AAAHHH, COOL BRISK FALL WEATHER .......

What a RELIEF from the miserable, oppressive heat we had last month, with more than 1/2 the month being days over 100 degrees! It's so nice and cool out this morning, almost chilly!!! The high today MIGHT be 70 - HOW I LOVE IT!!!!! Being able to go outside without busting into a dripping sweat or struggling just to breathe, feeling like you're melting into a little puddle on the hot asphalt, riding in the car with the windows down and a refreshing breeze blowing in on you, instead of sweltering heat that feels like you just opened the oven door and stuck your head inside - what a welcome change this is! Sure makes it hard to sit inside the office all day long. I'm itching to get out and go to the park, throw a blanket & pillow down under a shade tree and kick back with my new issue of Southern Living and just read, relax and snooze and enjoy the beautiful outdoors (not beautiful as in "Colorado scenery beautiful," just beautiful in the sense of lovely, invigorating outdoor weather).
Well, I have company this week. Mother and Daddy came out last Saturday on a spur-of-the-moment plan. I am enjoying the company. And Granddaddy is staying with us this week, too, so they can visit during the day. But it makes me need to go home exactly at 5 o'clock and that's not working out too well with my work load. I had to take some work home with me last night, but was able to do it while sitting in the living room keeping "company" with the family. I did go outside and water my flowerbeds in the back yard. Some of the plants are bouncing back from the damage that the horrible heat caused (the ones that didn't fully croak) and are looking like they might make it now. Still, the beds need an awful lot of work right now, but I just don't have the time to devote to them. Have more company coming Saturday, which I am thrilled about! As mother and daddy are leaving, sister #3 and grandbaby are coming! And nephew and his father-in-law will be coming that night too, but just passing through on their way to the wild desert land, so just spending a night. Hope they feel up to dinner out so we can take them out to somewhere nice and visit for a little bit, otherwise, I might not see him again for a long, long time, as I don't get out to the desert much!
Get to have a new culinary experience today - going to the new CHEESECAKE FACTORY restaurant that just opened nearby. One of my girls' last day is today so I'm taking her and two others out for lunch to say farewell. Will let you know how it is, I've heard nothing but great things about it, except for the long waits because of its popularity, of course.
By the way, just a note of caution regarding something I never even considered would/could happen. Do you use a debit card? And do you use a credit card? And do you keep them side-by-side in your wallet? Well, words of experience ...... ALWAYS LOOK VERY CAREFULLY AT WHICH CARD YOU GRAB BEFORE USING IT TO PAY FOR A PURCHASE!!!!!! Giving the debit card when you meant to give the credit card can end up being VERY VERY VERY VERY costly!!!!!!! Words of experience!!!!!!
Bye now.

TGIF AGAIN!

As you can see, I live for the weekends! 'Twasn't so when I was a happy homemaker! Saturday was just like any other day! But not anymore! They're few and far between, precious as water in a desert and highly prized like a State Fair blue-ribbon winnin' nanny goat! (I know, where did goats come in the picture?) Well, I was thinking of the state fair just while ago and recalled that we walked through all the animal barns with Granddaddy last year and the goats were a HUGE affair, there were thousands of them, all cleaned and brushed and vacuumed and groomed perfectly, why I'd swear some of them even had their toenails (hooves, I mean) polished! So, that just happened to be in my head. Anyway.....
It's been another killer week here at work so I'm ready for a break! I REALLY should come in and work tomorrow because I KNOW that come Monday morning, a certain client is going to call wondering "where are my logs?????" and it won't even make any difference to him that I didn't get his information to print until late Friday afternoon and was already overloaded on work that had come in earlier and ended the day printing 531 logs, he'll still wonder why we didn't get his 93 logs done too! We just can't do enough! Oh, well, I have way too much stuff I need to do at home so I most likely will not make it back in here tomorrow. I can only give this company so much of my life and life's blood before I have to say "enough already!" and consider my own personal life. I mean really, does anyone REALLY care that I give up my precious weekend time to come in here and slave away printing out logs over the weekend just to make some customer happy? No, in the end, probably not. Is it my fault that the f.e. didn't get the information in until 2 days late so therefore the customer will get it late? No, I don't think so.
So, for the weekend, my big plans are ...... work work work around the house! I have SO many projects that I MUST get done in the next 2 weeks, as I'm having some out-of-town company and I don't want them to faint dead away at the cluttery mess I have allowed to accumulate, trying to wait until I can get everything done "just so." So, I'll just have to dive it and do it the best I can and at least make it look good on the surface, something that goes against the grain for me! I have a tendency to put off doing things if I know that I don't have enough time to do it completely and obssessively and perfectly, so I just don't do it at all. Doesn't sound logical, I know, but that's how it is.
Well, gotta go get started on this big wild weekend of mine. First on the list, stop at Granddaddy's and watch Wheel of Fortune and Little House on the Prairie with him. Then, home at 8:15 to get started on the major picking up I have to do before my cleaning girl comes tomorrow. It will help immensely that she can do the routine cleaning (vacuuming, dusting, etc.) while I work on those projects I mentioned!
Talk to you all later! Have a good weekend everyone!

