I'm sorry! Time has gotten away and I should have been staying in better touch with you all.

I have been on Sue Watch, emailing back and forth with our friend Larry in Mississippi. Larry went to see Sue yesterday, and she is still very depressed, as we all know. She told him she will either go into a nursing home in Mississippi or commit suicide, as in she'd rather die than return to the situation in Texas. I am sure she doesn't want to go into a nursing home, but maybe it is the best choice for now.

Here is what has been happening around here:

My cousins with the five little kids (photo to come, I promise) are back next door. Last night we made s'mores over there over the fire pit, and the kids had a great time. There was melted marshmallow everywhere by the time we were done, and today I'll go clean off the picnic table and benches just to get it out of the way.

One of the little girls brought out the Rubic's Cube for her dad to solve. But I noticed that 'someone' had peeled off some of the colors and tried to stick them back in other positions in an attempt to solve it. She was pretty proud of herself because she'd gotten it solved at one time before one of the other kids scrambled it again, but her dad pointed out that now he couldn't solve it because things didn't work like they should.



All the kids but the baby hiked up to the waterfall with Mr. Troutbend and their dad yesterday and did well. Their ages are 9, 7, 5, 3, and 1 year. The parents don't know if they are done having kids yet, but realize they will have to buy a bigger van if they have more, and the mother-in-law informed the parents that she doesn't have any more of the matching Christmas stockings. Grandparents are funny - they apply pressure to start having grandchildren, and then pressure to stop when they think they have enough.

We are having to change liability insurance companies. The application has been submitted, and we are waiting to hear if they will accept us as customers. It is more than homeowner's insurance because we have the guest rentals and the fishing. They might turn us down because the clearing our house sit in is less than 150 feet from the forest. It's like applying for health insurance with a pre-existing condition before the advent of Obamacare.

One of the questions was: "Is your area prone to wild fires?" I answered 'no' because we have not had any fires up here. Of course we COULD, but I define 'prone to' as meaning having a tendency to do something, and that would be fires popping up all the time, which they are not.

Mr. Troutbend is going to have a colonoscopy next week, so we have been discussing how to get ready for that. We all know the prep for those things is the miserable part. My thinking is that a person might as well start the clear liquid diet a day or so early to get the body ready for the Big Day in the Bathroom after drinking the electrolyte Koolaid so there'd be less grist for the mill, if you know what I mean. His idea is that he should load up on food until the last possible moment so he doesn't get too hungry. Since I do all the cooking, I can help guide the intake to a certain degree, but I didn't point that out.

It is a bleak day punctuated with minutes of sunshine and rain showers. It feels like fall is right around the corner. We had another hail storm that was less destructive than a week ago, but this time I did a better job of covering the garden plants. We've gotten some rain just about every day, sometimes more than one storm, so it is very pretty and green here. It interferes with hanging out the laundry, but the fire danger is very low.

The waterfall: