The Abdominal SnowmanYes, we were probably the only adults in the movie today without a child or grandchild! I wanted to see Judy but the opening weekend price was outrageous, so we will go another time -mid week when it is cheaper. The Abominable Snowman was a great movie with a lovely life message. We liked all the characters, especially the Yeti and it had a happy ending. Funny, sweet, a little drama trown in but not scary. Highly recommend it to all kids and grand kids old and young! Downton Abbey I might be one of the few people who never watched Downton Abbey. But last week we went to see the movie Downton Abbey. There was a 5 minutes synopsis of all the seasons of TV shows so by the time the movie started you had a sense of who the characters were and by the time it was over you really got to know them all. Richard and I both thought it was entertaining and enjoyable although he still refers to it more of a chic flick!
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I found a table on FB Marketplace that I liked. Wood top and white legs.....I thought. Turned out to be cream which does not go with my kitchen but after a lot of deliberation I decided I could paint the legs to match and might even paint them the blue of the island cabinets. I wanted wood top since we brought our wood kitchen chairs that we like and are comfortable to sit in. The table has a leaf so it should give us plenty of room when we have visitors. New Fruit!!!I was in Sam's club and they were giving out samples of Moon Grapes. I had never heard of them or had them so after a taste test I bought them. Very sweet and deep purple so they must be good for you..... Right? "They" say to eat colorful fruits and veggies. And they are just wierd looking! But super tasty! Tree and beds Yesterday, I asked my friend Jeremy to meet me at the house to talk about the orchids on the palm trees in my courtyard. We rented from Jeremy last winter and have stayed in touch all year. He had orchids on the trees in the rental last year and I knew he could tell me why mine look so bad! So in the courtyard there are 4 very tall but small diameter palm trees. In florida, you put orchids on the trees and wrap the roots in some palm leaves to get them established. The roots grow around the tree kind of like the way poison ivy does in CT. None of them looked very healthy but one was really bad. So Jeremy looks at it and looks at the top of the trees and and tells me the tree has not top and that is why the orchid is sick. I never noticed that the other three threes had palm leaves and this one is just a trunk. Duh!! Also there were palm berries all over the beds and the courtyard. He said normally you remove the flowering part of the palm so they don't drop all the berries. Who knew. Although the HOA is responsible for all the outside maintenance, inside the courtyard is our responsibility. Richard thinks we could take the 4 trees down as they may be in the way of a doing a screened enclosure and if one tree is sick, the others may be ready to go too. So for now, we will cut down the dead one to the ground and see what happens. There are other bigger palms on the other side of our court yard so if they have to come down it is not the end of the world but like removing trees in CT, it is expensive to remove them and dig out the bulb they grow from. I called the landscaping company that does the common area and they will remove the dead tree and the flowering part of the tree and since they are already on property, the cost is minimal. A win for us! Over the next few weeks we will look at the local nursery and decide what to put in the beds. to add some color to the courtyard. I will post more pictures as I make progress. Of course, all the gardening tools are in storage! Below is a picture from the listing that shows the 4 trees. The dead one is the second from the left. And you can see the big trunks on the other side of the wall. This is a current picture. You can see all the berries on the ground. The sign by the ring video doorbell, alerts the works that there is a video doorbell and to watch their language! LOL
It's official!!!!
Yesterday we went to the Palm Beach Government Offices and have New Florida Driver's licenses. They cut the star off our CT license and gave them back to us in case we wanted to keep them as a memento! We were able to get Richard's car registered and his license plate has a golfer on it! My car is leased and the lease company didn't do what they were supposed to do, so I get to come back another day and unless the title from the lease company arrives by Monday. So it looks like my car will still be on the Oct 1st Andover Connecticut Grand list! At lease we got Richard's off the list!!! Today I ran around and did some errands and looked at a table I found on Marketplace. Wasn't exactly what I wanted but I decided tonight I could fix it up with a little paint so I called and made and offer! Tomorrow the challenge will be to get it in my car! So now we have a table when our house is ready. Next project is to choose lights..... The challenge is that the current "fad" is edison lights and we don't like how those look so the choices are more limited. But it gives me something to stress out about.....I mean something to do!!! LOL Yesterday I got an alert on my dashboard that one tire was low. Very annoying! So I added air in hopes that it was just a fluke. No such luck.
