Bingo Friday

Yesterday was Bingo Friday, and I can’t tell you how good it felt to not have to rush down to the Community Room after the morning’s workout, hang with the old people.

According to the flyer the Baker had me put together, bingo included a "Special Treat for Valentine’s Day" …… "Probably strawberry shortcake" is what she told me.

However, looking at the photos the Talker sent for me to post to the group’s Facebook page, it doesn’t look like strawberry shortcake happened.

It actually looked like there was no special treat, period. Then, in the corner of one of the photos, I saw what looked like the edge of a container of cupcakes, iced pink for Valentine’s Day.

Can’t tell if the cupcakes are baked or store bought but, when the Baker bakes, she usually displays on a cupcake stand, not in a container. So my guess is store bought.

When last I saw the Baker, she’d looked worried. She’d been placed in that difficult position of having to tell her friend (Red Light) that, because one of the usual bingo suspects had a problem with Red Light attending bingo as a non-resident, that she (the Baker) was going to have to hurt her friend’s feelings, tell Red Light she could no longer attend.

Since then, the Baker has had to deal with Red Light’s Facebook meltdown and harassing phone calls.

Looking at the pictures of the Baker at yesterday’s bingo, she does not look well. You can tell something is weighing her down.

It’s not a stretch to assume no strawberry shortcake and store bought instead of baked is because the Baker just doesn’t have it in her right now to do more than the basics.

Last week’s lousy weather didn’t help anyone’s energy — first three earthquakes, followed by drab dreary days and then non-stop rain with constant flash flood warnings Wednesday and Thursday.

Friday was a dry day for us, but still drab/dreary and, from the photos, it appears not many were in the mood as attendance looked to be down.

All in all, I’m glad to be out of the bingo scene.

This was also the first bingo where Red Light was not in attendance.

No surprise there because, after her Facebook posts, the harassing telephone calls by she and her son, she can never show her face around here again.

In fact, I’d not be surprised to learn not only has she now been officially banned by Management, but that Manager has taken out a restraining order because Red Light yesterday did something I never thought she’d do …… she scrubbed her Facebook page of the three libelous and poor pitiful feel sorry for me posts, wherein she’d named those she felt had wronged her.

It’s giving too much credit to think she deleted the posts because she’d come to her senses. Nope. Not her style. More like something of a legal nature has occurred, which may be another reason why the Baker is walking around with an even heavier heart — she had to hurt her former friend’s feelings again by doing something she didn’t want to do but had no choice in order to stop the harassment.

The Baker did say her Deputy Sheriff son-in-law was looking into what could be done to stop Red Light and her son. So, for Red Light to retract her posts, something significant has happened …… someone of authority has contacted her, or she has been served with a restraining order.

Sooner or later, the Grapevine will get around to letting me know which it was.

Valentine's Day

Love is once again in the air.

Thank the Lord, I've been vaxxed and boosted.

Who Wants to Tell Her?

Popping into the market, after this morning’s workout, I ran into Next Door Neighbor.

We chatted for a bit about how we were going to survive, where we were going to live, when Elon takes away social security.

I said I’d probably be living in my car.

She said it would probably be the same for her.

We were both laughing, making jokes, but the humor was only to keep from crying …… if you know what I mean.

We moved on to the topic of the three earthquakes we’d experienced, her saying that, like myself, she’d been in bed the night the third earthquake hit.

Unlike me, who stayed in bed, she said she gotten up, run into the bathroom, sat in the tub until she felt it was safe.

I never left the comfort of my bed. Of course, I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I browsed TikTok until I felt sleepy again …… three or more hours later.

Heading back to the complex, I pondered the idea of the bathtub being a safe place to seek shelter in an earthquake.

Going over it in my head, it seemed to me that should the building come down, the floor give away, I’d have the mattress at my back, nice soft pillows and quilts surrounding me; whereas, if the floor gave away and the tub fell, broke into pieces, the sharp edges of the tub's broken bits and pieces could be injurious.

Arriving back at the complex, I posed the question to Google …… "Is getting in the bathtub during an earthquake better than staying in bed?"

Google answered …… "No, generally staying in bed and covering your head with a pillow is considered safer than getting into the bathtub during an earthquake; the primary reason being that the bathtub offers little added protection from falling debris while getting out of bed could expose you to further danger during the shaking …… If you are in bed when an earthquake hits, stay there, lie face down, and cover your head and neck with a pillow".

