Never thought retirement would be like this

Sneaked in 2 extra hours of sleep this afternoon. Got to remember to count them toward last night and not stay up 2 hours later again tonight. This childish behavior about sleeping could be because the worst form of punishment when I was a kid was to get sent to bed early. But why was that so terrible? I wish they had time-outs back then. I would have enjoyed those.

Also I've gained back the 5 pounds lost last spring. I know it sounds silly, but just 5 extra pounds makes a big difference in the summer heat and humidity here, especially this summer. We were way above average temps here for June. I may sneak over to the weight loss punishment sub-forum and try to beat down some pounds, again. But I'm not quite in the mood yet.:rolleyes:
 

I like this quote, supposedly by Robert Frost. I find it applies even to this stupid diary, just to everyday unimportant stuff---like why I do stupid things or like inchworms.:)

Quote_Writer_Robert_Frost.gif
 
Yes, tomorrow. That is a good idea. Going to force myself out to the lake tomorrow and get some things done, but not in the morning. No time to eat while working. Not supposed to be too hot, and not supposed to rain. It will be a good kick off day.

football8.jpg


Still a bit of fuzzy thinking going on here.:confused: It will go away too... tomorrow.
 
Now I'm thinking this fuzzy thinking has to do with sleeping in such a cold place lately. It's like when you work in the AC all day and then go outside in the heat---your head gets all stuffed up for a while. Maybe it's better if a person doesn't think too much anyway. Ha! Sure better for sleeping.
 
The only thing to report today was a snapping turtle in the lake---by far the largest I've seen so far. I would estimate the shell was at least 18" long. It was there when I rounded the corner in the truck and quickly dove, but then emerged twice again later, always on the far side of the lake. It looked like a fat submarine.

There are really no jobs out there that I have to do. It's so dry out there the grass isn't growing, so no lawn mowing even. Took the trim saw and cleared out a bunch of ugly small dead trees sticking up around one little section of the lake, just cosmetic, and left it at that. At least it was something. I've got to make a firm plan, pick just one job, and stick to the plan. Spent a lot of time just watching all the activity in the lake.

Calories today (7/11): 1100. Should have been 1000, but I ate 4 of the goats' ginger snaps.:rolleyes: The goats are doing fine.
Calories 7/12: 1120.
 
Last edited:
My grandmother in West Virginia had a sweetshrub bush next to her porch. The blossoms smelled so sweet when the air was heavy and still in the evenings in the spring. I always wanted one.

sweetshrub1_zpsyf7m6hpc.jpg


Her house got torn down before I was a teenager, but some of that shrub got moved to my aunt's house, and the relatives sent me some sprouts here in the mail. Planted it beside my deck steps. My cousin took sprouts back to WV when she visited here and started it at her house a few years ago, so the genes from that plant have really traveled a lot.

It's almost an invasive plant and spreads rapidly from the roots into the yard. Haven't trimmed it back for a few years. That's what I did this evening. Here are the before and after pictures. I didn't kill it. I don't think you can kill it, except with Roundup. [The steps going up to that deck are perfectly level. They just look crooked in the photo:p.]

shrubB1.jpg shrubA1.jpg

I think my router is about to die. It keeps disconnecting. It has already lasted years longer than the reviews said it would.
.
.
Calories (7/13): 1070
 
Spring Shows Georgia's Full Glory

by Janisse Ray



"If I can be so bold as to name a time of full glory for Georgia, spring is it.


Here, azaleas are loud with fuchsia, pink, magenta, and flame. Sweet shrub, coral honeysuckle and dooryard quince are wildly extravagant in their blooming. Phlox turns patches of ground lavender. Wild cherries and sassafras are blooming, one wide open, one timid.


The beauty is like a drug. You want to quit working. You want to sleep and read and rest and laugh and watch the breeze ripple the clothes on the line. A trip to the mailbox is dizzying -- the air is full of fragrance and the private lives of birds. I bring the mail to the rocking chair on the porch, wind murmuring in the pines, where I find myself an hour later, the mail read but me dreaming, listening to the brown thrasher chicks whose mother has built their nest two feet outside the porch screen.


The problem is with the season’s length. If I am honest, I admit that spring lasts about two weeks, a wildly glorious fortnight.


Every day something new unsheathes, first purple violets in the yard and longleaf pine anthers. Then pollen mists the air and Chickasaw plums bloom. The sun rises more due east, between certain oaks along the fence-row.


One year on March 31, a chuck’s-wills-widow, a buff-brown nightjar whose song is often mistaken for a whippoorwill’s, called from the edge of the field. It had freshly arrived from Florida. I was excited to hear it and hoped it would stay, but I didn’t hear it again.


I wasn’t sure which day the kestrel, which had perched on a certain wire for months, wheeled away northward. On one afternoon of high and unusual winds, a flock of cedar waxwings appeared out of the high, white sky to take cover in a pecan tree. There they sat, brown and round, preening. I counted twenty.


The Grancy greybeard blooms, snakes abandon winter quarters. The first ruby-throated hummingbird returns to feed on trumpet creeper blooming up the pine tree, and kingbirds again perch on strands of barb-wire fence, flouncing their ruffled tails. This is the time enough pokeweed shoots up to cook a mess of poke sallet.


The rising sun eases toward my neighbor’s house to the north.


Then, with hardly more than a taste, sweet spring is gone".
 
Thanks, Jim. She has captured spring here perfectly except for one thing---mockingbirds.

