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Well, it seems like Mother Nature is making up for a lame winter here in Vermont.

This is the biggest snowstorm of the season, the wrong season mind you, but nevertheless, it’s really coming down hard as I write.

Marty stayed home from the farmers market today since the roads were dreadful; they still are.

He has been going on rescue squad calls for most of the day. I have been keeping myself busy doing my favorite things.

This morning I was in a full-on cooking mood. I love making comfort food on days like this.

I took out some skinless and boneless chicken thighs and made chicken cacciatore.

I have never had this dish before but have been wanting to make it forever; so I thought today is the day.

It looks and smells delicious. It will be our Sunday dinner tomorrow along with cheesy polenta and a salad.

Next, I grabbed a chuck roast and made bourbon & brown sugar braised beef. I just finished making the gravy from the pan juices. Yum!

I’m undecided about what to serve with it. Marty won’t be home for a while so I have time to figure it out.

I felt like drawing this afternoon in my cozy spot in our back room with Nelly snuggled up tight against me; on a heated blanket.

I took down our kitchen chalkboard and made a spring drawing of Nelly. She is by far my favorite thing to sketch.

Have a great rest of your weekend. It’s time for a glass of wine and finish dinner.

I was going through old photos and actually took the time to separate them into four categories. All the duplicates I finally got rid of.

I’m still missing photos but I’m not about to tear the house apart looking for them as if my life depended upon it.

I did stumble across a photo of Noah and his fuzzy bunny. He slept with fuzzy bunny and played with him too.

I remember how he would snuggle with fuzzy bunny on the couch when he was watching TV.

I texted the photo to Noah. The texting went back and forth like this: Do you know where he is? Let me look I think he’s upstairs. I’d love to see him again and have him.

I knew exactly where fuzzy bunny was; up on a shelf in his old room now our office. I took him down and gave him a hug.

I texted Noah these photos of Nelly meeting fuzzy bunny. She was so gentle and gave him a sniff.

She was very interested in him and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t play with him.

I looked through the photos of the boys when they were small. I told Marty we really did a lot of stuff with them. We did he said agreeing with me.

Those years when they were little are like a blur to me now. I realized that I was so focused on them I didn’t look around and pay attention to the little things.

I am grateful to both sets of our parents who took a shit load of photos for us.

Now, as I look at them I can see the details and how much fun we were having.

Photos tell stories when people can’t remember things well. Those memories can be shared with future generations.

I, for one, was happy when I was able to take photos and store them on my phone. How easy!

Ugh, remember how much work it was to take photos? It was a royal pain in the ass!

First, you had to buy film and put it into the camera correctly.

Then, you took photos if you remembered to bring your camera.

Next, the film had to be taken out of the camera and stored in one of those little black containers.

You couldn’t drop your film in any convenient places way back then, you had to go to one of those drive-up photo mat places.

Finally, you would have to drive back to the photo mat and pray your pictures came out. Sometimes yes and sometimes no.

The biggest bummer would be if the film was over exposed. Ugh! All those memories right down the shitter.

Right now, fuzzy bunny is waiting for Noah to pick him up and be with his boy again.

I know they both will be really happy to see each other again. ☺️

Where I grew up in Elizabeth, NJ, in the late 60s to mid-70s, most of the families were Italian and Irish. I grew up in a strict Catholic Irish family.

My Nana was the family’s matriarch and a very old-school Irish Catholic. My dad called her the sergeant.

Nana’s parents came to America straight from Ireland. She was very religious and had a deep faith. Even though I attended a Catholic school, I spent most of the Holy Days with her.

I’ve written about my Nana often and spent a lot of time with her. She went blind when I was four years old, so I was her helping eyes at her apartment, a light green building in downtown Elizabeth.

The sergeant.

I stayed over almost every other Saturday night and spent the other Saturday nights at my other grandmother, Mema’s house. I love both of my grandmothers, who were polar opposites, making me a well-rounded kid.

Our family ate no meat on Fridays, not just during Lent, but every Friday. I didn’t have school on Good Fridays but spent them with Nana. This was when she really was the sergeant.

We would kneel on her hard floor, which only had a thin rug over it, from noon until three, which was the time Christ hung on the cross. We would say the Rosary with all the Mysteries. It took at least three hours.

There was no sitting back on your feet; oh no, we knelt like soldiers. When I would complain that my knees hurt, she would tell me to think of how much pain Jesus was in while he hung on the cross. Like my dad said, she was tough.

The sergeant with my grandpop, my mother is the short one, and my Aunt Claire.
Why didn’t people ever smile for photos, then?

