Saturday night was our Captain's Party for the Krewe des Ambassadeurs. It was awesome at the lake house of one of our members. Cheeseburgers in Paradise was the main food. It's a great idea for a party. We had our own DJ, who is also a krewe member, a margarita machine furnished by yet another krewe member. It was a good time! I'm just not the party animal that I used to be! Thank goodness for that!!
I hit the ground running this morning because the yard needed to be mowed before it rained. It was already sprinkling, but I mowed anyway and it hasn't rained yet!
Last year I marked the date that I saw the first hummer...March 26th...so I put the hummingbird feeder out a couple of days ago and saw my first hummer feeding at it today. My mom saw her first ones today as well.I'm armed this year to get some close ups with my new video camera. Of course, I haven't bothered to learn how to upload video to the computer yet. I guess if the need arises, I will learn!
Wind is really getting on my nerves. How do people live in those perpetually windy places like West Texas? All day was spent working in my yard doing all the edging and planting grass plugs. I tried to blow everything off, but it kept blowing back in my face and in my garage.
My azaleas are suffering from lace bugs, so I sprayed them for the second time, but I'm not sure how much got on the plants with the wind working against me.
Yesterday I worked down at the home place and took Dad to Wal Mart. Now I have potatoes, onions, cabbage, some squash, and the first of the corn planted. We stagger the corn, so it won't all get ready at the same time, so I planted 3 rows yesterday and will wait a couple of weeks to plant more. 
My mom is not doing well. She could barely walk on Sunday when she came to lunch at my brother's house, but when I went to her house yesterday she had stripped the beds to wash the sheets. I told her she should have been resting her back and let me do the sheets. I went out to work outside and when I came back, she had already put clean sheets on her bed, had vacuumed, and was cleaning out from under a kitchen cabinet. I'm such a wuss, that if my back were hurting I wouldn't be doing anything!! She is just an amazing woman! I told her I would be happy to do all that, but she said I do enough around there. WHATEVER! She did let me put the clean sheets on Dad's bed.
My cooking skills are not my forte', but I made some killer baked mac and cheese last night. Last week there was a recipe in the paper which sounded EASY (key word) and good. I have never in my life made baked mac and cheese, but this stuff was delish! I'm going to make some for my dad this week. He doesn't eat much of anything, but he said he might eat some of that. Cooking it was a learning experience since I haven't had much experience with pasta that doesn't come out of a box. I made WAY too much pasta and had to throw most of it out. Next time I'll know that a bag of pasta turns into a bucket of cooked pasta. It's mixed with some cheese soup, sauteed onions, hot sauce, milk and grated sharp cheddar cheese, then baked for 30 minutes. It was even good cold!
I spent several hours working at Dad's today. He located a bunch of seedling peach trees in the middle of a grown up fence row and wanted the row cleaned up so the little trees can grow, so he and I were going to do it. I knew it would be me doing it because he just cannot do work anymore. My brother came and used the blade on the tractor and helped me a lot. 
It's time to start planting stuff, so I ran the tiller and got some rows ready to plant corn. We had onions waiting to be planted, so I got all them planted.
Then I had to mow my yard. It was downright embarrassing. I could have hidden Easter eggs in my yard, but it's all clean now. I still have to edge and use the blower, but........as is usual...I AM USED UP! I'm off to the Lazy Boy for a night of vegetating!!!!
When Mom told my brother this morning who was moving next to me, his exact words were, "He's the one who stole my class ring." O my goodness.....now I will always have to think of that when I see my neighbor!!!
My friend, who is the developer of this new subdivision, wanted to show my house to the people who will be building the house next to me. When they came by, I didn't know them, but it turns out that he went to school for a while in my home town and was in the class with my brother. When I told my mom who he was, she remembered him for one reason.....she thought he was the one who stole my brother's class ring!!! I told Mom to please just let that GO! Stewart got his ring back, but Mom doesn't remember how. Actually, he was the Methodist minister's son, so they never stayed in one place for a long time. It's amazing to me...the things my mom remembers!
If we had winds like this when I lived in Texas, they would have had a name...a tropical storm name! Tropical storms become named at 39 mph, I think. We have beat that a lot today. The airport has had to close down stranding many passengers in Shreveport. This has been made worse due to DFW closing down as well. Almost all flights from SHV go to Dallas for connections. Gusts have been clocked at 60!
Once again we are under a tornado watch and a wind advisory. It's nearly 80 degrees with a cold front on the way. This makes for "a particularly dangerous situation"....their words, not mine! We heard this a lot Friday night. I have moved all the plants inside that could blow away or break from the winds.