In fairness, though, they seem to prefer towns to the country. I've never heard one out at the lake. :(

Scene from the movie, To Kill a Mockingbird:

 
Thanks, Nancy, for that video clip. We have mocking birds that return each year. When flying, and courting, their wings look like pinwheels in the air.
 
I like that. Better than the Patti Page version, imo. He had a very unique style.

Did you know Slim Whitman had to learn to play the guitar left-handed because he lost a finger working in a meat packing plant!

Whitman told the AP in 1991 that he wanted to be remembered as "a nice guy." "I don't think you've ever heard anything bad about me, and I'd like to keep it that way. I'd like my son to remember me as a good dad. I'd like the people to remember me as having a good voice and a clean suit." [Obit]

From everything I've read about him, I think he succeeded.

This is my favorite Whitman song:

 
Unloaded the sweet shrub trimmings, carried 4 bags of pellets into the barn, did the usual stuff, and that's it. It's just too hot---still 97F at 7pm! And we are just now getting to what's usually the really hot season here.:rolleyes: There are too many preparations for any job. By the time you get all the stuff you need loaded into the appropriate vehicle, you are exhausted.

Only one unusual thing today. As I was driving down to the barn in the truck, just happened to spot a fawn, young enough to still have spots, running frantically back and forth, stuck behind the fence. From a distance he looked like all legs and ears. Mama must have jumped the fence and he chickened out. I figured I would be in for another hour of trying to herd him out through a gate somewhere, but the truck must have scared him just enough to pump up the adrenalin and he jumped over. I may have done him a favor by being there at the right time. Somehow this reminds me a little of the video of John Wayne throwing the little boy in the pond---when you have to, you do it.

Btw, the engineer said he would call me in "a day or two" and, according to this diary, it's been 23 days. There must be a problem. I'll send him an email tonight and see if he responds. I knew this would happen.

Calories (7/14): 1180
 
Last edited:
Ding! Ding! Ding!

I think you are exactly right, Jim! I got an email back at 8:30 this morning, saying he would send me something later this morning. His explanation was that he was waiting on possible duplicate calculations from USDA for comparison, and he just got a response saying they had nothing in their files.

Maybe you've discovered one of those universal laws of man (and woman and kids and deer).

I am just happy there's not an insurmountable problem. Well... I better wait for the estimate before I say that. Ha!
 
Pappy, with all your years of experience, you should know by now not to post something that requires deep thinking like that. Women are able to interpret things like that 99 different ways. It's the main thing that distinguishes us from men. Well...almost.

:grin:
 
It is 5:30 pm and there has been no email from the engineer.
wellduh.gif
Weekends are sacred in the South, even for small businesses, so I don't expect anything before Monday. But I'll admit it, if I have to eat my words.

Stuck indoors, and in order to procrastinate from mopping the floor, I've been reading more about insects.


One time, back in the 1970's while visiting my parents in Marietta, OH, I noticed a glob of trash on the foundation of their house. Next thing I knew, it started moving. It was some kind of insect, but was that stuff its body parts? I just found out what it was today.

A "trash bug"---most likely the larva of a green or brown lacewing

chrysoperla7.jpg

Lacewing larvae have long bristles jutting out from their sides, which collect debris and food remains, empty shell parts of prey, and provide camouflage from birds.

Green Lacewing larvae are voracious predators of the eggs and immature stages of many soft bodied insect pests, including several species of aphids, spider mites, and eggs of pest moths, and mealybugs. They are so beneficial you can buy larvae and eggs, even on the net.

Oh yes, and in keeping with the cowboy theme song of this post, I will add a picture of both the adult male and female glowworms together. I believe it now.

glow004.jpg

.
.
Calories (7/15): 1020
Calories (7/16): 980
 
Last edited:
I did get that floor mopped (the upstairs bathroom), but much more than just mopping---a complete wash down, including the walls, woodwork, and scrubbing in the corners of the floor with a toothbrush. :p

Found some more old pictures. Here are two of them:

Another view of my grandparents' cabin in the woods. It looks even more rugged in this photo. The entire cabin was 16'x24' I believe. I often think about the 7 of us (5 cousins) sleeping upstairs in that place on a hot summer's night. It was an adventure, because I wasn't used to that many people being crowded together.

cabin2_zpsky8xgjoa.jpg


My father and I on a later fishing trip to Canada, probably around 1960. He was always joking around.

littlefish_zpseagnptqe.jpg
 
Pappy said:
Great photos and memories, Nancy. Fine looking cabin.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Pappy.


humblepie.png

Just as I was about to hit SUBMIT for this post, much earlier, in pops an email from the engineer at 10:15pm with an apology. He has sent a bill to me for his services, and it ain't small!!! I thought he worked for the contractor. It includes what appears to be hourly rates for people that might work for the contractor. Doesn't include materials at all, and that would be more than half the cost. I thought this would light a fire under the contractor, because HE would get a bill. Is it going to be like starting all over again? Maybe it's meant to just be a copy for me? I'm confused right now, but it's late. Nothing can be settled tonight....

Anyway, what I was just about to post....

I thought there were only 3 pictures of my grandfather on my dad's side. One I posted earlier in the Model T, the second one is huge, taken when he was much younger, and in a frame on my bedroom wall. The other, I saw at my grandmother's once. But I hit the jackpot out at the lake this evening and found a fourth one.

gp2_zps478r9reh.jpg


He died about 5 months before I was born, on his 76th birthday. This picture was probably taken in his last years, because he looks rather frail. He and my father were very different, from what I could gather listening to conversations among relatives. He was straight-laced, no nonsense, and no sense of humor. I'd like to have met him.
.
.
.
Calories (7/17): 990
 

Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top