Apartment Life #385

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that have gone on in and around my apartment complex and in my neighborhood in the past 27 years that I've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 27 years here in a weekly blog post.

Last year my apartment manager hired contractors to paint my apartment complex. It was a complete fiasco which I talked about in this post. If you haven't read it, it's funny because I was sealed in my apartment and had to break out to take the dog out. At that time they took all the building numbers off the buildings and it took months of complaining to get maintenance to glue building numbers back on the buildings. Well they probably should have nailed or screwed those numbers to the buildings because the glue they used isn't sticking too well in this heat we're having and the numbers are falling off.

Here's the missing number on the ground. They used a bunch of glue but it melted in our scorching heat and didn't stick too well.

I had wondered why there were no building numbers out front for the back buildings. Well I just realized that these idiots put the back building numbers on the back of the buildings facing the alley. Now who is going to drive down the alley to find a building number? I see the ambulances, fire engines, Door Dash, Amazon and other delivery trucks driving up and down the street several times looking for building numbers that aren't facing the street. And yes, I know this building looks like a jail with the security bars on the window. That's the laundry room and they had to do that to keep the homeless people from breaking the window and breaking in to the laundry room to do drugs and passing out in there. 

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I know you can't see the dog very well but I circled him in red. I was walking past the pool courtyard in my complex and saw two homeless ladies in the pool. One of them had her dog out there as well. (One of these days I will get a better camera lol)

The homeless people around here have been treating the pool like a bathtub recently. Bathing themselves and their dogs. They can get in because someone in this courtyard took a handsaw to the pool lock and broke it open. Management doesn't care, they've been informed. When I walked out there to check the mail, one lady was picking the scabs off the other lady's back while they were sitting in the pool. I don't use the pool and I see the pool cleaner out there every week but eww. No thank you. 

The high this week was 102F/38C

The low this week was 78F/25C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.

Saturday Vittles

 

My Daughter and I are trying to eat more healthy so I thought I would share some pictures on Saturday's of what we've made.

I made a couple of new recipes for dinner this night. This is roasted chicken breast with berry & tomato salad and stuffed mushrooms. 

Berry & Tomato Salad

This one is easy! Just combine 1/4 cup raspberries, 1/4 blueberries, 1/2 cup chopped strawberries and 1 chopped tomato. Add the juice of one lemon and mix. This was so good and refreshing. 

Mozzarella and Spinach Stuffed Mushrooms

You will need: 

8 White Button mushrooms

1/2 yellow onion- chopped

2 cups fresh spinach

1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/2 tsp. Garlic Powder

1/2 tsp. McCormick Montreal Steak seasoning

Salt and pepper to taste

1 tsp. butter

What to do:

Remove stems from mushrooms and chop them up. Add them to a saute pan with the butter. Add diced onion and other seasonings. Saute until onions are soft. 

Use a spoon and enlarge the hole in the mushroom where the stem was. Just a little. 

Wash and chop the spinach into small pieces. Add it to the saute pan. Cook until all the water is gone. Remove from heat and add the onion mixture to a bowl, let sit for 5 minutes to cool. Then add the mozzarella cheese and stir well until combined. 

Spoon a little of the mixture into each mushroom and place in a baking pan. Bake at 350F for 15 minutes. 

The calories for 3 slices of chicken breast, 1 cup of berry salad and 4 stuffed mushroom's is 350 and it's only about 10 carbs. 

Would you eat this?

Book Review: Mated to the Mountain Bear by Reece Barden

 

Book Description

ZARA

My stalker destroyed my life. My grumpy mountain man protector is about to ruin me for anyone else.

Running to a remote cabin wasn't part of the plan. Neither was the massive, silent man who opens the door, all dark eyes, muscly arms, and barely concealed irritation at having his solitude interrupted.

Ben Lennox doesn't want me here, and he makes that crystal clear with every growl, glare, and gruff one-word answer.

