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!