how about drinking?
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Kim, you have infinite patience—laughter was not the emotion I would have stifled, but rather stuff that would fill an entire "swear jar." When I took my mom (85) shopping for what neither of us knew would be the last time, it was at Lord & Taylor (RIP) at Boca Town Center. She made a beeline for the petites department and delighted in trying on the most fashionable stuff: shorts outfits, "scuba" jackets, tunic & pant sets. Having made it down from a size 14 to a 6 (the result of listening to her doctor's advice to "stop eating junk"), she was quite the clotheshorse (though at 4'11" more like a clothes"pony"). When she saw the price of the jacket ($150 back in 2006), she balked and refused to let me buy it for her. She declared she wanted to get one of the cute suede ones at Costco for $30, but they had nothing smaller than an M (ironically, back in Chicago the S & XS were the only ones left when I was looking for myself—I was an XL back then).
A year later, I took my MIL shopping, this time at the Lord & Taylor in Garden City, L.I. while my FIL was in North Shore Hospital for heart imaging. She had not bought clothes or shoes for herself in over a decade (my in-laws were breathtakingly frugal despite being rather wealthy) and shyly asked if I could buy her corduroy pants, a sweater and a pair of nice loafers to replace her cracked old black oxfords. (She was chagrined to find she was still a size 14). The salesclerk marveled at how delightedly she walked around in the loafers and posed in front of the mirror, and asked me how old she was—she gasped when I told her 95. Alas, two weeks later (after we returned to Chicago) unbeknownst to us she took a "vacation" from her anticoagulant & blood pressure meds to "celebrate" my FIL's getting a clean bill of heart health; while eating ice cream with her next-door neighbors she collapsed from a massive stroke. She hung on for several months till just shy of her 96th birthday, when she told my FIL she was ready to go.
We went to Cooper's Hawk Winery Sunday night for their St. Pat's Day menu and our monthly free wine club bottle. I chose their private label Albariño blend from Spain, one step ahead of you-know-who's EU alcohol tariffs. Had thought about an Aussie Shiraz, but I don't think AU is being targeted…yet. With my dinner I had their "Lux Sparkling" brut (which they import from France—all their other bubblies are just too sweet) and half a glass of the "Lux Cabernet" they suggested pairing with corned beef & cabbage.
Tonight, after leftovers, I made my annual Irish coffee: a jigger & a half of Tullamore Dew muddled with 2 tsp. Sugar in the Raw crystals (the closest I could find to Demerara), French-press-brewed half-caff, and heavy cream I whipped with a milk frother. I have neither a mixer nor eggbeater in this house—and nowhere in Target could I find an eggbeater yesterday. I'd have used a whisk, but there are no proper steel or glass mixing bowls in the house either. No way was I going to use the sweetened spritz-can Reddi-Wip. I did splurge on a pair of double-wall glass mugs (wrong shape but the price was right—$12 the pair) because I didn't want to use the house's heavy diner-style mugs nor ruin our own plastic wineglasses with hot coffee. Was disappointed to find they didn't stock the Irish coffee mugs or stem glasses most bars use. Anyway, the drink turned out perfect. Not bad for something I make only once a year!
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Yum on your Irish coffee, Sandy. Haven't had that in a coon's age, or, a long time.
Sunday night I enjoyed two top shelf margaritas on ice, no salt, at a Mexican restaurant.
I took my MIL shopping in the Chicago suburbs when she was already developing Alzheimer's. A sad and nerve-wracking experience. I remember her looking at herself in the mirror in the fitting room and making disparaging remarks. Now I feel about the same way looking at myself in the mirror before making efforts to improve my appearance.
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Yesterday I was doing some research on my ancestry and I happened to connect with some people that are somehow distantly related and they had pictures of some of my ancestors dating around the late 1800s to early 1900s. I was so floored to see these pictures as I had never seen these people before.
