Non-conformity

The sun is shining! It's 6:45 AM and I'm actually dressed for the gym. Obviously, I'm not there yet. If I can get this post finished quickly, I may actually make it to the gym and get some sort of workout in. That's step 1 in getting back in shape. So, I'm typing as fast as my fingers will allow.

Today I am off to the periodontist for my follow-up appointment. That means I have to leave Sandpoint by 9 AM at the latest in order to make it to Spokane by 10:20. Hmmm, actually, now that I think about it, I need to leave by 8:45. You never know what sort of traffic problems you will encounter along I-90 between Post Falls, Idaho and Spokane, WA. So, if I plan to workout at all, I had better get to the gym by 7:30 at the latest.

Tom is in a bad mood. Jonathan cut his hair last night and it made Tom mad. I don't really understand why. You may recall that just before Mother's Day Jonathan shaved his head. Well, he's been letting it grow ever since. About a month after he shaved it, it looked pretty good. It was short but not horrendous and it was easy for him to take care of. He liked that it didn't lay down flat, as his hair has a tendency to do. By yesterday, his hair had grown out quite a bit and was laying down flat. He just cut it back to the length of about 3 weeks ago. I think it looks fine, but for some reason, it just sent Tom off the deep end. He thinks it's stupid looking and went on a rant about how Jonathan never takes his advice, never listens to anything he has to say, and so on. I told him I'd rather Jonathan's "rebellion" be in the form of cutting his hair short than body piercing and tattooing himself like some kids we know. For some reason he just doesn't get that kids this age are all about weird hair/clothes/habits while they try to figure out who they are. I guess since he was such a conformist he just doesn't understand non-conformity as a normal part of growing up. When I tell him that it's normal, he gets sarcastic with me, telling me that I think I'm such an expert on kids. Well, I do see a ton of college kids at the library, I do read college kids' blogs and try to understand what they are thinking and feeling, I do work with some college kids, and I do remember being a college kid who did not listen to much of anything her parents told her. Good grief! I can't believe we are arguing about something as stupid as Jonathan cutting his hair. I wish Tom would just let Jonathan be Jonathan and stop trying to "fix" him. Oh, duh... this is where I'm supposed to let God take over. Stop trying to control everyone's feelings, keep the peace... let God do what He needs to do in this. See, I'm telling you, this is my huge weak area and Satan knows it! As soon as I vow to let God be in control, Satan steps in and says "oh yeah? That's what you think. I'll show you that you just are not able to do that. Let me throw a wrench in your nice little life today." Boy, and I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker! Satan, you are such a jerk!

I think I need to go talk to God for a while... c'ya!

Testing, 1,2,3, Testing, 1,2,3

This is my first attempt at using audioblogger, so bear with me if it's completely inane. I promise they will improve with time.

It's all good

Wow, what a week since I last posted. First, we finally got the money from the refinance! I paid off ALL my credit cards and still have a nice little nest egg that I'll be depositing in an ING Direct savings account so it can earn 3% interest instead of the meager .75% most banks are paying. Second, last weekend was Hoopfest. It is such an awesome event. It's so cool that Spokane can host two events (the other being Bloomsday) that draw over 100,000 people to downtown and nothing bad happens like stabbings or shootings or anything like that. The only thing of note that happened during Hoopfest was one fight that broke out between two teams. Tommy, my oldest son, has played in Hoopfest for years - probably more than 10 years. He has played with various other players over the years, but his most consistent wins have come when he has played with my son-in-law, Ryan, my husband, and a kid named Tyler he met a few years ago down at Sandpoint City Beach playing basketball. The four of them have kicked butt every time they've played together. This year, Tom didn't play, so Tommy picked up the father of one of the girls on his AAU basketball team. He was okay and helped out, but Tom would have added a lot more to the team. Regardless, they won their bracket for the third year in a row. That's quite a feat. The team they beat had won their bracket for the past three years, so Tommy ended their winning streak. The last two years, Tommy's team won without losing a single game. This year they did lose once to the team they eventually beat. They had beaten the team on Saturday, which dropped the other team into the loser's bracket. That team had to work their way back up into the finals to play Tommy's team again. In order to win, the other team would have had to beat Tommy's team twice. They won the first game 14-12 because time ran out. Tommy hadn't heard the court monitor call "five minutes" so didn't realize time was running out and didn't play for the last shot, so they lost. They had a 15 minute break, then started game 2. When time ran out the score was tied so the game went into overtime, just like the first game they had played against each other on Saturday. Tommy's team ended up winning 15-13 in overtime. It was a tough, tough game and a hard fought win. Way to go Tommy, Ryan, and Tyler! Oh, his team's name is "It's All Good".

