It Is Your Turn, Lord

Post # 63     I am still trying to get the rest of the garden planted before we revert back to dust bowl days or fall gets here. Yesterday I planted 40 hills of corn.  Lord, I planted them in good faith that you would send rain, and sooner rather than later would sure work for me.

I can't help but smile when....

Post # 62        I get to play with my granddaughter!

Taylor 6 & 1/2 months

Get to spend time with the best 9 and 10 yr old boys I know!  

Grandma's grand boys!


 




watch this 3 ring circus in my living room!

or I see this little guy with the crooked smile!

Cattle panel trellis

post # 61                                                 My grandsons and I built a trellis for the tomatoes to grow on. A cattle panel is 4' x 16'...I imagine we looked like the 3 stooges out there trying to bend this panel and get it attached to the poles in the ground but we finally got it up!  3 more to go but I think we can only manage one a day!

Where did the time go?

Post # 60
I have not posted anything since last July!  During that time I read a lot of books, slept alot, finally realized how much stress I had been under for decades and just ...stopped ...and let the healing begin.  I gained a new daughter-in-law, a new granddaughter & a new grandpuppy. DD Casey moved out, DD Becky moved in. My dog ate my hearing aides and i said hallelujah, I hated those things anyway.  My depression and anxiety problems have just recently been greatly reduced with the help of a very wonderful therapist, meds from my psychiatrist and by me doing the things required to get better and help keep me healthier. It took a year, a very hard year, and I am not really well but not as bad as when I went to the hospital for sure. I still fall in the depression hell hole too easily and too often.  I still have anxiety just thinking about being among people and like to just stay at my home but that is ok. Now, If i could just lose those pesky 60 extra pounds!  I sure do miss work, my library patrons, the safe haven the library has always been to me, but guess what?! Retirement is just pretty darn good except for the absence of money!  I highly recommend it! But not if you have to live through a mental breakdown to do it. I stay up most of the night reading or on the computer...I'm just a night person and I have insomnia, and then sleep during the heat of the day. In between I play with my dogs and putter in my yard...two things that really help with my depression. See my grandchildren when I can, that really helps.  Appreciate it when my kids treat me kindly. Love to have emails from friends. But pretty much I spend my days with my dogs or in the yard planting stuff.   The morning glory photos here are from last year. I have lost count at how many paper bathroom cups I have planted this year with morning glories but enough to line 309 feet of fence with a plant every few inches!  Last year I just had morning glories that covered 1/2 the width of my property in the front, this year they surround the entire lot. Re: my garden... I am such a procrastinator! I almost have all of the garden planted but I am at least a month behind.  Tomorrow I will finish up. Last year I tried square foot gardening and it would have been great if the insects had not eaten my plants up.  And I want to know why they don't eat the weeds!? This year, since we are in a serious drought, I made self watering containers (see how at http://www.globalbuckets.org/ ).  I was able to get food grade buckets for free...formerly contained cake icing.  I have a fenced off section of my yard 20' x 30' for a garden area.  This week I totally lined the perimeter with 4 o'clock plants, as well as morning glories on 2 sides. I have pots of catnip, nasturtium, allyssum, and marigolds scattered among the buckets to hopefully deter some insects. In the self watering buckets I have tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, bell peppers, watermelon, cantaloupe, black eyed peas, green beans and turnips.  Another thing I would like to know is where in the heck do those squash bugs come from???  I live sorta in the middle of nowhere so how do they find me?  Anyway, I am going to find an organic way of getting rid of the bad bugs (other than picking them off).  Tomorrow I am going to get my grandsons to help me make arched garden trellis's out of 4 cattle panels. Right now my garden is not very attractive, dead bermuda, with rows of white Walmart icing buckets and a Rubbermaid tub or two but once the 4'oclocks and other flowers are in bloom, the vegetable plants start overflowing from the buckets, and the bermuda seeds I planted come up it ought to be a pretty garden.  For the first time I invested in Miracle Grow Potting Mix and my tomato plants are beautiful.  I have never had such dark green leaves, and I have a lot of tomatoes and more blossoms on them already.  I took my 4 square ft gardening boxes I made last year, moved them to an area around my swing and planted them in flowers.  The crepe myrtles I thought had frozen last winter when we had two weeks of below zero temps have all started to come out.  My knock out roses are full of buds and I have sunflowers coming up.  By the end of July I think my yard will be looking very nice.  If we could get some rain it would just be wonderful.  This year we have only received 0.16 inches of moisture since mid-February.  My favorite weatherman said this is the worst drought for us since 1956.  Lord, please send us several days of drizzle please!

