Make It or Fake It: Gingerbread

Time to get ready for our second Holiday season in living fulltime in the RV. Thanksgiving is just over a week away. Target is warning their employees that the COVID has entered into its ranks, so Natalie has just been tested for the second time. Thankfully, she has once again tested negative for the 'Rona. 

Sadly, with the number of cases of COVID-19 rapidly increasing in the Bay Area, we have chosen to stay home for Thanksgiving. It was very sad to cancel out dinner plans with Ryan, Amanda and their families. This has been a very, very long and lonely year, indeed.

So, we are, instead, making another gingerbread village. Unlike our Haunted Halloween adventure, it is not 105 degrees, with melty frosting and sweaty sticky humans creating drippy ghosts. 

Starting with several prepackaged house kits from Target, we added extra strength frosting. Five, sox, seven, tubes! A must!!! And many different candy varieties. Both for decorating and snacking. Nom, nom, nom!!!

I glued together the gingerbread camper with royal icing while Natalie built the supersized mansion. A few tubes of gel frosting and eatable glitter helped add dimension to our shingles and bricks. Almost as many gumdrops were used on our gingerbread creations as ended up in our BELLIES!!!

When creating in the 'tiny house' space of an RV, sometimes things may get just a bit messy. Frosting and sugars and empty gingerbread house boxes everywhere.

But in the end, it is all worth the effort! Holiday magic.

Seven hours worth of frosting and sticking and ticking and tacking. We created out glittering glowing holiday village, ready to get this crazy COVID pandemic season off and running. With everything cleaned up and put away, finally, Natalie and Luci settle down and relax. 

Christmas Season 2020 has arrived! 

After a bit of turkey and stuffing, anyway!

 

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Coffee...Coffee...Coffee

When your daughter works at Starbucks in Target, suddenly your coffee experiences at home become much more delicious. We may live in an RV, but our coffee is definitely not the typical camping/dirt coffee of my youth.

The first early Christmas present of the season from Natalie is a Nespresso VERTUO Machine.

After a very caffeinated evening testing out the sample pack of coffee pods that came with the machine, we ordered many more from Amazon.

Within a day or two, we also added a Bodum Electric Milk Frother.  These fun new 'toys', added together with the Starbuck's flavored syrups, vanilla, caramel and simple syrup, that Natalie has purchased in the past few months, gives us a grand coffee shop experience.

Luxury in a cup. Luxury in an RV. 

 

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Kaskading back to RED

With overnight temperatures dipping down below freezing, the Concerts in the Park are returning for a November encore. This coming weekend, Kaskade is doing a three night set Nov 12-14. It is always interesting to watch them setup the concert venue on top of our dog walking field.

With COVID making an increasingly strong comeback, the testing station down on the other side of our split entry into the RV park has been filled to capacity again these past couple of weeks. It is sad to see after several weeks of watching just a handful of cars going in per day. Definitely can tell that the virus is making a strong comeback in the Bay Area. Expecting to be put back into the red or purple lockdown any day. 

 

Prior to his next run of shows from Nov. 12-14 at Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, Calif., Kaskade fills Billboard in on what it's like returning to the road and playing to cars instead of crowds. link

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Election 2020

I try to  keep this blog relatively politically zone-free. But, with an election like this one, it is hard to not at least acknowledge it. 

Here we are voting early on October 30th, the Friday before Halloween and election day. Being very cautious, we registered to vote by mail the last we of August. It is a pandemic, after all. Then, we after we after week, we waited for our voter registrations to clear. By the time we hit the 4th of October, when all early ballots in California were being mailed out, and we had still not cleared through the system, we began to get concerned. 

At first, we contacted the nice people of Alameda County.. We were informed that they would 'check into it.' I sent a letter (email) off to our State Representative Eric Swalwell.  I received back a nice form letter stating they don't actually read their email. A letter (again email) to California Governor Gavin Newsom. That form letter reply came with some contact numbers for Alameda County. See above. 

I even sent an email of to the Democratic candidate for President, Joe Biden.  My reply to that letter claimed that once the election was over they would try to address what ever problems we may have. Shockingly, I have not received any further contact from the President-elect about my voting issues.

        

The problem, we discovered, is we cannot use a P.O. box as an address to register to vote. AND, the state did not want to accept the address of the RV park we have resided in for 14 months as our permanent address. After contacting the city, and county and pretty much everyone we could think of several times a week all through October we thought we would not be allowed to VOTE. AAAHHHH!

Then, someone working at the voter registration office in Oakland came up with the brilliant idea of having us register our address as a street corner. Just like they do for anyone who is homeless. So, for the purpose of voting, we officially lived at the corner of 12th street and Valley. The corner where the RV park is located. 

