5C's Que Pasa

Last Thursday I saw my doctor about a few issues and it has taken me until now to feel comfortable to talk about it.

I have to say that I was shocked to hear that this growth on my finger on my left hand was likely due to osteoarthritis.  That lump seems to have developed while we were in Europe. It is larger in real life than on the photo.  Perhaps I never noticed it before.  It only hurts if I squeeze it.  That finger is stiff to bend.

This finger on my right hand has been crooked with no pain for many years.

My doctor suggested that I wasn’t taking enough supplements and wants me to take 2000IU ( I was only taking in 1200IU per day ) of Vitamin D which is needed to help the body absorb calcium.  In addition to my normal calcium intake I am to make sure that I take in 1200mg of elemental  calcium. Elemental means calcium taken from food.  So I Googled elemental calcium and discovered that I am not taking in enough through the foods that I eat.  I might as well admit that I have been remiss since last fall in taking in any vitamins whatsoever, nothing, nada.  So it really is my own fault that I have come to this.  Bottom line, I was too lazy to pull out the 8 – 12 vitamins/supplements that we each need on a daily basis.  We have been doing this systematically  for years and years but I just stopped last September.  Often I would pull them out but neither of us would take them.  No other reason than laziness.

Colin recalled that our friend Jocelyn ( for the story of how we knew this couple from our Acapulco days way back, click here ) who we visited a year and a bit ago in Bucerias had trouble playing his guitar.  His fingers did not want to cooperate and now he is doing great.  He eventually discovered Genacol Bone and Joint and Colin was able to find that online today.  Have any of you tried this?  I Googled the product and read all the customer testimonials and it seems like the right thing for me to try.

We have not been out for a restaurant meal since June 19th and I felt the need to get out.  So last Sunday we headed to the local Greek restaurant.

The food was so good that I neglected to take a photo until more than halfway through the meal.   Everything including the Greek house wine was excellent.

Honestly the salad was so much better back in Athens and the wine prices were at least 4/5ths  less.  I think that it is difficult for local restaurants to have the tomatoes at the correct ripeness to serve so many people day after day.  Also an English cucumber was used opposed to field cucumbers back in Greece.  It still was a fabulous meal and we will be going back.

Thanks to a long time blog reader, Greytlady,  I have something special to share with you.  Truly appreciated and you are a great lady for sending this to me.  The following photo was taken by a 19 year old.  All sixteen of these doxies are his.

If you click here, it will take you to a link where at the bottom of the page you will be able to read a bit about how this photo came to be as well as the names of all sixteen dachshunds.  Such a sweet story and well done pups.  A very remarkable photo.  Once you click on the link, there is a next button at the top of the page to click next.  There are four photos in the series.

Mother Nature treated us after a brief shower late this afternoon.

It is a double rainbow with the top one barely visible.

About three or four times per summer our park has a garage sale and yesterday was one of those days.  It is well attended by many outside the park.  Between the thirty condo buildings (  between 2 – 4 units per building ) and 570 RV sites, there are a lot of golf carts and bicycles going up and down the streets looking for treasures.

Our first stop was just around the corner from us where Colin picked up two brand new ( with the tags still attached ) life jackets for $10.00 each.  I forgot to get a photo of them and they have been put away.  We now have six!

All kinds of things for sale, large displays in some yards and smaller ones in other sites.

This was my big purchase. A very full bag of beads which will be a fun thing to hand out during our Carnival fireworks cruise next February.  The fellow told me to make an offer.  I got them all for only $5.00.

This next purchase took some thought and discussion.  Did we need these and would they be right for the location?

We already had two chairs in this corner but they were getting sun damaged.  These look good here.  There were six of these chairs supposedly purchased new at Rona last summer for $40.00 each.  We paid $16.66 each and they do look brand new.  Between all three of our purchases we are still $2.00 ahead of what I got for what I sold last weekend.

Colin wanted a little corner for our propane fire pit which is what we created with two of the chairs.

The fire pit corner looks close to the table, chairs and umbrella but it works.  Note the piece of fencing we put up.

The neighbours had a hedge between us but it died two years ago, so they pulled it out. They prefer to grow weeds which we don’t want to see.

The entire yard is a mess of weeds which go to seed and blow into our yard. I spent an hour pulling our weeds yesterday.  So the fencing which is something we already had is a temporary fix to avoid the ugliness of their yard.  I have no idea why the park is allowing this.

