I am still working to set my schedules for different things I want to accomplish. By the time I get to this blog post, so much has happened, I feel like I’m writing a book. It’s not just the lack of sitting down to write them. I have been quite busy!
As I have mentioned last blog post, I have moved into the parsonage belonging to the church I have attended for several years. Another woman was already living here, but it is a nice three-bedroom house and we get along really well. It has actually been very healing to me to have someone to talk, eat and work with these past few weeks. She is finally ready to move on and we have been working on getting her belongings to her new apartment. Even that has taken more time than we had anticipated as we truly have been busy with so many other things, as I will reveal to you as this post progresses. Plus…she has a lot of stuff! Fifty years of accumulation certainly can add up.
I have also been putting a lot of mental energy into determining how to pivot in my situation. How do I continue to provide good, cohesive content to Grandma’s Homestead YouTube channel even though I’m no longer on the homestead? What about the happenings in the rest of my life that would have nothing to do with a homestead? The thought process took a lot longer than I thought it would, but, once the ideas fell into place, I was finally able to make a game plan for the future.
I will keep my Grandma’s Homestead YouTube channel, especially since it creeps closer to monetization. Only now, it will be exclusively cooking and baking videos. Along with the videos I shoot for the Wednesday evening church adults, I will also have food that will pertain to Cooking from the Pantry and Depression Era Meals. I have been very grateful for the use of the kitchen in the Fellowship Hall and take joy in providing something, maybe a little different than what they are used to eating, but is generally eaten with no leftovers. That is the true desire of one who cooks for those she loves. For a women’s meeting, I baked a batch of brownies from scratch. Brownies: An Old Family Recipe can be seen here.
I will say that, with all the storms we’ve been having, I’ve noticed my hair is exceptionally frizzy in these videos. That’s just life, I guess. But what about the rest of the content I want to produce? If I posted day trips, kids camp, or any other thing that is happening in my life, it throws off the audience that thinks it’s following a cooking channel. So, I decided that I would convert my podcast channel, This Grandma’s Life Podcast to just This Grandma’s Life. I may still do some podcasting on it, but it is now officially the new channel that I will have to build my audience, nearly from scratch, as I share with you the other things in my life. I’ll be perfectly honest. I have no idea what that will entail, but I guess we’ll find out together.
There is a tunnel under Route 66 in nearby Chelsea and my friend, Dianna had never seen it. The tunnel on one side has murals of various times in local history. The rest of the tunnel is free for people to write notes, sign their names and draw sketches. As long as what is written is clean, the writings can stay up for a very long time and it is cool to look for people we know who have signed their names. When the walls get too cluttered, or someone scratches something vile on the wall, the city comes through with a fresh coat of paint. It was slippery is spots from a recent rain, but we had a nice time exploring the tunnel.
Also, one afternoon, Dianna and two other friends accompanied me to go visit a couple of beautiful spots here in NE Oklahoma. It was nice to show some of my friends some of my favorite places to visit. Exploring Beautiful NE Oklahoma with My Friends can be seen here on my This Grandma’s Life channel.
When it comes to the cooking videos, I sometimes have “technical difficulties.” In this instance, not only had I not let a dish cool enough before I taste tested it, I had not turned on the camera properly. So, even though you didn’t get to see me struggling with this piping hot bite, the next clip revealed a little of my struggle. Cheese Potato Puff: Cooking from the Pantry can be seen here.
As my friend, Dianna prepared to move, she had a few yard sales to minimize the amount of stuff to go into the new apartment. One morning, she set up at the yard of her friend that lives next to the main road. Back at the parsonage, I noticed that a storm was about to blow through. I tried to contact her, but heard her phone ringing in the other room. She needed to know about the weather and to be able to be contacted so I took the phone to her, only to have gotten there too late. The storm suddenly rages as we tried to salvage what we could and get it into the house, watching parts of it blow away through large puddles of water. Dianna has a good disposition and took it all in stride. I’m not sure I would have been that calm.
My brother called me to tell me that the nurse at the facility where Mom and Dad are living contacted him to let him know that Dad was probably in his last days and fading fast. A couple of weeks earlier, in an attempt to get strong enough to be able to move out, Dad was doing physical therapy, against the staff’s wishes. He ended up fracturing his back in two places. He is in the latter stages of Alzheimer’s and Mom is mid stage. I believe Mom had talked him into doing the PT. Even in the condition he is in, he has always lived to please Mom. I got around and made arrangements to go see my parents before he passed, knowing this was likely the last time I would see them both alive. Kinzie was not able to get off work on such short notice, but Dianna volunteered to go with me. I was glad for her company as I would be driving.
The first day on the road ended up being much longer than I had anticipated. I had wanted to drive about fourteen hours, leaving an earlier time to get to my parents the next day. I believe we were in Montgomery, Alabama when we stopped for dinner. Afterwards, we had a couple of hours left of daylight and I wanted to get a little closer. The GPS took me on a route for many miles of nothing but corn field, cotton fields and then pine forests. There were no towns on the this road, only an occasional church. It wasn’t until nearly midnight when we finally found a town large enough for a motel. I could not sleep the night before and had been up since three o’clock in the morning and on the road since seven o’clock. When my head it the pillow about one the next morning, I was beyond ready to sleep. Poor Dianna was so tired, she got the giggles. We were both very happy to be off the road for the day and the shorter trek the next.
