Learned about measurement for laundry detergent

For quite a few years, I have been doing my own laundry and would go off of what the information on the side of the bottles would indicate. The liquid detergent I usually purchase would suggest using X amount of the accompanying cap which comes with the bottle. So when doing my weekly washes, I would *glub glub* fill up the cap and do my wash. Years go by and my laundry will at times feel a bit… interesting. There were times when the cloth would be just a tad bit weird, but I did not think anything more on it.

Just a few weeks ago, I looked something up online and found a website stating that for larger loads you only need two tablespoons worth of liquid laundry. Say what? Of course, they want you to use a large cup of the stuff because then you go through it faster and need to purchase more. Now I have learned the secret and am passing it along!

The slightly tense Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving was a tad bit stressful due to a small amount of tension between myself and my younger brother but aside from that it was a good one. I have lost a lot of hope for my kid brother because of his personal situation, which I am not going to blow up here in this post. I joined my parents and younger brother because our middle brother spends this day with his wife’s family. The turkey was good, I messed up the stuffing and wound up throwing it away before it made it to our table, the homemade sweet casserole I made was a hit and some of it came home with me. Regardless of how things are I will celebrate with my parents because they are so caring and have always been. Regardless of how everything is going in the world (or minor drama in our own family), I am always spending hours with my parents.

Reading the recipes, once, twice, to get them right

For many of us, tomorrow is a special get together day to spend with either family and or friends. If you are spending Thanksgiving alone for whatever reason, I hope you still have a good one. I know I am going to be bringing in half of the foods for our small gathering with my family and have read and re-read the recipes to get it all right. All the ingredients are either in the pantry or in the fridge, ready to be mixed and cooked early before heading over to my parents’ house. I am ready to fulfill my part of the meals! Nothing is missing because I checked and rechecked every needed item, ran to the supermarket to get it all in stock and tomorrow will go off with a great blessing and many stuffed tummies. If you celebrate, I wish you a happy Thanksgiving. If you do not celebrate, I wish you a wonderful Thursday!

The non-connecting gaze

When walking around, there are times when I do what some call that distant gaze where, even if there is someone standing or walking into my line of vision, my eyes do not focus on them. There have been moments, especially while walking around my work environment, when the folks look at me and want some kind of acknowledgement so I will do the eye contact and have a small friendly smile for them. I will usually get a smile back which is nice. Some friends have stated that it’s probably from my ex-New Yorker background where it’s kind of a given that you will be seeing a lot of long-distance gazes. People want to avoid confrontation for the most part and one of the best ways to do that is to not connect visually.

The Christmas music has begun

One of our local radio stations begins the Christmas music on November 11th and it runs all the way through until December 26th. Sometimes one is in the mood for a happy little tune about holiday lights, decorated trees and singing along about fictional characters but there is a downfall. While there are quite a few Christmasy songs out there, eventually the repetition begins and that’s when one gets crazy bored when hearing Mariah Carey’s first few chords come on. That’s when you are truly grateful that there is currently only one radio station doing the Christmas songs because if it was across the board, you might go looking for the closest earplugs to save your brain for it all.

The damage a storm does

Last month, the last hurricane passed by, and I was lucky that there was not physical damage happened to my home. Yes, the large tree in my front lawn had some broken branches which I paid some dudes to cut down – it’s in a past post.

This last one was a sudden storm that came through quickly and a much lower level of power, but it seems that the previous one may have loosened some of the soffits and they broke now, a long four-foot damaged spot. Strange thing is that this storm barely came in as a category 1, closer to a tropical storm but it was enough. What are soffits? Let me teach those who did not know the name for this important part of a building.

Most roofs will overhang the building slightly in order to offer additional protection to the home. This overhang is sometimes called the eave of the roof, and usually contains the ends of the rafters. If your home or building has an attic, you may be able to see the space where the building ends, but the roof continues to extend down past the walls.

If this space was to be left open, rain, snow, and wind could get up inside. This could do a lot of damage to the underside of the roof deck and to the attic and interior of the home. That’s why this area is usually covered and protected by a material called a soffit.

I have already placed a claim with my insurance company and now comes the not fun part of waiting to see if they will 1.) cover the repair 2.) not drop me after I put through a claim. Sigh. It is a part of being a homeowner and I’ve dodged it for several years, but this storm clocked me.

Dog being rude and overly excited

When we lived in Puerto Rico, my middle brother dated a gal who had a German Shepard male dog who had the really rude behavior of going snout deep into your crotch if you were not made aware of it. It caught each one of us at least once and it was the rudest bad behavior ever! You know what it is to be saying hello to someone as you are venturing into their house when their large sized dog comes over for a head pat and then its snout goes bazinga into your crotch?

We have met quite a few small dogs and larger ones and up until that point had never experienced that, thankfully. It made me veer very far from going to her house ever again after that. Luckily, they did not date for that long.

Now, a few decades later I had another dog – my parents nine-month pupper – swat my privates once in her frantic greeting recently. She stood up on her rear paws, flinging them around near me and boop got me right there. Luckily, I don’t have the equipment men do or else it might have caused me a lot of discomfort. I heard from one of my brothers that he did get the same welcome one time and was quite a pain. Thank goodness this pup has not been one to try to sniff private parts in any way or form.

The beautiful butterfly

Yesterday it was around 80° Fahrenheit outside, nice sunny afternoon after I had left work when I was standing in my driveway, enthralled by a Monarch butterfly hovering near me. With its bright orange wings with a deep black liner with circles of white were pretty amazing to see the drunken-like dance they do while staying airborne. It stopped for the briefest of seconds on a weedlike plant which had a flower on the end, but it must not have been what it needed because soon enough it was back up in the air, swaying its crazy dance to a new location. The smile on my face did not leave for a good minute as my gaze tracked the delicate looking animal as it continued its search for food.