Who are you?

Every week, when I post an update to my blog, I notice how many people have read each entry.

Who are you?  Please drop a comment....it's perfectly safe to do so (not you, Nan..I know you're out there).

Anyway, we're having a good weekend.  Productive and stress free.

Dave went to Coscto on Friday and got us stocked up on toilet paper and other necessities.  We both went the last time, but he dealt with it himself on his Friday off.  We shouldn't need to go back for a while.

I finally got a couple of cucumbers off of my vines.  The tiny water melons are just not growing.  They are all still the same size they've been for weeks.  My guess is that the planter is way too small.  Even adding fresh soil and fertilizer has done nothing to encourage them to mature.

The cherry tomato plant has lots of little green tomatoes on it, but they are not maturing, either.  We have gotten exactly 6 mature fruits off of it this entire time.  In their case, it could be that the summer heat has stunted them.  I don't know.

With the surge in COVID-19 cases in Oklahoma, Dave has not gone for another haircut (he's only had one since late February), and his mop was getting out of control.

He asked me to shave his head yesterday, so I got out the scissors, chopped off the length, and went at his pate with his beard trimmer.   He's now got a short buzz cut.  It will be much cooler, and less trouble.

I, on the other hand, have not had a haircut since late February, when Dave and I went together.  My hair is doing just fine, though.  It's growing out nicely, and actually looks pretty good, so I am not worried about it.  I just trim my bangs every 3 or 4 weeks. 

I like that I can wear my hair wavy, and that I can choose to comb it when it's wet, and wear it relatively straight.  It's nice to have options.

Dave FINALLY got to talk to his dad this past week!!  He texted the director of the facility on a week day, and asked her to have someone take a phone to Pop and let them talk.

After weeks of being ignored when he tried to get this to happen, THAT worked.  Hopefully, he will do this at least once a week now.

Pop was doing fine... well, as fine as can be expected.

There's really nothing else to report.  Our world has gotten pretty small, being home 24/7. 

I am off to make our traditional Sunday breakfast, and this evening, we are hoping to drive out toward the northwest to look for the comet at sunset.

Have a good week!

Muggy

There's not a lot to report on this week.

My visit with the doc was fine.  He decided to stop having me go every two weeks for blood draws, so that was nice.  I will now just go on the day before my monthly appointments.

We caught a break with the weather this week.  There were these odd pop up storms every night/early morning that pushed cooler air ahead of them, and kept that "heat dome" in Texas, so that we never saw those predicted highs of 103-107.

The humidity was brutal, of course, so the afternoon heat index was 105 and above, but it would have been 115 if the temps had gone as high as previously predicted.

Dave and I successfully got out and walked in the early morning on three days last week. The other two, it was raining.

It was 80 degrees every time, and extremely muggy, but it was so nice to get out and get our steps taken!  We then walked on my morning breaks at 9:30 as well.... even though it was starting to get hot by then.

Muggy.

What does "muggy" come from??  I never thought about it before.  It's a very odd word...

My little container garden is suddenly THRIVING.... the plants obviously prefer rain water to city water...that's the only thing I can think of that's been different!  

My two cucumbers, and the little watermelons, are getting bigger, and we ate three of the cherry tomatoes!

There were some unwanted insect eggs on one of the last of the squash plant's leaves, so I finally pulled those plants out and discarded them.  SO far, no sign of bugs on the cukes, and now the cukes can have their entire containers for root expansion.

I added some fresh soil to all of the pots yesterday, and am hoping that will continue this happy plant trend.

We had to hire our crew to mow the back yard yesterday.  He charged us $60 this time just to mow the back!  It used to be $40 for the front AND back... yikes... so we really don't want to have to do that again.  

The grass just grew so fast and thick with the rain, and we didn't get it mowed last weekend because it never dried out.

We plan to mow again on about Wednesday this week, and then again on the weekend, to stay ahead of it.

Dave mowed out front yesterday, and I got all of my indoor chores and laundry done.  

Then, last night, a friend (who recently lost her mother) came over.  

She walked up the driveway, though the back gate, and into the back yard.  We sat on our patio at a safe distance, and we had a beer and conversation until after dark.   She needed some friend time, and SO DID I!

It was weird to not have her in the house, but she has been around her daughters, who have been around others...so she has potentially been exposed to the virus.  

We DID let her pass through the house...all of us wearing masks... to get to her car, so she could see how big Frankie is getting.   On the day we brought him home, she met us at the house when we arrived with him, she was so excited, so she remembers how tiny he was.

There is nothing on the agenda for today, so I really hope to get a guitar tuned up and try to get back into practicing that on the daily.  I'm coming out of my funk, and am accepting that this virus is only going to get worse, and we are going to be in isolation indefinitely.