Later in the day I saw an online ad offering two free patio chairs and stools.  They were just two miles away so we went to take a look.  Pieces of wood had been placed to create a base as the webbed slats were falling apart.  However both the cushions which had been covered with some sort of material were rather digusting.  I had hoped to salvage the cushions and recover them but they were too gross.

You may recall that I have two similar footstools on the Isla but they are getting very rusty even with repainting and are looking tired.  The stool on the left in this photo belongs to the two chairs we are going to get rid of.  You can see the sun damage ( white color ) on the top.  They are usable stools but small.  The ones I picked up yesterday afternoon are rather large.  The ones on the Isla are perfect.

So now I have to come up with a cushion of some sort. The size is 14 – 16″ deep by 21 – 22″ wide. The blanket works for now but I really want a pillow or a cushion or ?  I spent a lot of time online today and could not find anything suitable that was in my price range.

A pair of these stools are sitting in my Amazon.com cart. I found them this past April. However they are $80.00 USD. If I could come with something for half that price to top my free stools, I would be happy.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  I do love to sit with my feet up.

You might say that we are almost back to normal.  For the first time since mid September Colin is working.  That means I won’t see him until at least an hour after it becomes dark.  We have been together every day and almost every moment since we left for Alburqueque last September 21st.

My day started early ( for me ) as I left around 9:45AM for a doctors appointment.  More on that in another post.  From there I had eight other stops, a combination of grocery stops and errands.  I did not get home until almost 4:30PM.  I was tired and Colin wasn’t there to help me unload.  The trunk and backseat of the car were full.  I missed Colin all day and even more when I got home.

Paper towels at Costco were $5.00 off so I got 4 packages of twelve. $20.00 saved.  Plus the ziplock bags were $3.00 off.  I have enough of both to last us a year or so I hope.  We usually take 24 rolls of paper towels with us to Mexico, so we should be good until next spring.

By the time I got to Save On Foods I needed to use the bathroom.  Wow, some funky lighting. I’m sure it has something to do with drug addicts shooting up in the bathroom. I could barely see my skin with the blue lighting. There is a sign on the door that you need to go to customer service to get the code to the lock on the door and that it changes daily.

Once home I unloaded, checked emails and had a quick two minute chat with Colin.  He was too busy to talk, in fact he was standing on a kitchen counter in a house.

It was my responsibility to check the garden and do the watering.  Today was one of our hottest days in a long while. That tiny line of green ( at the bottom of the photo ) that goes from left to right and stops 3/4 of the way to the end of the shot is our Swiss chard.  To the right of the green is a dark line in  the soil.  Something ate all the kale and the dark line is a wee trench in which I am replanting seeds.

The Swiss chard on the right has been nibbled down.  I suspect quail.  We just might not get some green this summer.

The only good thing was this new cucumber, just three inches long.  Nothing new with the tomatoes, still no flowers.

As I drove back home ( I was in the golf cart ) I stopped and chatted with a few neighbours.  Once I walked in the door, I was struck by how empty the house was.  No doggies and no Colin.  It took a few moments to adjust.  When we are home together we each do our own thing but we know that the other is in the area.  Tonight was different.

I decided to not do any desk work nor open the mail and instead sat with a glass of wine and my iPad.  I finished a book and then started on this post on the desktop computer.  Once I am done here, I will scrounge for something to eat and start another novel.  It won’t be long before I am once again used to being on my own most evenings.  I am happy for Colin that business had started up and looks to be a busy next month or so.  Soon I will be happy having my own quiet time and getting into a different routine with different projects.

It was a long day for me.  Time to eat and to relax.  But until Colin get’s home, I am just feeling like something is missing.

I have been meaning to mention that on this last trip to Europe the water ( other than in Marrakech ) was good to drink  right from the tap.  That saved us a good deal of money.  Oh and on the cruise ship we had to drink bottled water but we were able to get that from the various bars and did not have to pay for it.

Another thing we noticed is that none of the places we stayed had screens on the windows.  There are no bugs.  No flies, no mosquitoes, nothing.  Simply wonderful 😛 We came home to spiders webs and nests everywhere outside 😡  Colin has been washing them down for a few days now and he has only done half of the exterior of the house.  I dealt with my share on the inside.  And of course there are the mosquitoes waiting for their chance to feast on our blood.  Then there are the noseuums at sunset in Mazatlan 😥  Europe wins on the bug situation.

We picked our first ever cucumber this afternoon. I was happy to see that we have another wee one coming along. I think we lost a few potentials during the transplanting.