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Good Morning, Loungettes! It's been an interesting couple of days here with the technology. I got up early to get online to buy tickets to the Anne Frank house tour. Tickets only drop once a week and boy do they go fast! I got that done ok, but when I went to email a copy of the receipts/tickets to my cousin, Yahoo Mail opened up in a new format. One that looked like my main email address was gone. While trying to figure that out I got locked out of YahooMail. It took some serious shenanigans to it unlocked, and get back in. I did finally figure out that my main email address is now my "alias" address, and after a lot of hunting around figured out how to make sure I was seeing the email from that address as well as my secondary in the inbox. Then I freaked out because the YM app on my phone opened up and did not show my primary address, and did not show my folders. I use folders a lot, and right now the Amsterdam trip folder is the most important with all the receipts, tickets, and info for the trip being held there where I can get at them quickly, and it was GONE! All the folders were gone! It took deleting and reinstalling the app on the phone and shutting down and restarting the phone to get the folders back. Now I am totally paranoid about the folders disappearing again! All this does remind me that I have to get the printer hooked up to the new desktop so I can print out paper copies of everything as a back up.
Minus--yup, that drink does have some serious alcohol in it!
Mommy--LOL!
Teka--your daughter's boiled dinner looks scrumptious!
Chi--to be totally honest, I'm turning the outings and experiences with Mom into funny stories as a way to cope with the frustration and worry I feel at the time, and as a way to keep reminding myself that I can't fix everything for her and my time with her is getting shorter. I got a giggle from your description of your Mom as a "clothes pony" and can just about hear her reaction to the price of the jacket! I am sorry to hear about your MIL's passing. I am so glad your annual Irish coffee turned out so good!
Carole--Shopping with someone with cognitive decline of any sort is an eye-opening experience, isn't it?
Mommy--those pictures must have been fascinating to look at!
Whisky in Church
Ingredients
• 2 ounces Islay scotch
• 3/4 ounce oloroso sherry
• 1 barspoon Grade B maple syrup
• 6 dashes smoked cherry bitters
• Garnish: lemon twistSteps
1. Add the whisky, sherry, maple syrup and bitters into a mixing glass with ice and stir until well-chilled.
2. Strain into a rocks glass over a large ice cube.
3. Garnish with a lemon twist.From
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NM - Yup - I don't care for the new Yahoo either. Just a thought about all your trip info, if you don't have a back up drive for your desktop, you could copy it to a flash drive for safe keeping.
Speaking of Irish Coffee - supposedly See's Candy has a new flavor - Irish Cream. If anybody has access to a See's store, I'd love to hear a report.
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Good Morning, Loungettes! Happy TGIF day! Mom's doctor's appointment went well. Her recent worsening of her memory and cognitive functioning is likely due to a UTI, we've got labs going to confirm, and have made a medication change, dropping a med that can have negative memory/cognition side effects. Her weight is good, which I was worried would not be the case. We met up with a long time friend of hers for lunch and had a wonderful visit. Then she did spend an hour in Walmart to pick up rice cakes and look for her lipstick and a broom. She only got the rice cakes, but I think I know what brand/color number lipstick she's looking for and I can be looking for it, too.
Listing it out doesn't seem like yesterday was all that busy, but I was totally exhausted when I got home. The puppers and I lounged in bed until after 8 ayem, just cuddling and listening to an audiobook. Finally heaved myself out of bed because the puppers and I all need to pee. I can see this is going to be a totally lazy day today.
Teka--that is the only drawback of a boiled dinner, it can feed a family for days and days and days and days. . . .
Minus--I do have a back up drive for the desktop, but I will have to check if it backs up email. I know I can go on the site and download individual files, but I've never looked at the email. And I will back the vacation stuff up on a flash drive, that's a great idea, thanks!
Teka--I really do not like the look of the new Yahoo mail, nor do I like that it is now taking up to 15 minutes for emails sent to me to actually show up in my inbox. Or that it's taking as long for emails I send to get to the destination. Not exactly an improvement in any way that I can see.
At all! Love the pic!