The always wrong weather man predicted hot, hot temps all week. True to form, it's been raining for three days. Yesterday, I mowed in the rain. How fun was that? The lawn is growing like it's on steroids. It's crazy. I miss the sun.

I got my first paycheck with my raise on it. Nice! And... I got the lump sum back pay payout. Double nice! God is sooooooo amazing! He has truly blessed us in so many ways. (I think I hear Satan waiting in the wings to try to upset the apple cart.) I just need to always remember to TRUST HIM and stop trying to manage everything myself. I think that's my big lesson in life... TRUST HIM in all things and stop trying to make things go right. I am such a dork. I never thought of myself as a control freak, but God has been making it really apparent that I so AM and so often try to control situations to keep the peace, stuff like that. STOP IT GINA! That was God shouting at me. TRUST HIM! That's my new motto.

Ciao!

What is burning?

I'm sitting here reading blogs when I smell something burning. Well, actually, the smell is the smell of something heating up, like an iron or a heater you haven't had on in a while - that sort of dusty hot smell. I immediately hop up to find the source of this smell. My nose takes me to the master bedroom. Yep, definitely something in here. I figured the small space heater had come on since all the windows and the sliding glass door are open, the fan is going, making it about 62 degrees in there. So, I check the heater, which is usually set to come on when the temp gets below 65. Nope, it's not going, hasn't been going, and can't go because it's turned off completely. I check my curling iron "just in case", since it has not been on yet this AM and has an auto-shutoff that would have turned it off if I'd forgotten to do so yesterday. Nope, not that. I sniff all over the room and can't find the source for the life of me. I sniff like a beagle all over the house and out the windows. It is definitely coming from the master bedroom. Since I can't find any offending appliance, I chalk it up to a lingering smell from Tom's earlier use of the hair dryer - plausible but not likely.

I returned to my laptop in the living room and continued to peruse blogs and comments. After about 20 minutes, the smell got stronger. Now I was worried. What if some wires in the wall were overheating (you always hear about fires starting from wiring). I had to find the source. I returned with vigor to the master bedroom, my nose twitching like Samantha's in Bewitched. I sniffed around everything electrical - the TV, the satellite receiver, the surge strip they are plugged into, to no avail. The smell was strongest by the bed so I double-checked the electric blanket. Not on. I was starting to really freak out, touching the walls to see if they were warm or "different". The closer I got to our headboard, the stronger the smell became. Suddenly, I realized what it was! Our bed is a waterbed with a regular mattress in the frame instead of a waterbed mattress so the headboard sits on the frame above the floor (you know what I mean). I reached under the headboard and felt the wave of heat arising from......the baseboard heater! Its breaker was supposed to be turned off to eliminate this exact thing from happening, but apparently it had gotten turned back on somehow. The thermostat in the room was turned to "off", which really means 50 degrees, so it was a lot colder in our room than I thought, but that heater should not have been on. I immediately ran to shut the breaker off. Lord knows what is sitting on that heater under the headboard that could have caught fire! Phew! Thank you, Lord, for giving me a good nose, letting me be home to smell this disaster-in-waiting, and saving our house from burning down.

We actually removed the heaters in four places in the house because we don't use them. Back when we built this house we had a woodburning stove for heat. The bank actually required us to have baseboard heaters as backup before they'd lend us the money, so we put them in. On rare occasions we did use them to supplement the wood heat. Many moons ago, when natural gas became available in our neighborhood, we swapped the wood stove for a gas free-standing stove. (Yay! No more chopping wood, carrying wood in each night, soot, etc.) It is our sole source of heat now, with the exception of the small electric ceramic heater in our bedroom. Our bedroom is on the north side of the house so, when the north wind blows in the winter, it gets cold in there as the heat seems to all get pushed to the south end of the house. The heater comes on if the temperature drops below 65, which is not that often. It's a lot more economical than the baseboard heater and does exactly what we had hoped it would do.

