It's Where?

It's such good news that your house made it through and you are ticking along, although that time in the hospital sounds rough. Proof that you are resilient, the ultimate goal for any of us.

We have pine squirrels that lately have been throwing hard green pine cones down from the tops of the trees then coming down to carry them away. It sounds like gunshots when the cones hit the roof. Last year a red "town" squirrel was here for awhile, but left. Maybe it got lonely. We called it 'Big Red.'

It used to be that I trusted Amazon without checking all that, seems like it has gotten sketchier, more like eBay, which is definitely a Buyer Beware situation.

Yes, you covered it all! I admire your make-ahead meal prep.

Too many funerals. I hope those visiting cousins are helping with the cooking at your sister's house.

It's good to hear from you. I had to Google "Blinkie" - put "solder" in the search string, and that worked. Now I know.

Right now I'm reading a novel about a paraplegic detective (author: Anne Holt) and at one point I wondered if the author has personal experience with it because she spends a lot of time on it.

Jealous men are a real hazard. February 2 this year my renter decided his wife had had an affair with the bartender where she worked as a waitress, told me they were going to dissolve their marriage, but next thing, he'd shot her and then himself.

His family told me that in his 52 years, he'd been married 9 times plus had 13 serious girlfriends - note that they kept score, and I often wonder why he had to shoot her - he should have known there's plenty of fish in his sea.

Anyhow, the point is - jealousy in a relationship is no joke.

We've watched #4 & 5. #4: If that kid had not been white, he'd have gone to prison for life because nobody would take the time to work through it.

#5: it reminded me of working with Gen X members in the 1990s - they acted like us 'old folks' spent too much time planning and working through a process to make sure a given event or project would go smoothly - they said in the meetings that 'it'll be fine,' end of discussion. When it became a big mess, they said 'who knew this could happen?' but they didn't learn from it - they decided it was us old folks' fault because we 'let that happen.'

Meanwhile, near Las Vegas: low water level in Lake Mead has so far revealed 4 or 5 sets of human remains. More to come.

Something sounds fishy in all that, and I don't mean from your end of it. Not that it matters a whole lot as long as you have a chair to use at the computer, and it brightens the place up. It's a strange feeling to get to where we don't care if something lasts forever, just need it to last as long as we do, and then we don't care what becomes of it. In some ways, it's a liberating feeling. xoxo

It's so nice to have help with those maintenance chores - hard to find a handyman to do that sort of thing.

We have a type of bush called Siberian Pea my mother planted 46 years ago to restore the vegetation along the riverbanks after a devastating flood. They grew fast and made a nice privacy hedge along our yard, plus stabilizing the soil. They reproduce via seeds that pop out of pods in August, shooting 3 and 4 feet out from the bush, and they are starting to become a nuisance - a good example of invasive. Like you, we feel like we might have missed the time to get aggressive with them. In the winter, when there's no leaves, I try to cut some of the bushes back because it's just sticks instead of branches with bulky leaves.

Once in awhile we pick a section and cut them back severely, but unless we kill the roots, pruning just encourages them to re-grow even faster. I alternate between fretting about it and thinking that we're old and we won't live long enough to see it get really bad.