Development

We got a lot more rain today. Mr. K said it was over four inches. We need it very badly.

I visited my friend Lori today. She has four kids. She had her baby back in May. She's 40. They all seem to be doing well, but she said her baby had her up three times last night. I'm so glad I finished with babies at 36.

I was stunned when I looked at her back yard when I pulled in the driveway, and there was a three-story house framed practically in her back yard. When she bought her house a few years ago, the real estate agent assured her no one would ever be able to develop the woods behind her because the ground was too soft. Not even a year later, the surveying began. We knew someone would be behind her, but we figured their back yard would abut hers. Never did anyone suspect that the house would have such a small yard, and would be put in sideways such that the corner of this house would be about eight feet from her six-foot-tall privacy fence around her back yard. It's awful! The sort of have a half-basement, which raises the main level of the house about six feet. Many windows in what will be the kitchen face right into her back yard, over the top of the privacy fence because the house is so tall. Anyway, this is going to be a huge house. She says it's worth between $500,000 and $600,000.

My friend and her husband are talking of moving, but right now all they can do is talk. Right now the market is way down for prices, things aren't selling very quickly, and her husband works for a company that may go through bankruptcy or be bought by another company, so his job is very unstable. I think he's looking around to see if he can't find another job.

Having someone build behind us has been a concern for Mr. K and me. We've been worried about it since we moved in ten years ago, but so far no one has tried that we know of. The strip of land, as it now stands, doesn't have road access. If it were joined with another parcel on the road, though, I would think it could be developed. We'd certainly talk of moving if someone's huge house was right by our back fence. I feel sorry for Lori.

RIP, Mr. Dillard

I went to the funeral home this evening to see the family and remains of Mr. James Dillard. He was 90.

I met him shortly after I started going to the gym. We would try to work out three times a week, the same three I try to go. He had been a small business owner and on the side, made a LOT of money working very hard at owning/managing rental houses. Since Mr. K was just getting into that, I spoke with him a lot. He was full of lots of good advice, and was always willing to share it.

A couple times he'd be gone from the gym for a month or so, but eventually he'd be back. Last time I saw him was in the spring. I've been keeping my eye out in the paper for his name in the obituary section, and Saturday I saw it. I've met his wife a few times, and she was very nice. Mr. Dillard always made it clear she was the love of his life and his reason for living. His first wife had left him out of the blue after around 20 years of marriage, and he told me he felt like dying until he met his second wife. They married three months later, and have been married almost 37 years.

His wife is very, very sad. She felt the same way about him.

I knew when I met Mr. Dillard that I was lucky to have met such a man at all. He was a really good man who really loved his family. He loved to wear a thirteen-year-old sweatshirt to the gym that his kids, grandkids, etc. had written on in fabric paint to wish him a happy 75 th birthday.

Mr. Dillard said more than once that he owed his life to President Truman dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. He was in the navy in the South Pacific and would have had to go in and fight if President Truman hadn't brought WWII to a halt with so much sudden force. Mr. Dillard took great pride in America and his service to his country.

I miss him. I've kept hoping he'd come back to the gym, but I always knew one day he wouldn't, and I wouldn't have very long to know him since I met him so late in his life. What luck I had to meet him at all.

Garden

Bean Damage
Originally uploaded by greycharleigh

This string bean plant is trying to recover. It had full-grown leaves and blossoms, but a rabbit sneaks out at night and chews it (and it's neighbors) to the ground.

I realize I probably won't get any green beans from it. Probably another chewing of the new growth will kill the entire plant. I've sprinkled some Swiss chard seeds in the area with these decimated bean plants, and I'll see if I can get them to grow instead. I don't know if the rabbit will prefer Swiss chard to the weeds in my yard, but I know for sure he prefers bean plants.

It's been time to put in my fall/winter garden, and I'm remembering why I didn't bother last year. Not too many things will survive over winter here. I'm hoping the chard will. I know beets will if they get established before it gets too cold. That's the catch. I need to get the plants started now or a couple weeks ago.