Too bad I'm stranded here, stuck with a man who hasn't had a houseguest in years and treats every conversation like torture.

But the longer I'm forced to stay, the more I realise Ben isn't all he seems.

I should be terrified of the danger hunting me. Instead, I'm terrified of how safe I feel in Ben's arms. How right this cabin feels like home. How much I want to stay.

BEN

She talks too much. Touches everything. Fills my silent world with chaos. She's also mine.

My bear knew it the second Zara walked through my door, this sweet but noisy woman who doesn't belong in my world of isolation and secrets. I've spent years keeping everyone out. Then my brother dumps her here. Terrified. Running from danger and needing protection.

Now she's wearing my clothes. Sleeping in my bed. Eating my food. And making me want things I can't have.

Because I know what I am.

She thinks she's hiding from a monster, but she has no idea her presence has awakened one. And I'll tear apart anyone who tries to take her from me.

Forced proximity meets fated mates in this scorching shifter romance. Standalone, no cliffhangers, guaranteed HEA

My Review

Zara's sister has been missing for a few weeks and now someone is stalking Zara. When she realizes that someone's in her apartment, she runs but not before she spots a dark outline of a man in her window who tells her not to run. After running into a diner and asking for help, the two police officers who are there check out her apartment but can find no signs that anyone was there. No one believes her once again. So she calls Lennox Private Security, a phone number someone gave her and told her might be able to keep her safe and he comes to get her within a few minutes. 

Beau picks her up and decides to take her her to his brothers cabin in the woods where he knows she'll be safe while he can look into the stalker. When Beau gets to Ben's cabin, Ben is not happy, he's a loner but he agrees to let Zara stay with him for a few days while his brothers work her case. 

Ben's cabin is out in the middle of the woods, no TV, no Wi-fi and no cell service. So they just have each other to keep them company. The sexual tension between these two was off the charts especially once Ben realizes that Zara is his mate. Ben is a Bear shifter and Zara is a human who knows nothing about shifters. So he doesn't think that it could possibly work between them so even though he wants her, he keeps his distance and she tries to even though she's completely infatuated with him. 

When Zara's stalker doesn't stop looking for her there's a huge twist about him. Oh what a good twist, sad though. I won't say more about that. You'll just have to read this one to find out more. 

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. 

Disclosure: I was given an ARC copy of this book via the author but all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Amazon

Book Review: Flint by Eva Kent

 

Book Description

I came to Penfell Heights to escape my cruel alpha—not to find a new one. But fate has other plans for my wolf and I.

After years in a forced marriage to the alpha of the Moon Falls pack, I escaped with my life—but barely. Now I’m broke, on the run, and being hunted, but at least I’m free. I need a job, a place to live, and time to heal—and when I end up in Penfell Heights, a tiny fishing town with suspicious townsfolk and protected by a motorcycle club made up of bear shifters called the Blood Brotherhood, I think maybe I’ve found exactly that.

Flint, the club alpha, seems willing to offer me that same protection. Why, I don’t know exactly, but it can’t be out of anything other than the kindness of his heart. After all, he’s a bear shifter and I’m a wolf—and I’m not looking for love, or anything else. It doesn’t matter if Flint’s handsome face and huge—muscles make me feel things I’ve never felt before, or if he calls to me in a way that not even my wolf alpha ever could. It doesn’t matter if he makes my heart race.

I’m on the run. Penfell Heights is supposed to be a stop on the way, not my forever. But fate might have different ideas. And when my past catches up to me, it might be Flint who turns out to be my savior, after all.

My Review

Layla is a wolf shifter who escapes her alpha who forced her to mate him. He is cruel and abusive and she's hurt when she escapes. She finds herself in Penfell heights just to stop long enough to get something to eat and rest for a little while. But things take a strange turn when she meets the alpha there and has feelings for him right away. 

