We have some fun questions from you. I will try to do it justice. ::girds her loins::
Will there be a blog serial this year? Waiting for “magic Friday” when Ilona posts the serial update is the best feeling!
I told you, those who attend the chat will get to read the first chapter early.
Ilona wrote in in the blog that she has issues with her hands, where it was painful for her to type. Has that been resolved or is she still having to deal with it?
Thank you for worrying about me. Unfortunately the damage is kind of permanent. I now have to be extra vigilant, because the other day I took a cast iron pan out of the oven, and the right hand just gave out. I type a lot less, and I use a keyboard with soft keys.
If that’s how you work, why do you guys always do your interview on the other side?
Harriet is referring to our seat positions being reversed during Zoom. Usually we work with me sitting on the right side and Gordon sitting at the desk to my left. For Zoom we switch seats. Harriet, it’s this way, because he keeps trying to slide out of the screenshot. He can’t slide to the left, because the elliptical is there. Periodically I have to pull him back into the frame. It’s not just the fans. He did it the other day when our agent facetimed us.
Are you still thinking about moving to Florida?
Well, honestly I would like to. I really love the water. Gordon does too. Given a choice, my husband would spend his days in the water and when he was out of it, he would sit on the porch facing the water, drink iced tea or beer, and read werewolf and bigfoot books. Also megalodon shark books.
The problem is that the pandemic brought the need for a secure base into a sharp focus. If something happens, and the kids need to come back to the house to shelter in place, we need to make sure there are plenty of rooms. Our house in Texas is like a little compound. We have a couple of acres. We have diversified so we have wood heat if we need it and propane to cook on. Our communal well is separate from the city, so when their water service failed, ours still ran. We had to boil water, but that was okay.
By the way, my cooktop died a sad death. It was over 20 years old and the parts for it couldn’t be obtained. We bought a new cooktop, but it’s natural gas. I don’t know why. We ordered the propane one. We could convert it with a kit, but all the kits are backordered till March. Instead they are bringing the new propane cooktop and will swap it. Meanwhile, I am terrified to damage this new cooktop in some way. I am cooking with all my burners on low.
Please excuse the cooktop interlude. It is clearly a source of some mild anxiety.
What I am trying to say is that the house is located in a relatively safe part of the country. We get hail and an occasional tornado. Fires occur but they are rare, not like in Pacific Northwest, which seems to be annually on fire. We are not in danger of a flood. If we are buying a house in Florida, we are risking hurricanes. While the house construction has come a long way, a hurricane can easily damage even the most sturdy house, but it’s not even the immediate damage. It’s what will follow: days without electricity and water. We drove through Lake Charles after a hurricane. There was no Lake Charles left.
Suppose we have to evacuate. Kid 1 will likely have her own household at that point, which leaves us with 2 dogs and three cats. I am hoping she will take the tarantula with her. Where are we going with that many animals? What hotel would take us? Do we travel with a litterbox? The logistics of it seem complicated.
So I don’t know. Maybe we will find a lake somewhere. Maybe we will end up buying a small house in Florida somewhere and keeping this place. I would like the sea but I would also like four seasons. Jeaniene Frost moved to Maryland and she loves it. Maybe we will go up north a bit.
That was such a Southern things to say, haha. Up north. ::clutches imaginary pearls:: Maybe all the way to Virginia. ::dies::
I don’t know. Maybe we will throw caution to the wind and move to Spain. Mediterranean is truly lovely. It does burn occasionally as well, though. Maybe we will stay put. Although it is bloody hot and we’re both getting a bit tired of it.
Now I have a question for you. What’s the strangest Christmas, holiday, or birthday gift you have ever gotten?
A chia pet from my uncle who could be relied on for fun and different sorts of gifts. To say I was disappointed would be putting it mildly.
For some reason, people think this is weird, but the coolest Christmas present we’ve gotten was a small McCullough chainsaw from my parents. We’d just built a house on 5 acres of pine trees in Colorado, so it was perfect! That thing ran for 20 years and I’d still be using it here in Montana if we could get parts.
I got this weird Santa figure made out of springs from my neighbor. It was so weird you couldn’t tell what it was
When son #1 was getting married I finally met the bride’s mother a month before the wedding. Two days later I received an email from her stating her daughter told her I like to read and thought I would like this book. Attached to the email was a link to an Amazon book site. The book was a weight loss book from the 1990’s. Needless to say I didn’t purchase it nor did I reply to the email.