Change in Seasons
Ingredients
• 2 barspoons Le Sueur very young small sweet peas
• 2 1/4 ounces Plantation 3 Stars rum
• 1 ounce lime juice
• 3/4 ounce simple syrup
• 6 leaves tarragon
• Garnish: 5 small pomegranate/beet/allspice ice cubes*Steps
1. Muddle the peas in the bottom of mixing tin, then add the remaining ingredients.
2. Add ice and shake until well-chilled.
3. Double-strain using a handheld strainer into a short-stemmed glass.
4. Top with flavored ice cubes.*Small pomegranate/beet/allspice ice cubes: Combine 2 cups pomegranate juice, 1/2 cup red beet juice, 3 ounces St. Elizabeth allspice dram and 20 dashes The Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas’ bitters in a pitcher. Freeze in ice cube trays.
From
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I'm not fond of the new Yahoo Mail either. The text seems smaller and more difficult to read.
My coffee is tasting good this morning, like usual.
Happy Saturday to everybody.
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Good Morning, Loungettes! Happy Sunday Funday! Not much going on here this weekend. It was pretty nice but chilly yesterday, this ayem it's cold and windy. March is truly living up to its reputation!
Carole--I think you are right about the text being smaller in the new Yahoo Mail. I was looking at the mail settings this ayem to see if there was anything I could do to make the whole thing look better and found a "return to old Yahoo Mail" option and clicked on that just as fast as I could. The look is sooo much better--the Today, Yesterday, Last week, sections are labeled again, with the labels standing out by being dark gray, the mail items are listed closer together. In the new version each email has an icon at the left edge which makes the whole page look so confusing to me, with something different at the start of each line. The mailboxes are back at the top of the mailbox and folder list, not at the bottom, which was a crazy place to put them. I can easily tell which emails are read and which are unread in the old version, too. I hope Yahoo will leave this old version as an option, at least until they can fix the new one to actually be user friendly!
Air Mail
Ingredients
• 1 ounces Banks 5-Island rum
• 1/2 ounce lime juice, freshly squeezed
• 1/2 ounce rich honey syrup
• 2 1/2 ounces brut Champagne (such as Moet & Chandon Imperial), chilled, to top
• Garnish: grated nutmeg
Steps
1. Add the rum, lime juice, and honey syrup into a shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled.
2. Strain into a Collins glass over fresh ice.
3. Top with the Champagne.
4. Sprinkle with freshly grated nutmeg to garnish.From
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Good Morning, Loungettes! Happy Twofer Tuesday! Waking up this ayem to 6 more inches of snow after getting about 4 inches during the day yesterday. Winter wonderland out there! Too bad it's March and it won't stay long, right. Yes, that was sarcasm.
Where is everyone?????
THE SNOWMAN-HATTAN
INGREDIENTS:
2 ounces bourbon or rye whiskey
1 ounce triple sec
3 tablespoons homemade ginger syrup
3 ounces fresh orange juice
Fresh snowCombine the whiskey, triple sec, ginger syrup, and orange juice.
Fill a glass with fresh snow and pour the cocktail over it.
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Snow in March? The only white here is fog some mornings. We're supposed to hit 80 today. Hello, a/c.
Happy Tuesday.
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Wow - snow on 3/25!!! We beat you Carole. 89 in Houston today.
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Good Morning, Loungettes! Happy Hump Day! Taking Mom to the first fitting of her new dentures this peeyem. She is really looking forward to being able to eat a steak again! I'll be glad when she gets them, too. Why she thought she had to wait for so long (as in years) to replace the old ones that don't fit and are cracked in places I don't know.
Carole--Yup, snow in March. There is usually one good big snowstorm in March, but it usually melts off in a day or two. This year the temps are going up as usual, so I have 4 inches of icy, frozen snow in my yard and driveway. Lots of dense fog advisories in the ayems as the sun comes up this time of year.
Minus--you guys must be absolutely cooking! 89 degrees in March? ABOVE zero? Wow!