Fog may be clearing

Post # 59  I quit taking the two $50 copay drugs I mentioned awhile back and I seem to be doing better in some ways. I was able to read a book this week...Donna Andrews' book Stork Raving Mad (thoroughly enjoy this series)and I am going to get off the computer and start another cozy mystery Death Loves a Messy Desk. I am scared the anxiety might get worse or that I will fall in the depression hellhole but I have to be able to read books.

Brent will live to see another day

Post # 58  Yay! DS Brent brought my washer and dryer tonight. I would love to post a photo of them here if I could. I may move my blog to Shutterfly...I think you have to sign up if you want to view my things but signing up for shutterfly doesn't cost you anything and in fact they give new people something like 50 photos free for signing up. Back to the w/d...Now I just need to sell the old ones if you know anyone who needs them. $225 for the pair. Honestly they are good appliances, I just hate them because I bought them from my son's X-mother-in-law and it makes me sad every time I look at them ('cause Gail divorced my son). I bought a front load Energy Star stackable washer and dryer and they will be the last ones I ever buy, unless I live to be a 100 or something. Brent, Kali, Becky, Casey and I had a nice dinner and visit. The girls and I made salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, pea salad, homemade cream style corn,& Sister Scubert rolls. Those dinner rolls are so awesome I didn't care if it was 90 degrees outside...we had the oven on anyway. Cantelope and watermelon for dessert but we were too stuffed. Casey and I went to a Wal-mart yesterday and a different one today and I noticed the price of numerous things was higher at one than the other one. If you live where I live the one on Georgia is the cheaper one. For instance watermelons were $2 on Georgia and $3.88 at Tascosa Rd. Looked like the same watermelons to me, probably came from the same field. Once I was thumping watermelons like I would know what I was suppose to be hearing when the guy stocking cantelopes next to the watermelon bin said to me "they all came out of the same field"....I gather he had heard all the watermelon thumping he wanted to for one day. This dang site...it keeps underlining cantelope to let me know I misspelled it but spell check is no longer an option...it left when 'add photos' disappeared. Anyway, Casey and I found geraniums half price so I got 2 big pots of red ones to go in front of the fireplace. If you know me you know I have been selling jewelry for a couple of years. After mid-September I will no longer be selling jewelry. I received a new catalog from the company this week and it is the best catalog yet. I am sending in two more orders, August 15th and September 5th. If you want to order anything I will forego my profit and let you order at my cost. Very good deal if you want to do some early Christmas shopping. On a very sad note I hope Oprah's No Phone Zone becomes common. This weekend a woman a couple of years younger than me was struck and killed while riding her bike with a local cycling club. She had a husband and 16 yr old daughter who needed her. Her cycling club friends saw her die. The driver was a 24 yr old man who dropped his cell phone and took his eyes off the road to pick the cell phone up, veered out of his lane and accidentally slammed in to the lady on her bike. It is a tragedy all the way around. That poor man will have a long life ahead of him to remember seeing her in front of his truck when he looked up. It could happen to any of us who talks or texts while driving and I know too many people who do. So PLEASE don't.

