Cheryl Beckham

I actually got up on water skis and managed to hang on for a good 5 minutes or so, this has been a long time a coming. I went for a week end visit at my brother’s summer beach house, where he has all of his water toys at hand and we had ourselves a blast this time around, and the weather was perfect the whole time for a change.

I have always enjoyed water sports, swimming, boating, rafting, fishing, tubing, but have never been able to get myself up and out of the water each time that I have attempted to water ski, so this came as a big surprise and helped end the summer on a high note! And one of my nieces got the whole thing on video to be shown, I’m sure, during one of the family holiday season get togethers that will be here soon, ugh…

All most all of the houses on my street have some sort of vegetable garden growing in their side and back yards, I do believe that I am the only one that doesn’t have much of anything growing in my yard, besides some crab grass and a few trees and some bushes here and there. I’ve never been one to get into the landscaping aspect of my land, but I do enjoy seeing all of the nice landscaping jobs that people have been piling a lot of their time and money on, all across the neighborhoods.

This afternoon, I answered the backdoor, to find a neighborhood kid with a basket of home grown vegetables that his parents had asked him to deliver to me. It seems that they have an over abundance of their produce and are nice enough to bring over to share with me. I like neighbors like that, not really used to being friendly with neighbors, never stayed any where long enough to get to know anybody and the ones that seem to approach me, in most cases, are the whacked out, messed up, druggie kind of neighbor, the kind that you would want to avoid, not get friendly with, that is for sure.

I do the majority of my grocery shopping at our local Food Lion, they seem to have the cheapest prices for the items that I buy regularaly. There is a few things that I can’t seem to get Food Lion to carry for me, so once in a while I will need to make a side trip to either Martins (owned by Giant and very expensive) or go to Wal-Mart, ugh, I’m not a big Wal-Mart fan and dread having to go there.

I have seen for the past month or so that Food Lion has a huge bin over flowing with brand new books at a discounted price and as much as I love to read, it takes a huge discount for me to purchase any book. I get most of my reading material from places that give them away or go to the used book store to find my bargains. The price of a brand new book is totally outrageous, I can’t even remember the last time I bought a book at full retail price.

But back to Food Lion’s book offering, today I had to make a mid week grocery run and I noticed that the book bin was almost empty, and they had a sign stating that the remaining books were being sold for 75% off of the already discounted price. With that being said, I stopped and took a look to see what was left over and was glad to find two new hard covered books that needed to come home with me and only paid $1.50 for each one, and I’m pleased with my purchase and will go back again on Friday and take another look see.

A customer of mine brought me some fresh crab meat (2 pounds of it) at work last night, along with a sample of and a recipe for the most amazing tasting crab cakes that I have had the pleasure of cooking tasting.

I’m looking forward to trying out the recipe tonight and testing it out on a few friends that I have invited over to play cards with tonight. I’m sure that they will all be surprised that I actually cooked something for our night of card playing, usually the best that they get around here is chips and dip, maybe a few fresh veggies or fruit, but never any type of home cooking.

I am gladly passing this recipe on to you to try if and when you get your hands on some delicious crab meat.

• 1 Tbl. Mayo
• 1 Tbl. Mustard
• 1 Egg
• 1/2 Cup Bread Crumbs
• 1/2 Tbl. Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 small Onion (finely diced)
• 1 Pound of Fresh Crab Meat

This one is real simple, combine all the ingrediants, salt and pepper to taste and fry the made up patties in hot oil.

This was a tough July for me, I have felt like crap almost every single day due to my allergies.  I even called my doctor and had him switch prescriptions to see if it would bring me any relief, but I have seen no improvement and I called once again and left his office a message late Friday asking for another brand of allergy medicine can be prescribed once again, I’m feeling rather desperate at this point.

We have had a hot and humid summer, with the month of July not having much rainfall to wash all the nasty pollens out of the air that often helps with allergy suffering folks like myself. We started the spring and summer with tons of rain, but all that ended right after the 4th of July festivities were all over and done with.

So I have spent most of this summer inside the house with the air conditioner and air cleaners going full blast, my summer hasn’t turned out quite the way that I planned it to. Although I am getting a lot of things done around the house that have been begging for my attention and getting a good amount of reading done that I always seem to enjoy and don’t ever seem to have enough time to really get into.

I hope the doctor calls me on Monday in a timely fashion and maybe he will come up with another brand of medicine that will so me some good. And I pray that August will be not as difficult on my well being.