I sit on my sofa blogging in the early AM. About 5 feet from me is our 45 gallon aquarium. After once being populated with 40 fish, we are down to 4. I thought I was a bad fish owner, though in years past I have had aquariums and have had dozens of fish thrive. When one of the gouramis died, I finally figured out what was going on. We had two opaline gouramis. I had always had gouramis and loved them, loved watching them swim around, "touching" things with their little "tentacles". Well, this pair stayed hidden behind one of the big rocks in the tank pretty much 24/7. They were boring! When the one gourami died, it was following an injury to its side, I realized the culprit was the other gourami. Turns out, despite his sheepish behavior, he is very aggressive, especially at night. He attacked all the other fish in the tank, causing injuries and eventual death. So, now he's alone with two cory catfish and a giant gold plecostomus. The plecostomus is too big for him to take on and the cory cats are too fast and probably mean. So now he's alone and probably bored out of his mind. How do I know he's bored? Every morning as I sit here blogging or reading, he suddenly goes completely insane and races around the tank, banging into the sides, swimming in dozens of circles, jumping to the surface over and over, making such a racket the cat comes racing in to see what's going on, and then just as suddenly, he stops and goes back behind the rock. He's crazy. I think I'm going to trade him and the plecostomus in for a bunch of small, nice fish, like some neons and some tetras. No more gouramis.

Time to get ready for work.

How high can it go?

The real estate market has just gone insane! I just talked to a neighbor who put his house up for sale. His appraisal came in at about $40,000 more than ours (it's about 400-600 sq. ft. bigger) but he's selling it for $80,000 over appraised value! It will probably sell too. That's insane! That means we could probably sell ours for $360,000 instead of the $280,000 it was appraised at. What is going on? We do live in a "desirable neighborhood" and we have deeded lake access with a boat launch ramp, dock, beach, and nice picnic area, but still, houses going for several thousand over appraised value? That has never happened here. I know in Seattle there are bidding wars on houses. We know a girl from here who lives in Seattle. She has put in offers on several homes and lost every one. She said she's usually competing with over 25 other buyers, most of them couples (she's single), who are willing and able to pay $100,000 over appraised value. The sad thing is, our kids may never be able to own a home at this rate! Well, my two oldest do own homes, but what will it be like for Jonathan once he's at that stage of his life? It's kind of scary.

I wish I had had the money to just buy a lot or two before things went so crazy. What a great investment that would have been. Unfortunately, we've never been in a position financially to do that. We've been lucky to just be able to afford the house we live in, let alone "investment property". There's a guy in town we've known since we moved here in 1983. He used to work for the local radio (FM) station selling radio advertising. He used to beg me to come to work for him. I sold radio advertising back in Colorado Springs. I couldn't imagine trying to make a living selling radio advertising in a town of 5,000 people so I politely declined his persistent offers of employment. It was a smart move on my part as the radio station has always been notorious for problems paying their bills, including payroll. Anyway, Jeff decided to go into real estate after a few years in the radio biz. Very smart move on his part. His first year he had the highest sales figures of all the real estate agents in the county. He continued in that vein, eventually becoming a broker. He is now a multi-millionaire. And to think, I knew him when... It makes me consider becoming a realtor. I love my job, though. And there are about a million realtors in Bonner County. Obviously, some of them are NOT making much money. But some are.