STATE FAIR TIME

The state fair starts tomorrow! Yippee! I love to go to the fair! We have a great fair here. It's nice and clean and big and interesting and fun! It's a good place to take the family (if you have one!) and have a great time! I used to love to go for the rides (that now make me nauseous) and the junk food (that now makes me fat). Now I enjoy going just to stroll around and look at the displays (that used to make me bored), the new cars, the home and garden building, the arts & crafts building, the cooking contests and demonstrations, etc. We like to go out there during the first few days when everything is still new and fresh. It is "fair weather" - it always turns cooler or rains the week the fair gets here. Right now, it's just nice and pleasant. Could be cool at night though. Last year we took Granddaddy out there with us and I pushed him around in a wheelchair for .... get this .... SEVEN HOURS!!!! Yes, my hands were killing me and I was exhausted by days end! But he was having a good time and so were we so we stayed! I kept saying "are you tired? do you want to go?" and he'd say "oh, no! I'm not tired at all, I'm just fine!" Finally, I had to say, "ok, I'M the tired one, we're gonna have to go!" :) I always have to have a corn dog. Too bad a corn dog and a Coke now add up to $6.50, a ridiculous price to pay for that! Well, that was last year, it could be $8 this year! We used to eat a lot more of the junk, like funnel cakes, cotton candy, candied apples, fried cheese on a stick, etc. but now, by the time you eat all that and pay the price for it, you could've had a great steak dinner at Outback or somewhere nice for that amount of money! So we cut that out. I might have to take an afternoon off work on one of hubby's days off so we can go out there and check it all out.

TGIF!!!!

Yea! My second-most-favorite day of the week is here! It's Friday! And a beautiful one, at that! The temperatures have just been awesome this week - pleasant and mild! Something we have not seen for many months! After having weeks and weeks of over 100 degree temperatures, 80 seems like nothing but enjoyable! Yesterday, a paper sales guy came up from Dallas and took us out to lunch. I always get to pick where we go (with the input of my girls, of course) so we chose to go to Bahama Breeze, not so much for the menu, but for their wonderful outdoor patio right on the waters of the lake (we were desperate for a dose of the outdoors since it's been so pleasant outside!). It's a huge white wooden structure with a high ceiling and big ceiling fans, open on 3 sides with big glass windows all around that slide open (and are always open except in the winter time) so that the nice breeze comes right off the lake and makes you feel like you're in a "whole 'nother place" other than in the middle of the city! We had a nice, relaxing lunch and hated to come back to the office. But, we did and we finished up the day and I actually got out of here before 6, a rare feat. Went over to Granddaddy's and we did our usual "Wheel of Fortune/Little House on the Prairie" routine. I'm catching up on a lot of lost episodes of Little House! He enjoys it because he can "relate" to how they did things back then. On last night's episode, old Houston was plowing behind a mule and Granddaddy said "yep, I've done that many a' time! That's hard work!" And then they were reading by the light of an old kerosene lamp and he said "oh, I've studied late many a' time with a lamp just like that one!" I guess it brings back fond memories for him, so he enjoys it, even though he doesn't keep up real well with who's who and what they're doing. He can't remember that Mary is the blind one and Laura is the other one. Or that Almanzo is Laura's husband and Albert is their brother. So, I just explain it whenever necessary and he gets it for the time being.