Flint is the alpha of Penfell Heights and realizes after he meets Layla that she's his mate. So even though he knows that she's in danger and probably running from something or someone and that might put his pack in danger, he talks her into staying in town and taking a job. 

The only problem is the pack isn't very welcoming and they really don't like strangers so they weren't very nice to her. I really didn't like most of them. The other problem is Flint is part of a motorcycle club that might be doing some illegal things. Flint is also a bear shifter so the pack is worried that wolf and bear shifters might not get along all that well. 

I didn't really like Layla or Flint and I really didn't like most of the townspeople who were less than understanding. Layla had been abused but she jumps right into feelings and a relationship with Flint because her body responded to him? No. Plus she stayed in a place that she was clearly unwelcome? Again, no. She should have left and gone someplace else. Flint kept stringing Marilyn along even after meeting Layla? No thank you. These people were not likable. 

When Layla's past some knocking it brings danger with it. 

The first half of the book was so slow and even though I can read a book really fast this one took me a few days because the story was just lagging for me. The better part of the book was the ending since things really ramped up and got better. 

I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. 

Amazon

Favorite Picture of the Week

 

We tried a few new foods that my daughter found at the store. So I thought I would share them with you. 

What we have are Pickled Brussels Sprouts

Pickled Quail Eggs

Pickled Asparagus

Now if you like pickles and/or pickled foods, you would probably like these items. I like most pickled vegetables so I thought these were pretty good. The pickled asparagus was probably the best thing though. You can tell from the half empty jars that we've been eating them. lol 

Have you eaten any of these pickled foods?

Everyone Has A Story, Here's One of Mine

 

I've been thinking of writing an autobiography or memoir but it just never comes together for me but I figured if I write one story at a time and post it on my blog maybe once a month, I can do that. Maybe one day I'll pull all the stories together and put them in a book but for now I'll just share some stories with you about my childhood and into adulthood. Some of the stories will be happy, some sad and some horrific because that was my childhood. But they will all be real, things that actually happened. If it seems like something that people enjoy reading maybe I'll keep it going. These stories will not be in any kind of order, I'll just write them as they come to me.

Riding The Greyhound Bus at 16

After my mom got out of prison for drugs and child abuse, Buster (my grandma's husband) asked her if she would move to West Virginia and help him take care of grandma. At that point my mom was clean of drugs and alcohol and hadn’t gotten back together with her ex boyfriend, Jose. I talked to my mom quite often on the phone and kept telling her what was going on where we lived with my dad and step mother. Things were bad as I've said in past stories. 

She and Buster both told me that if we wanted they would send us a Greyhound bus ticket for both me and my brother. I was 16 and my brother was 14 at the time. Anything sounded better than where we were at so I told her to send it. But I asked her if she could send a little money too so I could buy stuff to make sandwiches for us for the seven day bus trip. She did so I made my brother and I three sandwiches a piece for each day of the trip and bought some sodas as well. My dad let me use one of his coolers to put it all in and even bought a bag of ice for me. My dad actually told me how sorry he was for how they were while we lived with them and blamed it all on the meth but I knew that while the drugs played a big part of the problems, his personality was a big part of the problem too. I was surprised that he apologized at all but it was nice that he did. My stepmother never did but I’m not really surprised by that. 

So my brother and I took a Greyhound bus from Van Nuys, California to Guyandotte, West Virginia and it took 7 days and 6 night in all to get there. But because we had the sandwiches and sodas, we never had to get off the bus except for a couple of layovers. The layovers were never too long, one was in Chicago but we were only in the bus terminal for about 2 hours before we were able to get back on the bus and get going again. But I had a 14 year old teenager with me that I had to look after and my brother found another teenage boy in the bus terminal and just went exploring with the boy for 2 hours. It was hard making him stay with me and stay out of trouble for those 7 days and nights. Thankfully we were on the bus for most of the time. 