So what did we eat on Fridays, especially during Lent? We ate pizza, pepper and egg subs, and fish. My mother never cooked fish, so we either went out to eat, ate fish sticks, or Gordon’s Fishermen fish filets at home.

I didn’t mind and liked what we ate on Fridays, especially Gordon’s fish with lots of tartar sauce. Mmmmm! I also liked the Filet o Fish at McDonalds. It was a perfect fish sandwich. Now I make my own.

I stopped practicing Catholicism when my boys were young due to a lot of reasons. I’m not going to bash the Catholic religion, but being an extremely spiritual person, I have a very close relationship with God and didn’t need man-made rules for myself or my boys.

I self-churched my boys and taught them that instead of making sacrifices they could easily fail at and hate, I made them do extra good deeds during Lent.

We still didn’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent, probably out of habit, but I never made it a big deal, or they again would hate whatever we were having.

I would make mac and cheese, fish sticks, pizza, grilled cheese, and a few other non-meat kid-friendly dishes. My son Noah was a very picky eater, making it sound like the meal was a punishment, which would have only added to the problem.

After the kids grew up and moved out, I would still make shrimp or something like pasta with clam sauce or garlic and oil during Lent. I wasn’t doing it on purpose since we ate meat for lunch but for nostalgic memories.

Marty would always ask if we weren’t eating meat during Lent. I guess my answer should be yes and no. I’m not doing it because someone told me I had to abstain from eating meat; I’m doing it because I want to.

The funny (ok, not funny) part of not eating meat on Fridays during Lent is that my mother would take me out to a hotdog place for lunch. On the way home, she would cry, “Oh shit, we ate a hotdog!” I would laugh but also HAD to tell the priest during confession I sinned by eating meat.

That’s me, the sinner, on Easter Sundays.
When I was growing up, I loved wearing Mary Jane shoes with fancy lace leotards. I still have Mary Janes.

Yes, I sinned. Must I say more about the church? I had to say 10 Hail Marys and 5 Our Fathers because my mother forgot and bought me a fucking hotdog? Sorry God, please forgive me, but I think not.

I remembered I had some frozen flounder and decided to make an old-school fish fry for dinner on Friday night. I fried the flounder and made french fries, homemade tartar sauce, and coleslaw. It was delicious. I have to remember to make it more often.

My reference to my fish fry was a recipe like this one: https://www.sipandfeast.com/fried-flounder/ .

I added old bay to all three breading components along with garlic, onion powder, and a pinch of kosher salt. I skipped the parsley and oregano.

I put the breaded fish on a rack over a sheet pan and popped it into the fridge for an hour. I heated up 1/8 inch of canola in a pan and fried the flounder until golden brown and crunchy on both sides.

Refrigerating the fish before frying keeps it cold long enough so it doesn’t dry out when it’s golden brown and crunchy. I drained the fish on paper towels; I was really how happy and easy it was to make.

I served the fish with lemon wedges to cut through the taste of frying by making it bright. Restaurants and seafood shacks give lemons with your meal for this purpose; they aren’t there just as a garnish.

Will I make seafood again next Friday? I may not, or then again, maybe I will. If not, we will likely make pizza like we do most Fridays, but sometimes with pepperoni.

One of my favorite photos from our wedding was this one with Mema and Nana. This was the last day I saw my Nana alive. When she was buried, she wore the same outfit at our wedding, and she loved it, along with her mink stole. The once robust sergeant diminished to a frail, sweet woman who still had a lot of faith in God.

Yes, I am crying and miss them both so much. ♥️ ♥️

I’m still taking online drawing class. I like to practice a lot before I move on to the next lesson.

This is my first attempt at drawing a building using perspective points. I was off but I don’t mind it since my drawing style is whimsical in a way.

My brain no longer hurts when I try to find the right angles. I’ve gotten well at drawing rooms but drawing our house was tricky.

This afternoon I worked outside for a bit then picked up my sketch book and began drawing.

Let me tell you how free it is to learn and practice a new hobby rather than just scrolling through shit on my phone.

Between writing, drawing, cooking, and planning my patio garden I have less time for nonsense.

Speaking of my garden, all the old-school Italian gardeners I know start their seeds and eat cream puffs on March 19th St Joseph’s Day.

This is a real thing eating cream puffs and planting seeds on St. Joseph’a Day in NJ but I know other people who do the same thing.

I already bought my seeds, so that’s what I’ll be doing on March 19, St. Joseph’s Day, eating cream puffs and planting starter seeds.

I’ll be resharing my post about St. Patrick’s Day and St. Joseph’s Day next week. 🍀🇮🇪🇮🇹

When we made our back room a 4 season room 12 years ago, we’ve called it many things from a lounge with a bar, sun room, mud room/pantry.