blundering with my blog

Post # 57            AArrgghhh! For some reason I can no longer post photos here. I hunted for another free blog and had trouble there. I created one on wordpress. That wasn't good. No colored text there. I need color, colors make me happy. I need to share pictures. I guess my blog is staying here until I find another free place that will let me do what I want to. I loved the old blog I had a couple of years ago and really really wish they had not gone out of business. Well, back to life. My new washer and dryer came in at Sears on the 15th. Delivery was $75 so my DS Brent insisted he would pick them up for me. INSISTED. They came in Thurs, he was going to pick them up after work on Friday. I forget why but that didn't happen. He was going to get them on Saturday. Didn't happen. Would get them Sunday afternoon for sure. Ya know what happened. nothing. Definitely Monday after work. Well, Monday night we all went out to eat together to celebrate (1) my washer & dryer, (2) Trey's saving Taco Villa from burning down (THAT is another story), (3)Becky's finding out she will have a job interview on Wed.....same company, just would be a very nice promotion, (4) Brent and Kali's baby...she is starting to have a baby bump and (5) Casey just because she is a very sweet DD who takes good care of me. After our meal we went to Sears and actually got the washer and dryer loaded on a trailer attached to Kali's jeep. Casey and I drove off for home assuming we would have appliances installed in just a few minutes. No. Brent calls and his friend in the next little town needs him to come pull him out of a ditch. It is 8 pm. My washer and dryer are on the trailer. Not in my utility room. Brent parks the jeep and the trailer in a locked fence area at the place where he works and he and Kali take off in his truck to go pull out his friend. Promises he will bring them to me Tuesday night, right after work. OK fine. It's not like I have to have them, and I know they are locked up (Casey drove by just to be sure) It is now Tuesday night. He doesn't show up by 6 pm so Casey texts her brother. They are going to eat and then be right over. I had offered earlier in the day to cook supper for them since he would be here installing my washer and dryer but no, that's ok, they will eat at home then be over. Now, I am a patient woman but at 8 pm tues night...I get a text, Mom would you be really mad.... i should have said yes, yes Brent I would...but I said fine BUT tomorrow night... (my therapist will not approve)
If i do not have my new washer and dryer in my utility room, hooked up and functioning by 7 pm tomorrow I will not need them because I will be in jail for beating my son with a wet noodle. or a Louisville slugger. Have you ever heard that Carrie Underwood song....maybe I will just go after his truck.

In my yard...

Post # 55      dang it. something happened and i no longer have the option to post photos. i updated my browser and it changed things. i was going to post pictures from my yard. if i can't get it fixed i will look into moving my blog to a different free blog site. if you ever read this and want the new address you will have to tell me. i can't tell who is reading this.

cognitive impairment?

Post # 54      You know a few posts back I was wondering if I could do without the 2 prescriptions that are $50 each? You know how I have been saying I can't concentrate enough to read a book? Can't comprehend anything? Everyone knows my memory is non-existent. Well, I decided to see what I could find out about one of the $50 ones. This is from the list of side effects of one of my prescriptions, one for anxiety, from wikipedia...With long-term use of benzodiazepines it is unclear whether cognitive impairments fully return to normal after cessation of therapy; cognitive deficits persist for at least 6 months post-withdrawal, but it is possible that longer than 6 months is required for recovery of cognitive function. Lorazepam appears to have more profound adverse effects on memory than other benzodiazepines; lorazepam impairs both explicit memory and implicit memory. Benzodiazepines can cause or worsen depression. I don't need any help worsening my depression. Won't be refilling this one.

vinegar

Post # 53       In my searching for ways to live more frugally I have discovered vinegar. The acid in vinegar kills bacteria.   Click on the link below to Reader's Digest list of 175 uses for vinegar.  The one i can hardly wait to try is spraying vinegar on your windshield when a frost is expected and your windshield will not freeze over.  A tablespoon in the dog water bowl is a natural deterent to fleas and ticks but don't try this for cats, they hate vinegar.  I now have $ store spray bottles filled with vinegar under every sink.  You can use it for a vegetable cleaner (vinegar kills bacteria, then rinse off with water), i use it for a cleaner for my sink, stovetop, fridge door, door handles, counters.  FLYlady suggests a swish and swipe method every day to keep your bathroom clean.  I spray the sink, faucet, mirror with vinegar, let it sit a minute then wipe down with a paper towel.  Spray the toilet seat & rim with vinegar then use that same paper towel to wipe it off, spray some vinegar in the bowl and swish with your toilet bowl brush and your bathroom is clean.  takes just a minute. I sprayed the kitchen window sill when i saw baby sugar ants and that got rid of them, sprayed vinegar on weeds and it killed them. 
http://www.rd.com/home-garden/extraordinary-uses-for-vinegar/article24053.html