Journal to Healthier Living – Week 10

Welcome my friends.  I’m tweaking my weekly journey with my healthier living.  It’s a step in the right direction for sure.  I hope you come along for the ride.  Instead of day-to-day comments, I’m going to post something from my personal journal to share.  Hope you enjoy.  Remember all of us go down this path and we are all in it together ❤

---

Week of 03/11-03/17/2018 – Week 10

“Dear Journal – Do you ever feel like time is slipping away.  You look in the mirror one day and you love your curly hair and your long legs.  You look again and your hair is thinning and those once long giraffe legs now resemble a short buffalo?  LOL – okay nothing that drastic but you get the meaning.  Life is short.  We talked about celebrities aging today… and then realized that we were also aging.  We still act like kids young at heart while our bodies get older every day.  What once we thought would never happen to us when our grandparents couldn’t get up as fast or walk as far has now hit us… no full force yet but knocking on the door for short visits.  We say it all of the time – life is short.  So what do we do?  Live it up every.single.day as if it is the last.  Because you never know – tomorrow is not a given 🙂 ” 

---

This week walked: 5.17

TOTAL 2018 Miles:  80.31

TOTAL 2017 Miles:  541.06

 ❤ small goals turn into big accomplishments ❤

---

 

 

This week the hub unit was craving homemade fried shrimp and his beloved tater tots.  I use to limit these meals because of the deep frying and I still do.  But, I wanted to see what the air fryer could do for my hub’s favorite meal.  I bought fresh shrimp, deveined them and slightly pounded them giving them a ‘flat’ appearance.  I then battered the shrimp with a light coating of egg mixture and seasoned flour.  I placed them in the air fryer for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.  Have way, I turned them and added the tater tots.  They came out beautifully!  Lightly tanned on the outside, crunchy and so juicy on the inside.

 

Tootsie Roll Pops

Do you remember the commercial for Tootsie Roll Pops back in the day.  You know the one with, “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?”  And then the owl licks and counts, “One, Two, and then crunch – three.”  Snorts with piggy laughter.  That commercial kills me.  I wasn’t born when it originally came out but the other night here at the Hotel Thompson we were watching old commercials.  It was great – some of them were hilarious.

But it got me, mom and dad talking.  What were some of your favorite flavors of the Tootsie Roll Pop?  But better yet, what flavor would you have loved to have had for a Tootsie Roll Pop?  Mom and dad came up with:  Pineapple, butter pecan and coconut.  What do you think about those flavors?

Tell me my friends.  What flavors would you have loved to have seen and had?

 

 

Travels in the South

Hello sweet friends.  Today we continue our Travels in the South series with our friends Fozziemom and Fozziedad who visited all the way from Australia.  Now this little piggy is jealous over today’s adventure.  I think I could have had a ball roaming the grounds with everyone exploring the way they did.  You see, on this day everyone visited Ft. Pulaski National Monument which is a national park near Tybee Island in Chatham County.

 This is an aerial view of Ft. Pulaski National Monument courtesy of Ft. Pulaski 🙂 Thank you Ft Pulaski!  Ft. Pulaski was going strong in the days of the American Civil War.  It is over 5,000 acres consisting of tidal marshes and mud flats.  There are canon and musket reenactments throughout the day.  The park is open daily from 9AM to 5PM.  

You can go throughout the yards either on a guided tour or you can venture around by yourself.  

Your tour really starts when you park your car.  The grounds are absolutely beautiful!  You start down paths walking to the entrance and you also see the moat.  Now, go ahead and raise your hands my friends.

How many of you want a moat around your house?  I’m raising my piggy hoof.  I think it would be kind of cool for sure.  I bet back in the day they didn’t have solicitors knocking on their drawbridges – snorts with piggy laughter!

 Now when everyone first got there, they heard loud noises that sounded like cannon shots.  But, upon further investigation, mom/dad found out that actually it was from muskets being fired at a kind of show and tell.  Even the guy shooting the musket, was dressed in attire from the Civil War days.  Cool huh?  