I sold all my plant caddies to one lady earlier this afternoon.  I had someone else who wanted them about thirty minutes later and then one of my local blog readers was also interested. So I made another $47.00 today and with what I sold on Sunday, I am ahead $127.00.  The best part is that all those items are out of our basement.  Pretty good with little effort on my part.  The only “free” thing that was not taken was the longer hitch and we put that in the park recycle area, aka Walmart.

Getting some tomatoes. However they were already on the vines. Less than ten new yellow flowers since the transplant. Hopefully the plants will pick up.  We noticed that something is eating our kale, so we will have to do some replanting.

Once again due to my lack of technical knowledge I spent close to three extremely frustrating hours on the phone this afternoon.  I may have mentioned that Colin got his first ever iPhone this past April before we left for Europe.  He had very little time to get used to it but he did have problems receiving texts. We spent a good deal of time trying to sort that out before we left.  Today he got a phone call from a client we have not heard from in several years.  He later texted details on a place to meet later in the day.  Colin never got that.  Heck Colin was not getting my test texts.  Colin even stopped in at a local Telus store and asked them to check his phone at my suggestion.  The fellow sent him a text and said that his phone was just fine and he had likely been in a dead zone 🙄  I certainly used my little grey cells today to get to the bottom of the continuing problem.

First I want to clarify that I have only had my iPhone for two years.  Colin has been using a flip Blackberry for almost forever.   When I got my iPhone we had no problems texting each other.  Now that we have two iPhones we are having communication issues.  Colin has unlimited texting and phone calls.  He had been with the same company since 1993, 26 years!  I have unlimited texting, 500 anytime minutes and unlimited after 5pm and weekends plus 1 GB of data.  It took a while to figure out that because Colin has no data ( even though he is paying for texting ) he can’t receive texts from an iPhone if the text is being sent via iMessage  😯   What the heck is that???? The help desk tech told us that a text is green in colour while the iMessage text is blue in colour.  So????  I ventured to ask what is the difference.  Simply answer, it is an iPhone thing!  Okay so why can’t I text my husband.  It took a while but it turns out that you need data in order to text with an iPhone. My mind was spinning by now.  So I asked why could I text with him for the last two years?  Impossible she said.  I tried again but was forced to give up  that train of thought or go mad.

So I next asked how could he get texts and why did it work sometimes.  Turns our that if you have wifi, which we do here at home, he can receive a text.  But while out driving or wherever he can’t receive a text if someone happens to be using iMessage.  Which I later found it is the norm.  So I then asked what can we do?  Well she said just tell your clients to go into settings and turn off their iMessage and then text you.  Yeah, right, like they are going to do that each time they text just this one person.  Obviously Colin needs to add data to his plan @ $25.00 per month for 3GB.  He only needs a small amount for texting and will never ever use his phone for anything but texting and phone calls. The only good news is that we can stop that $25.00 charge when we go to Mexico.  He does keep his cell turned on until we drive into Mexico and at that point he call forwards it to our business landline phone.  Once he gets a message, it is sent to us at no extra charge via email.  However we have a new headache of wondering what happens if he gets a text while we are in Mexico.  Will we get the message?

I could go into more details but you get the picture.  I figured that as my two year contract was expiring this month I might as well call Virgin with whom I have my plan and see what I could get.  Currently I am paying $55.00 per month for 500 anytime minutes and the rest unlimited plus 1GB of data, which I never ever use.  Well I guess except for texting.  I was offered 100mg of data with 500 anytime minutes, etc for $45.00/month.  As she was looking up the info I was also on line and saw that for $45.00 they also offered 500mg and 500 anytime minutes!!  Well I wasn’t born yesterday.  I then noticed that for $50.00 per month I could get the 500 anytime minutes plus 4GB of data.  Only $5.00 more per month.

My next question was about suspending my phone service while we were in Mexico.  Yes it could be done for $15.00 per month.  Brilliant.  For the past two years because of my contract I was paying the full $61.00 per month.  I do take my phone to Mexico and put a Telcel SIM card in it and pay maybe 200 pesos ( 13.70 CAD / 10.40 USD ) per month to have the privilege to call all over Mexico, the US and Canada at no charge as well as have data.  So for a total of $15.00 extra ( for 3 months until we leave ) I will have 4 GB should I ever need it @ $50.00 CAD per month.  Best part is that I can shut that down to $15.00CAD per month.

Is it any wonder I needed a glass, maybe two, of wine afterwards 😳  I still don’t get why Colin really needs data ( I just don’t understand the why of it all  when he is using an iPhone and paying for texting )?

I feel a need to go pull weeds in my garden.

To lighten the mood and to show that things could always be worse…….

Sorry for the rant, but I really don’t get it………