Answer Me This. . . Volume 2

To read other bloggers answers to the "Answer Me This" post, you can find them here at Catholic All Year



1. What’s something you intended to do today, but didn't?


Hmm, nearly everything.   I spent most of the day on the phone and on Facebook.  Somehow having a lot of friends and posting a photo like this with the caption "The answer was yes" results in a lot of time on Facebook reading lots of congratulations.  :)

In addition, I was engaged at a Catholic youth camp.  The priest from that parish was in our home this week, and he had to return early for a meeting.  He missed our engagement but called to extend his congratulations.  Just lots of wonderful things today and meant I only did dishes, went to Mass, and social media-ed.  lol

2. What's your favorite grilling recipe?

We just got a grill.  Hot dogs were made on it yesterday.  Despite what 50 kids from a parish in Pittsburgh may think, I am not a great cook.  I just made my best dishes for them.   My boyfriend My fiance, is the cook, and he often just throws stuff together, although recently he has been writing down his recipes and entering them in recipe contests.  (We are keeping our fingers crossed.  Weddings are expensive and hopefully he can win with some of his recipes.)

3. What movie did you see most recently?

Madea's Witness Protection Program.  Before last summer, it was 1999 since I had seen a movie in a theater.  I'm not much of a movie watcher.  I do like documentaries.  I have one here of the rise and fall of the VHS tape called Rewind This! but I can't talk my boyfriend my fiance into watching it!

4. Would you say your tendency is to over or under react to medical situations?

Probably under react.  I don't have insurance (not even after it was made "affordable" because someone else's idea of "affordable" and mine differ.  I suffered through a 2 hour long asthma attack recently because I didn't want to pay the fee at a hospital to go and a breathing treatment.  Thankfully my doctor has now prescribed an inhaler (I need to check around for prices on that and try to find it cheaper somewhere.)  

5. Do you squeeze the toothpaste tube or roll it?

I squeeze, but my boyfriend my fiance is very picky about rolling his toothpaste.  In fact, he uses a binder clip to help keep it rolled up neatly.  

6. What are you doing for Father's Day?

My boyfriend My fiance works.  (My dad died in 2006 and we are visiting my boyfriend's fiance's dad soon.)  I will likely be working on a blog post I need to get written, cleaning house, reading, and likely spending more time on Facebook than I should.  (See question one.)

Answer Me This. . . Volume 1

This is my first time participating in the link up Answer Me This from Catholic All Year but the questions looked fun, and I thought I'd jump in.  After all I hear the water is fine!  (ha ha!)

1. Do you have a land line?

No.  My mother loved a land line, but when she passed away in February, her funeral was on a Friday.  The next week I cancelled things that would cost us that we no longer needed.   This included her cell phone, the land lane, and cable TV.

2.  What is your least favorite food?

Do I have to pick one?   I hate chocolate.  I also hate ham.  Okay, how about ham dipped in chocolate.   Most people are horrified to learn that I hate chocolate.  I used to love it.  In fact, I can look at something chocolatey and know how good it would taste to others.  But in 2012 I was in the hospital for 8 days with a bone infection.  I was on IV antibiotics for that entire time and was on oral antibiotics for 9 months.  The antibiotics changed some of my tastes, and chocolate was one of the casualties.  Of course, it's not something I need to be healthy (well, I do choke down some dark chocolate almost daily because of the health benefits.)

3.  What's on your summer reading list?

I need to finish a couple books for reviews.  I have a stack of books on my night stand.

 There's one about the history of the Sheetz gas station / convenience store that I bought months ago.
Made to Order: The Sheetz Story

There are two my priest gave me in September.  (He's moving next week and I still haven't finished them.  Thankfully he gave them to me and I don't have to return them.)

I have also purchased several from thrift stores that look great.  I haven't had a lot of time to read lately.

