how about drinking?

Good Morning, Loungettes! Happy Twofer Tuesday! It's definitely different getting up to 46 degrees than 76 degrees!

mOmmy--what colors are you working with for the potholders?

Minus--I'm with you, I like to see the wood, too! I thought that was a cool placemat pic. The bourbon and a splash with lemon sounds very nice for a hot day.

mOmmy--I haven't heard of a thermal pad for a table. Did it replace trivets and hot pads?

Mason Jar Fishbowl

What You'll Need
1 part Blue raspberry vodka
1 part Vodka
1 part Coconut rum
1 part Peach schnapps
1 part Blue curacao
2 parts Lemon lime soda
Nerds
Swedish fish
Orange

Preparation
1 In an ice filled glass combine liquors and lemon lime soda
2 Stir to combine
3 Pour nerds into base of mason jar and add orange slice
4 Add ice and a swedish fish
5 Pour mix over ice and garnish with cocktail umbrella

My mother also had a table pad for her good "dining room" table. And it was usually covered with a tablecloth. We ate most meals in the "breakfast room" since my Dad was usually traveling for work & it was just Mom and the 3 kids. However we always ate Sunday DINNER in the dining room.

Good Morning, Loungettes! Happy Saturday! It seems we have jumped from hot, muggy summer to dry, warm days, crisp nights fall all of a sudden. Temps dropping into the 40s overnight, still hitting 80s during the day, but without the humidity, it's been so nice. I accomplished nothing yesterday but sitting on the deck reading and watching the puppers play. Now if only I could get some ambition going and get some projects done around the house!

mOmmy--the table in the picture is beautiful! I can see why you'd want to protect it. I still can't get used to the idea of a dining table pad, but then, I never had as nice a table to protect.

Minus--growing up we always ate dinner as a family at the kitchen table. We didn't have a separate dining room. I do remember Mom using table clothes and linen napkins for special meals.

mOmmy--I'm an in front of the TV eater, too. The kitchen table is usually covered with things that need to be put away or otherwise taken care of.

Kitchen Sink Cocktail

Ingredients


	4 sprigs fresh mint


	2 ounces Simple Syrup, recipe follows


	2 ounces gin 


	2 ounces light rum 


	2 ounces triple sec 


	2 ounces vodka 


	8 ounces lemon-lime soda 


	4 lime wedges, for garnish 

Directions
Muddle the mint in the bottom of a cocktail shaker with the Simple Syrup. Add ice to the shaker, then add the gin, rum, triple sec and vodka and shake vigorously. Strain into 4 rocks glasses filled with ice. Top each with some lemon-lime soda and garnish with a lime wedge.

From https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/geoffrey-zakarian/kitchen-sink-cocktail-3213590

Good Morning, Reader! I am praying for you and your family, and hoping things are improving for everyone involved.

Reader. Thinking of you 🙏

Hi to everyone. We're meeting another couple at a Mexican restaurant for dinner tonight. I definitely plan to order a margarita.

OMG - Reader. Holding you in my thoughts.

Native - another good Mom story!!! I solved the problem with my Dad discarding or misplacing mail by setting up an email account in his name & switching everything to "on line" - bills, bank statements, doctor's notices, etc. Since he didn't have a computer, he couldn't delete important things and I could access at my convenience. Yes, he had to sign forms in some cases but that wasn't a problem since he was past the point of reading everything. I really don't think he ever missed the mail, since there was always a lot of junk anyway. He was addicted to ordering things from catalogs. Forgot the name, but maybe Reader's Digest?