But after the shots of the musket, things were silent.  Mom said that you could close your eyes, smell the musket from when it was fired, you could feel the wind blowing around you, the water hitting the moat and you could almost visualize life as it was in the fort.  Mom might have said a moan from a soldier could also be heard.  Was the place haunted?

The fort was built in 1861 and is still in remarkable condition.  You do see some of the stonework falling inside of the casemates as you can see in the picture with the fireplace.  But overall, it is still an overwhelming fort.

 Some people – like Fozziemom and Fozziedad – climbed onto of the fort to get a better view and to take some amazing pictures over the wall looking out over the water.  If you look closely at the picture with the cannon, those two specks at the top – that would be Fozziemom and Fozziedad the adventurers.

.

♦

And as Fozziemom was taking pictures, mom captured her in a picture of her own.  This is Fozziemom in her glory, aimed and ready to shoot something fantastic.

So the question remains. Is Fort Pulaski haunted? Is it spooky – yes. Do you pick up “feelings” of days gone – yes. Mom said they could close their eyes and hear and picture in their minds the activity that happened once upon a time.

Since mom/dad have been back home, I’ve done a lot of research on Fort Pulaski.  To my amazement, there have been many encounters with the unknown at the Fort over the years.  There was a story about a mother and son visiting the fort that were crossing over the draw bridge to enter into the fort.  They met a Confederate sentry dressed in uniform with his sword.  They spoke to him about his outfit and the fort.  The mother then inquired about a restroom and he advised that he could not leave his position to show her.  She thanked the man and with her son she continued into the fort to ask about the restrooms.  There she was advised that the restrooms were at the entrance.  She became upset and told the man about the soldier she spoke to at the drawbridge.  The man advised her that they had no soldiers dressed in Confederate uniforms at the fort.

Then there was a time that a group of Confederate reenactors placed a wreath at the graves in 1994.  They then settled down for the night and camped out.  During the night, a young 12 year old boy couldn’t sleep and was walking around the fort.  Nearing the graves, he saw a figure of a Confederate soldier in uniform on his knees near the grave they had put the wreath.  The soldier had his hat in his hand, then stood and faded away into the air.

Then during further research, I learned that an actor that you might have heard of did a movie at Fort Pulaski back in 2009.  The movie was called The Conspirator and the actor was Robert Redford.

It’s up to you to decide if it’s haunted or not.  Maybe someone needs to let the worker at the shop know that there has been some cases of mysterious sightings.  It was definitely an adventure!

Edit

 

 

 

Journey to Israel – Part II

Welcome my friends to my second installment of Journey to Israel.  This is a trip that my Aunt made over the Christmas holidays.  If you missed the first part of getting to Israel, check it out here.  Part of the adventure was getting there.  Today, I bring you some pictures of Israel and the journey my Aunt took.

---

For some reason when I pictured where we would be staying while we were in Israel, I never thought modern or updated – LOL.  Go figure huh?  Well, I was happily impressed with our lodging. This is the building with balconies that overlook the city.  See the beautiful clouds – the temperature during our stay at Christmas time was around the 70’s – perfect weather for exploring the lands.

This is another picture overlooking where we stayed – you can see more of the city in it.  You feel old country – you kind of settle into a different world from what you have been accustomed all of your life.  Such an adventure that we couldn’t wait to go exploring in the city.  And you hear nightmare stories of safety.  Personally, we didn’t feel at all afraid of anywhere we went.  The people were open and friendly – always there with suggestions of what to eat or what to see.

One of the first adventures we went on, it had been raining and we stumbled upon the glorious rainbow picture showing a bus coming down the street.  What better way to say welcome to Israel?  And as you can imagine, there are a lot of ‘touristy’ areas but there are also a lot of areas that showed how old the land really was, how mountainous and vast some areas are.

Here are some pictures of some food that we tried and a coke can – do you recognize anything?

