Scattered Thoughts . . .

My health has been quite lousy since January. Sheila and I seem to be passing a cold and a stomach bug back and forth between us, over and over. These types of 'common colds' always send my mast cells into a hyperactive tailspin so I'm having great difficulty focusing on anything because my thought processes are a muddled mess! I have a dozen different projects bouncing around in my head all at once. Most of these projects I actually want to accomplish... some I  need to accomplish as soon as I am feeling well enough... and all of these projects are occupying my thoughts at any given moment. If I'm not struggling with nausea and spending time in the bathroom, I'm struggling with pain and overwhelming fatigue. Sheila hasn't been much better lately. I feel as though I am spending all my time in bed, sleeping away the winter as projects keep backing up and my to-do list gets longer and longer. My spinal injuries are terribly inflamed. I assume much of t

My health is still consistently 'poor'...  since January, for the most part. I really haven't gotten much of anything done around the house as a result. Unfortunately, my 'to-do' list continues to grow. I'm really itching to feel well enough to do something significantly productive!   W hile my health tries to recover, I've been occupying my waking hours on the couch with creating sketches of plans for the train room. There are a LOT of things on my 'to-do' list before I can even begin to try to tackle this project but it is always nice to have a plan! It is also nice to exercise my brain while my body recovers.  The room is 12' x 8'... so, it is a decently sized room.  I've already done some work in this room including installing new flooring, a new walk-in closet and new heating. I still need to build the little workbench alcove on the lower right side of the image, finish the ceiling, and build high-end bookcases.   Underneath

Although it is quite unusual for this winter, we have some fine, light snow falling outside as this latest forecast 'storm' approaches. While I'm sitting in our warm home, I was looking for some photos on one of my hard drives and came across photos of Lukey and Kenzie from exactly a year ago that I had forgotten about and thought I should share a few here... We started this particular day with a haircut for Lukey... While the sun was rather high in the sky (a terrible time for photos), we went for a walk... They are all in-step! And, collecting pine cones that have fallen off our live Christmas tree in front of the house...

The past week has been quite a week. My week was so lousy that I would have sworn that just this past week was really three weeks long! First, the grandkids started puking last Sunday... unfortunately, I had been with them on Saturday so I was probably exposed to the same bug.  By Monday, the stomach virus had hit me as well. Fortunately for the grandkids, they shook off the bug within 24 hours. Unfortunately for me, bugs like this tend to linger and negatively impact my Systemic Mastocytosis with problems that linger even longer. This bug was no exception. Some of the days over the past week were absolutely miserable... from morning to bedtime... but some of the days varied between waves of nausea and feeling like the bug was finally moving behind me. Then another wave would hit and I knew that I was only experiencing some wishful thinking.  Some days, my fatigue was actually brutal... I'd get up and immediately take my morning dose of medications... then, after my medicat

Although I am not ready to start building my little railroad in our newly designated "train room", I am working on a plan whenever I feel up to it and I am envisioning it in my imagination. I also buy products as I find them on sale or, if previously used, at a great price. At this point, I have quite a collection of trains so much of my focus has turned to designing a layout plan for this small room. There are a few issues to overcome because the room is so small and, subsequently, some track would need to be lift out or portable but last night I found an unexpected problem with some of the track I plan to use for this model railroad layout. Some of the track will be handlaid simply because no commercial manufacturer makes what I need for my dual-gauge mainline track. So, I'll be gluing down wood ties... then actually spiking rail to the ties just like in the real world. For the remainder of the track which will run through villages and down by the docks, I will use

Before the absolutely crazy and unseasonably warm weather hovering around 60 degrees which has caused a mid-winter mud season this week, we somehow managed to get some snow!  As this snow started slowly inching its way down our metal roof, it slowly changed the profile of our roof... Typically, once that snow hangs off the roof by about a foot, it breaks off and crashes down onto our deck. This time, however, we had some freezing rain before getting this latest 14" of snow so that snow sliding off the metal roof was pretty solid underneath and supported by some ice this time. Within a day or two of inching its way down off the metal roof, the snow from the roof had created a sort of natural awning covering our windows and our front door!  The snow was hanging down so far that it was covering more than half of our front door! That was a lot of snow hanging down in one giant piece! From inside the house, this hanging snow awning looked like a giant frozen wave. When

I haven't been eating much lately because of a stomach bug and typical Systemic Mastocytosis complications due to any added cold, flu or bug. I really haven't felt like eating and quite often I find myself holding back puke. Fun.  Anyway... I did shoot some food photos recently and I thought I would share them here while I have some time. Sloppy Joes served over mashed potatoes. We had Sloppy Joes a few days ago. To be honest, I'm really not a fan of Sloppy Joes (mostly because good rolls are hard to find around these parts) but we do make them occasionally just for an easy change of pace.  After having this for dinner the other night, we had leftovers as usual... I pulled out the leftovers the following day at lunchtime... I took one look at the Sloppy Joes and I just could not stomach another one of those things! I decided to find some other use for these leftoevers. The garbage can came to mind but there wasn't much else to eat in the house at this time!

For the past few weeks, we've been experiencing some internet issues, mostly with our wireless internet. However, there have been times when our wired internet was a pain in the butt as well.  For a little while, I was having difficulty deciding whether or not the source of our problems was due to a bad modem (Comcast's hardware) or a bad wireless router (our hardware). Most of our problems were related to dropped wireless so I was focused on our own router rather than Comcast's modem. There were times when we would lose all internet though. There were times when our FireTV wouldn't startup because it could not find internet and, unfortunately, we have our FireTV hardwired so I knew that particular problem wasn't due to a wireless problem but it still could be a problem with that wireless router since the wired connections are routed through there.  Even considering some of the wired internet problems we were experiencing, the source of our problems seemed to

Yesterday, while all the ladies were out bridal dress shopping, Lukey and I had some nice quiet time at the house. Naturally, we ran some trains on Lukey's layout while it was so quiet in the house... four different trains to be exact. That was fun. We then headed to the kitchen for some lunch.  After lunch, we knew the ladies would be back home before long so we didn't want to jump into anything time consuming. I then had an idea... I asked Lukey, "do you want to learn how to play a song on the piano?"   He enthusiastically replied, "YES!" while jumping up in the air like a little jumping bean. First, I attempted to teach him something simple... where to sit in reference to the piano... how to identify that middle group of two black keys. I doubt he'll remember this but he seemed to understand and it was his first introduction to this concept.   Then I figured we'd start with trying to play something simple like "Jingle Bells"...

One night this past weekend, we had a marathon game night with the grandkids while watching a few movies. I'm not really one for board games (I typically avoid them like the plague) but I do enjoy playing Uno and that is what we started with on Saturday. First, Gee had to teach the kids how to play Uno... and, they did better than expected. Shuffling is out of the question, even dealing is out of the question, but they did so well in learning that the following morning Lukey and Kenzie played Uno alone and were actually remembering most of the rules on their own. They did very well! After we tired of about a million four-card-hands of Uno (four cards were far easier for them to handle than seven and the hands went fairly quickly), they switched gears and moved to the classic game of Trouble.  Apparently, they had played Trouble before but definitely needed a quick refresher from Gee. Truth be told, they remembered about as many of the rules as I did! I definitely needed a