Two days later, way too later for a mail in ballot, we cast our ballots in person.

Election night started at our #homesweetrollinghome with a fine collection of  icy cold  drinky drinks. Anything to get through the end of this crazy election season. Little did we know the election was nowhere ending.

 

Early, early numbers

November 7th, 2020

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Carve a pumpkin, build a snowman

This week has been one of ups and downs. Great joy and lots of unhappiness. In amongst all of the voting and counting and waiting and waiting and waiting, I had yet another doctor's appointment.

After surgery the end of July and a short hospital stay in September, which I can't really talk about, because I can't remember most of it, I can seriously say I need a social life beyond doctor's offices and medical labs.

During all of the counting and chaos, I found out I have a tumor in my right kidney. In addition to the Angiomyolipoma tumor, there is also a cyst in the right kidney, as well. There is another spot on my left kidney which is hopefully a kidney stone. Fingers crossed. It is six month into this Chronic Kidney Disease diagnosis, and I have no idea if this is all cause or effect.

Angiomyolipoma are tumours consisting of perivascular epithelioid cells (cells which are found surrounding blood vessels and which resemble epithelial cells). A tumour of this kind is known as a PEComa, from the initials of perivascular epithelioid cell.

With more tests and full abdomen scans to be scheduled in the next few weeks, surgery will not happen until after the new year. If this is the only tumor they find, sized somewhere between a pea and a peanut, we will just chalk this up to 2020 being a really sucky year. And, 2021 has to be a better year for surgery after all of the twists and turns and ups and downs of this crazy year.

Off to weekly doctor appointment to prove life 

goes on even during these crazy election days.

Thankfully, healthcare is not suddenly going to be taken away from people with pre-existing conditions.

Hug your dog, your kids. Build a snowman. Bake some cookies. Do something nice for your neighbors...all of them.

Red, brown, yellow, black and white.♪

Because, what the world needs now is love, sweet love ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬

It's the only thing that there's just too little of ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬

I believe in God's unconditional love. UNCONDITIONAL!

I believe in his omnipotent power to create ALL things including the heavens and the earth.

All religions. All identities, Science and math.

The ability to choose right and wrong.

Compassion, empathy and again, LOVE.

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Still here

September 28

It has been a while since a posted anything to this blog. These past few months have been a roller-coaster of crazy. As if being in the middle of a world wide pandemic, which isn't receding, wasn't enough, the fires keeping burning around us, as well.

Along with all of  that, I have been on a roller-coaster of my own. Numerous doctor's appointment, tests and screening all summer long. After thinking I was dealing with kidney disease for most of the summer, I finally met with the kidney specialist. It takes months and months to get any appointments at all. 

Well, the kidney doctor believes that while I have kidney disease, it was caused by 'something'. He believes it is an auto-immune disease. Most likely Lupus. Well, that's just great. And, many, many more tests and weeks upon weeks of waiting for more doctors visits because, let's face it, our insurance sucks.

October 22

I started this blog post weeks ago, one week after I spent the night i n the hospital with TGA. 

Transient global amnesia is a sudden, temporary episode of memory loss that can't be attributed to a more common neurological condition, such as epilepsy or stroke. During an episode of transient global amnesia, your recall of recent events simply vanishes, so you can't remember where you are or how you got there.

It has now been just a month since that event, and our insurance still has not okayed getting the EEG done to see what is happening inside my head. 

An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a test that detects electrical activity in your brain using small, metal discs (electrodes) attached to your scalp. Your brain cells communicate via electrical impulses and are active all the time, even when you're asleep. This activity shows up as wavy lines on an EEG recording.

There is a twelve hour window of time in which I have absolutely no memory of what happened, at all. Apparently, I held conversations, walked around, including down some steep stairs to get to our truck and and believed it was 2016. 

Having no memory of this is terrifying to me because it is like another person took over my brain. Highjacked my life. And I can't remember any of it. Yet, I, or other me, was a functioning person. What happens if that comes back, and I just disappear completely?

There have been a few snippets of time since then that I also have lost. I know this because I can't remember doing things like taking medication, yet husband and daughter tell me, "Yes. you took it ten minutes ago."

What am I losing that I don't even know about?

But insurance won't cover testing. And, husband is like, "Awww. don't worry about it."

In the meantime, I don't sleep because this began when I woke up 'Four Years Ago'. In 2016. All I really know is what I have been told. I just remember going to bed and then waking from a dream in the hospital twelve ours later. A cat scan and MRI later.

I have my second appointment with the kidney specialist two days after the election. Before that appointment, I having a series of tests, because who doesn't want more blood drawn.

We did have a wedding a couple of weeks ago. 

 

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Wedding Day

 “Once in a while, in the middle of an ordinary life… 

love gives us a fairy tale.”

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