My helper is leaving early today, about noon, so that puts me in a bind for the rest of the afternoon. This is not a one-man (or one-woman) operation in here and it cannot be done efficiently with just one person. We're going to have to institute some new guidelines in here to avoid this in the future.

My plans for the weekend include sleeping late tomorrow morning (until about 9:30, I hope) and then getting some major projects completed at the house. A couple of weeks ago, I discovered, quite by accident, that the carpet on the east wall of the dining room (an outside wall) was soaking wet, and had apparently been that way for some time, as the bottom of the feet of the sofa table were turning black with mildew!!!! Much to my horror! It was all along the whole wall, about one foot in. So, I had to empty BOTH of those big white cabinets, the ones that contain all of my 250+ cookbooks and all of my special occasions serving pieces and put everything into the middle of the living room floor, so we could move those two cabinets, and clear off the sofa table and take it into the entry way and then pile stuff back on top of it. Then we dried out the carpet with a big box fan and Jimmy worked on the outside wall to seal up any cracks that might be allowing water to come in when it rains. He also used to water the yard over there on that side of the house and sometimes even squirt the bricks with the water hose, so he said maybe water had come in like that, so he will discontinue that practice! Anyway, it hasn't gotten wet in there since, and we've had a couple of rains, so I assume the problem is taken care of. I hope it is anyway. BUT the problem is, all of those cookbooks and those dishes are still sitting in the middle of my living room floor and have been for 3 weeks now!! What a mess! But I don't want to load them back into those cabinets yet for a couple of reasons. First, I want to move those cabinets into the middle guest room, along the south wall. But I can't do that until I unload the shelves that are there now, that hold all of my "craft junk" and miscellaneous stuff, and I haven't had a chance to do that yet. So, hopefully tomorrow, I can start in there and get those shelves cleaned off and get rid of most of that stuff, since I no longer have time to do craft stuff anyway. And then I can move those 2 white cabinets in there along that wall and put that stuff back in them. I've been lucky that no one has "dropped in" on me lately or I'd be highly embarrassed at the mess. It's much worse than normal.

Wednesday was my dear friend Esther's birthday! And I forgot to send her birthday wishes! What a bad friend I am! Well, maybe not a bad friend, just a forgetful one! And a tardy one! So, I sent her a funny e-card yesterday saying I was a rat, a dog, a slug, scum, dirt, etc. and apologized for my oversight! I sure wish she didn't live so far away and we don't get to see each other but about once every 3 or 4 years! :( It's sad! I did see her back in April, when she went to TX to visit her brother, I drove down on Saturday and came back on Sunday. It was a very quick visit but was so great to see her and meet one of her new best friends from Canada.

Well, that's two posts in one week. I hope you're happy! :) I'll try to continue on this way and be a better blogger buddy, since I do enjoy reading the blogs of others, I guess I should contribute a little of my own as well, huh?

Ya'll have a great weekend!

Don't fall off your chair .....

But here I am again! What? You're surprised? Well, good grief, it's only been 6 months since I posted anything! And I must admit, I was "prodded" into writing by someone who needed something to read! :)