The same thing that happened last year is happening this year. It's been far to dry in early August to get the plants going. I had to wait until it got rainy last fall, and the few things I tried to get started were too small when the frosts came, and most died. Only some stragglers I had put in in the previous spring survived.

For a little while, I'll try to keep the Swiss chard seeds watered. It's going to be hard, though. It's so dry they'll need water every day or every other day to get the seeds to germinated and the plants to get established. Right now we have voluntary watering restrictions, and I don't know how long it will be before they become mandatory. Probably I'll still be able to haul a bucket of water to the tiny plot to water the seeds, but that's a pain with K around so I'm likely to put it off and the seedlings (if I even get any) will dry out. It's worth a shot, though, because right now I have absolutely nothing going for winter, although I'd like to put in a bunch of beets. I think if our weather turns rainy, I'll give it a shot and hope the plants get big enough to withstand a frost.

Playing with Pictures--Snoop!

I've been playing with some of my pictures in Picasa2 that came out dark. I have discovered by adjusting the fill light, I can make some bad dark pictures look okay. I've also discovered I can see things in the background that had been blacked out. I saw a nasty scratch on my coffee table. I saw kid-junk left all over the floor. I saw lots of stuff I wouldn't actually want in the background. Sometimes the dark background is a good thing, but it is so interesting that the data is still there, even if I can't notice it without adjustment.

That wasn't exciting enough. I wondered if I could find hidden things in the pictures of others. I downloaded a couple pictures of Brilly's (I hope you don't mind--I know you played with one of my autumn pictures once and I didn't care.) Behind the dark-background plum blossom picture, you can see more tree limbs of a different tree. In the picture of the moon taken as soccer practice on evening, I can see trees, and what I think are clouds and a power line. In a night picture of a bridge, there is a woman sitting not far from the camera at the edge of the water.

Okay. I admit it; I'm a snoop. I'm sort of getting the urge to peek at what's really in the background of the pictures of others in general

Doughnuts

I had a really stupid idea today. Instead of making a regular dinner, which the kids seldom even eat, I wanted doughnuts for dinner. We also had leftover chicken from last night to go with them. I made a cake doughnut recipe and heated canola oil in an electric skillet. I made way too many doughnuts, and now I have some in the freezer and a zip lock bag on the counter. I also feel sick to my stomach. I did eat a little chicken, but mostly I had doughnuts.

Oddly enough, J ate better than normal. Yes, she had doughnuts, but she also ate a lot of chicken and even had some frozen raspberries for dessert.

Anyway, because of how unwell I feel, next time I think doughnuts for dinner would be a good idea (it's never happened before today), I need to re-think it.

Monday supermarket run

I didn't get my car back from the shop until Sunday around 5:30 p.m. It isn't completely fixed; I'll need to take it to the dealership. My antifreeze leak is probably from the head gasket, and they put off too long looking at my serpentine belt, and right when it was time to pick it up, concluded the belt should be replaced since it's a type they can't tighten. I'll probably have that done at the dealership so I only have to have the car gone once. I think I'll see if I can get it in next week. I had hoped for another weekend fix, but the dealership doesn't do that sort of thing on Saturday's because their parts supplier isn't open.

I went to the supermarket this evening. Now I have some fresh meat in the refrigerator. I got some clearance steaks that must be eaten tomorrow. I think I'll grill them outside unless we get lucky and it rains.

Disjointed thoughts

I always do my main grocery shopping on Saturday evenings. I can't today because we took my car in last night (Friday) for it's annual, state-required safety inspection (and a few other things since it was there anyway), and they didn't quite get to my car today. It's second on the list for tomorrow.

I will have to wait until Monday evening to get my week's groceries. The supermarket I go to on Saturdays is closed on Sundays so the employees can spend time with their families and go to church, which is a nice idea. They're the only large store in town that still is closed on Sundays that I can think of.