Fuzzy Leprechaun
Ingredients
• 1 Ounce Peach Schnapps
• 1 Ounce Blue Curacao
• 1 Ounce Vodka
• ½ Ounce Orange Juice
• ½ Ounce Pineapple Juice
• Garnish with an orange and cherry
Instructions
• Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake
• Strain into glass and garnish with orange and cherryFrom
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Hi all! I have a bit of a big project coming up this weekend. While cleaning the excess fur from my girls shedding on their cat tree, I noticed some parts have begun to look a bit ratty. I was talking to my hubby and he thought about getting them a new one. I told him it was still in good shape so why don't we just fix up the parts that are in need of a fix up. He agreed and said it sounded like an idea. I even said that the new fabric doesn't have to match on all the levels, it can be an interesting turn out as things get changed. So yesterday I got some pre-cut fleece fabric abd sisal rope. Just need to find the staple gun and staples and I can go to work on it.
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be sure to post a photo of the finished product
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will do. It will probably look a little sloppy, my first time doing it
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Good Moring, Loungettes! Happy Thirsty Thursday! I had a nice day with Mom yesterday. She has taken a big liking to Denny's salmon dinner on their 55+ menu, and actually asked to get lunch there, so there we went. The meal really does look good, I probably will try it myself one of these trips. Yesterday I got the pot roast melt sandwich and onion rings and it was really good. Grocery shopping is on the agenda for today along with washing the kitchen floor and hemming up one pair of the new pants.
Mommy--reupholstering the cat tree sounds like a kind of fun project for the weekend! A good project for learning on, too. It's ok if a cat tree isn't all the same material, and if it's a little sloppy, the kitties won't care but you will gain some practice and the next project will be better!
I second Wren, please post a pic!
Jungle Cat
Ingredients:
1.5 oz Tom Cat Gin
0.75 oz Campari
1.5 oz Fresh Pineapple Juice
0.5 oz Fresh Lime Juice
0.5 oz VT Grade A Dark, Robust Maple SyrupPreparation:
Combine ingredients in a mixing tin, add ice, shake, and strain over crushed ice in a tiki mug if you’ve got it. Go crazy with the garnish, a Campari soaked pineapple works well, and using cherries or pineapple leaves is fun. Try and make it look like a cats face!From
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I did the posts this morning with the sisal rope. Had enough rope to cover three totally. Only had enough left to cover one half of the last post midway, so I covered the rest of it in the fabric I have. Going to do the two platforms this weekend. The girls have been using the newly covered posts already.
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I remember the year Wisconsin got 6" of snow in April…ah, the good old days.
I'm waiting for October. We hit 60 the other day and that was all I needed of summer. Sigh. Crawling back under my rock…with my red wine :-)
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Years ago we got snow in March when the azaleas were in bloom. That was quite a sight. Blooms and snow. It happened only that once as far as I can recall. Must have been a shock to the shrubs.
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Good Morning, Loungettes! Happy Saturday! Snowing here again, today, and going to snow, sleet, and freezing rain all weekend. The mud from the first rounds of mud season have frozen up again. Everyone around here seems to be going crazy, there have been more reports of domestic violence, people attacking other people with weapons, police stand-offs, and bail violations than I can ever remember hearing about, and I don't even listen to the news on TV anymore! It's the worst form of spring fever. The world is getting very scary!
Mommy--I bet the kitties are happy with the reupholstering of the cat tree. Didn't take them long to check it out and start using the new platforms!
Wally--wow, 6 inches of snow in April is pretty amazing!
Carole--Azalea blooms in the snow must have made for some amazing pictures! I bet the shrubs were very surprised.
Azalea Cocktail
Ingredients:
• 1 part lemon juice
• 2 part vodka
• 1 part pineapple juice
• splash grenadine, add until desired color is reachedInstructions:
• Mix all ingredients together and serve. Garnish with lemon slices, if desired.
• Refrigerate mixture until ready to serve.
Notes:
Can use gin in place of vodka.