I hear stories almost every day about some two-bit piece of property, or some cheesy little house, being sold for unbelievable amounts of money. Everyone in the area is aghast at what is going on and can't seem to stop talking about it. New developments are popping up all over the place. Lots that sold for just $30,000 last year are going for over $100,000 this year as people scramble for a place to build that doesn't reequire them to bring in power, water, and telephone. Acreage is still fairly reasonable. It seems what is selling are lots or homes in and around Sandpoint, or anything on the water. What seems slow to sell are homes and acreage over 5 miles from town. Where in the past the inclination was to buy someplace out in the boonies to escape humanity and surround yourself with lots of property, it appears now that people want proximity to town, a nice neighborhood with amenities, and paved, plowed roads. Privacy and acreage really don't seem to be a factor at all. Maybe it's because so many of the transplants are used to big city living where homes are built on top of each other. Compared to that, a lot that is .25 to .5 acres seems enormous and probably seems really private. Also, someone used to California or Arizona (seems to be from whence most of our new arrivals come) city life would probably not be too keen on dirt roads, mile long driveways that they have to plow, and dialup internet access. So, maybe that's what I should buy - acreage just about 8 or 10 miles from town. Some day it will be worth a fortune as "town" continues to expand and new developments are continually in demand. Maybe, once we get our bills paid off and start saving money, we can actually consider buying investment property. It would be a smart move. Heck, look at the woman who owns the lot behind us. She has refused to sell that, and 4 others she owns in Ponder Point, for years - or has wanted so much for them no one would pay the price. We tried to get her to sell to our kids a few years ago and she wanted $60,000 when it was maybe worth $30,000. She has hung on to them all, and now each one is worth in excess of $100,000, up to $150,000. That's crazy! Her ex-husband is mad because he sold all his lots a few years ago. She got hers - half of his - in their divorce settlement about 25 years ago, so it irks him that she is making so much from land he "gave" her (not like he's hurting - he's worth millions). So, where will it end? How high can it go?

Debt-free here I come!

Today we close on our home refinance! We have lived in this house for 21 years. We have never refinanced the first, although we have had a second for several years and have refinanced it a couple of times. When I went to the bank to see about increasing the line of credit to pay off some other bills, my banker suggested we do a complete refinance. I was leery at first, but realized my 21 year old adjustable rate mortgage, while it had been great for the past few years of record low interest rates (it has been at about 3.2% for the past several years), was headed up with the recent rate increases. It had already gone to 5.32% and was set to adjust next year at least half a percent, if not a full percent, higher. The second was a whopping 7.65% and had 13 years left on it. A complete refinance sounded like a good idea if the interest rate was decent. We ended up with a 15 year no points loan at 5.65% fixed. That saves us $200/month on just the mortgage payments! I got enough to pay off all the credit cards (which had gotten a bit out of control over the past year) and leave us money in the bank for emergencies, college tuition deposits, and such, saving us another $830/month! That means I can actually start SAVING money! What a novel idea! It also means that we should only have to borrow half as much for college each year as we have been borrowing via a PLUS loan. For the first time in our lives we will be on the road to freedom from debt. In 15 years the house will be paid for - just two years later than had we not done this - and in the meantime, we can actually put moneyin savings each month and put aside more for retirement. Tom's hope of retiring in 2-4 years is now a real possibility instead of a pipe dream. I am so excited! Also, I found out how much our house appraised for just last week and was stunned. 3 years ago it appraised at $140,000. The latest appraisal came in at$280,000!!! That's about $30,000 higher than I had even hoped it would appraise for (I know, bad grammar). Just shows how crazy the real estate market has gotten. Anyway, I guess we'll have the money in our account in 3 days and I can send the credit card companies their last payment. Yippeee!

I have become Marlon Brando

I swear, the day after my gum surgery I looked exactly like Marlon Brando in The Godfather. I actually had someone ask me if I had "something in there", referring to my extremely swollen lower jaw. The swelling has subsided almost completely now, but I am seriously bruised on both sides. It only looks like I took a couple of good punches to the jaw now.

So, the surgery was "interesting". I have never had my palate numbed before. That is a real experience. You have no idea how much the roof of your mouth is involved in virtually everything that goes on in there. It became difficult to swallow with a numbed palate and both sides of my tongue numb. That actually got a little scary a couple of times when I tried to swallow and it wasn't just a natural reflex. All of a sudden, I had to actually mentally talk myself through the steps to make it happen. You tend to instantly panic when you can't swallow. It was freaky. They gave me about 50,000 shots of novocaine to numb me up. That in itself is so much fun. Then they give you this list of movies from which you can choose to watch during the procedure in an attempt to distract you from all the activity taking place inside your mouth. Riiiiggghhhhtttt. I decided against any comedies. It would be hard to laugh while someone is cutting away on your gums. I opted for A River Runs Through It since I've never actually seen all of it. I still haven't. Half the time I just was too distracted by what was going on in my mouth to focus on the movie. The other half the time, my doctor's head was in front of the screen so I could hear but not see the movie. The rest of the time I just tried not to imagine what was going on in my mouth, with little success.

