First Day of Fall

 

I had the most yummy salad today for lunch.  It was chopped lettuce and greens with an egg, cold salmon, cherry tomatoes and a sprinkle of edemame and toasted pumpkin seeds.  Plus I crushed up a handful of tortilla chips and a tiny sprinkle of crunchy jalepeno crisps.  Now I need a nap.

We turned off our AC finally this week.  I have a new fountain (I will post pictures next week).  So, now we can enjoy the fountain sounds even from inside our house.  But I keep thinking that either it is raining or that I left some water running somewhere, LOL.  It is in the high 70's during the day, maybe just into the low 80's and in the 50's at night.  Nice weather!  I opened all the windows and ran around and cleaned all the window sills, they get so yucky.  Dirt and flies.  Ew, too much information.  Esp on the north side of the house, the moisture.  The north side of our house now looks really nice since I scrubbed off the mildew this summer.  We are also getting a nice steady rain today and the humidity is 93%.  I scrubbed the range hood really good this morning and worked up quite a good sweat.  Speaking of sweat, I sat in my office all afternoon yesterday and was comfortable without even opening a window, but when i did yoga last night in the sitting room and the door closed to keep out the dogs, I was really sweating and started shaking, thinking what is wrong with me - then i realized - we turned off the AC Sunday!

I have been having so much trouble with my right knee!  Then I lowered my desk chair - it is already better.  It has been so bad for a couple of weeks i was thinking of making a doctor's appointment.  Now that I am working and back to sitting up to 8 - 10 hours a day, it really makes a huge difference!

We finally got our new bed.  We are loving all the room we have now, going from queen to king.  It isn't as crowed as i had feared.  I really want to get rid of the side tables and attach lamps over the headboard on the wall, but DH thinks he needs his drawers for storage.  Maybe next spring i will work on convincing him.  For now, i am just enjoying having essentially my own bed - we went for the twin base, and we can move the head or the foot up.  I love watching tv in bed, so i LOVE our new bed.  

I caught a cute picture of my 2 chi's sitting on my lap yesterday.  It is rare to catch them close to each other.  They like the 2 big dogs more than they like each other.  Chihuahuas are sort of temperamental...shoking huh?  I had to just look up how to spell temperamental, I had no idea the first A was in there!

The other evening, we went for a ride in the convertible to enjoy the pretty weather.  We were a little late getting back, after dog feeding time.  DH says, well Penny (the big pup) will be chewing on something by now!  Sure enough, we get home and she got into my yard and there was a single strand of yard going from the living room, out the back doggie door, through the patio area, out the fence and strewn all around our back yard!

Sure am loving this bit of rain.  Save me from watering this week before i have to drive up to the city.  I worked Sunday so that i could take off Friday to go up and help my aunt move my grandmother.  She is moving into an apartment right next door to my aunt, so my aunt can take care of her.  At 101 she still insists on living alone, so i hope this works out.  It will still be a lot on my aunt making sure her mother eats.  But, it is what they have decided and i am being supportive.  I am helping pack/move Friday, then picking apples at my former colleague's farm, then Sunday my sister will join us to help organize/unpack after.  The movers are moving big stuff Saturday - not much just a few chairs and bed/dressers.  I will be happy to get it over with - not nearly as happy at grandmother and aunt!

This is a picture of our weeping blue atlas cedar that we planted where we took out the huge crepe myrtle.  

before

after

Well, enjoy your first day of Fall!  See you next week.

It's September but Still Feels Like August

 So, I am not sure exactly what i was so busy doing last week, but it did seem like i was busy everyday with more than just work...that last weekend after my last post my sister and i ran up to the city to see my Grandmother.  All we could do was sit outside and so we brought our own chairs and planned to just be able to visit with her 1 person at a time, but the woman working the front desk let my sister and i visit with her in the lobby and my aunt was there too.  My Grandmother is looking good, alert, but very thin.  My aunt said she was down to about 93 pounds.  She is very small anyway - like 4'11".  But she was in pretty good spirits and enjoyed the visit.  It was awful not getting to hug her.  I took her choc chip cookies and tomatoes.

Then we finally broke down last week and subscribed to Dish satellite TV.  I figured as long as I am working and with winter coming and continued numbers of Covid 19 increasing in my state, we will just pretty much plan on staying home and staying safe, so let's get something to watch on TV!  I do have a couple of driving roadtrips and a couple of long weekend kayaking/hiking trips with a small group, but DH will appreciate having something to watch.  We had that done Wednesday and the Dish customer service setting up the service and the technician who came out and did the wiring and setup was great.  So far, we are really enjoying it.

Then, we got a wild hair and decided to get a king size bed and sell our Queen - so we did that last week.  We ordered our king - and decided while we were at it to get the adjustable kind - i LOVE watching tv and reading in bed.  So, we had some back and forth with the bed store saying the bed was on backorder, no it's coming tomorrow!  Etc.  So we sold our old bed quickly to get it out of the way and the couple paid for it last Thursday on Venmo and then came to pick it up on Sat.  We also sold our guest room mattress (used less than 20 times) and will move our old tempurpedic into our guest room.  I will show picture next week and include my guest room makeover!  We got my Ikea order Monday last week and put the furniture together and finished the guest room Wed.  It looks so nice and i can store twice as much clothes.