I need to do stuff that feeds my soul.  Playing my guitars helps with that.

We are also going to see if we can figure out somewhere to go at dusk tonight so we can see our first glimpse of the comet!

OH, and sitting in the hot tub last night, I saw a HUGE, bright meteor.  It made me remember watching the Perseids every summer with my dad, as the katy  dids sang...

12th on the 12th

It's our 12th wedding anniversary today.

Neither of us even thought about it until a couple of days ago.  The new way of living has us experiencing the passage of time in a different way.

Even though we KNOW we had the 4th of July last weekend,  it is still surreal to already be in July, and suddenly, here we are, on the 12th.

SO, we aren't doing anything to celebrate.

Just being happy that we have been together 24/7 since mid-March and are perfectly comfortable with it.  Some couples can't take all of that togetherness.

For us, it's been fine.  We still like each other, and the only thing that has made us snap at each other is this stupid refinancing process on the house.

We're 3 months into it, and it's just now looking like it will either be canceled, or completed.  It was supposed to be a no cost re-fi, and we are now seeing almost $3,000 in "closing costs" show up in the paperwork.

We need to get that question answered before we proceed.

I did a re-finance on my condo a couple of years ago, and said I'd never do that again, and here I am. I have no idea why re-financing is SO much more complicated that getting an initial mortgage.  It's ridiculous.

The new gas range came on Tuesday, and is wonderful!   We had a frozen pizza that we baked on Friday for dinner.... HAHA! 

Of course, now it's too hot to use the oven much, but I am SO GLAD that little ordeal is over, and that I have the best range of my life in the house now.

The brutal Oklahoma summer has come back, but there have been some pop up storms that have saved us for a couple of days.

It was supposed to be 107 yesterday, but it only got up to 98 (though the HEAT INDEX was 117---if it had been hotter, though, the heat index would have been worse).

More storms last night, and today's 100s are now canceled as well!

I got my new walking shoes on Friday, but have not been able to try them out yet.  Maybe today.

This week, we are going to start getting up 15 minutes earlier in the mornings, and taking our walk before coffee and showers, at the coolest part of the day.  It's the only exercise Dave gets (other than his weekly forays into the yard to mow, etc), and we need to do it.

My little container garden is finally starting to show signs of producing something.

The yellow cherry tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, and there are more of them.  The tiny watermelons are starting to get a little bigger (there are several of them, but they haven't grown at all for a while), and I have one tiny cucumber on each vine!  The squash plants failed again, just like last year.  I will not do that one again.

I think I'll get them out of the containers, so the cucumbers can have more space for their roots.

I'm thinking that next year, I need bigger containers, with more soil, which equals more nutrients for the plants.
I added some fertilizer last weekend, and that seems to be what's made the difference.  The "three months worth of fertilizer" built into the container gardening soil that I used seems to have run out just getting the plants to grow.

With all of the rain the past few days, I will add a bit more fertilizer today or tomorrow, but just a little.

There's nothing else to report on, really.

I have my blood draw tomorrow, and my monthly trip to the clinic on Tuesday.

The only thing I have to report to the doc is that my seemingly random hip and thigh pain is still a problem, but there's obviously nothing that can be done for it, so why even mention it....

Off to make breakfast.  Have a good week, and stay cool!

Being okay with disappointment...

We took a little overnight road trip on Friday, July 3rd, with the purpose of a) getting the heck out of "Dodge," and b) finding dark skies to star gaze.

Dave settled on the Amarillo, TX area, because there is a canyon out there where the skies are supposed to be great for seeing even the Milky Way on a dark night.

Unfortunately, we selected the date for our trip way ahead of time, and didn't realize it was full moon.  I should have checked, but I didn't.

OH well...that was okay.  We'd see what we could see anyway,  having learned that Jupiter and Saturn would be up that night, too, including that beautiful, big full moon.

We found an Air BnB property that was really inexpensive.   It was a "tiny house" built in a shipping container, and it was SO cute!  It was out in the area of the canyon, too, which should have meant big, dark skies at night.

In the pictures on the website, it looked like it was a single outbuilding on someone's property.  Dave messaged the host, and they said YES, the star gazing was GREAT.

So, we booked it.

A week or so before our trip, Dave looked up Palo Duro Canyon state park, and we found that we could not be out there at night unless we were camping or in one of their cabins.  Dang it.

But, we figured, the tiny house host had assured us of good star gazin, so that was okay....we'd just go to the canyon during the day, and maybe take a short hike (it was bound to be very hot, given the time of year).

We also planned to poke around Amarillo, go for a hike at the canyon, and then get dinner at "The Big Texan," a blatant tourist trap that we had been assured was worth the stop.

As we arrived in the Amarillo area, our first order of business was to drive by The Big Texan to see what our chances were of being safe in times of COVID-19. 