It’s a mélange of sorts for sure. Today, we added one for thing into the mix, the laundry room.

Last night, I went down to the basement to get my last load out of the dryer. The clothes were still wet. Dammit.

It was flashing a code which I looked up. It said to unplug the dryer for a few minutes then plug it back in and press start.

It still flashed the same code. From what I read I knew the motherboard shit the bed. Our washer and dryer are 20 years old.

Before replacing the dryer we know how things work in the Irion household, the washer would go next.

It’s always something but instead of being upset, I looked at the situation as an upgrade like I did with the whole septic issue last year.

I had a chance to think about what I wanted since Marty was out on a rescue squad call.

He’s usually quick to say no to my ideas so I had to convince him of my plan.

I wanted to get a washer-dryer combo machine. They have large capacity units even though it’s just the two of us.

I didn’t want a new unit in our dungeon of a basement anymore. I hate going up and down three flights of stairs to do laundry.

When I am having a hard time breathing on certain days I can’t carry the laundry up and down the stairs. I have to rely on Marty.

Since my lung disease, I’ve had to adjust the way I do a lot of things in my life. Doing laundry is a big one.

At first, he said it wasn’t possible when he got home. I insisted he open his German mechanical brain.

I am an animated person so he asked me to show him not tell him where I wanted to fit a washer-dryer combo machine.

He could see my idea when I physically showed him. He said, “Oh, okay.” 😀

We never pay full price for anything. Marty is a master at finding things we need at a price we can afford.

The combo machine was $1000 off since it was on sale and “out of the box.” He immediately ordered it.

While he was in Saratoga picking up the machine this morning, I took away the baker’s rack which was basically a filler for a blank space between the loveseat and the pantry shelving.

It was loaded with shit to fill it up. Nothing really needed to be there. The washer dryer combo fits perfectly in that spot.

It’s low and sleek so it doesn’t look obtrusive in the room.

People in Europe have had these kinds of machines for years stuck in all kinds of places in their homes and apartments.

After production tomorrow, Marty will run the water and electricity to the new machine. The European design is ventless which is brilliant.

I’ll let you know how it works. I’m never thrilled to do laundry in the first place, this will make it a little better.

So that little back room that serves so many purposes now, calling it a multipurpose room would be wrong.

It’s still our back room which is perfect.

We had our friends over for supper on Saturday night. Supper? What she say?

We always have company over for dinner but this time we wanted to do something informal, not fussy, without a lot of mess and cleanup.

When I was growing up we had supper every night. That’s what it was called. We also had Sunday dinners.

I’ve never given it much thought until now. We had dinner when the boys were growing up. We still call it dinner.

The age-old question, “What do want for dinner?” Dinner, not supper. The answer is always, “I dunno.”

After we invited our friends on Friday night, Marty and I started brainstorming what I could make.

We both wanted something informal and easy. A meal that I could just pull out of my ass like a magic trick.

We decided on Thai red curry with chicken and veggies. I make variations of this dish all the time; sometimes even for lunch.

I have to say I make pretty good Thai food. Once I taught myself how, I mix up the curry paste, proteins, and vegetables.

The curry was served family-style with a big bowl of steamed jasmine rice.

My friend David leaned over to me when he tasted it and told me it was good.

His husband Arthur made the sound, “mmmmmm” when he likes something. Yay!

I knew it was good when Martin, a chef, ate two bowls of food. I was pretty happy about that since he doesn’t eat much.

I call it a supper because everyone came to eat a meal. The evening started at 6:30 and ended at 8:30 pm. An early night for everyone. Like supper.

It was great just sharing a meal with friends and having a chance to catch up. Like people did back in the day when people said supper.

Instead of worrying about shit all the time, I use my brain to think of this kind of stuff. 😂

Below is a link of my recipe for Thai red curry that I wrote for my cooking class.

Remember, you can use any protein and veggies. The recipe isn’t limited to what I wrote.

*** sorry the link didn’t open. I am not a techie. I’ll try to put up the recipe another way.

Frenchies are special little dogs that were bred for the elite to be lap dogs.

They fall deeply in love with their owners and cannot be left alone for more than 3-4 hours tops.

Frenchie owners have to be aware of this before their little scrunchy face comes home.

For us, we work in the production kitchen behind our home; 38 steps away.

We check in on Nelly on longer production days. She knows now when we say, “We’ll be right back” that we will be.

She used to have terrible separation anxiety and took it out on anything she could get her hands on.

She didn’t destroy furniture as Otto did, he ate our leather couch.

She would knock things over, chew up any paper, and two TV remotes which was our fault for leaving them where she could reach them

Another thing Frenchie owners have to do every day is grooming, or in Nelly’s case, her spa treatment.