Good Morning, Loungettes! Happy Saturday! I went to see Mom yesterday. She was complaining about all the clothes she had all over her bed that she was trying to get sorted out and hung up. She even took me to the bedroom to show me, and low and behold, her bed is covered with clothes that we had gone over and gotten hung up in the closet last week! The very same clothes, plus a few that had gotten put in the wash last time. Why she felt the need to pull them all out of the closet and off the hangers and lay them out on the bed again I'll never figure out. I know she has trouble sorting things, but until recently that's been mostly involving papers, mail, books and the like. She will go through a pile of papers, start making piles of things to throw away, things to keep, things she needs to look over and think about. After a few minutes she is grumbling about not being able to remember which pile is which, and starts putting papers into piles randomly. Then when she gets finished with the pile, she picks up one of the three piles she has and starts over. Eventually everything ends up in the "ones I need to read over and think about" pile and nothing gets accomplished. It's totally crazy in her filing drawers. She has bank statements from the 1990s, but can't find any recent ones even though I give it to her every months and go over it with her. I found a bunch of nested bowls in the fridge, empty (but at least clean) that she says she put away where they belong. Never seen them there before! She still insists that someone (ok, me) is coming in and moving things around when she's asleep, both at night and during the day. I am hoping a place opens up at the facility she wants to move to soon.

Carole--a margarita with Mexican food sounds just about right!

Reader--wow, you have got a HUGE amount going on! Glad to hear brother's surgery are over and behind him, and he does get to come home soon. I think I'd rather have heart surgery than anything to do with a dentist. How did DH get covered in poison ivy? Was he out rolling around in the garden? He must fell miserable. I think you deserve 2 martinis this weekend!

Minus--I am in the process of getting her doctors' offices to mail things to me, have already set up patient portal access using my email address, and having the offices use my phone number for notifications. She hadn't seen the eye doctor since she stopped driving, so I hadn't gotten to them yet. Got it switched now, I hope, we'll see. It can take a few tries with this hospital system. Mom still likes to open her mail herself, although I've noticed she's not doing that as regularly as a few months ago. I don't want to take away anything that she likes to do, so I'm concentrating on setting up work-arounds. I'm finding piles of unopened mail in the oddest places

Miriandra--GOOD FOR YOU! CONGRATULATIONS!!! What a wonderful thing to be chosen to take part in! You must be so excited.

Flat White Martini

Ingredients
• 50ml Baileys Original Irish Cream
• 25ml vodka
• 25ml espresso
• A few ice cubes
• 3 coffee beans to decorate

Directions
STEP ONE
Super easy. Simply put everything into a cocktail shaker - apart from the coffee beans.
STEP TWO
Give it a really good shake to blend everything together – dancing while you do this is optional but encouraged!
STEP THREE
Grab a martini glass, strain your silky-smooth Baileys cocktail into the glass, and garnish with the coffee beans. Now sit back and enjoy!

From https://www.baileys.com/en-us/recipes/flat-white-martini-cocktail

I am excited to be here! I still drink when I want to. I have cut back some but not much & feel stressed about it here and there. Glad to have found this group!

Good Morning, Loungettes! Happy Sunday Funday! Fall is definitely making its presence felt at night now. I had to get out a heavier blanket last night, and Zoe even snuggled under the blanket at one point early this ayem! It always amazes me how much warmer the bedroom is than the rest of the house when I get up. You wouldn't think 1 person and 2 dogs would heat up a room so much!

Teka--how kind of you to share your garden with the doe! Yellowjacket stings are pretty ouchy from what I've heard.

Wren--setting up that phone call must have been a real job! Good for you for sticking with it and making it happen. I hope the dinner with DD was a very good one!

Skv0123--Welcome to the HTL! We area a mildly crazy bunch but we have a lot of fun here. To drink or not to drink, or how much to drink is a pretty hotly debated topic in medicine still. For me it's a choice to accept that there may be some risk of recurrence in favor of continuing to do something I really enjoy and not letting the cancer rule my life. Disclaimer: I personally do not believe that alcohol intake directly causes breast cancer. I acknowledge an association, but association does not equal causation. And until medical science can tell me with assurance exactly what caused me to develop breast cancer, I'm not taking on the blame of giving myself the cancer by drinking and being overweight and eating meat. Interesting side note--in all the research reports I have read, the correlation between alcohol and breast cancer has been between alcohol and the first diagnosis of breast cancer. I've seen nothing yet showing the same correlation between alcohol and breast cancer recurrence or second breast cancer diagnoses. So I figure that the damage is done, and since I have no more breast tissue to mutate, the risk of recurrence or a second breast cancer is small enough to allow me to enjoy a drink or two with meals or in the evening if I want.

