Best Of

Sadly, my thought that Bella would be going home soon was dismissed this morning when Jie reported that Phil was back in the hospital. She spends the whole day down there which is why she hasn't tried to keep Bella at her place. So our visitor will be here a little longer. Generally Ken walks them both although with this hot weather it's only early in the morning and after dark at night. They go out in the front yard briefly mid-day. When it gets a little cooler, I'm sure I'll be back as the after dinner walker. We have discovered that it's easier for one of us to take both dogs. They get the leashes even more tangled up if we both go. While he used to love it, Mutz has suddenly gotten very stubborn about riding in the car so drives to grassy areas in the neighborhood have stopped (no grass in yards here as a water saving measure.). I really dread next month's visit to the vet.

It seems as if Ken "needs" to be the dog walker and the cook. He's given up so much that he used to do that I haven't argued with him. I know his telling me that I needed to take over handling our money was hard. He still drives, but only in our senior community. I worried about that until he had his cataracts done, but he now drives well if he knows where he is going. Aging really isn't for the faint of heart!

I was so glad to see Fleetwood win the golf tournament and now look forward to watching tennis for two weeks. I knit during commercials.

Have just finished an afghan for the last of seven great-nieces' high school graduations and have ordered yarn for one for Ella. Just hate the Joanne's went out of business as it is really hard to visualize the true color from a small picture on line. I'm already returning one variegated skein I ordered as it wasn't the right shades for the solid.

Mission BBQ was good. Six sauces to choose from so everyone was happy and we all liked the sides we choose. On the noisy side but it seems most places are these days.

Have a good week everyone. Pace yourself, Sandy.

Harley, so sorry your DH got stung. That's one of my biggest fears—up in the Catskills at a resort I got stung by a wasp when I was 10 (it had camped out overnight in my cabin inside the sleeve of my cardigan, and when I donned the sweater in the morning, at first for about a second I thought it was one of those drycleaning tags that they used to staple into clothing…until yeeeeowch!). My upper arm swelled so badly I had to spend the morning in the pool submerrged up to my shoulders. Ever since then I've been terrified of bees, wasps, hornets & yellowjackets (especially the latter, which will attack unprovoked and don't leave behind a stinger so they can live to attack again). For years I carried an Epi-Pen because I'd been told that the combination of penicillin + ragweed allergies predisposes one to an allergy to hymenoptera venom. Then I was retested and found not to be penicillin-allergic…and that Epi-Pen had long since expired. Glad the Bactine worked—and there's always ice.

Got a lot done today: all the boxes are out of the front room, and found the glass shelves for the small TV stand and three of the six for the tall AV unit. Located 2 of our 3 receivers, 2 amplified indoor antennas, a Blu-Ray player and 2 CD burners, plus a cassette karaoke machine (that one goes free to a good home, heck, any home). Still no luck locating anything else for which I'd been looking. Was able to jettison about a dozen boxes of books, bills and Bob's old grad & med school notes. Also started re-shelving my LPs. The crew yesterday found a large metal-and-Masonite shelving unit, and we (the crew, Carrie via text, and I) debated endlessly about where to set it up, Once assembled, we found it's bigger than anything we remembered having before the fire—I suspect it isn't even ours. Oh, well. finders-keepers. It'll hold all our suitcases. Tomorrow we wade through the rest of the bedroom boxes (only 4 remain) and start culling the 12 boxes in the dining room. Needless to say, we're generating a lot of trash.

But we still can't move until the contractor gets back and we can go over the punch list—and paint the kitchen & baths (and let them dry & cure). That'll likely take us into (sigh) mid-Sept. We have a long timeshare weekend in NYC planned for Bob's birthday weekend mid-October. Hope we've settled in and found cat care by then. We've had to postpone that trip four times since the pandemic began!