I started this routine the morning after she was delivered to us so she would get used to it right away.

We couldn’t ever clean, brush, or clip Klaus or Otto’s nails. They would growl a scary growl that made us back off.

Frenchies can’t clean themselves so there is a lot of butt wiping. We say, “Let me check your hiney” and she stops on a dime for a wipe.

Female Frenchies need their female parts cleaned as part of their daily grooming routine. It’s no big deal.

Next, cleaning in between those adorable wrinkles on their faces and their ears are done everyday.

Longer spa days once a week including clipping her nails and smoothing them out with a grinder is no problem.

Nelly sleeps through the process and finds it relaxing. I find that relaxing too.

Finally, she gets a small amount of doggie coconut oil sprayed on her brush and I remove any loose fur.

She loves the brushing so much and likes to sniff the brush before we start.

Nelly joins Sam and me always smelling things we use. Laundry, lotions, shampoos, spices, food, new items, etc.

I always let her smell any new fruit or veggie she gets. She loves the smell of watermelon and the fruit itself. She recognizes it now.

I haven’t shared our special spa time together everyday with anyone, so today was the day.

She is the little love of our lives. We are very lucky we found her or she found her way to us almost a year ago this month.

58 trips around the sun. This is going to be my best year yet; I can feel it.

I’ve been working on releasing things that no longer serve me and removing blockages.

My niece Tabatha, pointed out that we had a vortex in our home. Vortexes are bad, it’s when two mirrors are facing each other.

Why kind of psychic medium am I?

As soon as my brother and Tabby left on Sunday afternoon, I removed the living room mirror. I left the one in our dining room.

It wasn’t my imagination, I felt a shift occur. I believe the vortex was blocking good luck, prosperity, and opportunities to come through our home.

The vortex was located two feet from the front door. I educated myself about the two mirror thing and was shocked I didn’t feel it.

Again, what kind of medium am I?

I guess it’s like reiki, it works on anything I touch or send remotely but I can’t feel it on myself.

This morning we made a trip to Saratoga to make spätzle deliveries and we found these two mugs at TJ Maxx which are perfect for tea.

They were waiting for me on my birthday for $5 each. A bargain! 🥳

This afternoon and evening I will be belly dancing with my friends and students. My leg is feeling great. Knock on wood.

I pulled a container of meatballs and sauce out of the freezer. We will make a little pasta when I get home.

Presto, one of my favorite birthday dinners as a child. Mmmmmmm! 🍝

Have a great day, guys! Thanks for letting me be me.

You never know what you will stumble upon when you go to the store for a tube of BenGay.

I found this adorable princess crown at our local DG for $1.

I hobbled over to the self-checkout, which I despise, and paid for my little treasure and topical hot cold shit for my right leg.

I pulled my right glute muscle in the first dance class of 2019. It hurt for months.

When the weather gets cold, it literally kicks my ass. The pain has been pretty steady for most of February.

After leaving DG I went to dance class. I moved my right leg a little too far out and Boom! It felt like an arrow in my leg. 🎯

Needless to say, I couldn’t put any weight down on that leg but managed with a lot of pain to do upper body strength training moves and teach classes.

I was pissy on my way home and was in agony. When I got home I quickly tried on Nelly’s little crown, my heart melted and it cheered me up.

This little princess has become our magical princess that turns frowns upside down, and makes us so happy and lovey-dovey.

She is such a cuddle bug but likes to play hard. She knows how to play Marty like a fiddle which is the cutest thing ever for me to watch.

She was in her glory this weekend and I was too since my brother Dan and my 16-year-old niece Tabatha came to visit.

We had a wonderful time getting to each other better with lots of one one-on-one time.

We only met for the first time at the end of 2019 just before Covid. We still have a lot to catch up on and this was our chance.

Noah and Aja came for dinner on Friday night. Dan and Noah had a lot of stuff to chat about. It made my heart so happy!

Just as they were packing up to leave today, Sam showed up after spending time in Lake George for the weekend.

It was great they could at least talk for a few minutes before they headed back to Jersey.

It was a weekend retreat for them and me. We had lots of laughs, lots of stories to tell, and a few tears and we talked about the good and bad things we got from our father.

Father. Sperm donor. He was never a dad to his 3 children and split when Dan was 6 months old.

He never knew about me which was absolutely the best thing for me and my biological mom.

I am headed to bed with little Miss Nelly now. I know I’ll fall asleep with a smile on my face and more love in my heart. ♥️

***Post done on my iPhone so excuse the errors.

Three words, butter swim biscuits. Yes, they are a thing and they are delicious.

I’ll be writing a post about them in a couple of days. In the meantime, be well and I’ll catch up with you soon. ☀️