Minus--ah, the magic of moderation! Which I think is the best approach to EVERYTHING!

GRASSHOPPER

Ingredients
• 1 ounce green creme de menthe
• 1 ounce white creme de cacao
• 2 ounces heavy cream
• Garnish: nutmeg, freshly grated (optional)

Steps
1. Add the green creme de menthe, white creme de cacao and heavy cream into a shaker with ice and shake vigorously until well-chilled.
2. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
3. Grate nutmeg over the top of the drink, if desired.

From https://www.liquor.com/recipes/grasshopper/

Beautiful!

We're having several days of cold weather that would be winter weather in Louisiana. So our before-dinner cocktail is an old-fashioned made with Knob Creek bourbon. Plump cherries and slice of orange add to the enjoyment.

Cheers to everyone!!!

First Draft:

“Operation: Carolina or Bust”

—A Mother-Daughter Travel Saga, Featuring Kiniption Kittens and Highway Hysteria

This week, I began organizing a trip to North Carolina for Mother and myself next month. I believe I now qualify for “totally insane.” If not, I will be by the time we get back home—assuming we survive the journey, the budget negotiations, and the six-lane highway panic attacks.

It all started innocently enough, with Mother announcing from her recliner like a general issuing orders from a war room:

Unfortunately, Uncle Kenny passed away peacefully in his sleep a few weeks ago, which meant Mother didn’t get that final visit. So now, all her emotional energy has been redirected toward seeing Kid Brother in North Carolina. And when Mother gets focused, it’s like trying to redirect a freight train with a salad fork.

Fine, I thought. We’ll make it happen. I started researching flights, hotels, rental cars—fully aware that this was going to cost way more than Mother would ever agree to pay. You see, her financial expectations are firmly rooted in the 1960s and 70s. Motel rooms over $30 a night? Highway robbery. Airfare over $100? Criminal. She still thinks you should be able to fly coast-to-coast for the price of a nice dinner and a handshake.

Luckily, I have a Delta companion certificate, so I can get us roundtrip, first class, for $500 each. For comparison, economy was $420. When I explained this to Mother, she nodded approvingly—clearly pleased that I’d found a loophole in the system. But then came the real problem:

Cue the kiniption kitten fit. To Mother, anything with more than two lanes is a death trap. She believes speed limits are merely suggestions made by reckless youth, and that driving over 45 mph is a felony offense. I once took her on a bypass and she clutched her purse like it was a parachute.

Still, we pressed on. Next step: booking a hotel. But not just any hotel. It must be:

• Less than 20 minutes from KB’s house

• Have a kitchen or kitchenette so we can fix our own breakfast

• Be close to a grocery store

• Have a pool

• Not be too close to a highway (because noise = danger)

• And be “reasonably priced,” which in Mother’s mind means around $15 a night

I’m not booking a hotel. I’m trying to manifest a unicorn.

And yet, despite all this, we’re going. Because Mother hasn’t seen KB in years, and she remembers every detail of their childhood—including the time he set the fireplace mantlepiece on fire. She misses him fiercely, and even though her memory is fading, her love for her family is as sharp as ever.

So I’ll pack snacks, maps, and a playlist of 1950s hits to soothe her nerves. I’ll tell her the pilot promised to stay under 45 mph, and that the hotel manager is named Maureen and knows our cousin from church. And if we survive the trip, I’ll write the sequel: “Return from Carolina: The Great Biscuit Debate.”

The table in the picture I posted wasn't my table, I have an oval table that seats six comfortably. I cant wait until we are finally able to get out of this rental whenever it happens and get into our new home. I am going to make the rule, meals will be eaten at the table and we can watch tv from there as we eat. The modular floor plan we picked is living room, dining space and kitchen all open space. I looked at my table top the last time i was at our storage bin and it looks like we are going to have to do some light repairs as the idiots who moved us allowed it to to get nicked and banged around when they loaded it on the truck without putting a blanket around it to protect it even though we told the jerks to protect it.

We thought it would be sone this year, but two other clients had emergency builds which shuffled us back a bit. I just want out of the rental and into my own space again