4.  Is there something that people constantly ask your advice on?  What is it?

Yes!  Being frugal.  Saving money, especially with coupons.  And for some reason friends think that because I shop at a grocery store and can save significantly on a cart of essentials that I have some magic wand I can wave and get them a Disney vacation much cheaper.  (That's actually the #1 question I get -- How can I save on a Disney vacation? I want to laugh in people's faces when they ask that.  Seriously?  You're asking someone without children, who is not a huge Disney Fan about saving on a place she's never been?  My advice is learn to save money elsewhere and earmark that savings for the Magic Kingdom.  Somehow it seems that the people who ask that aren't very appreciative when I say I honestly have no idea and then point them to resources like this:

Save the Big Bucks at Walt Disney World: Discounts, Deals, and Freebies 2014

and this:

How I earn Money and Gift Cards Online


Somehow I think the "try and save on your necessities and pay only 25 cents for your toothbrushes after coupon" isn't the savings they want.  I might write a blog post on this sometime on how to save on everyday purchases so you can afford some bigger things (If you have the money, sometimes savings are just needed to survive.)

5.  What's the most physically demanding thing you've ever done?  

I went to fat camp.  I mean Faith and Fitness Week sponsored by RetroFit Ministries.

This photo is of me receiving my Dare to Soar Award.  Also pictured with me are Austin (left) and Ken (right) Andrews, a father/son team who were former contestants on Biggest Loser.

During this week we worked out about 4 hours a day, heard a weight loss testimony in the morning, nutrion class in the afternoon, evening praise and worship, small group after worship, we'd fall into bed, and up for the same thing the next day.  It was so hard, but it was wonderful.  I got to work with some of the best trainers in the country including Mr. Natural America, John Heart,  Laurie Graves, author of Fit for Freedom, and Charline Bucher.  It was the hardest thing I've ever done, but also one of the most rewarding.  My only regret is I was not able to continue to take care of myself when my mother got sick and had to focus all my attention and energy to her.  I would love to go back to another Faith and Fitness week.  There were Christians from every denomination there -- Pentecostals, Catholics, Mennonite, Seventh Day Adventist.  It was worth every penny!

6.  How do you feel about massages?

Add this to the list of things I've never had.  (Also, pedicure, manicure, etc.)  I'm not a prissy girl.  I'd rather have the money for a book, gas money to find another geocache, or even a gift card for groceries.  I'm usually practical (except when it comes to travel.  I have a passport and I know how to use it!)

Weekly Geocaching Roundup #4

It's been a busy geocaching week for us.  On Thursday, my boyfriend had a short work meeting in a town an hour away then the rest of the day free, so I tagged along and we went geocaching afterwards.  We decided to go up into Pennsylvania and see what we could find, and we did find some neat ones.  After he worked all weekend, he had two days off in a row, so we decided to go on an overnight trip to Martinsburg, West Virginia.  This is one of the best geocaching areas in the country.  WVTIM loves putting out gadget caches, and I regret we were only able to find about 30 caches during our trip.  One reason for that is we did the Villages of Berkeley County geotrail to get this cool coin.

The Villages GeoTrail covered a lot of area, but they were easy to find, it was just a lot of driving between caches.  The gadgets were more concentrated in area, but they took a slight bit more figuring to open -- you had to solve a puzzle to be able to open the combination lock on them.  Most of them were much more simple than we tried to make this.   This is the first gadget cache we found, and it was actually quite easy.  Each of these vials contained a scent and on the cache page there was a list of scents.  We had to put them in order, and the order gave us the combination to the lock based on the numbers at each scent.

At this one, the cache was under a merry go round.  You can watch the video here:  (warning includes spoilers)

So here I am getting the cache.   I was going to make my boyfriend get the cache, but I couldn't get the merry go round to go as fast as required.  So I was the lucky one who got to get dizzy.

At this one we had to play a song to be able to figure out the combination to the lock that opens the cache!

We didn't have time to get both geocoins -- we are two caches away from the coin for the gadget trail!  In addition to those on the trail, there are so many fantastic geocaches in the Martinsburg, WV area that we are hoping to go back another time!