The virus is REALLY BAD in Texas right now, and we weren't going to take any chances. 

It was 2 pm, and as we drove by, the parking lot was COMPLETELY full.   If you look at pictures on line, they have long tables where they seat parties right next to each other.

We figured there was NO WAY they were seating people 6 feet apart, so we decided to skip the idea entirely.

One of the museums we had considered visiting was closed, no cars in the lot.

So, next, we went in search of a retired steam locomotive that's on display downtown.

The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe 5000 sits, cold and rusting, on a concrete slab behind a chain link fence.  It's a Baldiwn engine, with a 2-10-4 wheel configuration.  It was built in 1930, and retired in 1957. 

We found it, and in the process, took a bit of a tour of downtown Amarillo, which was virtually deserted.

Did you know that their minor league baseball team is called the SOD POODLES?  I thought I had read it wrong on the park as we went past, but then I saw them on the local news that night.

We laughed about that for what felt like hours.

After taking some pictures of the ATSF 5000, we went out to Palo Duro Canyon. 

Dave had checked their website on Thursday, and there was not yet any indication that they would be closed due to COVID-19.

As we pulled up to the gate, there was a lighted sign that said "Park Restrictions:  Reserve on line."

Uh oh. 

We drove on up a little further, and there was another sign that said PARK AT CAPACITY, and we were turned away. 

We couldn't even go in and drive around on the roads around the canyon.  That was REALLY disappointing....but oh well.... we still had our star gazing to look forward to.

If the clouds that were gathering would please clear out by dark.

From the canyon, we decided to go get some groceries for our dinner, and go check in at the Air BnB.

Everyone in the grocery store was wearing a mask, and we were able to distance ourselves, so we felt safe getting some food for our overnight stay.

We headed out of town to our lodgings, which were truly out in the middle of nowhere.  However, when we got there, we found that our little building was at the back of a small RV park.  Which was FULL.

This filled us with a sense of dread, but it turned out to be okay.  It was very quiet, and no one was setting off fire works or anything.

However, there were bright lights at each RV pad, and by our little house.  The clouds grew thicker and thicker, into a heavy, gray haze.

By dark, the highest point of the sky was pretty clear, and we could see the big dipper, but, beyond that, we couldn't see a thing because there was too much cloud cover, and WAY too much light around us.

The star gazing SUCKED, but the moon looked REALLY COOL up there behind those clouds.  We sat outside of our rented tiny house until after midnight, hoping it would get better, but it didn't.

There also must have been a feed lot somewhere nearby, because the air smelled VERY strongly of cow shit.

Oh, and Dave pulled up the Palo Duro Canyon website again, and there it was... a NEW pop up saying that there are park restrictions and to reserve on line.  That was NOT THERE the day before.

We had entertained the idea of trying to go Saturday morning, but then just decided to skip it and go home.

The botanic gardens were closed, the museums were closed, the Cadillac Ranch had scores of people looking at it, so we just drove past... it was kind of a bust.

So, we decided to just hit the road home.

It was about 11, as we went back past the Big Texan.  The lot was only partially full, so I said "LET'S GO SEE..."  If the dining room was full, we'd leave.....

It was almost lunch time anyway, and all we'd had for breakfast was yogurt and fruit we'd gotten at the grocery store.

Inside, the vast dining room was virtually empty, so we said yes to a steak lunch.  The entire staff was masked, and they seated us off in a corner booth completely away from the few other guests.

We got the lunch portion rib eye meal, and split it.  It was just enough, and it was actually very good....as we'd been told.  We bought some raw steaks to take home, took some touristy pictures, and strolled through the gift shop.

After a stop to add some ice to the cooler, we headed home.

As disappointing as almost everything was, we were okay with it.  We had gotten out of the house for a couple of days, and saw some stuff, and enjoyed the various landscapes.

The area around the canyon is really cool.... the little bit of it we could see into from the road was pretty amazing.  I wish we'd been able to go in, but it was okay that we didn't.  It's only 4 hours away, so we'll go back and will have a better plan when we do.

We were home by around 4:00 pm, and ordered our groceries, and cracked open a cold beer.

The cats were happy to see us, and they behaved well for our pet sitters. 

After dinner, we sat in the hot tub, and watched the illegal fireworks going off all around our neighborhood.  It was a nice enough 4th of July.

In other news, my blood work continues to improve, and I for sure feel less fatigue.

I've ordered some new walking shoes, because I realized that mine were about a year past their "expiration date," from walking on concrete.  I am hoping that changing my shoes for new ones with better support will reduce my hip pain.


We slept late today, and now I am starving, so I am off to make brunch. Dave will be mowing the back yard, and I will be doing laundry.... an easy day to ease back into a full work week next week.