I'm Baaackkk

Well, maybe I am.

At least I'm here for now. What have we been up to this summer? Too many things to write about right now. I really got out of my good routines over the summer. We had so many things going on, family visiting, and little mini-vacations (a couple that were spontaneous, which was nice). The weather has been so strange, too. We had temps in the 90s in June and so far August has been way cooler than normal. We've had so much rain this summer that it has been hard to keep up with the yard and I just let a lot of my flower beds practically go to the weeds.

Andrew turned 20, so we're back to only one teenager in the house again. Thomas has worked much less overtime as the bad economy finally touched his job. But that means he's been home on the weekends, so we've been taking advantage of that -- see the mini-vacation line above! He just almost changed jobs because he saw a bad trend happening at work, but at the last minute changed his mind. And we're glad he did. There are some changes coming where he works, but we don't now believe they are going to affect him adversely. In any event, he'll ride it out and then we'll go from there.

I got back into following FlyLady this past month. I'm so glad I did. I really needed her fussing at me to get me to get my routines set up again so things will go smoothly when classes start full-time for Eler Beth next week. Also I've been doing a lot of writing -- just not here! --, and having everything organized has made it much easier to write regularly. I have two manuscripts sent off to a published-author acquaintance of mine for critiquing, and I'm very happy to finally have them finished to my satisfaction. Now we'll just see what we'll see, as my Mom would say.

And speaking of my Mom, I spent the day with her on Saturday while Thomas and Eler Beth took my nephew and his wife and son fishing all day. My Mom is 85 and she just about wore me out just from watching her on Saturday. When we got there she made everyone breakfast, which included sausage-gravy and home made biscuits. Then before anyone else could get to them she started doing the dishes. Then she was snapping beans, making cherry preserves, sorting through some pictures and scrapbook items, and more. Then she finished by making dinner, of course. The whole time I was there she was busy with something. (I didn't just sit there idle, while she was busy, so please don't think I did! lol) My sister Barbara said that the day before Mom had started cleaning off the back porch and then washing down the siding on the front of the house from the front porch, up as high as she could reach. If Barbara hadn't come along when she did, Mom probably would have gotten out a ladder and finished it up! Well, maybe not, but we just never know with that one! I asked her about that and told her she had no business doing that kind of cleaning outside (quaking in my shoes as I was saying it, of course!), and she told me that the siding was dirty and needed the dead bugs washed off it, so she DID have business doing it too! And so I shut up.

She does have days when she's tired and just "does nothing much", or so she says, but I have an idea that even on those days she does more than most of us do!

So, anyway, I've had a busy summer and I hope to write here a bit more as things get into a good routine again. I have lots of ideas for entries, if I would just write them!

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the summer months, or getting settled back into the school routine. Please take care, and I'll try to drop by soon.

Wow! What's Wrong With Me?

I did three entries last month, and I think two the month before. Whatever is wrong with me???

Copper

Eler Beth's flying squirrel, Copper:














Copper in his little fuzzy bed, eating a pecan.

Doesn't he have a cute feathery tail?












And big eyes?

























"Okay, Mom, that's enough pictures!"

Explanation of our Cooler Weather

A few days ago Eler Beth observed how cool the temps have been in our area and came to a conclusion.

"Must be all those people going green!"

Facebook

Yes, Facebook can be very time-consuming. But this evening I was reminded of one of the reasons I like it so much.

First I saw the name of an old high school classmate of mine in a comment on another friend's profile. So I contacted her, and now we're in touch again. Hours later I logged in to see that I had a friend request from another old classmate of mine -- "OMG, Lori, is that you? It's me!" --, and then only minutes after that, while I was still responding to "OMG", I got a private email from a girl with whom I'd worked at the newspaper before I was married (she was two years ahead of me in school, too), and it was especially wonderful to hear from her. She and I spent a lot of late-night hours putting the paper to bed and getting punchy and silly over nothing. I learned that her son, who was a baby the last time I saw him, is now a college graduate and married, and she has remarried and has two daughters now.

Yes, it is nice to hear from people we haven't seen or heard of in years. To be fair, though, I don't think I'd be spending much time blogging anyway, even without Facebook. I just got out of the mood and out of the mode for a while. However, the past few days I have had entries writing themselves in my mind, so one just might make its way out of my head and into the blogosphere before too long.

This spring has been super busy for me -- graduations, weekend mini-vacations, terms ending, relatives having surgery. (I was SO tempted, Beth, to put "and so on" or "etc." at the end of that sentence, but I didn't, just for you! lol) I've read or skimmed through blogs but have not left many comments lately. We are all well, and busy, and happy, and I guess I can't ask for more than that.

Hope everyone is well out there and enjoying their summer. Ta for now!

My Aunt Vivian

My Mom called this evening at 9 p.m., a strange time of day for her to call, so I knew that either someone was sick or someone had died. My father's sister, Vivian, the last of the 12 siblings passed away today. She had had a stroke a few weeks ago and hadn't been doing well since, so it was not a surprise. And I guess she would be about 85 years old now, but it is still a bit hard to realize that now all of Lucy Myrtle Williams Dowell and Jeff Dowell Sr.'s 12 children are gone.

I don't know how old she was in this picture, but this is my aunt Vivian as a young girl.

My thoughts are with her three children, Steve, Rhonda, and Terry Dallas.

Monday, Monday

I am so behind in reading journals. I knew that this evening I wanted to visit a few Blogger friends, but the task seemed a bit overwhelming -- where to start? So I decided I'd start by returning a visit to everyone who commented on my last post, eight kind souls. That was a beginning, at least! I dropped by and read all of their June posts, and that's about the extent of catching up that I can do today I'm afraid! I'll do a few more tomorrow and so on and hopefully get by to say hello to everyone by the end of the week.

My brother's surgery went well last week. He had the aneurysm in his groin taken care of (repaired? what is the word?), and he had two arteries unclogged. They did not have to do a graft (I think that's right) below the knee like they thought they would. He has really good blood flow in that leg now. I was there once when they were checking it with the Doppler, and it sounded great! He went home on Friday, which was a day earlier than the best estimate, and he is doing well, as long as they can keep him from getting up on his own. To get up out of a chair or out of bed he is supposed to have assistance, because he is not to put any pressure on his groin at all for a while.

We went to the graduation party of a dear young friend of ours on Saturday. Some of you may remember the young girls who lost their mother to suicide last year. The elder of the two graduated from high school Saturday. She seems to be doing very well; they both are, really, although the younger is still having some tough issues to deal with.

I guess everything is well with us. The weather has been nice, and it's time to mow the yard again. I'm hoping I'll have a bit more time to write and blog now that Alton's surgery is over and a few other things are taken care of.

I have some window treatments that need to be taken down and freshened up, and that is on the agenda for tomorrow. Woo Hoo, exciting, huh? I'll try to get back on here at some point too. So, until then . . . .