Can make in advance and refrigerate until ready to serve.From
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It is amazing. Sadly (or not), I was living in Paris (for work) and missed it.
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Wallycat, I can't feel too sad for someone living in Paris. LOL. Seems like a great experience to me.
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Yes, it was amazing. I wish I could rewind the clock to do it again. It was even worth the 30 pound weight gain…I know, I know…but the FOOD!!!!
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you’re right about the food. Every bite was delicious
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Home again, home again, jiggity jig. We just got back from taking the kids to Turin for spring break. It was amazing and beautiful. We spend most of our time in the museums, palaces, and churches in the city, but took a day trip into Asti to see what a smaller town was like. We saw the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist where the Shroud is kept (the Shroud is no longer displayed, to better preserve it, though the case in which it is kept is viewable), the Royal Museum (boy-child loved the armory), the Egyptian Museum (where elder child totally geeked out), and loads of other amazing little palazzos and churches that you just stumble across while wandering the area. It's like walking through a land mine field with little explosions of history everywhere.
It was great to be in a walkable city. This was the first time out of the country for the kids - exploring new foods, learning "buon giorno" and "grazie mille", and experiencing the joys of navigating trains.
DotD is Bicerin, the drink of choice in Turin (aside from Barolo).
- In a clear heat-proof glass, create three layers.
- Pour the hot chocolate on the bottom, followed by a shot of hot espresso.
- In order to avoid "breaking" the first layer of the hot chocolate, pour the espresso over the back of a spoon so that it gently cascades into the glass.
- Finally, top with whipped cream and serve warm.
- Do not stir! The layers will mix as you sip.
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Sounds fabulous and that drink! Oh my! Glad the trip was wonderful 😊
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The updated cat tree
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Wish I could have tagged along on that wonderful trip! LOL. Lucky kids.
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Good Morning, Loungettes! Happy Twofer Tuesday! The rain and snow have finally gone away, and the sun has come out and is shining, now if it would only warm up a bit more, although 39 degrees isn't too bad for a March ayem. Mom got her first weekly grocery delivery yesterday, and we seem to have figured out the basic, repeating stuff fairly well. We need to do a little tweaking, but that's what the next couple of weeks are for. Also need to get her stocked up with some things that she doesn't need every week for variety and fun. Her current obsession is washing her kitchen and living room floors. She has back pain from arthritis and can't stand up for too very long, so she's working out a plan to wash specific sections of the floor one at a time, and has a stool to sit on while she does it. I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but I'll find out on Thursday. I've started visiting on Thursdays in particular to help her get her trash put out for pick up. She is also obsessed with accidentally throwing something away, and wants to go through all the trash before it goes out, during which process she gets sidetracked, and ends up with several bags and boxes going, losing track of which bags and boxes are trash and which are keepers, and not getting the trash put out at all. Anyway, if I go by every Thursday ayem, I can gather up all the trash, get the vast majority of it put out, collect up the cans and bottles and take them to recycling and help keep up with that stuff. I didn't realize how much trash stuff she was keeping in the craft room, which she keeps very cold when she's not using it, and that's not a workable option come summer and warmer temps.
Mirandra--welcome home! It sounds like you had a wonderful trip. It's a bit disappointing that the Shroud of Turin isn't displayed, but I can see why it would need preservation and protection. Love the mental picture of walking through a land mine field of history explosions! Wow, the Bicerin sounds lovely!
Morning, Reader!
Mommy--the cat tree looks great! I bet the kitties are loving it.
Carole--I wish I could have tagged along, too. Great sounding trip!
Barolo Chinato Manhattan
Recipe: Barolo Chinato Manhattan (serves one)
• 2 oz. rye
• 1 oz. Barolo Chinato
• 2 dashes (= 1/4 tsp) Angostura bitters
• maraschino cherry
Combine ingredients with ice in a mixing glass. Stir. Strain into cocktail glass and garnish with a cherry.From
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They are! Every morning they climb up on it so they get their morning treats!
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