Catching Up And Formulating a Plan

As you might suspect, I haven’t much wanted to leave my home over the past couple days.  We’ve been hanging around with Peanut and trying to catch up on routine stuff.  I’ve only been out once and that was to the grocery.  Gene has been out a couple times--he went with me to the grocery and yesterday afternoon he went for a short hike at Beaman Park.  We haven’t even opened our door today.

So far, everything is going well with my folks.  My dad continues to improve slowly and apparently my mom has everything under control at the house.  While I was there, I did a lot of cooking and my aunt brought in six casseroles and a huge pot of soup.  All that food went into the freezer so all my mom has to do is heat and eat.  She can still do her own cooking, but she gets tired very easily.  With the extra work of caring for my Dad, she’ll enjoy not having to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

With things going as well as they are, we are looking for a departure day of Saturday.  A memorial service for my uncle who passed away a couple weeks ago is scheduled for Saturday afternoon.  After that is over, we’re thinking we may drive a hundred miles just so our distance won’t be so far the following day to Perry, Georgia.  If that works out, we can actually see ourselves in Bushnell, Florida on Monday afternoon.  We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve spent considerable time catching up with the blogs I follow.  Seems like everybody is getting a very good start to the new year.  As I read one of Judy’s posts at Travels with Emma, I was reminded of a few King Cake parties I’ve been to.  Once upon a time, in a life which seems far, far away, my teaching friends and I had a little book club.  Like most book clubs, we’d select a book to read and then get together to discuss what we’d read, drink wine, and eat junk food.  Eventually, we gave up the reading and just got together to drink and eat.  Someone in our group had heard about King Cakes, but we were really too far away from southern Louisiana to hardly notice Mardi Gras.

One year our little group decided to order a King Cake and that got us started on an annual King Cake Party event.  We ordered our first King Cake and it came complete with the Baby Jesus (henceforth known as the BJ).  We didn’t like the taste of the cake so much and decided from then on to make our own.  The person getting the BJ in their piece of cake got to host the party the following year and make the cake.  We also decided there were several “kings” to be honored--Elvis, for example, King Tut, BB King, King Kong, the Lion King.  The host announced the “king” and everybody dressed accordingly.  It was a hoot.  Thanks, Judy, for setting in motion all those fantastic memories.

Rick and Paulette have been out hiking and his post the other day about a short section on the PCT brought back a host of memories of some good hikes we’ve done on that trail in the Lake Tahoe area as well as near Mt Rainier.  It reminded me also that I haven’t selected the Appalachian Trail thru-hikers to follow this year.  Many thru-hikers post their journals on Trail Journals and each year I like to select six or eight to follow.  I usually pick out some older hikers.  Their journals are more interesting to me than the younger set.  We’re also getting very anxious to get back on the trail ourselves.  We’re looking forward to doing some hiking on the Florida Trail this winter.

Peanut seems to have enjoyed us being close at hand for the past couple days.  Gene taught him a new trick while I was away.  Peanut has discovered the heating pad.  Gene put it on the bed one morning and turned it on.  It’s hard to get that cat up from there now.  Would you say he’s is SPOILED?

That’s enough rambling for today.  Thanks for tagging along.