The procedure took 2 hours. She cut two incisions in my palate and removed tissue to be used for the grafts. That was sutured and then she started on the grafts. All I felt was a lot of tugging and stuff, you know how dental stuff is - you can't feel anything but you know what's going on sort of, the thought of which is almost as bad as if you could feel it. Anyway, they cut open the gums by teeth 19, 20 on one side, and 29, 30, 31 on the other, took biopsies, then inserted the grafts and stitched me up. I was to eat only cold, soft stuff for 24 hours, then I could graduate to warm, soft stuff for the next 14 days.

Eating is the worst part. I made Tom and Jonathan barbecued steaks that first night. Man, I wanted some so bad! Instead, I had ice cream. I never thought I'd get sick of ice cream, but I am now. The first day I had popsicles, iced tea, ice cream, pudding, and more popsicles. The next day I had cream of broccoli and cheese soup. Every time I ate anything with more substance, like I tried to gently chew with my front teeth some pizza, I popped some of the sutures in my palate. Fortunately, the roof of your mouth heals really quickly. I almost have zero stitches on the left side already. The right side has a few more still, but they'll be gone soon. It does still feel like I have one heck of a bad burn on the roof of my mouth. The lower gums are a different story. I can't chew anything with my molars. Anything that presses into my gums is excruciating. We went to this great buffet on Father's Day and I was so bummed! There was all this gorgeous fresh fruit - strawberries, pineapple, melon - I took a couple of pieces of pineapple and tried to eat them with my front teeth. No dice. I broke out some of the palate stitches. Srawberries were a no-no because of the seeds on them. I was told absolutely nothing with seeds. I sort of gingerly chewed bacon but mostly swallowed big chunks. I did do okay with the scrambled eggs, but the buffet was wasted on me, sadly. Last night I had a big, big bowl of macaroni and cheese. That's about the least painful thing I can eat. Oh, and over the weekend I got Tom some KFC and I had the mashed potatoes and gravy. That is easy to eat too. It's amazing how when you can't have something, that's all you want. I want barbecued meat! I want nuts! I want crunchy stuff! You'd think this would be a great time to lose weight, but most of what I can eat is carb-laden and fattening. I would kill for a green salad right now. As for the pain, I was given a prescription for 800mg Motrin tabs and Vicodin if I wanted it. I filled neither. I have generic ibuprofen at home, so I just took 4 of those every 6 hours. The first two days, if I went longer than 6 hours, I felt it. My jaw would start to throb and ache. Now I just take 800mg in the morning and then before bed and I'm fine. I go back on the 30th for the follow-up visit. I just want to be able to eat real food again!

Rain, rain go away

It's raining really hard. It's been doing that all night. My potted flowers don't NEED any more water. In fact, some are getting root rot from too much WET and I have had to pull them out of the pots. I just had to drive down to our beach lot to unlock the gate for some guy delivering huge, long steel pipes that will be pilings for someone's dock. The secondary lot owners have the nearest launch ramp and we keep the gate locked to keep non-residents out. We don't usually do stuff like let big delivery trucks unload on our launch ramp, but I figured it was not that big a deal this one time. But that meant I had to throw on clothes really quickly, run a comb through my hair, and drive down to the beach lot to unlock the gate in the pouring rain with a really sore mouth.

I agreed to do this yesterday when my mouth didn't hurt at all because it was still numb. Today is a different story. It's sore. The roof of my mouth feels like I have the worst pizza burn you could possibly imagine. My lower jaw is swollen and it's hard to talk because the muscles pull uncomfortably in the areas that are swollen. It's hard to describe how it feels. They put these "bandages" on the roof of my mouth to cover the stitches. Really, it's almost like temporary filling putty stuff. They just form it to the area and push it into shape. Well, the left one came off last night so I have all these ends of stitches hanging down that my tongue keeps trying to mess with. Tongues are weird. They're like the curious cat. They just roam constantly around your mouth, searching out anything unusual or any changes in the various items littered throughout your mouth - teeth, cheeks, gums, palate - the most minute change is instantly discovered by the tongue, which then plays relentlessly with the are in question. It is truly a naughty, curious kitten at work. I have to consciously keep my tongue still and not let it toy with the stitches hanging down.

