Home Alone

A little melodrama, re: the title, to get us started. Really, it is not so bad, but I sure do miss Bruce, especially when he decided to remain in DC until Saturday!! Much to his chagrin, there have been far too many unforeseen problems needing his attention. It is not the first time, although with any luck, it will be the last, primarily because his next job is here in Orlando! Just five and a half miles from home, no less.

So, I'm pretty much sick of summer. Same old, same old.

Most everyone feels the same when September rolls around because it is still hot/humid as the dickens and we don't want it to be. Humidity--big time! Why, some days, my glass doors do not lose their condensation until after 10 in the morning. We've not had a drop of rain, however, since Sunday afternoon, although the sky is cloudy now, just when Bill needs nothing of the sort as he is having some concrete poured around 2:00. Not only is he having a sidewalk poured alongside the house, he's having some planters filled that once were inside the pool screen enclosure, and of late, have housed only weeds.

The early week adventures have come to a halt, however, my dear friends have really helped me out by having me over for dinner two nights this week. Thank you, thank you.

Wednesday, David and I met with our accountant to discuss next year's tax burden and it could be worse. I invited Dave because he's our money manager, or at least the invested portion; then too, he can follow along better than I can. Long story short, it's going to be interesting.

Because I was in Winter Park, Trader Joe's was on my agenda. One thing they have for very reasonable prices are fresh flowers, and that day was no exception. I came home with some super fly orange Gerbera daisies. 10 stems for $5.00.

Aren't they super? Speaking of the grocery store, the other day I boiled some eggs for egg salad and once they were all peeled nicely, I lined them up to check the sizing. You know how when a recipe calls for a large egg and that is what you use. But seriously, as demonstrated below, not all large eggs are created equally.

See what I mean? I wonder how much difference it really makes when baking...

Clemons hooked me up with some multi-colored radishes!!

This is a first in my life....I take my excitement any way I can of late. :)

Here is a wonderful story for all my teacher friends. Simply amazing what an impact a teacher can make on a young student's life. I bet everyone reading this has one of those in their life, or so I hope. Susan Thigpen was mine, back when I was in the ninth grade at Howard. I wonder what happened to her.

My friend Sue is having her kitchen redone, and unlike us, she's getting all new cabinets, flooring, and a wall taken down. In other words, the works. Riding over the other morning for a status update, we talked out front and I could not help admire all of her blooming orchids, and there were a bunch.

The day I visited the cabinets still had not arrived, however, that has now been rectified, and things are moving along nicely.

Cheryle sent me a link to an article last week about purslane and how you can eat the stuff. The reason she did so is because last year, when I had it growing like a weed, she took some cuttings and now has plenty of her own. For the life of me, I find it difficult to imagine frying the stuff.

Or eating the flowers for that matter. I think I will content myself with enjoying the cute flowers and foliage in the garden.

Bruce is encouraging me to do a better job taking care of my camera equipment which is probably only fair. Finding this cute little bag from Jon and Alissa in my desk drawer, I'm going to do my best to use it for storing lenses. Time will tell now, won't it?

By the way, it is now pouring. Perhaps it will stop before two? I sure hope so!

Yesterday morning I finally took Baxter for a walk in Cypress Grove Park, the only place he really likes to do so. As I mentioned before, with all of the recent rains, everything is green, green, green.

Surprising me, he was a pretty good walker, at least until he got a little tired. Most of the time I forget he's getting older like we are. Twelve years old already. I ended up carrying him in order for him to catch his breath, however, once we reached the big open field I put him down because, generally he loves to run. And run he would have except the grass was nearly as tall as he is!

He's taking a little breather in the high grass which was also wet from the morning dew. I know my shoes got soaked, as did his little legs. Once home, for some reason I took ahold of a bowl I've kept on my kitchen window sill, rummaging through the contents. Was I ever delighted to discover two items that I thought I'd never find. Duh, I look at the bowl every single day! Anyway, one item was a watch, and the other was a replacement button for a blouse I purchaed in Brighton, England. The blouse is darn cute with bird cages and never fails to garner compliments. Unfortunately, one of the lower covered buttons fell off a few months ago. My plan was to remove the one at the collar to replace it with, however, now I don't have too!! Button sewn on this morning. Woo hoo!

My luck did not hold out with the watch, however. Figuring it was merely a dead battery, I took it, along with a couple other dead watches over to the clock guy I've seen more of than I would like. No problem, three new batteries, and I am off. This morning though, I put the lost/found watch on before going on my ride,  only to look down thirty minutes later, and notice that the time was as he set it the day before. I seriously loved that watch, so much so, that I drove over once again to see what was up. Here's what was up--the circuit board is dead. I asked him to throw it away for me because it was too painful to do so on my end. :(

Finally, and this will interest only a few of you, so you've been warned. Anyway, a few weeks ago while at the nail salon, Tina talked me into letting her paint my nails which is something I ordinarily shy away from. Not because I don't like it, but because what I don't like are nails with chipped polish. Well, lo and behold, that polish stayed looking pretty good for about five days. I discovered I kind of liked being a painted lady. While flipping through a Vogue magazine recently, I saw an ad for Essie top coat which promised to behave like gel nails. So, I went in search of it, finding a little combo pack of both the top coat and a bottle of polish named "Sunday Funday." Perfect! Except, it is not. Or to date it has not proven to be so. First day and I had a serious chip. Second day--more. Hmmm.....let's try this again now that I am confidant enough to polish my nails. Pretty much the same result. In other words, not the miracle cure I was hoping for. Still not ready to give up, I wondered if it were the Essie polish, and would another brand work better? Seriously, a science project going on around here. The other day I decided to try it with some Revlon polish I had in my little nail bag. Let's just say that painting with dark polish is quite the challenge for me. Here I am holding up a little piece of sea glass I keep in shell jar.

By golly, I'm several days in, and my nails, although too dark, are still looking mighty good. Stay tuned.....

Won't be long now,

Gail