Who wants to tell Next Door Neighbor?

Not me.

Now disturbed by thoughts of Elon still in my head, I decided to do something about it.

I had cotton fabric, freezer paper, ironed the two together to make paper I could run through the printer.

I found an image I could work with, printed the image onto the fabric side, pulled away the freezer paper.

Now having an image on fabric, I cut around the image, fit cotton fabric as a backing, pulled out my sewing machine and VOILÀ …… a voodoo doll.

Stuffed and edges completely sewn together, pins in his vacuous eyes, a pin straight through his cold dead heart, and he was ready to join his sidekick.

I feel better now.

Ominous

That’s the word for how this week has started out ……… Ominous.

Yesterday was shake, rattle, roll with not one, not two, but three earthquakes.

Ominous.

Ain't no sunshine today. Outside is cold, dark, gloomy.

Ominous.

It’s only Tuesday, and I’m waiting for the other shoe to fall.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

It wasn’t until I returned from running errands on Saturday, and kicked off my shoes, that I noticed something was wrong with the outfit I’d been out and about in that day.

Do you see it?

Hopefully my bright red lipstick detracted folks from looking down at my footwear.

These senior moments are coming more frequently. I had two such moments on Saturday. First was wearing mismatched shoes then, later that day, I found myself searching the unit for my keys, with no success. Something told me to check the front door.

Sure enough, there they were, just waiting for someone to come along, enter while I’m asleep, pillage and plunder or drive off with the Jeep or both.

I guess the lesson that day was to slow my thinking down, pay attention to what I’m doing, stay in the moment.

Linda in Kansas aka DrumMajor was interested in the recipe I used a few days ago for Mini Monkey Bread which, unlike the last time I tried to make Monkey Bread, was a success.

That last time was back in 2015, when I followed the Pioneer Woman’s recipe to take Pull Apart Monkey Bread as my dish for the Valentine’s Day Potluck.

It was an epic fail — the dish came out soggy, not cooked all the way through, so I was forced to contribute Girl Scout Cookies to the potluck instead.

Since then, with my food allergies — which have plagued me since age 18, becoming increasingly worse to where my system can now not tolerate whole wheat and high-fiber flours, Monkey Bread has been off the menu. That is, until I recently came across a recipe for Monkey Bread made with white rice flour.

I gave it a try, but instead of baking in a bundt or loaf pan, as the Frugal Farm Wife’s recipe calls for, I made Minis by baking in a cupcake pan.

Into the muffin tins I dropped teaspoons of dough, followed by drops of filling and continued layering dough/filling until dough and filling were depleted.

Soft on the inside, with pockets of filling throughout, sugary and crispy on the outside, snackalicious with a cup of coffee.

Around 5:00 today, about the time I figured Kendrick Lamar would be performing at the Superbowl, I quickly switched channels, checked in to see if it was Halftime yet.

It wasn’t, but I did see the score and it looked like the Chiefs were getting their arses kicked.

I tuned in about 45 minutes later, just in time to catch the Halftime Show, which was great — I liked the red, white, blue theme, could have done without Samuel L. Jackson, and I’m sure some of Kendrick's songs ruffled the correct feathers, not to mention the patriotic colors.

(I guess Kendrick did indeed ruffle feathers, because the pundits are saying "worst halftime ever". No, that would be Rihanna's snoozefest back in '23.)

According to the score I saw, before I went back to my regularly scheduled programs, the Chiefs were getting creamed.

Now flipping channels, seeing the game is over, and Kansas City was slaughtered, I’m wondering if Kelce would like to eat his words that it would be "pretty cool" and "a great honor" if the Orange Menace were in attendance, because it looks like the Menace brought the team bad luck, not to mention he doesn’t like what he calls "losers".

It’s Raining Men

It rained all night long and, when I awoke this morning, it was still pouring down.

I came thisclose to call off getting out into it for this morning’s workout; but then remembered the market had been out of frozen salmon when I shopped the other day, and that if I wanted salmon for dinner, it was best to just go ahead, workout, market after.

Crossing the market parking lot after working out, headed inside, I heard a friendly sounding voice say, "Hey, lady".

I turned to see who was speaking and saw it was Meat Man, whom I’ve not seen in ages on the complex.