With the rain coming down so hard, Jonathan will be home soon. It's only 7:28AM. It takes him about 3 hours to mow the greens, which they do rain or shine. That means he'll probably get off around 8 or 8:30. Since he's trying to earn as much money as possible this summer, these short days are a drag. He's going to put in to work some Saturdays to make up the lost hours.

I may just milk the gum surgery and take the day off. I can't talk too well so if I have to talk to a patron, it will be weird. I think I should just stay home. Maybe I can take a nap. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. I was supposed to get up and take Motrin at 3AM, so I kept waking up, but never did take the Motrin. I just took it when I got up at 4:20. Now I'm watching E! True Hollywood Story about Farrah Fawcett while I type this. She sure was a beautiful woman. She sure is a wreck now. I remember some star saying once "I hope I never end up on E! True Hollywood Story because that will mean I've done something really wrong and have really messed up my life." I would say that's pretty accurate. Farrah has pretty much messed up her life. I think I'll watch Shall We Dance after I take a nap. I've had the DVD forever and haven't gotten around to watching it so today will be the day. And Jonathan has been bugging me to read Eragon, which I have every intention of doing. Maybe I'll start that today too. Yeah, it's one of those kinds of days that is perfect for taking naps, watching movies, and reading books. I think I'll make the most of it.

Show me the money!

I have a bad habit of not blogging. It's been 15 days! I even took photos of my flowers to post but haven't had time. I guess that's a good thing - being busy. I have some good news though! I had to go to the Board meeting last Monday because we were asking them to FINALLY approve the purchase of 3M's PAMS - Patron Access Management System - an internet management program. We've been "reviewing" it for almost two years now. The Board appropriated the funds last summer but had not gotten around to actually giving me the go-ahead to order and implement the system, continually posing questions and asking for more info. I prepared a paper addressing every question they had, every concern the staff had, showing the hardware that would be used (smart card readers), and basically giving them a very persuasive sales pitch. I had to be in attendance in case they had still more questions. That meant I had to sit through all the boring rote stuff - approval of minutes, budget reports, committee reports, etc. Just before my project was to be discussed, discussion ensued about a change to our salary scale. The personnel committee and the supervisory team had recommended a change. The current scale provides for a 4% step increase every year through the fifth year. From that point forward until the 12th year, the step increases are given every OTHER year, so year 6, 8, and 10 do not get raises. Starting the 12th year, the raises are only given every three years. It was finally recognized that this system totally devalues those who have been with the library the longest and it was recommended that the step increases be given every year for everyone. That I knew about. What I didn't know was that the Director and one of the Board members had decided that doing away with the "gap" years should be made retroactive to the beginning of this fiscal year - October 1, 2004. Anyone who was not scheduled for a step increase on their anniversary date from 10/1 to now would, in fact, receive one - and it would be retroactive! Well, I am one of those who did not receive a raise on my anniversary date of 10/1 so that means I get a lump sum payout of 4% of my earnings from 10/1 to 5/31, and I am now being paid at the higher rate. AND...on 10/1/2005 I get ANOTHER 4% raise! So, by 10/1 I will be making $300 more a month than I was making just last month! Awesome! I had no idea the Board was pondering this so was thrilled when they approved the policy change. Immediately afterward, they spent about 30 seconds on PAMS - and approved that too! It was a great night for me!!!

Now... I am sitting here with sutures in my mouth following gum graft surgery wherein they took tissue from both sides of my palate and inserted it between the gum and bone on both sides of my lower jaw. Needless to say, I am in pain. I can only eat cold stuff like popsicles, ice, ice water, iced tea, ice cream...for the next 48 hours. Then I can only eat soft stuff like pasta and soup for the next two weeks. Maybe I'll lose weight? Well, not if I'm eating ice cream I suppose, but it hurts so much I don't feel like eating much of anything really, even ice cream. It hurts a lot more than I thought it would. I did get a prescription for Vicodin, but I'm not big on pain meds and would prefer to get by with just the 800mg of Motrin every 6 hours. We'll see. For now, I see myself doing a lot of reading and movie watching. I was watching "A River Runs Through It" during the surgery and didn't get to see the end. I've never seen the whole movie, so maybe I'll go rent it, or check it out from the library.