So..... let's see, what have I been up to lately? Well, we've been looking at dining room furniture for a few weeks now but haven't found anything that we liked that we could actually afford. There was nothing at Mathis Brothers or all of those other furniture stores down around there (also owned by Mathis Brothers!) that I liked, and there was one set at the Thomasville showroom that we both liked but it's outrageoulsy expensive - wouldn't you know? The 3 pieces (plus 6 chairs) I wanted come to about $8,000, and I just can't bring myself to spend that kind of money on furniture. Even though it is really nice stuff and very well made and would last forever, and be the kind you pass down to your kids and grandkids! It's not like the stuff that they throw together with staple guns and glue in a big warehouse, it's really fine craftsmanship, but I'm just not that wealthy! Then we found some yesterday that was real nice, too, and it was only about $5,500 for that set. It has to be ordered, they don't carry it in the showroom, so I haven't seen it in person, and I'm not going to spend that kind of money until I can lay my eyes on it and then decide if it's really what I want. So, I'm still shopping around. It's unfortunate that I have such expensive taste! But, I'd rather wait and save up and get what I really want, like I did with my bedroom suite, and get a good quality, than get something just because it's cheaper but won't last. We've never had a dining room suite, just that wood & glass table that we've had for the last 21 years, the same one we had in the apt. We got our $100 worth out of it, that's for sure! We sold it for $40 a few weeks ago, to a friend of the lady across the street from us. She was thrilled to have it, so I was glad to let it go. Mom and Dad are going to give us the set they have that belonged to my dad's grandmother, and were going to bring it out on Memorial Day weekend, but that didn't work out, so now, I don't know how long it might be. Could be a year or more before they could manage to get it out here, and I don't think I want to be without a table for that long! Can't have anyone over for dinner! And the card table and folding chairs in there just don't quite do it for me! :) Well, maybe I'll be patient and wait for the furniture from mom and dad. It's "family" furniture, you know, heirloom stuff. We want to keep it in the family, that's for sure.
Yesterday we were going to go for a motorcycle ride, something we haven't done in a very long time, but wouldn't you know it rained off and on all day long!!!! The good thing was that it kept it cool all day, it was a very pleasant 70-something day, so that was nice. We went out to an early dinner at Johnny Carino's and that was good too. Well, I'm back at work today and hubby is off, so he calls while ago and lets me know that TODAY is the PERFECT DAY, sunny, mild temperatures, perfect MOTORCYCLE WEATHER!!!! Aaaarrrggghh! Well, I'll just hope that we have the same type of day on Saturday and maybe, just maybe, we can get the bike out and put some miles on it!
On another subject, Granddaddy really does seem to like it out here but I know he misses my older sister and seeing mother more often, plus he used to get to see the nephew every week (my nephew, his great grandson) because he came over to my sister's a lot, she picked him up from school sometimes. So, now, I'm the only family member out here to come visit him. And even though I go every day, I'm sure sometimes he'd like to see the others come through the door, too! But he's doing very well and getting settled in. Luckily, it was his suggestion that even got us looking for the place, so at least we didn't have to try to convince him or persuade him to do this. But I really believe it is the best place for him, because there is always someone around and close by in case he needs them, whereas at our house, and at my sister's house, too, he was there by himself when we had to all be at work, so he was alone too much of the time. He has a little thing he wears on his wrist and all he has to do is push the button and it summons help for him so someone can be there in less than 2 minutes. They serve him 3 good meals a day, which is more than I can say for when he was at my house! His breakfast was always cereal, unless it was Sat. or Sun. and I was home, and his lunch was usually nothing special, just something to tide him over until I could get home, then I'd try to fix something decent, but it wasn't always a full-fledged "good hot meal." He gets much better food and nutrition this way, and on a regular schedule too, not on our hit & miss schedule. We sometimes eat supper so late, as late as 8:30 or so sometimes, and he just needs (and likes) a much earlier dinner. They bring him his daily medications right on schedule every day, morning, noon and night, so that is a good thing, too. They have activities in the main room by the dining room every day, such as bingo, dominoes, Scrabble and other board games, plus they have a choir, which he wouldn't sing in but enjoys listening to, and they have a church service twice on Sundays and once on Wed. afternoons that he can just walk to, right down the hall in a nice little chapel. The girls that work there are just super. They are so nice and friendly and just make him feel real special. They give them a lot of attention, which I sure am glad for. He gets confused as to what day it is sometimes, even though I got him a big atomic clock that shows the day/date/month/year/ time/am/pm/temp(outside & in) but I guess he forgets to look at it sometimes. So I just call and remind him what day it is and let him know I'll be over later. He spends every weekend with us at our house and goes to church w/ us Sun. a.m and p.m. And he spent the night this Sun. night since we were both off work on Monday. We went to IHOP for breakfast then back to his apt. around 11:30, he thought Jimmy and I should have some time to ourselves, he said, which I thought was very thoughtful, so we did spend the rest of the day together, just the two of us.

OK, Tam, have I written enough yet?