FANTASTIC FRIDAY

[FelineFriend]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HRH!!!

We were up in the middle of the night, about 2 - 2:30 a.m. Our cat loved it. I've been up and s2s, shampooed, and am working on a letter. Scans have been going on and updates, so the computer's been re-started and re-started. Am in touch with my nurse because one of my long-time medications for anxiety came out on "the list" of medications, which causes Alzheimer's in the elderly! I don't NEED Alzheimer's in my life! So posted to my nurse, my concern, and how I want to "wean" off it now. I can use deep breathing exercises, prayer, guided imagery, walking, and journal. I don't "need" a pill. I CAN do this myself. It's a concern because for the past few months, DH and I'll be chatting back and forth, I go to tell him somebody's name and just can't REMEMBER it! So, now, with this latest news on the Forbes website yesterday AND the National news, listing MY pill, yes! I want off of it now. I'm in the elder years now, as I approach 63 years, so why bed for trouble? I want to be as healthy and alert as I can in my later life. I refuse to go down the path of my Alzheimer's Dfriend! It's not a happy situation to be in, not only for the person WITH it, but for family and friends, too. It breaks everybody's hearts. I'm one with a broken heart because of my Dfriend. To remember how vibrant and fun she used to be, was a bright LPN for years, and now she's in a nursing home. One good thing though: Her DH is with her at the nursing home so they are together now. I'm so happy they didn't get broken up as a couple. They're in their later 70's. Once they get settled in to their new routine, we'll go see them at the nursing home.

DH is running errands now, he'll be back later, and hopefully will bring the mail, too. I'm bleaching sheets. I'll continue snail mail, then crochet on the grandson's afghan. 3 rows and edging to go and I'm done. I cleaned out a bin,to put my 44 journals in it, because DD is bringing me a box of books, some weekend this month. What I don't want/need, she said I can donate to ARC. I'm making more room, on my shelves, in cabinets, and on my desk, for the new books, when they arrive, so this is why I'm putting my journals back into storage. I just don't have time to read 44 journals right NOW. My idea was to read each one, glean out good story ideas, purge them, to declutter them out of the house. But what a JOB it's going to be!

Kathryn, I hope your knee gets well soon. I have a knee brace and love it. What is a tensor bandage?

LadyM, Good luck on your difficult email to reply to. It's so "challenging" sometimes, isn't it!

WTG, Nancy, on those low branches!

Dee, It looks like you may have some guests overnight!

Waving to Twins' Mom, Booksaver, and others who come after me.

[lucylee]

Happy birthday, HRH!!! Hope you have a fantastic day!!!

(((Dee))) Hope your day goes well and you recover from the loss of sleep. Kathryn is right, very efficient use of time -- like you said, I am very prone to the wandering around and looking when shopping for stuff like this, when I don't really know what I'm going to get. (When I was shopping for something to wear in the parade the other day, I wandered until I had tried on enough pants that I was depressed. Only then was I ready to go home. * sigh * ) Hope that surprise visit goes well w/the dniece and dxsisil!

Good morning to Kathryn... Ha ha... it's almost 2:00 p.m. Good afternoon to Kathryn... BookSaver... Twins... Nancy... and FF!

LadyM -- re: marking purchases. I have made an effort recently to keep receipts for major things WITH the things. Computer monitor, for example. Receipt is taped to the back of the monitor. I hope I can remember to do that always. Bought myself a watch yesterday, put the receipt in my jewelry box. I guess the Experts in this would say have a FILE for all these things, but seems like I can never get to that point, or I forget that I filed it anyway.
at LO's growth spurt.

Well, the excitement here is that we are waiting on a locksmith. I could not tell anyone else this, except dmom (maybe) and ds/ddil, but guess what? (This is too stupid to even tell. This is the kind of thing that makes it impossible for me to ever face any of you IRL.) When we returned last night (this morning?) on our late night excursion to get the newspaper, we discovered that our back door lock was broken. Yes. I mean -- no one had tampered with it -- it has been kinda "tricky" lately anyway, and when dh put his key in, it just twirled around. Local locksmith that advertises 24 hour emergency service would not answer his phone, so... after half a dozen calls to next town(s), we finally got one who came and got us in. He got here about 3:30 a.m. The locksmith had to come from about 25 miles away, and he only charged us $85. I thought that was amazing, at that hour of the morning. HOWEVER -- he could not replace the lock w/locks to match the deadbolt, and we definitely do not want two keys for one door.
So... this morning I called local locksmith again, and he should be able to put a matching lock back on and key it to match the keys we have.
He was supposed to be here about an hour ago, though, and he has not shown up.
ALSO -- in the midst of all this, we discovered that apparently we have no key for our front door. (Storm door was locked last night, it would not have helped if we had.) If I were alone, I'd probably go ahead and replace the locks on that door too, to match back door, and dh said we would, if we had to have new keys for the back door. But -- since locksmith thinks we will not have to change keys, dh said forget it -- we've lived this long without needing the front door key, we can do without it. (We never use it when we are coming in, and we always keep the storm door locked.)
I just wish the guy would hurry up and get here, so I could go out and walk and then s2s.