"Meat Man" being formerly Handsome Man on the blog, until he’d approached Homegirl (whom can be described as a healthy woman ……… all boobs, hips, butt), and in a sleezy tone said to her, "I like meat" — referring to all the meat on her bones.

Homegirl cursed him out for the disrespectful way he approached her, and I changed his blog name to Meat Man because, to me, he looked a lot less handsome after that faux pas.

So, anyway, as I needed to get out of the rain, head into the market, and Meat Man needed to get out of the rain and into his car to leave, in response to his "Hey, Lady", I said "Oh hey neighbor. You staying out of trouble?"

He said something in return which I couldn’t make out, and that was that.

By the time I exited the market, the rain had let up enough, to where I didn’t even have to use my umbrella, and the sun was actually trying to come out.

It’s like that around here ……… a rainstorm and then, seconds later, the rain stops, sun comes out. So, it wasn’t surprising to see residents hanging around outside the gate — smoking, chatting, when I arrived back.

One chatting, not smoking, was the famous Hubba Hubba Awooga Silver Fox, whom I also had not seen in ages.

Readers might remember him as the resident — moved in August of 2023, that the women were all gaga about.

Described to me as mixed with First Nation Indian Blood and some other blood type, wore a ponytail, which blood mixture and ponytail made him "too handsome for words" and said to be "antisocial, mean, doesn’t like people knocking on his door".

I don’t care for people knocking on my door either; so, I didn’t put much weight into someone being antisocial or mean because of wanting to be left alone; and I later learned those smears were being made because he’d pissed some of the female residents off.

How did he piss the female residents off you ask.

Well, the thirsty women around here were bothering him — vying for his attention, knocking on his door ……… showing up with cakes, cookies, meals, asking questions about where he was from, what he does, and he’d ruffled their feathers by telling them to buzz off, that "I’m sick and tired of women always chasing me".

I later saw the Silver Fox around once or twice, waved as I always do to residents, whether I know them or not.

I don’t recall his being friendly in return, but to be expected as his expectation was all us women wanted him.

He need not have worried. Seeing him up close and personal, I thought he was nice looking compared to what else we have around here, but not all Hubba Hubba Awooga and not my type.

It wasn’t until manager’s meeting in September of last year, when I was seated away from the cluster of residents — for viral safety reasons, at the back of the room, when Silver Fox walked in, sat right next to me.

He introduced himself, we chatted a bit and, when the meeting was over, he began walking, chatting with me as we headed for our units.

Conversation ended when I reached my walkway with him saying, "It was nice to meet you, Shirley. I hope to see you again" in a way where I knew he was opening a door.

I was polite, but not encouraging. I did not walk through the door.

I’ve seen him once since then. He was driving in, yelled "Hello!" as I was crossing the parking lot. I said hello in return, but kept walking, didn’t look back to encourage him.

For those who don’t know, when us ladies smile and look back, that’s a yes, a green light signaling a male to come with what he's got.

So, there he was today, outside the gate talking to Big Friendly Guy.

I parked, got out of the car, picked up my workout bag, groceries and, just that quick, he’d ended his conversation with Big Friendly guy and was on the walkway, behind where I was parked.

"Hello, Shirley" said he.

Oh ……… he’s calling me by my name, opening that door again, thought I.

I know his name but chose, once again, to not walk through the door. I replied, "Hey, neighbor".

"How are you doing?", asked he.

"I’m okay, how about yourself?"

A little too far away, I couldn’t make out what he was saying, didn’t want to prolong things, or have him walk closer, by saying I can’t hear you. So, I just listened, made out what sounded like "wha wha wha wha wha wha wha, but I’m okay with it". To which, I smiled, nodded as though I understood and that was that.

So, it really did rain men this morning ……… at least two came out of the woodwork.

From the looks outside now, you’d never know it rained all night and most of the morning, as the sun is shining and outside is drying up.

BTW: While at the market, I noticed the organic Eggland’s Best were all sold out.

I’m now kicking myself for only buying a dozen, I should have purchased two dozen because a recipe I’m trying this afternoon for Mini Monkey Bread is calling for six egg whites.

This recipe, which I'm revising to substitute rice flour for regular flour and a stevia blend for brown sugar, had just better work out ……… not waste my precious eggs.