However, a dear friend is a jeweler and when she heard about the “book suggestion” she insisted on lending me pieces to wear to the wedding. Diamond and sapphire earrings and her own diamond necklace. 10 years later, still not close with the MIL but still have the awesome friend.
Spain is the place for you! Being a southern myself (from Cadiz, Andalucia), there is not better place to live because of the weather and the vibe there (I live abroad and miss it soooo much) but if it is too warm for you… We still have amazingly beautiful landscapes in the north! Although I recon that without speaking Spanish at all the experience may not be the same…
Cadiz is lovely!
Strangest Christmas gift: 20 years before my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia she gave me 2 perfume samples and some airline snack. The perfume samples came in the little 0.5ml glass tube attached to a card. They were used.
My strangest gift was from my husband. I got the movie The Streets of Laredo and the mini series Lonesome Dove on DVD, neither of which I ever mentioned wanting. I had several movies on my Amazon wish list, but these weren’t on it. My husband swore he got them from list. Turns out he looked at Sheila Lankford’s list – but not this Sheila- someone else had the same name and he didn’t notice. We still laugh about it over 10 years later ????
My paternal grandmother and her sister were 13 years apart in age. At one point, one of them sent a birthday card to the other and forgot to sign it. The recipient saved it and sent it back (still unsigned). They traded the card for over a decade or two before one of them misplaced it. They could not remember who originally forgot to sign the card nor who lost it.
This same grandmother gave un-birthday gifts. (I believe this started because my Dad and Uncle are only 16 months apart and competed with each other constantly.) So my sister and cousins (uncle’s two daughters) and I would get truly odd “practical” inexpensive things on our sibling’s birthday. We would frequently all get the same unbirthday gift. This was espescially impressive since our birthdays are not all in one season. (Jan/Jan and Jul/Oct) One we all remember is the plastic ring lingerie drier. Imagine a blue plastic clamp style hanger with white plastic chains leading to a small blue inner ring with blue clothes pins, and then more chain to an outer ring with more clothes pins. The idea is that you would hang it over a shower bar and then clip your bras to it. I believe my mother still has mine and uses it for her swim shoes.
This all led to a discussion about unbirthday gifts between the 4 of us last spring. I then decided to see if I could find something “Grandma worthy”. I searched for “weird practical gifts” In the first few items on that search was the portable bidet from hellotushy.com. We threatened collective to give to a husband (oldest cousin), nephew for his 18th birthday (also oldest cousin and her sister thought it was a great idea), and nephew and his new wife for a wedding gift (me).
(PSA – the algorithms for an internet search use your search history so think really hard about what you typically search on and look at before doing your own search.)
My husband and I split a package of Reese’s peanut butter cups to celebrate the birth of our first child.
I still love peanut butter cups….and the husband, and all the kids.
The best and oddest Christmas gift would likely be my daughter lol. She wasn’t due until the end of Jan. Early Feb. but we had complications and it was during a full blown covid surge. We thought she wouldn’t make it or I wouldn’t but they had to go in and get her and risk it because I wasn’t going to make it if they didn’t. I woke up prepared for the worst and she was fine. A perfectly healthy, sleepy 4LB baby so tiny they said the bones in her fingers were as thin as sewing needles and she had to be isolated because babies that small usually struggle a lot. She had trouble with her temperature but they sent us both home after only 5 days on Dec 23rd. I’d been hospitalized and we were all so freaked out no one did anything remotely Christmassy. Christmas day rolled around and she was there and my mom brought us all dinner and decorated with my daughter. We had rotisserie chicken and a very odd assortment since the other holiday stuff was sold out and stores were closed. We didn’t do gifts or a tree until the New Year but it was a great Christmas- we didn’t have any clothes or things ready for her but my family showed up with whatever they had or could find. Weirdest gifts ever and my favorite holiday memory now.
Not my gift, but my dad’s. Dad LOVED chocolate covered cherries. One year my fave BIL had his brother, who worked in a candy factory, get one of their 55 gallon drums. We family members each got about 10 boxes of chocolate covered cherries, totaled about 900 cherries. We packed the bottom of the barrel with old newspaper, added cardboard to hold up the cherries, about 4 layers worth, and all laughed ourselves to exhaustion when we saw the look on George’s face when he opened his present. He couldn’t decide if he was happy or overwhelmed when he thought he had received 55 gallons of cherries.
Both Will and George are gone now, but this was one of the best Christmas’s ever!
My mom was a child in the 1940s, first poor on a farm and then poor-ish in the city. Santa’s presents included daily use things like socks and toothbrushes. When my brother and I were young, we always got “a toothbrush type of gift.” Now one of the things I consistently ask for because they make me happy is socks.