Oh, Tom and I had our 24th anniversary yesterday! Yay! We're going to celebrate on July 8 at the Hotel Lusso in Spokane. I have a free night's stay coming to me courtesy of a coworker for whom I did some computer work. It's quite a luxury hotel, so we're going to do shopping, dinner, and a movie and spend a romantic night in luxury! Should be fun!

Time to get dinner started.

Holidaze

Wow, the holiday weekend went by quickly! We had the best weather ever for the weekend! Well, it was at least the best we've had in a few years. Temps were in the 80's and 90's and the sky was crystal clear.
On Saturday, Tom and I went to Home Depot and bought three 20" pots for the patio. They look like they're terra cotta, but they're actually styrofoam. Amazing! We bought a few flowers as well, though we were not impressed with the condition of most of the plants. They were not being well cared for. After our Home Depot purchase, we headed to this nursery in town we like - Arcadia Greenhouse. They have a big greenhouse facility out in the boonies but they open a satellite operation in town with dozens of flats of flowers of all varieties. When we got there, they were swamped. Every time we walked down one of the aisles between the rows of flowers we had to stop and stand sideways so someone could walk past us. I felt like we were driving a Suburban on a road in an Italian village. Not that I've ever been in an Italian village, but I've seen movies and heard stories about how narrow the streets are and how crazy the Italians drive, so that's my metaphor! Anyway, it was crazy. We squeezed in where we could, picking out pony packs of pansies, petunias, dianthus, nemesia, bacopa, and stock and putting them into little nursery trays. Before we knew it, we had 4 trays of flowers for a grand total of $57. After we checked out, I overheard a woman saying that all the small black pony packs - pots equal to 4 cell pack plants in size - were 2 for $1. That was just an amazing price, so.... we hurried home with the plants we had, and then I went back and bought another $36 worth of flowers! I bought everything I could think of - vinca, geraniums, violas, phlox, more petunias, more pansies... at that price, I wanted to buy everything they had. I made myself stop at 72 plants. We had our work cut out for us. Later that day our oldest son and his family came to visit. We all went down to Sandpoint City Beach for a while so the kids could play in the water. Tommy and his family spent the night at our house and we all made plans to get together with Shana & Ryan the following day for a barbecue and to celebrate Shana's birthday (May 31).

Sunday was every bit as beautiful as Saturday. We again spent the day at the beach. The "boys" (Tom, Tommy, and Ryan), and granddaughter Sydney played a few games of "horse" - two out of three of which Tom won. Not bad for an old fart. After we got bored with the beach, we went to Shana & Ryan's and barbecued tri-tip and had birthday cake. We played dominos until later that night and then headed back to our house. Tommy and his family left Monday morning and Shana & Ryan trekked to Spokane to do some shopping.

Sunday morning I ran over to Home Depot again to get some more African Daisies. Sadly, they were sold out. I went over to WalMart to check out their flowers, but nothing struck my fancy. By the time I got home, Tom had filled the large pots with potting soil and one was waiting for me to fill with flowers. I set to the task with great enthusiasm. I love mixing the colors and leaf textures to make an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. Tom insists on a dracaena in the middle of the pot each year - something I'm not overly fond of, but I relent - so that went in first. On one side of the dracaena is a Martha Washington geranium. On the other is a gorgeous African Daisy in the darkest, most beautiful magenta you can imagine. The rest of the pot is filled with a mix of yellow snapdragons, white dianthus, pink, magenta, and white Sweet Williams, white and lavendar bacopa, lavendar petunias, lavendar nemesia, purple and yellow viola, some ivy, some vinca, and lots of lobelia. Oh, and some pink phlox is thrown in as filler throughout. They will be beautiful once they start filling in. So, we have three pots like that on the patio. We also planted about 7 other smaller pots with things like red and pink zonal geraniums, purple and lavendar petunias, butterscotch colored African Daisies, and other miscellaneous flowers. Once things begin to grow a bit I'll post photos. After all this planting, which took most of the day, I still have about 36 flowers to plant! Unfortunately, it's raining, has been raining, and is supposed to continue to rain for the next few days. I guess the rest of my pots will have to wait.

But it was a glorious holiday weekend!