Thursday:  15
Monday: 16
Tuesday: 14
Wednesday: 1

Total: 151

Weekly Geocaching Round-Up #3

My weekly post about Geocaching.

My boyfriend and I each hit 100 finds this week.   I have found six without him, so I hit find 100 at a guardrail.  I was so excited I wanted to stop at the closest geocache!  His was much cooler.

His find #100:

This was at a place called Lincoln Motor Court, and it is just charming.  I want to spend the night there sometime.  Cute retro cabins, what's not to love?  Reminds me so much of when I was growing up, we'd always stay at mom and pop hotels on vacation to Pennsylvania.

One cache we got this week that I thought was really cool was this one.   In this photo you can see three states (Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia) as well as seven counties.  My geography isn't good enough to tell you which counties you can see, but I can tell you they are in the above states! 

This was one of our DNFs this week.  It was labeled as terrain 1, but a local geocacher told me because it's one of the oldest caches in the area, terrain was graded a bit differently back then.  Now a "1" should be handicapped accessible, but this "1" you have to walk down to the wheel and underneath the building.  Now that she helped us in knowing where it is (we were having GPS bounce), we can get it sometime.

This was my favorite cache of the week.  It was at a church built in 1804.  So much history here.   My parents sold tombstones when I was growing up, and I have always enjoyed walking through cemeteries reading gravestones.

This man fought in the Revolutionary War.  To him, and every other Revolutionary War Veteran in this cemetery, I thank you for your service to this country.

Less than a half mile from the cemetery was Little Boy Blue -- and my boyfriend pretending to be Little Boy Blue!

Next week is going to be a huge geocaching week for us, so stay tuned!

This week's stats:

Saturday: 2
Sunday: 2
Monday: 3
Wednesday:7

Did Not Finds:   3

Total:  106


Come join the fun at Geocaching.com

Seven Quick Takes Friday: RCIA, a BBQ, and guest book

1.
Since I started a new Thursday series, Weekly Geocaching Round up, I won't be adding geocaching adventures to my Quick Takes Friday any more.  So that cuts out a lot of my news I'd been relaying here as that is our biggest out of the house hobby.

2.
Last week was our last class of RCIA.   We learned all about the end times.  While that's not something that is stressed much in Catholicism, it's a huge focus in evangelical churches, so our priest thought it was important to cover.  I did not join the Catholic Church, and I talk about that in a previous post.

3.  
Our priest is moving.  This upset me greatly (and I even cried because of how much I like him.)  It is very difficult for me to trust clergy, and this man has both my respect and trust.

4.
We invited the RCIA class over for a BBQ on Monday evening.  It feels like forever ago we started the class.  That was in September.  My life has been turned upside down since then.  I'll  never forget the night I got the phone call while in class.  The phone call that changed my life forever.  I'll never forget me walking back in the room with a friend who came into the hall to check on me, and I said, "We have to go.  I think they lost her."  I'll never forget what a good friend that boy was through the next few days.  He called our priest who came after class to to a prayer of committal of Mom's spirit to God.  I feel like this group of people have helped me through the roughest time of my life and I'll be forever thankful for them.

5. 
On a lighter note, a friend of mine bought a guest book for their home when he and his wife were married.  I always thought that was the coolest idea.  So since I have my own place, I bought a guest book.   I loved it when my friend who I got this guest book idea from pulled it out a couple years ago when I visited with someone he had never met.  I was able to look back 15 years and see when I had first visited him and his wife!  I hope for this to become a treasured possession for us!  We have nearly a dozen signatures in it since March.

6. 
I set the date of my annual party in the park.  I was debating if I wanted to have it this year or not, because Mom died.  Jewish tradition says no parties for a year after the death of a parent.  I'm not Jewish, but I have better days and worse days, but the better days seem to be a little better  as well as more frequent and the worse days not quite as bad.  So I booked  a place in the park in September.  That still gives me a few months to heal as well.