Picture this- 6 year old with no sense of humor that just watched her older brother get a cool new toy. I unwrap my present from my Uncle to reveal Rowan Atkinson making a weird scrunched up face at me. I definitely thought Mr. Bean was creepy at that age. I cried before I finished unwrapping it, and my Uncle was traumatized
My mother once asked for a bundt cake pan for Christmas. My brother (as a joke) got two, toy cake pans. He beat one with a hammer until it was very misshapen. Then torched the other until it was blackened. He told her he couldn’t remember if she wanted a burnt cake pan or a bent cake pan, so got both. After much laughter, he pulled out a beautiful non-stick bundt pan. It was one of our best Christmas memories.
One year my grandmother gave us each a couple pairs of irregular nylons. I’m guessing she didn’t realize that they were irregular–just thought she was getting a really good deal. We have had several good laughs over the nylons with one leg longer than the other. ????
Have you both considered the beaches of North Carolina? Doesn’t get hit with ad many storms and kind of 4 seasons! Plus near a lot of old and beautiful houses.
If you are considering Florida, look at north Florida on the Gulf Coast. I grew up in Jacksonville on the Atlantic coast but I believe the Gulf is much more beautiful. The town I live in is in the “armpit” of Florida where the state turns to the west toward Pensacola. It is called the forgotten coast and is more unspoiled and quite lovely. My husband is a forester and did a study for the large multinational corporation he worked for until he retired and he found that the area we live in has the least incidence of hurricanes of any area in the state. The curve in the land “slingshots” them away from us we think. 🙂 Anyway, look at the area around Taylor County on the coast. We are within 45 minutes of Tallahassee, so not far from major shopping and restaurants. If you like just chillin, this is the place! All the land around here is either in state forests or large private forestry operations so it will not be developed and will remain pretty unspoiled.
Spain is lovely. Of all the Mediterranean places I’ve visited, Spain and Sicily are the two I’d move to in a heartbeat.
I can’t think of any one gift but as a child my father’s mother was well known in the family for odd little gifts. She had 6 kids and consequently many grandchildren, so she was shopping for a lot of people on a budget. We’d get the strangest little things from Grandma, like a flower that dances or a weird little musical instrument you play with your nose. She was a hoot ???? It’s a good memory, thanks ❤️
my aunt went through a sewing phase. she made me a blouse but the sleeves were two different lengths.
The strangest gift I ever got was a four-pack of toilet paper when I was a teenager. I kept stealing household rolls to give to my hamsters. They chewed the paper and played in the tubes.
Okay – I had to share this one. One Mother’s Day, my husband had taken our 2 children to the grocery store to get my Mother’s Day gift. My son, then about 2-years-old, gifted me a 3 pound package of chicken hotdogs. He was so excited to give them to me!
I got myself a shark vaccum for the pet hair… for Christmas – but pretty grossed out after the first run of the house!!! So much needed!
I sleep in lightweight, fingerless compression gloves – I am amazed at the difference it makes for my carpel tunnel and arthritis – have you tried for your hands?
Australia is better
I just got a Christmas bag from my beloved mom.. Rogaine and 5lb barbells.hehe
I’m a transcriber and have my own business (in Australia). I have had a problem with my hands and thought I would be put out of work. As someone mentioned below, Dragon Dictate is something you could look into. I’ve found it to be really great. It does make mistakes, but not that many and it saved my career. Not only do I now type very little, but it has sped up my workflow, I didn’t have to retire and I actually make more money, it’s much faster than typing. I don’t sell it, haha, it doesn’t worry me if you try it or not, but it changed my life so I can recommend it FWIW. I didn’t expect much when I got it, but now I would never go back to typing, even if my hands were suddenly okay.
I didn’t have an answer for you when you posted this as I couldn’t think of any unusual Christmas gifts I’d received; but I can now. This year I got given a stationary set with cards and notepaper. That’s not bad; however, they all say “Congratulations Graduate” at the top of the paper and on the front of the cards. I have no idea when I am ever going to use them.
This year? This year the weirdest thing I got was a large plate of obviously stale and seemingly already picked through cookies from my nieces family. She had 5 kids that “helped” put the cookie trays together.
I hesitate to suggest medical treatments, but after I developed hand problems, my endocrinologist told me that one of the primary causes of hand problems in women is thyroid malfunction. Perhaps, if Ilona has not had her TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) tested, she should.