We got to Mom and Dad’s place about eleven in the morning and sat on the porch that overlooked the pond having a nice conversation with Mom. (We were informed that the alligator that lived there was no longer there.) A few minutes later, my Dad came out on the porch with us, pushing his walker! I guess he wasn’t on his death bed after all. He neither recognized me nor acknowledged me but I was prepared for that. I was just glad to get to see them again. Dianna and I stayed with my brother who lives a couple of miles from the beach, visiting Mom and Dad the next day and then one more time on the way home. Dad showed his resilience, yet again, though he did not get out of bed the next day and no further than the recliner the day after that. It was also good to visit with my brother.
On the way home, we stopped at a friend of Dianna’s south of Tupelo, Mississippi, spending the night there. What worked out well as it was almost exactly half way home. It was good to see my parents, wonderful to visit with my brother, nice to walk on the beach and we were grateful to be back home sleeping in our own beds. I am grateful for the opportunity to have been able to make the trip. A video of the trip will be out soon. I’m behind on production. Another video that I hope to get out soon was a wonderful afternoon exploring parts of NE Oklahoma with Dianna and two other friends. I am loving this time of being with friends and having fun together, exploring our wonderful state.
One video I did get edited and posted was one of Kinzie’s softball games from last year. This was a difficult game for me because she sustained an injury that was millimeters away from being potentially life threatening as the catcher’s cleats cut across Kinzie’s inner thigh. S Coffeyville at Home can be seen here.
In trying to keep with my “Next Great Depression” series, I posted the audio-only version of Episode 81: Gardening; Another Tool for Preparing for the Next Great Depression. You can listen to it here.
I also was able to post a podcast on my Books Highlighted podcast. Episode 27: Going Through the Notions can be heard here.
On the Grandma’s Homestead channel, I posted Old Fashioned Potato Salad: Two Methods. It can be seen here.
When we got back into town from Florida, Vacation Bible School was in full swing. The last night, I got to help clean up, taking out the garbage and help put away a nice canopy. I love getting to help doing things like that. Soon after that, the heavy rain set in. We haven’t had the kind of rain they have had in Texas and other parts of the country, but it has been pretty wet.
The next Sunday night, a storm took out the power lines on both ends of town with then lying across route 66, closing off traffic both ways. Rain came flowing through the bathroom window and was creeping into the front door. The scary part was so many of my friends and family trying to get home in the storm with all the flooding and downed power lines and debris on the road. It took Kinzie an hour and a half to get to where she was staying, a trip that generally takes fifteen minutes. I was very grateful when I learned that everyone was home safe.
Just before we went to Florida, we had kids camp at the church. I got to help in the kitchen. The lady who runs the kitchen and I had hoped to record a couple of videos showing her magic of feeding lots of hungry people. It was just too chaotic, but fun, and we were unable to get anything done there. I did, however, do an overall video of kids camp. It can be seen here and on the This Grandma’s Life channel.
The storms keep rolling through and the clothing ministry always has a small stream running through it in every substantial rain. When we got back from Florida, not only did the floor have puddles in various places, a rack of small boys’ clothes had collapsed off the wall and the clothing was soaking up the water. Leaving the rack repair to the men who have the tools, Dianna and I decided that there were just too many clothes of similar size to discard and we got to work washing and rehanging them. I’m glad we took that route.
We later discovered that the big storm that had rolled through on that Sunday night had taken out the electricity at the fellowship hall and the sanctuary and we didn’t know about it until Wednesday afternoon. Several of us met at the fellowship hall and proceeded to haul off the spoiled food in the refrigerators and freezers. That was disappointing. We had a good time in fellowship as we worked though and that was nice.
Still trying to get softball games that Kinzie has played in edited and posted, I put up a video from the 2023 season. Copan Away can be seen here.
As I have literally been starting over in my life, I have been trying to accumulate a few possessions for keeping house. One of my friends at church took me to her storage unit and I came away with a nice set of sheets, some dishes, towels and other items for the kitchen. I have been absolutely floored at how kind people have been to me. I am so very grateful.
Another little side hustle I am attempting is writing skits, mainly for church settings and posting them on Etsy. I’m sure there is a better way to sell my skits, but I haven’t figured it out yet. My most recent skit is actually only for one person. Teach Me Your Ways can be found on scriptureskits.etsy.com along with others that I have written.
I have been looking actively for a job since early February with no results. I admit to being hampered by damaged feet that won’t let me stand for long periods of time and my age had been an issue I’m sure. I have decided to go all in on my YouTube channels, focusing on them primarily and adding in a few side projects I’m working on (like Scripture Skits).
Through all of this, I have been missing my granddaughter, Kinzie, terribly. She works as many hours as she can get at a local restaurant and is getting ready to go to college next month. She managed to get away for an evening and we had a wonderful time at an Italian restaurant and catching the new Jurassic World movie. The food, the movie, and particularly the company was good. I am so grateful for the opportunity to spend and evening with the girl I love so much.
One last thing: I posted the audio only podcast of Episode 82: Pivoting…Again. I discuss how this might be the last episode to the podcast channel. Maybe not either. Sometimes, when you have a project you love, it’s hard to put it down, even if it might be the best thing to do. We’ll see. It can be heard here.
Once again. I know this post has been long. I’ll work harder at keeping you caught up in a more timely manner. Until then, LIVE until you die. God bless!