7. 
Don't forget about the U.S. Cellular iPhone 5s Giveaway   that is currently going on here on my blog!

Visit www.conversiondiary.com for more Quick Takes Friday.

Weekly Geocaching Round-up #2

This was a slower caching week for us (at least compared to the last couple ones!)  There was a lot of rain that kept us inside!

This week we mainly stayed in West Virginia.   My boyfriend's favorite cache of the week was in Grafton WV.  We didn't find this one as someone who wasn't a geocacher came along to check on the paint job that was done on the caboose that day.

My favorite cache was the one at the Mother's Day Shrine in Grafton, WV.  (Just up the street from the caboose.)  It was a micro, but I loved the location.

The funniest thing this week happened at a cache along the WV Civil War Trail.  There was a toddler whose mother was working in the gift shop by the cache.  The toddler was in a toy battery powered police car, and when we got out of our car, he turned on the siren, followed us to the cache and said he was giving us a ticket for walking on freshly mowed grass.  We played along.

This week's stats:

Friday: 2
Saturday: 9
Tuesday: 8

Total:  91

Travel Bugs registered as collectable:  2
First to Find caches:  1

Weekly Geocaching Round-up #1

I've decided to try and post every Thursday about my geocaching that week because Friday starts the weekend and it's a good way to keep it in my mind what geocaches I grabbed that week.

Last Friday, my boyfriend had the day off and we went to a Geocaching event.  One word of warning -- Geocaching.com e-mails give distance as the crow flies, so it was a bit more of a trek than we expected, but we hit some thrift shops along the way and also found a few geocaches.  That evening we met some great people who I expect will be "distant friends"  (not the type you can ask to come over for an evening, but ones you might see a few times a year.)  One couple even told us to let them know when we'd be in the area again and they would go geocaching with us, even revisiting caches they have already visited.

Sunday was Mother's Day, and that's a difficult day for me.  We were going to spend the day doing Urban caches, but it was graduation at WVU, and we didn't want to be in Morgantown that day, so we headed out and kind of just ended up where we wandered.  We found some great caches.

My boyfriend's favorite of the day was one we had to log "Did Not Find" because it was so difficult.  But being male, he thought a tank was just cool!

My favorite one was the toll house at Addison, Pennsylvania.  I am not sure when they levied fines for those entering Pennsylvania but a sheet was a 3 cent toll.

We're new at geocaching, and this weeks stats were:

Friday: 6 (includes event)
Sunday: 14
Wednesday: 2
Weekly total: 22

Total:  73

Travel bugs found in the wild:  2
Travel bugs discovered at an event: 2
Travel bugs registered to release:  3

The weather (and work schedule) wasn't  as cooperative as we'd hoped, but unfortunately for finances, my boyfriend has five days off out of the next seven (unfortunately there's one work day thrown in there so we can't go too far away if we would decide to!)  I expect we'll have a lot more to report next week than we did this week.  We met someone last week who once logged 120 finds in one day.  Wow.  We have a long way to go to get to that, and we've even met someone who has logged 10,000 geocaches, so we are really newbies. But we're having fun and finding some cool places I never knew existed in our area.

Geocaching: Seven Quick Takes Friday

If you aren't aware what Geocaching is, it's using GPS to find "treasure" hidden in the woods.  If you don't have a GPS you can find many caches by downloading the app to your phone.  (And a shameless plug, if you don't have an iPhone, I am giving one away that is good only on the U.S. Cellular network.  Just click here to visit the giveaway.)

And back to geocaching. . .

Here are some notable finds of mine in the last week.  Because I don't want to give away TOO much information just in case you are a geocacher near me, I will just describe some of the locations.


1.

My favorite find of the week was on Tuesday.  My boyfriend and I were in a town about 10 miles from here an we saw one located near a cemetery.  I suggested we find it, and we went up the side of  a mountain that reminded me slightly of those pictures I've seen of the mountain paths in China.  Okay, so I'm exagerating, but it was quite the road.  What I didn't realize when we started out that it was at the cemetery where my great-great-grandfather and his wife are buried.  If I had known, I would have brought flowers.  I never had been to where they were buried before.   He was a Union Soldier in the Civil War, born in 1845. 

