being joining them for brunch.
Took a shower, hoping the steam would help my sinuses. Got out, pulled on the first pant leg, and felt an unmistakable click in the lower part of my back.
To think, I spent the good part of Friday digging out one of the garden beds. Lifted bags of soil to fill the earth boxes, and I ruined my back by putting my pants on.
I spent the better part of the tossing and turning, taking care to stretch my back before falling to sleep.
My back didn’t hurt so much, but my head still felt like it was going to explode. I spent watching the church’s lives stream on YouTube, surrounded by tissues.
Around two o’clock, I finally decided to take a caffeine nap, popping an ibuprofen just before laying down. Twenty minutes later, Mike came in laughing at some meme. Fortunately, I was already about to get up and I felt so much better.
I helped Mike with the new chick’s temporary home as we work to integrate them in with the flock. Then I dug a little more in the garden, but only to get more soil for the earth boxes. It turns out, the soil I bought wasn’t quite enough.
Today wasn’t so bad, despite the problems. I still feel like I was productive and definitely have a good outlook for this week.
Yesterday was Sarah’s birthday and we took her to Menchie’s in Tyler, Texas.
We left on the thirty-first and headed towards my in-laws in Effingham, through rain that seemed to come from all directions, only to clear as quickly as it slammed us. We got to Illinois in one piece and earlier than expected. Spent the next day there, visiting Golden Corral and doing some shopping before making the longer trek to Vermont.
Mike’s dad bought us gas. This helped as it was on less stop to make. We stopped in a hotel in Ohio, so we weren’t totally worn out when we got to our destination. A little more rain, and it cleared up. We still made it to Vermont in decent time, even with the overnight stay.
My kids cleaned up the brush around the house. Things my father was too sick to do, but too prideful to ask for help. My husband help my brother clean out the garage, and we found some interesting treasures. Kind of regret not taking the Tandy with me, but I really don’t have a place for it.
The day finally came, and we went to the Green Mountain Church of Christ in Castleton. My sister set up a projector and the few images we did have of dad flashed on the screen. Interestingly, one photo depicted dad with his hand up, indicating he didn’t want his picture taken, showcasing the reason we didn’t have many pictures of him in the first place. Dad never liked having his picture taken and would readily volunteer to take pictures or videos, so he wouldn’t have to be in them.
It was clear for a while until we reached the Midwest. Then it we had a repeat of the storms, book-ending our trip, bringing some form of poetic closure.
I could end this with the clichés like “enjoy what you have now because you never know” and “death can come at any time,” but why? It doesn’t change anything, does it? Experiencing it is the real kick in the pants that works, but then it’s too late.
I’m off to hug my kids – and maybe let them take more pictures of me.