On the Porch
Onisha Ellis
Well, here we are in February already.
Over Christmas we were blessed with a ten day visit with our daughter.We made low carb cookies and candies together. Working together in the kitchen is one of my great joys.
My mother and I did the same. In her later years mom and I would sit at the kitchen table and chop up pork for Eastern North Carolina style barbecue, peel potatoes and snap green beans together.
But I digress..
We have very poor cell service at our place in Western North Carolina. My cell phone uses wi-fi assist to make phone calls. When we tried to activate that on my husband’s phone it wasn’t there.Assuming we were simply not tech savvy enough, we went to the Verizon store for help.
Many attempts by the Verizon employee failed.
But wait! There’s more.
You guessed it. Verizon had a new and better service plan for us and would throw in a new iPhone.
After 4 hours of the salesman juggling numbers, adding and deleting phones, we left with one new phone, a new plan and exhausted. It was worse than buying a car.
Of course it didn’t end there. We spent the first part of January deciphering strange and exorbitant bills and oh, I forgot to mention, we also had to get the Verizon Visa to take advantage of $20.00 credit on bill, Like we needed or wanted another card.
Next came the big Verizon outage.We were leaving a visit to a neurosurgeon in Orlando when I noticed my phone was in SOS mode. I thought the problem was my phone and began checking all the settings.
The SOS message set off a mini PTSD moment from Hurricane Helene days.
None of the “fixes” put out by Verizon eliminated the problem. Apple tech told me the fix but said it was up to Verizon to do it. Too stressful to write about but it was finally resolved. Hours of my life gone.
Next up- The brutal winter weather in the Southeast.
The frontal rains of the first cold front was moving in the day we planned to return to Florida.
We staged our belongings at the garage door and waited for the rain to slack off. My husband was anxious to get started. As soon as the rain lightened, we threw our belongings in the truck.
We were fortunate to only travel around 100 miles before the rain stopped. When we arrived at our Air BnB we unloaded our overnight items then found a place for supper.
Meanwhile, the weather reports for the cold front in North Carolina were looking ominous. Not much snow but major ice and power outages.
We were concerned about our water pipes, but decided it was foolish to be worrying. The pipes and our house were in God/s hand.
Thankfully, there was no damage except a tree leaning toward my husbands shop at the bottom of our property
A few days later, a rare snow storm arrived. We are in a valley town and the snow tends to go around us. Not this time. Our neighbor said we received around 8 1 /2 inches. Due to the extreme cold the snow melt turned to ice. We are glad we missed that. Once again thankful that our home experienced no damage.
To our surprise the cold weather actually made its way into Florida. Some areas had snow flurries!
Yesterday was gorgeous and walking the granddad was delightful.
January wasn’t all stress, of course. But I think it is why the month seemed to fly.
The month ended with a special evening event. So much fun and the fireworks were spectacular!
Did January whiz by as fast for you as it did for me?
After my retirement, I decided to re-learn the canning and preserving skills I learned from my mother. I hadn’t practiced them for twenty years. I titled the blog Old Things R New to chronicle my experience. Since then I have been blessed to have six other bloggers join me, DiVoran Lites, Bill Lites, Judy Wills, Louise Gibson, Janet Perez Eckles and Melody Hendrix
In addition to blogging, I’m a general “mom Friday” for my author daughter, Rebekah Lyn. I also manage her website, Rebekah Lyn Books
My 2025 goal is continue to use my love of photographs and words to be an encourager on social media.
Old Things R New 