If you’ve never ridden the Greyhound bus, they stop three times a day at restaurants for meals. Most everyone else got off the bus so we were able to eat in peace and no one ever said anything to us about not going to the restaurants. For the most part it was a really quiet trip. I had no idea how bad things were about to get though. Buster picked us up from the bus terminal and took us home. My mom was really happy to see us and I was happy to see her and my grandma. 

That night I was helping my mom make dinner. She handed me Buster and my grandma’s plate and asked me to bring it to them. They ate in the living room in front of the tv while my mom told us we would be eating at the table in the kitchen. When I got back in the kitchen I heard a loud crash from the living room and then Buster started screaming about me not bringing the salt and pepper shakers in with the plates. The crash was him throwing his glass of water against the wall. I looked at my mom in total shock because she never mentioned that things were going to be bad living with Buster. Had I known, I’m not sure I would have come but that’s probably why she didn’t say anything. After I brought the salt and pepper shakers to Buster he said he was sorry about the outburst but that was just the beginning. Buster was drinking a lot but he tried to take care of my grandma who had brain damage from oxygen depravation from complications due to having a stroke after open heart surgery. I've talked about Buster before, he was a real piece of work.

Links to past stories

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Happy Raturday!

 

*Todays pictures are courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

Apartment Life #384

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that have gone on in and around my apartment complex and in my neighborhood in the past 27 years that I've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 27 years here in a weekly blog post.

One day last week the police showed up for the apartment complex right across the street. I didn't get any pictures because they were in the alley. Then that night the fire department showed up and again they went in the alley so I didn't get any pictures. Then the next day the police showed up again for the same apartment complex across the street and they parked in the alley. Then last Friday night the fire department and an ambulance showed up because the homeless people set a fire in the dumpster across the street. 

It was hard to get a clear picture of the fire truck because the lights on it are so bright.

But you can see it's the fire engine.

They put the dumpster fire out in the alley.

And then they decided to do an impromptu training session on my street. They had the hose hooked up to the fire hydrant and took turns holding the hose and spraying water down the street while the firefighter on the right, behind the truck took pictures and video of them doing it. 

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There's a older couple that lives across the street and they have a truck. When they leave this parking spot, they put this cone in the street to stop others from parking there. 

While it's kinda funny, it's also kinda rude. Most people in the neighborhood know that they think this is their spot and let them have it. But when new people move here, they will sometimes take the spot. 

This is the older couples truck. When they park there, they put the stolen traffic cone in the back of their truck. 

The high this week was 100F/37C

The low this week was 78F/25C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.

Saturday Vittles

 

My Daughter and I are trying to eat more healthy so I thought I would share some pictures on Saturday's of what we've made.

Eggs in Tomatoes

You will need: 

1 Large Tomato- diced

1/2 Yellow onion- diced

1 Green onion- diced

Garlic salt

Onion powder

Pepper

Salt

2 Pieces of toast

1 tsp. Oil

4 eggs

What to do: 

Add oil to a non-stick pan. Add diced onion and let cook over medium heat for ten minutes or until soft. Add diced tomatoes and cook for an additional 5 minutes until tomatoes are softened. Add spices to taste. 

Add eggs on top of the tomato mixture, one at a time. Add a lid to the pan and cook for 1-2 minutes or until the eggs are done to your liking. Sprinkle diced green onion on top of eggs. Serve with a piece of buttered toast. 

Each serving is 400 calories and 25 carbs.

The Sunflower

 

Every year my daughter plants something different in her little patch of garden that she made in front of our apartment. This year she wanted to grow a couple of sunflowers. 

It didn't take long for the stems to get really long.

Some of them grew and some didn't.

But this week, we have a sunflower blooming. The plants in the little pot were wild flowers but most of them died before they bloomed. I think it was too hot. 

Book Review: The Merman King's Bride by Mona Black

 

Book Description

A twist in the tale of the beast with a rugged merman and a princess who isn't sure she wants to save him... at first!