 

 

When?

Today my friends, mom would like to speak with you about something that she has been thinking about a lot lately – take it away mom –

---

Thanks my Bacon.   Today let’s talk about when.  When what you ask?  When did we become old – LOL.  I mean really, this aging thing has like sneaked up on me and screamed BOO in the mirror like overnight.  And I’m ALL for aging gracefully.  It’s just when the heck did this happen?  So my friends, I’m going to share some things about aging.  Please join right in and share some of your thoughts with me.

WHEN…

Going into a room and forgetting what the heck am I here for?  This can include going to the bathroom to use the facilities and forgetting why I’m there.

Not writing things down because you know you will remember and then not remembering what you were suppose to remember.

Putting things in a good spot so you don’t lose them and then forgetting where that nice safe spot so happens to be.

Actually taking the time to write a letter.  Mailing the letter and forgetting to put the letter in the envelope.

Going to bed at 8:30pm is now considered late getting to bed.

Making dinner sometimes consists of a bowl of cereal – who needs to put out extra calories just to make a meal these days?

Snap, cracking and popping more than Rice Krispies.

Not driving at night because it’s hard to see.  Heck sometimes it’s hard to see during the day time.

And when did eating dinner after 4pm start happening?  Anything later than that and your tummy will ache when you are trying to sleep.

Ordering off the senior menu… ’nuff said.

 

Snap, Crackle and POP

I’m sorry mom and dad.  I couldn’t resist this. I heard you both get up from the couch this morning.  There was more snapping and cracking go on that for a minute I thought daddy had some cereal on the counter.

 

Bacon’s Show and Tell

Welcome my friends to today’s Bacon’s Show and Tell.  This month we are highlighting something that is the oldest in your house.  As you know, we have been doing a LOT of renovating here at the Hotel Thompson.  Mom has an antique trunk that came from her mother’s mother – old huh?  Well, mom explored inside of the trunk and found something older than daddy!  Can you believe that?

Here is a newspaper from the Bangor Daily News dated Wednesday, January 2, 1963.  Can you believe that?  If you look close in the upper right hand corner you will even see the cost of the newspaper during this time – EIGHT CENTS!  You might be asking yourself WHY would you have such a paper from such long ago?  My Nana’s family is actually from Bangor, Maine.  Small world huh?

And I told you this newspaper was older than my dad.  It is by 4 days – snorts.  My dad was born on Sunday, January 6, 1963.  What a small world huh?

 

Bacon’s Show and Tell – REMINDER

Today is going to be a twist to our normal Bacon’s Show and Tell.  This month we are going to highlight something that is the oldest in your house.  It could be a person – snorts watch out daddy of mine.  It could be a special dish that you use only on special occasions.  It could be a picture frame of a loved one.  It could be a dress.  Anything.  What is the oldest thing you have in your house?  Take a picture and share it with a story on April 30th, 2015.  Can’t wait to see what you find my friends.  Have fun!

 

 

Bacon’s Show and Tell – REMINDER

Today is going to be a twist to our normal Bacon’s Show and Tell.  This month we are going to highlight something that is the oldest in your house.  It could be a person – snorts watch out daddy of mine.  It could be a special dish that you use only on special occasions.  It could be a picture frame of a loved one.  It could be a dress.  Anything.  What is the oldest thing you have in your house?  Take a picture and share it with a story on April 30th, 2015.  Can’t wait to see what you find my friends.  Have fun!

 

 

Bacon’s Show and Tell – MARK YOUR CALENDARS

Today is going to be a twist to our normal Bacon’s Show and Tell.  This month we are going to highlight something that is the oldest in your house.  It could be a person – snorts watch out daddy of mine.  It could be a special dish that you use only on special occasions.  It could be a picture frame of a loved one.  It could be a dress.  It could be a military uniform. Anything.  What is the oldest thing you have in your house?  Take a picture and share it with a story on April 30th, 2015.  Can’t wait to see what you find my friends.  Have fun!