OTOH, I have been productive since I finally got up. Both bathrooms s/s, second load of laundry spinning in the washer, breakfast & Bible reading done.

Last night at dmil's was... okay... but dh is still very anxious about how this is all going to work out. Truth be told, so I am, but I am trying to keep the faith that somehow, the Lord will keep His hand on us and keep dh/dbil from having a serious falling out over it all. I think I already said more about it in J&C.

No ballgame tonight. DH said he was not about to take off on a 40-mile drive (one way) after the night we'd had -- they will be on local radio, and dh much prefers to listen to them and watch Braves. Next week is seriously busy and he will be missing the Braves at least three nights, and he just hates it when it gets down to the penant race and he has to miss games. (Although if you follow baseball, you know the Braves are not seriously threatening to go to the World Series this year. LOL.)

I am going to look up some more prices of household items (on ebay, craigslist, etc) to try to give dbil/dh something to go by. DH says at this point, he thinks we are down to things that have much more sentimental value than monetary value -- and some things have NO monetary value (letters their grandfather wrote home in the early 1900s, etc) -- and if dbil insists on keeping tabs on every penny, he (dh) will just say fine, take it all. * sigh * Right now, we are approx $700 ahead, but dbil already has chosen some things w/no monetary value assigned (just b/c they were overlooked by antique lady, or b/c she had no idea what to price them.) But anyway, I figure forewarned is forearmed. Isn't that the saying? It can't hurt to have a point of reference when our personal Uncle Scrooge McDuck starts saying, "Well, I think that is worth an awful lot..." (DH said he would just tell him, "Iyou think I'm coming out ahead, then you better pick stuff you think is worth more on your next turn.")

Locksmith just arrived!

BBL! Hope y'all are all having a fantastic day!

[Nancy]

Lucyl. Btdt with journals phew and yes it was a job.
Did s2s before bed.
Journaling done.
Fixed hair today.
Picked up branches I pruned off yesterday,
I had flat hair yesterday today not quite enough clearance sigh so need to pay attn to that, but it is pretty smokey out so I am only doing a few min.
At a time of yd. Wk. I have done several rounds.
Got trash in the trash cans buckets and wagons, emptied.
Lunch is over.

[Twins' Mom]

I've straightened up and dcleaning lady is doing her magic.

My back is killing me. Moses and I had an encounter with a neighborhood dog who was out of his fence and off leash last night, and I'm wondering if pulling hard on him made my upper back sore. Really was scary but I know the dog and family and I know how bad I've felt about Macs trying something like that. Anyway, my upper back hurts - usually for me it's the lower back so this is unusual.

I am feeling like just collapsing today. Was busy yesterday and day before, and then yesterday was gassy all day. Basically skipped supper except for some snacking and by bedtime the gas-iness was a little better.



Didn't get this posted earlier. I went out to grocery and then napped with Moses. Back is still hurting; I bet I was holding his leash in my left hand.

[lucylee]

Nancy -- you mean you had to try to divide journals from someone else w/a sibling, etc? Yes... I can see how that would be a mess, too. I don't think there are any real "journals" in this, just letters, bank/farm account books, maybe deeds, stuff like that. I told dh we should separate all these papers by type and choose in that way, but he says that will take "forever." Lots of old newspaper clippings, too, and old Newsweek magazines. I've got a sneaky suspicion that our historians (dh & ds) will REALLY want to keep ALL of this, but dh realizes that there are two of them, him & dbil, and he will do very well to get half of the things he REALLY wants. (He said, "I don't think he (dbil) realizes that though. He thinks he can have EVERYTHING he "REALLY" wants.")
All this makes me very glad that ds is an only child.

[Harriet]

Ya'll are all so sweet in remembering him. Very kind wishes on a somewhat tough day.

He (we) have been waiting for weeks for our new water pump, even offering to pay a deposit, or whatever the people needed. We kept getting put off, with assurances that the temporary fix was working so it wasn't urgent. HRH kept saying it was more urgent than they thought - in fact, he told them.