A cursed King of Faerie

A princess betrothed to a man she doesn't love

A kiss that will change everything...

The last thing Princess Selina expects to find in the lake in the woods is a handsome merman. His name is Adar and he saves her, teases her, kisses her, and tells her she could break his curse.

Because, as it turns out, he's a Fae King, cursed to remain in merman form until he finds a princess to kiss him.

But one kiss is not enough and Selina has other problems.

Such getting engaged to a prince she isn't sure she even likes, let alone loves. Marrying him and having his children is not on her list of favorite things.

And now she's falling for the merman.

He's everything she could wish for in a man. Handsome, protective, kind. Except that he is Fae. And has a fishtail.

Still, she can't stop thinking about him. Keeps going back to him. Craves his kisses.

Would gladly have his babies.

Is this a spell, or is it love? Can she break the curse and save Adar? Will there be a happy ending to their story?

All a girl can do is try. After all, true love is worth fighting for and Selina knows she has found it.

*This book is standalone novella-length NA romance fantasy. It is inspired by Little Mermaid and The Frog Prince.*

This book was previously published as "The Opal Tower".

My Review

Princess Selina is to be betrothed to Prince Iason but she doesn't love him. When she loses the gift he sent her as a betrothal gift, she must make her way back into the dangerous woods to find it but she instead finds a fae merman and he has her pendant. In order to get her pendant back, she makes a deal with this merman to kiss him in order to break the curse his brother put on him. But it doesn't work right away so she has to come back and kiss him again. 

Since the fae are not to be trusted, Selina is wary of him at first but in time she grows to really care for him and wants to help him break the curse, they just aren't sure how. In the meantime her parents and Prince Iason's parents are making plans for Selina and Iason to be engaged and married. Iason turns out not to be the nicest of guys and Selina knows for sure she doesn't want to marry him but that angers him and her parents. 

Iason shows his true colors but so does Adar- the fae King merman so Selina knows she has feelings for Adar and must save him from Iason or her people. The ending was great. I'm so happy that Selina and Adar got their happy ending and I really liked the description on how pretty the fae kingdom was. 

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

Amazon

Favorite Picture of the Week

 

My daughter decided that the kitchen needed more cabinet space, I needed a new desk, the walls needed a new color and just needed something new. This was my old 'desk'. It was really just a table with a bench seat on top of it as a shelf. 

We had a white dresser in the corner of the kitchen for stuff that we didn't have other cabinet space for. We have very little cabinet or shelf space in this apartment so things were always cluttered. So she started buying cabinets to put together *The boxes in the back* and bought some paint.

I took some pictures of the before so you could see what it looks like now. I was making dinner when I took this picture so don't mind the dirty pans on the stove.

We had one microwave cart that we stacked too much stuff on. 

This is the kitchen now with the back wall painted a dark green and 3 new shelving units. So much more space to put stuff.

This cabinet replaced the big white dresser.

It even has lights inside it. We're still moving things and figuring out where to put everything.

I like the color of the kitchen now. And the new shelving units are so nice. We still have to declutter that shelf in between the cabinets over the sink. 

And my daughter bought me a new desk. An actual desk. I love it. We still have a few things to do like buy new curtains. The ones hanging there are about 25 years old. My daughter has a small shelf to hang on the wall where she wants to put some plants on it too. So we're not completely done but this is how it looks so far. I like how much more shelf space we have now.

Book Review: Mercy by Elizabeth Knox

 

Book Description

Death came for me, but he had other plans.

Meghan

I was never one to believe much in fate, but all of that changed when I was sharing a hospital room with Tor.

I was hit over the head by a clubwh*re rat who tried to kill me, and he was shot keeping the club kids safe. Who knew the two of us would create a bond within those hospital walls?

Certainly not me.

Tor was the President's son, and he was a couple of years younger than me. I shouldn't have flirted with him, but I did, and one thing led to another.