This morning I got in the car and sure enough, low tire alert again. So off to the Tire store. I picked up some kind of sharp metal but it was small and they were able to fix the tire. So the good news is I didn't need another tire and it didn't happen while we were driving from CT. Next on the agenda was a conference call with Xfinity and our landlord. I had asked him to sign up for DVR service so we could record programs and skip the commercials, but there was not option on the menu for recordings so he suggested a call to Comcast. Much to my surprise we connected to a real person right away and determined his box was not a DVR box and we just needed to switch out the boxes and they made an appointment for me to go get the box an hour later. Plugged everything in and it worked. No follow up call to activate etc. I had a 1:00 meeting with my contractor, Mike, at the Coral Cove house. He had a couple of questions about light placements and I had a lot of thins to review with him. We sorted everything out and we are happy with the progress and hopefully will be ready of us to move in at the end of November. I will post some pictures of the progress on the Reno Page soon. A visit to the Post Office was next on the list trying to track down a package that was supposed to be deliver the day before and the tracking said it was being held at the PO. Of course they couldn't locate the package and took my number and promised to call. So I went off to Target for some household items. Around 5:00 I get an amazon alert that the package had been delivered, so we went back to our Coral Cove house and sure enough, it was in the mail box! Today I went to Juno Beach Pier to walk on the beach. I promise I won't post beach pictures every day! If you watched any of the early Hurricane Dorian coverage when it was heading for the Florida coast, you probably saw pictures of the Juno Beach Pier. It was really windy today and the surf is rough so it was fun to walk on the beach and watch the surf ebb and flow. I always wondered where the color SEA FOAM came from. There was a lot of foam generated on the beach today from the rough surf, but look, it's just white! LOL Juno and Jupiter are big area's for Turtles! The Loggerhead Marinelife Center is located in Juno Beach and they manage and mark the nests as well as provide a place for injured turtles. The white sticks are turtle nests they are watching and waiting to hatch. The red ones are dune markers. Hoping to get to see some of the little turtles making their way to the ocean. Took a mile walk on the beach today. Testing out the ankle as I don't want to overdo it. Water is not cold, just a little cool. Waves are awesome today and the wind is blowing! Walked along the edge but got wet up to my knees as a few big waves surprised me at how far they came on shore. It was awesome and I loved being on the ocean.
We arrived around 4:00 yesterday. So tired. Unpacked the car and ate at Cafe Sole one of our favorite little spots right next to the grocery store.
Today I went to the Post office to get our held mail and hopefully it should be delivered now to our mailbox. We went to our new community and got stickers for our car so we won't have to stop at the gate anymore. There is a auto gate for residents. The AC guy was working at the house and all the flooring tiles are in the garage so hopefully that happens this week. I will meet with the contractor on Monday to get a status update. Mostly spent the day unpacking, and orgainzing.. A quick trip to the grocery store and then Richard did a little exploring to find a path to walk on. Mostly we are weary and trying to adjust to a new place with different stuff and trying to figure out where everything is. Yesterday we left Debbie's on our way to the first stop in Florida on our final leg of the adventure to Florida. Car traffic was light but there were a lot of trucks some of them clearly in a hurry as they pulled in front of us with no signal. But we arrived in good time and were able to follow the Map program without any issue.
Staying at the Embassy suites and went to the managers reception for free cheese and crackers, fruit, and veggies and drinks. Ordered a grilled chicken salad for dinner as we were just too tired to go out to a restaurant. Today we have on our last leg of the trip to Florida. We are renting a Home Away townhouse in Jupiter until our place is ready. Hopefully it is as nice as the pictures. Stay tuned! Tomorrow we get to see first hand the progress on our new home. I will post some pictures in the next few days. Our temporary address is 108 Ocean Cove Dr., Jupiter Fl. but we will be getting our mail at our Coral Cove address every day. Wonderful relaxing day with my sister Debbie. She took me on a tour of Garner and then we just spent precious time together. Richard and Joe got 18 holes in at the local golf course and found more balls than they lost so it was a successful outing. Dinner at 42nd Street Oyster Grill. We tried some southern food there. Local swordfish was wonderful as were the corn hush puppies. I learned my New England palate didn't like collard greens prepared with cajun spices. Not sure I ever had collard greens or if I will ever try them again!! Richard tried the black eyed peas for the first time and said he would eat them again. We finished off the day with ice cream at home and watched "The Book Club" on Amazon Prime. Tuesday was a relaxing day with Deb and Joe. Richard and Joe went to a local 9 hole course and then after lunch on a long walk. Deb and I did some shopping, stopped at Planet Fitness for a hydro massage and just spent the day visiting. I watched with complete fascination s she loaded a quilt onto her long arm machine and and quilted a row. Pretty amazing and I realized what a technical and creative process quilting is. Cindy and Brendan joined us for dinner along with their new adorable dog Chai. After watching some of the Country Music show on TV we all went to bed early!! Fun to visit people our age who get tired as soon as we do....... The day did not start out that well due to Technical difficulties. I dislike Google Maps on my PHONE mostly because I rarely use it and don't really understand it fully BUT Apple Maps does not allow you to add a stop along the way and I wanted to navigate to a meeting place for gas about half way. So I set up Google maps on my computer with our planned route and a stop along the way for gas. I wrote down the general plan and then put the halfway address into my Apple Maps so I could use that option as a back up.