The garden still producing tomatoes, i have made salsa and given several jars away.  I have had tacos, nachos and taco salad, made stewed tomatoes and put some in vegetable soup.  My peppers are still growing too, so i decided to dry some.  They were all green and now that they are drying, turning yellow and red.  Very pretty.

My sister and i talked plants and gardening while we were driving, so i am putting together a succulent sampler plant for her from my little growing collection.

My husband and i are both enjoying this cypress vine that is growing in the lava rocks behind my trash container, next to my ivy topiary.  It is also called Cardinal vine.  It is so fine and dainty, but it is anything but timid - once it grows, you will never get rid of it!  But it is pretty.

I really am loving my ivy topiaries.  One on each side of our shop/covered car port.  It was so much metal and concrete, we knew we wanted plants on each side to break up all that metal and concrete, it faces west, so i wanted something drought tollerant - plus i can leave it out there all year and it winters fine.

This is a picture of my sweet little girl chi, Chili.  She has such a cute face.  But she is not a friendly dog to strangers.  During the time the satelite installer and the people who bought the bed were here, we had to keep all the dogs outside and they were not crazy about that!  They are so spoiled!

Right now for the next week until our new bed arrives, we are sleeping on our old mattress, on the floor in our master bedroom - good luck keeping all the dogs off the bed right now!  It is only about 15 inches off the floor!  Even the 2 chi's can get right on it now.

Well, i guess i better get back to work.  No rest for me on this Labor Day, i am working so that i can take off this friday.  I am going kayaking with a couple of girlfriends about 4 hours away.  We are going Friday, Sat and a little float Sunday before we drive home.  It is going to be so fun!

I hope you are having a great Labor Day, and staying safe.  Maybe having something good to eat, on the grill or not.  I know thought it is hot and i am ready for cooler weather, I am not altogether ready for summer to go either.  See you next time.

Wednesdays with GM

Well I made an error in my first blog post ever.  I guess everyone refers to family members by initials.  So, I should have typed DH instead of husband.  I don't even know what the D stands for, 'dear'?  Anyway, it's a learning curve.  Today I am not nearly as talkative as I felt yesterday.  Maybe that is part of the curve.  Like, where to start...what to say...Today in the Midwest it is pretty warm for this time of the year, highs in the high 80's.  So, I actually enjoyed wearing a dress and sandals to work today, but with a jacket because it is always freezing cold at my office. 

After work on Wed I usu go visit my 98 year old grandmother.  GM I guess.  How lucky I feel to have a GM who is 98 years old.  I turned 50 this year.  My folks are both deceased.  Cancer.  I lost my mom early, she was in her 40's and I was in my 20's when she died.  This GM is my paternal GM.  My dad passed away 3 years ago.  So, after my dad passed, we moved GM away from my dad's city to the city where I live now.  My paternal aunt (PA), her daughter also lives here.  One of the people I will be very sad to move away from is GM.  When she moved here 3 years ago she never expected to be alive at 98.  I am glad she is, but I try to pray for God's will.  I was mindful of this this past spring and tried to come to terms with what He might have in store.  I pray my GM will not go through a long, protracted decline.  She got sick after having a surgery in March, just before her 98th birthday and for a few weeks, we really thought we were going to lose her.  It was a long spring.  She lives alone in an independent living facility.  Her meals are fixed for her and her apartment is cleaned/linens washed.  She does her own personal laundry.  She likes books on tape and baseball.  She cannot hear or see well so her quality of life has diminished a lot.  She has a lot of friends who visit and call her.  This past year I have really seen this diminish too.  She gets anxious because she can't understand when people try to talk to her and when she asks people to speak up, often they just repeat what they said in the exact same tone.  I can imagine how frustrating that would be.  So, I go visit once a week and call at least once a week.  I wish I could do more, but she is about 50 miles from where I live on other side of the city.  My work is about 1/2 in between, so it is handy to go see her on Wed or Fri after work. On these days, I try to have DH dinner pre planned, because he does not cook and would resort to snacks and unhealthy stuff...or just eat nothing.  Ugggghhh.

Lately I am doing a stretch of OT at work and this has gone on since July.  I try to get an extra 5 to 10 hours a week on top of my usu 40.  It has helped me get a few things for retirement house (RH).  I bought a new window, a new stove and a new dishwasher.  More on RH later.  In my posts, I want to include something about what I am doing to prepare for that move.  Some days, it seems very little.  But, really just working and paying bills, saving and paying as we go for improvements/projects is as good as it gets, and for that I am grateful.  I also try to do at least one small project at city house (CH) a weekend while I am in town.  We go to RH about once or twice a month.  Lately, we have done less of that because of my OT.  So, this past weekend I regrouted between the sink and the counter the length of my center island where the sink is.  I know, ambitous, huh?.  I also put out 2 heavy dehumidifiers that we will no longer need/have room to store at RH.  RH does not have a basement either, while CH does.  They were marked free and both were taken.  It was our neighborhood fall garage sale this past weekend, so that felt good.  The week before that I sold my treadmill and elliptical that I stored (and used) in large basement storage room in CH.  I was a little surprised they sold so quick and both together.  This winter I will have to be a little creative in my workouts and I will also just up my yoga a bit.  Well, back to work...See you again soon.