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Finally, the AC man came back today after I called him yesterday. He took a measurement several months ago to add a booster fan to my AC system, but never came back. Today he changed the ducts to the master bedroom and bath to a larger size. Hopefully, this will help to cool them a little better. There are huge windows in the bedroom which could contribute to the poor job of cooling, but that would not affect the bathroom. I hope this works. If not, he will come back and add a booster fan.....all this at no charge because he wants it to be right and he installed the system originally. I like that work ethic!
It's been a long time since I had a rant, so I am overdue. My calm demeanor gets a little riled when everybody in the damn Wal-Mart is talking on their cell phones. Why can't they just get out of the way if they have to talk? Personally, I don't see any reason why one has to carry on a big conversation while they are supposed to be shopping. They are loud and obnoxious and IN THE WAY! They are totally oblivious to any other shoppers in the store! OK. I'm done!
Tonight I went to the Easter musical at my church. I usually don't go on Sunday nights, but this was a special event and well worth it. It was incredibly moving and the music was awesome. The rest of the day I was basically useless. After church and lunch at my brother's, I was comatose for a couple of hours. I woke up once again sometime in the night with my toe showing signs of gout again, so I medicated myself. My doc doubled my meds that are supposed to prevent recurrence...obviously, that is not working!
As I was watching TV last night the weatherman broke into programing with a tornado warning. Turns out all the weathermen reported for duty and stayed on the air for two hours nonstop! I knew it was serious when that happened. They run crawlers along the bottom of the screen, but never come on live and stay on. There were tornados very close by. Their weather equipment is just amazing. We knew exactly where the tornados were and where they would be every minute. It was scary!
And it's only 2 P.M.............This day has been a wonderful day all spent outside getting things done in the yard. I heard people over at my new neighbor's house, so I went over at lunch time and went to Sonic to get lunch for them. I felt bad because all her friends were over there helping clean the house getting ready for her and her husband to move next week and I wasn't over there helping. I'm trying to get everything finished here so I can devote my time to gardening at Dad's. Yesterday I spent hours at the garden taking advantage of the weather and some partially dry soil. I got lots of tilling done and planted 4 rows of potatoes. After that I was used up yesterday, too! There is a pattern here......I'm used up A LOT! I just can't do like I used to!
At Christmas this was a huge baseball size bulb given to me as a gift by a cousin. I planted it and left it in the garage. Mom told me the garage was too cold and I should move it inside. I did and this is what it turned in to. Absolutely gorgeous Amaryllis!
According to my work schedule today, spring is officially here. Mom cooked collard greens, hot water cornbread, sweet potatoes and white perch for lunch. Of course, I wasn't going to miss that. After lunch and a brief rest, I tackled mowing the thick winter grass in my yard. It is so hard to mow, but it was very high and thick. As soon as I finished mowing, two of my friends dropped by to visit while I was sitting outside enjoying a rest and some sunshine. I planted some more plugs of zoysia grass in some places that grass won't grow. Also, planted some hostas that a friend shared with me. She is building a house right behind me and is digging up hostas from her old house. This has been my kind of day!
In the past month, two of my former teacher friends have died. Both of them were slightly younger than I am. Weird things are going on. I don't believe either of them were completely retired. They retired from our school district, but took jobs in other places. It's a shame to work your entire life....then die! I am loving my retirement!
We went to Cirque du Soleil Saltimbanco today at the CenturyTel Center. It was an awesome show well worth the $80 tickets. Afterwards, we had dinner reservations at Four Winds, an Asian restaurant. That was also awesome, but we ordered way too much food. There were 5 of us and we all ordered an entre.....big mistake! We should have ordered 3 entres. Overall, good night!
It has snowed nonstop since about 9 this morning, but now it is melting as fast as it is falling. It has been fun and pretty all day, but it's heavy, wet snow that it not very conducive to playing. All the schools got out early. Why? I have no idea. The roads are fine, but I'm sure it was impossible to do school stuff. These kids have mostly never seen snow, so I'm sure it was mostly to just let them enjoy the snow.
I never even got past my flannels and a t shirt today. There was no reason due to inclement weather, so I just stayed around in bed mostly...completely worthless! For several days the weather forecasters have been harping on bad weather coming on Monday. All it did was rain. My new drainage system sort of worked. I think I need to lower it a tiny bit. It still has some water standing in front of the pipe.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have no tolerance for incompetence. Today I had a craving for strawberry pie, so I took a little road trip to Shreveport to a place that I know has awesome strawberry pie. I ordered a piece of strawberry and a piece of coconut. When I got home....30 miles away...I was all set for my strawberry pie. The damn bag had chocolate and coconut in it....NO STRAWBERRY! I was pissed....in fact, I'm still pissed! 