Downloaded Google map route LINK to our phones, tested it out and it seemed to be working ok. So we packed the cars, I headed to Starbucks and Richard headed on the way to our meeting spot. Just as I was paying, I get a text from Richard that the map program had him on 81 North when we were supposed to be going South and he had turned around and was back at Starbucks. For some reason the Google maps programs seem to be confused and didn't think you can cross a road so they route you north and then uturn to come south. GRRR. So we reset the program and all was working well .... we thought. Richard headed out and I was a few minutes behind him. Another text....the program was not working or talking to him anymore and he had pulled off to check it out. I pulled off all well and at that point we were both ready to throw the phone away but we had no paper maps....LOL. Reset the phone, plugged in the gas stop and now that we were on I-81 South, Apple maps knew how we wanted to go and seemed to be working except it did not want to speak if it was plugged in to charge. But that was fine, the phone had plenty of juice. So off again and about an hour into the trip I am at a stop light and get a text that Richard was not going to have enough gas to get to the meeting point. I looked at my gauge and whoops, I only had 67 miles left to go. I look around and there is a big gas station across the intersection, Richard is behind me and so we go for gas. I can't figure out why we would be out of gas already when I realize we forgot to get gas in Hagerstown the night before and so we didn't start off with full tanks. Senior Moments! Once we filled up the tank we headed off and still planned to meet at the midway point even though now we wouldn't NEED gas then, we would need to eat lunch. We always pack a picnic lunch when we travel. Of course since both cars were fully packing including the front seat, we just pulled up next to each other so we could talk through open windows! Then off to on the second leg of the journey. All went pretty well. Traffic was mostly moving well except for the occasional idiot driver who thought the left lane was the place to go the speed limit!! We took turns leading and following, but mostly I followed him. By the time we got to Garner I was really getting tired. The directions and signs didn't make sense and so I got off the road we were on and pulled into a Burger King, got out of the car and told Richard I was out of brain power and he had to lead from now on. And so finally we arrived at my sister Debbie's house safe and sound. We will spend a few days here and then head South again on Wednesday. Packed up our last suitcase and Yeti and some sandwiches and we were off to Hagerstown. The drive through Pennsylvania was an easy one. I-84 to I-81. Moderate to light traffic. And the scenery was lovely. Stopped halfway for gas and lunch. Arrived Safe and Sound. Fun eyelash car in the parking lot!!
Packing, packing, packing. How can we have so much stuff?
Got the cars mostly loaded and ready to go in the morning. Tuna sandwich for dinner in the room! I think today is the final round of goodbyes to three more special people in my life.
My dear friend Cheryl meet me at the hotel for breakfast today. Although we went to High School together, we only became special friends 11 years ago when I moved back to CT and she has become my sounding board and confidant over the years. I shall miss her much! Then a stop at Starbucks and on to Doe's house for our good bye. Leaving her behind is really hard and I wish I could take her family with us to Florida, but she hates the hot weather so I don't see that ever happening but I am confident she will visit and I will be back to see her and all the rest of my family here in CT. We managed to get thru the hugs and I saved the tears for the car. Last stop was at my inlaw sister Barbara's house. We raised my youngest and her oldest baby together and she will always be special to me. She has been babysitting two plants that came from Richard's Aunt that we are taking on our Florida adventure. She managed to get one to bloom a beautiful orange flower that only happened once since I had the plants. I guess they loved sitting out on her porch. Hugs and car tears and it was on to the dollar store for a small bottle of laundry detergent for the final hotel laundry day. Tomorrow is time to pack everything up and figure out how to get it all in our two cars! If you are wondering where we are in Florida so when you see that Storm track Cone you can locate us. We are between the coast and intercoastal waterway. Easy to spot on the on the CONE map.... if we were to drive due West we would end up about in the center of that BIG lake you see on the map. It is called Lake Okeechobee!
If you looking for the county, we are in the northers portion of Palm Beach County almost to Martin County. Oh and we are NOT in a FEMA Flood zone, we have a cement block home with cement tile style roof. Soon our impact doors and windows should be installed, so we should be pretty safe once we get moved in. Hope that Helps! Simple day today. Organized some of the stuff we will be packing in the car on Friday, then off to Andover one last time. Forwarded our PO box to Florida so now all our mail is being held in Florida awaiting our arrival.
Then on to Junie and Pete's house for a hot cup of tea and and one more chance to absorb some of the serenity and wisdom from my big sister. When we lived 5 minutes from each other our lives seemed too busy and filled with other things to get together often enough. I wish I had made more time to share more cups of tea! So now we will have to have that tea long distance over the phone. Then one last drive by our Merritt Valley house. Oh how the weeds have invaded all the beds. Maybe in the spring they will figure out how to put Round-up to work!!! Or maybe the forest will reclaim much of the property. Just a reminder of how much work it actually took to keep it looking so nice all these years. Good buy big house and gardens, I have better things to take my time as I explore my options in my new chapter. |
Author: Penny
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October 2020
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