Mr. K signed a lease with a mother and adult daughter for the house we have for rent at the place that took forever to find the tenant last summer, and who never paid her rent until things went to court. We finally evicted her while I was in Michigan in June. It took him several hours to get the lease signed because apparently this lady had trouble getting all the money together (not a good sign). I guess the big thing she rounded up was a check from her church. Now I have a stack of about four money orders, a fifty dollar bill, a five dollar bill, and a check from her church. I went to rush them to the bank right away to make sure the check would clear, but when I went to my car, it wasn't there because it's at the shop. I think I went out to my car at least three times today only to find it gone.

The kids are happy because they'll miss church tomorrow. They're sad because they'll probably miss the doughnuts afterwards.

Mr. K, K, and I all have some kind of a tummy bug. K complained about her tummy yesterday and today, I threw up this morning, Mr. K spent a lot of the afternoon in the bathroom, and I spent a little time there myself this evening. It's not the horrid, dehydrating, feverish but I had one year right after Thanksgiving. This is much milder, but it seems to last a while, because Mr. K and I have had some problems the past couple days.

Since I couldn't go out tonight, I suggest we go fishing instead. The fish weren't biting very much, and the creek had pretty much dried up to just a couple pools. We went back to the pond itself, and went exploring. I wore my Crocs, as did the kids. We got stuck in the mud, had to take our Crocs off and pull them out of the mud by hand. The mud was bluish black and as squishy as I imagine it would be to step in most of the poop in K's diapers. Thankfully it didn't smell. No one got leeches. N fell into the mud when his Crocs were stuck in it, but he only got the side of himself into the goo, and not his butt and head.

When we got home, we hosed off. My feet and Crocs were still dirty. I had everyone take a bath before mine so I could soak as long as I felt like. I threw my Crocs in the tub with me and used a couple scrub brushes I normally use on the tile on the Crocs, my feet, and my hands. I did a very good job getting the mud off. There's only a little left under a few of my toenails.

I get to sleep in tomorrow morning. That will be nice. I didn't get to today since Mr. K had to get up early to meet the ladies to sign the lease. I've got a lot of clothing I'd like to get folded. I may try doing it in the computer room while I watch a show called Regenesis at Hulu.com. I might just go to my room and fold clothes on my bed while I watch MacGyver on DVD or something. I'd also like to get my sheets changed before I go to sleep.

Bees

From the safety of my bedroom, through the sliding glass door, I filmed the masses of bees that are now in our screen porch, looking for leftovers from Mr. K's honey extraction yesterday. It appears he left a frame in there that he thought was empty, but it actually wasn't completely empty and now the bees are after it. This is sort of an interesting video. It's at my flickr page.

Also, currently the last item on the first page of my Flickr account is a black-looking video. It was taken on the 4th of July after dark, and you can see the glowsticks my kids were playing with. It's not as interesting as the bees.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greycharleigh/?saved=1

Exhausted

Mr. K extracted his honey today. He watched the kids for a while this afternoon while K and I napped. For some reason, I've been completely exhausted today. I ache a little but have no fever. I wonder if I didn't pick up some kind of virus from the kids last week.

I had planned to take the kids swimming today, but it never happened. Since I never told them I might, they didn't nag me. I'll try to get them to the pool tomorrow.

I'm Done

I did my fifth and final day in the church nursery today. It went pretty well. We finally got things down to a routine--play with toys, go outside, play with toys, have snack, play with toys, play with balls in the gym, play with toys, and clean up. I left a note for the person working next week regarding the time we used the playground and the gym. These times might not work for her if the Vacation Bible School kids need either at those times, though, but at least she'll know they're available to her.

Today (and I'm surprised it took this long) the teenage males figured out I had teenage females working in the nursery. For most of the morning, I picked up an extra volunteer. He's a son of the friend of mine with six kids. He didn't distract the girls, and I got him to help pick wet goldfish crackers off the floor with me after the one-year-old boy put them in a cup of water and poured it on the floor.

I'm not sure if I'm taking N and J at all to Loreto next week. The mother of this young man is teaching the class for fourth graders, so she'll be there every day. She lives near me and has room in her van for both my kids. I might just take her up on her offer to transport N and J. I'm thinking of going Monday morning, though, and talking to the lady running the nursery so she isn't as clueless as I was when I walked in last Monday.