Well, today - a Friday of course - the water went out again, with the temporary fix they had done just not holding any more and in fact making the motor housing ( ? I am just giving my best guess at the name of what I'm seeing ) heat up very hot. HRH cut the power to it to let it cool down so he could tinker with it as he did before to get it going. Possibly he'll be able to start it up again, but we have no certainty of that - he is a backyard mechanic, not a specialist. They say they'll be here tomorrow, but if they didn't get that new pump purchased by now, well, it's the weekend now. Sigh.

Beyond that, I join LadyM in worry over some emailing and phoning that has been happening here, too, either from family (mostly mine) or from other people trying to get family to do what they want.

((Twins' Mom))
also ((Nancy))
both of whom have been having more than their share of neighbor-dog troubles lately.

lucylee could still visit me IRL with complete confidence that we are equals in doorway mishandling, LOL. All ya'll knew where we kept our spare key for years. With our most trusted neighbor. We hung it inside Sammie's doghouse. Only the most beloved of her acquaintances dared ask for the loan of it. With Sammie gone, we started keeping it in a hidey-place in our storage building. I have no qualms about posting that here, since everyone here can imagine how much stuff would be concealing it in a building owned by me.

Eventually, we needed it. (no surprise there) Unfortunately, it was night. And we had neglected to think ... ... there is no light in our storage building and the flashlights are in the house. If we could get to a flashlight, we wouldn't need to find the spare key in the first place. I ended up training the car lights onto the doorway of the building so that HRH could manage to see enough to find the hidey place. So lucylee, come visit and put your feet up, we're your kind of people.

[Twins' Mom]

Lol, Harriet and Lucylee. Our house on the mtn was seldom locked ever. Here, dh has gone completely paranoid.

[lucylee]

It's not the broken lock that is so embarrassing, Harriet, it's the insanity of someone who has to read the paper at 2:00 a.m,
THIS club cannot possibly have a large membership.
Shaking my head...

[Nancy]

Re journals: no I did not have to share 'em, they were all mine I was just trying to glean out specific info. Like having chickens.

I dug out some plants to clear out another area in the front of a flower bed. Lemon verbenia was taking over and it is time for something else in that spot. Now I need to figure out where to plant the onions I salvaged while digging out the other stuff. Lots of folks on our block are redoing their yards on our block.

Hubby does not have to work tomorrow yea!

Had my dinner yum h. Brought home pizza.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Lucylee I suspect that club was larger in the olden days. I'm thinking about performers sitting around waiting for the papers to arrive so they can see the reviews of their plays, for example. But now, how many people wait for the paper, vs looking at things online?

Tense day here.

After the singing and my snack I iced my knee and did a round of physio. Before starting that, I got ds up telling him we needed to go get the antenna tower down while the weather was still good. While I was doing stretches, ds said he had a 6:30 climbing event with friends (and dd) and so we rushed out the door. I thought ds had eaten while I was doing stretches, but no.

I wasn't needed outside, so worked on taking down the air beds and packing things up. Visited a bit with a neighbour and kept an ear and eye on the work.

The weather station came down easily and the antenna and the mast came down fairly easily. That left seven 8' sections of tower. Ds was working 50' up in the air (using his climbing belt and ropes to keep himself safe.) He managed to lift the top section off, but couldn't flip it over to lower it, it kept catching on the top of the remaining section. Remember, he's 50' above ground, lifting an 8' tall, ~60+ lb section of metal above his head. He got it 90 degrees over but not the 180 it needed. Finally, he tied it off, climbed down and his father climbed up.

Dh could lift it vertical but not over the bar that was stopping it from being lowered. So he suggested we call a tower company and/or order a crane. It is now 5:30 on a Friday and I'm looking at having to pay overtime, etc. etc. The estimate ds got was $700 (the tower, installed cost me $1500.) I said no, lash the piece in as best as possible and then we'll deal with it when I'm not paying double-time.

Dh came down and the ds fixed up the second climbing belt so they could both go up. Working together, they got it down (a neighbour helped from the ground, hauling the segment down slowly.

We have 6 more segments to do (and 4 of them are covered in vine.) But that's for another day.

Ds was simply shaking when he got down the first time and the second time he had to rest on the car. It was then I realized he had not eaten for 18 hours. He gave up on rock climbing and we drove to a Subway and ate dinner.

He's doing laundry now because he needs clean clothes for his shift tonight.

Hopefully, he'll rest in bed while the laundry is on.

BTW: my knee was just fine at the house. Even did 10 flights of stairs. No problem (although I took it very slow on the down steps.)