New month, new banner!
I LOVE it – and I am REALLY wanting to go to the beach these days. I can’t seem to convince Fred to run down to Florida for a day or two, though. I’ll just have to keep harassing him, I guess!
Thanks once again to the wonderful Christine!!!
CeraVe lovers, CeraVe products are on sale at Walgreen’s through the 5th. $3 off the cleanser, cream AND lotion. Now’s the time to stock up!
(Thanks to Jean for the heads up!)
I’m uploading my pictures a different way this week – actually using WordPress to do it – so if you guys can’t see the pictures or they look odd to you, please let me know.
Remember how last year I was bitching about those two old ladies digging through the bins at the recycling center, and how I was all “They’re not supposed to take stuff out of the dumpsters! The sign says so!”
Yeah, well.
Someone who looks like me might have spent three hours weeding around the tomato plants last week and decided “Fuck THIS SHIT, I’m putting down newspaper around the tomato plants, because this weeding shit is FOR THE BIRDS.”
Someone who looks like me discovered that when you pay $1.50 for the Sunday paper, you don’t get nearly enough newspaper for that $1.50, and surely there’s a better way to find newspaper to use? Like, FREE newspaper? Somewhere? Ya think?
Someone who looks like me might have convinced her husband to drive by the recycling center.
Someone who looks like me might have been seen at the recycling center, digging through the newspaper bin and pulling out piles of newspaper.
Someone who looks like me might have grabbed as much newspaper as she could reach, tossed it in the back of the truck, and then told her husband to floor it
Someone who looks like me just might have spent a few hours laying newspaper down around the tomato plants.
Not me, though. Nope. I’d never dig newspaper out of the recycling bin. The signs say not to! Wasn’t me, Officer. Just someone who looked like me. Really!
On Saturday, I got up and spent an hour and a half weeding around the tomato plants. I’d done the first half of the row Monday and found it rough going. Fred said, at some point during the week, that the weeds might come up easier if I did it the morning after it had rained.
He was right. Those weeds just about pulled themselves out of the ground when I grabbed them.
I got one of the raised beds set up behind the back yard and then I came inside and took a shower, and washed all the mud off me. I’m not the sort of person who enjoys getting muddy ordinarily – usually I’m like those little kids who have a screaming fit if they get a little spot of mud on them, “GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF ME!” – but this time around I kind of enjoyed it.
Later Saturday morning, Fred’s parents came over and brought us all their cat stuff. Their cat Sam died Thursday evening – they knew it was coming, it wasn’t unexpected, but that didn’t break their hearts any less – and they both said that they didn’t want to ever have another cat.
By the time they arrived on Saturday to deliver all their cat stuff to us (carriers, cat beds, left over cat food), Fred’s father had gone from never wanting another cat to not wanting another cat for a couple of years.
I’m still a little surprised that they left without any kittens, to be honest. Fred said he should try to convince them to take Franco and Garrity (or “Mini-Tom” and “Mini-Sugarbutt”, as he calls them).
Saturday afternoon, we waited for the rain to arrive (it never did), had Chinese food for dinner, and snoozed on the couch.
Sunday morning we both got up feeling lazy, considered just doing nothing all day, and then ended up going to Walmart to look for soil for the raised beds (there are going to be a total of four raised beds behind the back yard. One’s got three volunteer tomatoes transplanted from the garden, one will be catnip, one will be other herbs, and I’m not sure what I want to plant in the fourth bed, but I’m thinking I better figure it out soon.) As we were walking through Walmart looking for a mug for Fred to use at work, this couple came up behind us, and I was pretty sure for a moment that they were going to walk directly up my asshole. I had to duck into a side aisle to lose them.
Fred has no patience for Walmart at the best of times, and not being able to find inexpensive topsoil for the raised beds OR a mug for work (he wants a 20 oz. Bubba Keg mug to replace the one that’s falling apart) OR whatever the third thing we wanted to buy (I don’t remember what the hell it was) just confirmed his hatred for the place, and he requested that we “Get the fuck out of this shithole right now, please.”
We left Walmart and went to Publix to pick up a few things for his lunch, and then headed to Lowe’s. We had a list of stuff to get, and he headed one way to get his stuff, and I headed the other to get my stuff, and then we met up and went into the garden section so he could look for a tree to replace the apple tree that had died. Not only did he get his apple tree, we also ended up buying a Key Lime tree and a Satsuma Orange tree because they were on sale for an amazing price.
Later that afternoon, we went back to Lowe’s and got a Kumquat tree and a Tangerine tree. They’re all rated to 20ºF, so maybe they’ll live through the winter. If they don’t, it’s not like we lost a fortune – it’s worth the gamble, as far as I’m concerned.
(Now, if we could just find a mini lemon tree that we could bring inside the garage for the winter, I’d be happy!)
Monday morning we were originally planning to go up to the flea market in Tennessee. They have the flea market every weekend, but Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekends they’re four days long (they’re regularly only there on Sunday and Monday, the rest of the year) with a lot more vendors there selling their wares. But when we got up, neither of us was really that into the idea, so we opted not to go.
I transplanted three volunteer tomato plants from the garden to one of the raised beds I’d set up on Saturday, then went into the garden and put down newspaper around the tomato plants. I swear, I thought I had more than enough newspaper to do the entire row of tomatoes, but as it turned out, I only had enough for half the row.
I guess SOMEONE will have to go back by the recycling center and steal more newspaper from the bin.
Fred grilled hamburgers and pork steaks and pork chops on the grill, and I made potato salad and coleslaw, and we’ll be eating that stuff for the rest of the week.
We ALSO had our first serving of green beans fresh from the garden. Fred picked enough green beans from the garden that I could boil half of them to have with lunch yesterday, and saved the other half to make green beans Pioneer Woman-style with dinner tonight.
The canned green beans we’ve been eating all year are okay – but they are NOTHING like fresh green beans straight from the garden. I’m surprised there were enough green beans left over to do anything with, because while I was snapping the ends off the beans, I kept showing raw beans into my mouth.
YUM.
The rest of Monday, we did nothing much. Pulled out the dryer because the freakin’ hose keeps coming out of the hole and thus on the rare occasion I put something in the dryer to dry, that whole end of the house becomes super humid and hot. Fred fed the hose back into the hole and then slapped duct tape on that fucker to keep it in place. We’ll see if it works. I did laundry, hung out with kittens, the usual.
I love long, relaxing weekends where we actually get a few things accomplished ’round these parts.
All four in one shot!
Fred leaves his briefcase on top of the chair near the door.
Rhyme thinks it’s a pretty great place to hang out.
Have you ever seen a happier kitten?
Elwood’s all ::slurpslurpslurp::
Corbett’s all ::PURRRRRRR::
Rhyme’s all “I cannot watch this.”
Rhyme. Is he a beautiful kitten, or what?
Corbett and Reacher, fighting.
“Bleh. This mouse tastes funny.”
Sheila’s all “BRING IT ON, SONNY!”
Emo Sheila.
Sheila says “Yeah. Apparently nothing interesting going on up HERE, either.”
“AM TRYING TO SLEEP PLZ LEAVE ALONE THANKYOO.”
Previously
2009: This is why it’s a good thing I’m not licensed to carry a gun.
2008: No entry.
2007: Damn gardeners, always laying down on the job.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: It’s just a good thing the air traffic controller didn’t start talking about the plane’s phalanges.
2003: Anatomy of a Smackdown
2002: No entry.
2001: Lovely ‘do, eh?
2000: I don’t want to sound like a nosy know-it-all.