But, after nearly dying, I knew I wanted a life away from the club. I didn't want to put my life at risk ever again, and the club understood that.

Things got complicated when I fell for Tor, and leaving him would mean ripping my heart into shreds. I never expected him to follow me and fight for our love, but at the end of the day I couldn't go back, and he wouldn't leave.

***Mercy is the prequel to USA Today Bestselling author, Elizabeth Knox's Raiders of Valhalla MC: New Blood. It is set at the end of the original series, right as Savage ends. This is part one of a two part story between Meghan and Tor. The second story is titled Manic, and is where they will officially get their HEA.

Please note, this is intended for mature audiences only and might have some triggering subjects. 

My Review

Meghan and Tor both belong to a motorcycle club and while I like MC stories at times, this one had too many things about it that I didn't like. The biggest thing I didn't like was the fact that this motorcycle club had club wh*res. They seemed like they were treated like the clubs property and when one of the women attacks Meghan and almost kills her, she doesn't want to come back to the clubhouse. But the members and other women kind of push her to come back. 

Meghan has secrets, secrets that she tries to run away from but it doesn't work and she should have been truthful with Tor and his father is she really wanted to be with him. But instead she says nothing, which was a bad move that comes back to bite her in the butt. 

This book ends in a cliffhanger but I knew that it would from the description. This is a prequel for Manic where Tor and Meghan get their HEA. I have not read that book and after reading this one, I doubt I will. 

I didn't like Meghan. She lies by omission because she's scared of her past but that's not a good enough excuse for me. Maybe I'm not up enough on the whole MC culture but the others that I've read didn't have MC wh*res. They had girlfriends and old ladies/wives. I like that better. I don't want to read a MC story where there are club wh*res, I found that distasteful. The fact the men are ok with passing around the women don't put these guys in a good light for me either. But that's just me. 

I had good hopes for this one but it fell flat for me. 

I give this book 1 out of 5 stars.

Amazon

Happy Raturday!

 

*All pictures this week are courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

Apartment Life #383

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that have gone on in and around my apartment complex and in my neighborhood in the past 27 years that I've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 27 years here in a weekly blog post.

So I wanted to show you a fence. This is what the fence across the street that you can use as a reference for what it's supposed to look like in comparison to the next pictures. 

I had my camera up and noticed that this guy who lives across the street was demolishing this fence across the street. At first he was waving around a knife and then he dug a hole to bury the knife but then dug another hole and then another hole and finally buried the knife. So I started watching him because that's not suspicious at all.!

He knocked over a bunch of the bricks and the blue fence and then dug another hole behind it in front of the bush that's sitting there.

And then this dude took a break from demolishing the fence, went in his apartment, came out with 2 cups, dug yet another hole and buried what he had in the cups. 

Then he went over to this fence and tried to break this one too. 

And then he went back in his apartment, came back with something else in his hand,  he dug another hole and buried what he had in his hand. I told my daughter that I took pictures in case the police showed up looking for a murder weapon or someone's body parts? Am I paranoid? Yes. But look where I live and this guy was acting all kinds of weird. It happened last Saturday but maybe he was just high or something because nothing ever came of it. 

This is what the fence looked like after he was done with it. 

He did a number on it for whatever reason.

He had a big rock and was just smashing it all to pieces.

I think the owner is going to be mad.

The next day I went to take pictures of the destruction and found a dime bag of weed right in the spot where he had been digging one of the holes. Yes, the bag has a dime in it for some weird reason. I wonder if all the holes have weed in them. lol Or if this is just a weird coincidence.

Was he just high?

Was he burying something illegal?

Was that knife a murder weapon?

Are there more drugs buried in the holes?

Did the fence insult him and had the demolishing coming to it?

Come back next week for answers to these questions and more, on another episode of...As The Apartment Burns!

The high this week was 108F/42C

The low this week was 80F/26C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.