Randoms of a Southern Girl at Heart...Who Exercises to Watch The Throne!

I hope you had a great weekend. Mine was a bit busy, but otherwise nice and peaceful. I don’t know about you, but I love when I can rest comfortably knowing that I have completed any and all chores, errands or things so I can chill. Loves it.


However, today is Monday. Please explain how I can spend 20 minutes in the bathroom doing absolutely nothing? I can’t figure out what I am doing to waste so much time in the morning? Okay, I know I am really trying to wake up. Sighing…I am going to do better.

The heat, ya’ll? It is doing the most. I don’t even know if I can call it the bowels of hell any more, it is more like hell? Geez, I have stopped watering my plants on the weekends before I go to work because it is too dang hot.

Speaking of garden, my flowers are still flourishing. My green onions, basil and cilantro are still hanging in there. My peppers are slowly but surely coming along, I just don’t understand why it takes so long to grow them. I can say without a doubt, my tomatoes are done. Don’t get me wrong I have some flowering and such, but before they can grow properly, the birds are eating them. How do I know? Yesterday, I was looking out of my den window and notice two red robins and I was oohing and aahing, then it occurred to me that really isn’t a good thing. I know I had a few green tomatoes left but they were gone and remnants of eaten tomatoes were on some of the leaves. I thought the birds were cute…now; they are the vermin eating my precious tomatoes that I am so over. I do still have enough tomatoes to get me through a couple more weeks.

Bouquet of 7/25/12

My cousin saw my most recent bouquet and she was so surprised that all the flowers came from my container garden. She was impressed they smelled so wonderful. Of course they do, I put love into those plants.

You know I am already planning next year’s garden. It will be slightly bigger, better soil and it will be just as amazing. Unless, I change my mind.

Do you realize August is this week? After August, is September, which means I turn another year older, God willing and then it is the holidays. Where has the year gone? I have been lamenting about the fact I haven’t had a vacation this year, but I am planning a post birthday staycation at a hotel/spa for the entire weekend. I used to do this all the time; I use the time to be quiet. I do very little, but I make the time to rejuvenate my mind, body and spirit, because sometimes you have to take care of yourself and deal with other things later.

Sunday dinner

Guess what I did this weekend? I cooked. I was determined on Friday that I would cook a full meal for dinner on Sunday and hopefully eat off it for lunch in the upcoming week. Seriously, you can only eat so many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and salads before you are over it. So I planned my menu and when I did my weekly grocery shopping I was prepared. So look for the recipes for the dishes soon. What did I cook? Using Pinterest as a guide, I prepared garlic brown sugar chicken, my aunt’s scalloped potatoes and a sauté of yellow squash and zucchini. For dessert, I made mixed fruit pops. I also baked a batch of the Triple Ginger Cookies for my kids on my second job. I repeat I cannot cook during the day, because it will make the house too hot, so Saturday night I was in the kitchen from 10 pm until midnight cooking. It really didn’t take long because I had season my chicken, cut up my veggies and mixed the batch of cookies up before I went to work that evening. And being the night owl as I am, I made fast work of cooking dinner.

Those kids ate them damn cookies up. They are always a good barometer on whether a dish is good or not.

Don't forget my sister has a story in Z-Rated Chocolate Flava III coming in August!

I guess my sister is settling into living in San Diego. My niece got to meet one of her singing idols on Friday, so she was stoked. And my sister seems to take great comfort in reminding me the weather is a comfortable 70 degrees. Ugh! And we suffer in hell. Frankly, she can have lala land; I am a southern girl by heart.

Lala saying Hi!  Ya'll she has dimples!

On Saturday, she sent me a text about a situation going on in Virginia and I responded, and? I know that sounds cruel, but I refuse to allow myself to get sucked into folk’s problems and chaos. I have peace right now and I plan to hold onto it as long as I can.

I have a girlfriend whose life seems to be a ball of chaos. And recently I got drawn into it. Then when I ask if she followed up on the help suggested, she has yet to respond. I am just gonna pray for her because undoubtedly she doesn’t really need help, but likes to cry out for it. I am done. Prayers work.

I can’t really say I have been watching the Olympics. I will watch for a minute and then I move on to something else. I used to be captivated by the summer Olympics, but now I guess I have too much going on to really concentrate on it.

I love looking at blogs of folks who sew their own clothes and have a great sense of style. However, you do not have to worry about me adding another hobby to this blog. I am not the sewing type. I have no patience. When I was in the 8th grade my home ec teacher taught a half year of cooking and a half year of sewing. I hated the sewing portion because again I have no patience; I didn’t understand why we had to base stitch the hems of shorts if we were going to sew them on the machine. In my logical mind, that was a waste of time and energy. I didn’t finish the two pair of shorts I started because she wasn’t going to let me sew the hems without base stitching and I wasn’t going to waste my time doing double work. I slept. And I passed the class. I was stubborn even back then.

Last night on my second job, a customer comes in saying she smelled natural gas outside our store and we may want to check it out. I am so glad the owner was there because it took both us to smell the gas. When we first when outside, we didn’t smell it. Then we went back out and the cross winds were blowing and whoa! The smell was strong and undeniable. He called the gas company, would you believe it took him almost 30 minutes to get someone on the phone through the 24 hour emergency number? They came out and although it wasn’t a leak, there was a problem that needed to be fixed and when I left last night they were still working on it. Thanks to the customer for letting us know. Although there wasn’t any danger to our store or people, if it hadn’t gotten fixed a lot of businesses would have to be closed down temporarily. No one wants or needs that right now.

I did have a good weekend and even spent a bit of time with The Guy. I hope you had a great weekend as well and will have a wonderful week too!

Roses, coneflowers, cosmos and marigolds!