2. 

One we are still talking about is one someone planted right outside their house.  As we pulled up, someone asked if we were geocaching, and told us we were about 30 feet too far away.  The person who hid the cache was home and waved to us.  And since we were being watched, wouldn't you know it took us a good five minutes to find what should have been seen in seconds.    

3.

I think one of the most interesting things in my area is a rocket.   I can't help but wonder why, but it's there, as is a geocache.

4.

There is an overlook near where I live with a cross.  I have always thought, "How high!  I'd never be able to climb that!"  But I did!  

5. 

This one was sad to find in the condition we found it in.  We think some non-geocachers got into it and left it like this.  But not the way to leave a geocache for others.  I thought it was cool because some school kids left it for others to find.  There is also a neat bush near the geocache, and my boyfriend posed by it.

6.  

A more unusual container I ran across this week was a mailbox.   It was on the side of a building and they received their mail at the road so there is no confusion.

7.  


There was nothing too notable about this one. . . unless you count the beauty of nature.  

For more Quick Takes Friday, visit www.conversiondiary.com and learn more about Jenifer Fulwiler's book  Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found Itthat was recently published.

Spring Clean Your Cellphone

FTC disclaimer:  I am part of the U.S. Cellular Blogger Brigade and this is a sponsored post.

For a FREE U.S. Cellular Parent Child agreement about cell phone and Internet usage click here. This is a great guide to start talking to your tween or teen about the responsibilities that come with having a cell phone such as limits, safety, and more.

Everyone knows spring is when you should clean, right?  The sun starts warming the earth and the whole world comes out of hibernation.  People are cleaning their yards getting them ready for the coming summer.

The Sting of Mother's Day

I can remember when I was growing up Mom used to talk about the church she grew up in.  On Mother's Day every woman got a flower.  (Bravo!   Do you know how many women  hate Mother's Day because they want children and can't have them?  That church was doing something right to celebrate ALL women on Mother's Day.)  Except -- if your mother was alive you got a flower of one color.  If she was deceased you got a flower of another.  Can you imagine the first year you had to choose a flower of the "deceased" color?   That would bring the pain of her death right back to you.

photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Then there are the churches who give a gift to a mother.  I visited a church a few years ago on Mother's Day and was handed a Mother's Day gift.  I hung my head and said I wasn't a mother.   (I have always wanted to wait until marriage for children.  Because I am not married -- in a huge part because I was taking care of my mother as her health failed -- I am dismissed on Mother's Day.)  The greeter smiled at me and said, "Take it anyway."  Know how happy that made me?  It wasn't the trinket he pressed into my hand, but it felt like he was saying, "It's okay.  You're valuable, too.  And I don't want to make you remember the pain of a loss you never have had."

What about the gifts of "Oldest mother present" (Who likes to tell their age), "Youngest mother present" (often times a baby herself), "Mother with the most children"  (remember there are those who have lost children either by miscarriage or by childhood disease or accident -- please don't bring up that pain).  

Another time I was in church on Mother's Day and the pastor was giving a sermon about how mothers are so important and they can influence their children.  He was emphasizing this just a little too strongly, I thought.  Yes, mothers have influence, but sometimes the best mothers can have a wayward son.  During the sermon -- until she left because she was sobbing -- was the mother of a child who wasn't in church.  The sermon made her feel like a failure.

Is it important to honor mothers?  YES!  It it important to honor women?   YES!  Are there women who want to be mothers who aren't?  YES! 

So, please, as you are thinking of Mother's Day celebrations at church, remember those who might be feeling pain on this day and plan your celebration accordingly.  Why not give a small gift to all women and talk about the mothering spirit?  Or even not mention earthly mothers and make the focus on Mary, the Mother of Jesus.  Even if we don't have children, she is someone all women could aspire to be more like her. 

Just please remember those who might find pain in this holiday.