Another glorious day

OK, it is another glorious day.  Sunshine, warm temperatures, lower humidity then we will see this summer.  I am telling you I don't know how much more glorious I can take.  Just kidding, I am loving this weather.  My friend Kim told me once that there are like 2 or 3 months that it is just spectacular here.  She was smart enough to put her house on the market during that time so that people would see the best of your yard.  Well, this year, this is one of those months!  The weather people say more of the same.  

There are 2 draw backs to all this gloriousness, one is that we are drying up and if we don't get any rain before the end of the month, which at this moment rain is not in the forecast anytime soon, we will be 4 inches in the hole.  That is making for some very nice kindling in our yards and woods.  I have started watering my landscape.  Just the front yard really.   My camellias disappeared so fast this year between the heat and the dryness and my azaleas were looking like they were going to open and close in the same day from dryness.  So I turned on my big movable gun style sprinkler, since I have not put any irrigation on this property.....yet.  In all fairness it is on my to do list, but that was before I knew about the cancer.  So now, I have put it on the short list of possible things to accomplish while I am still here.  And so I continue to shoot water in the air above my plants, knowing that this is one of the most inefficient ways to water.  I do try and water later in the day, usually after 5 so that the heat of the day doesn't evaporate any more then necessary.  But tonight I have rehearsal so I am watering earlier because the plants were whispering, "please, please give us some water” And I hated to walk past them another day pretending I did not hear them.  I usually water for several hours in one place.   And then I don't water there again for at least a week, usually 2 weeks or longer.  I am not trying to help my plants flourish at this moment, but rather, just to keep them alive.  And I can already hear the plants laughing and soaking in the precious substance.  And the birds are frolicking in the spray and mist.  And frolicking is the right word as they dance and shake and preen at their feathers, chirping and laughing like human children playing in the sprinkler.

The other drawback is the pollen.  Everything is blooming at once.  It does make for sheer gloriousness having every kind of flower, tree and bush blooming, but oh lord the pollen.  Everything is yellow with it.  And everyone is walking around with sinus infections.  It is a good thing that it is beautiful outside, because we don’t look so hot, breathing through our mouths, futilely blowing our noses, bleary eyed with antihistamines, some with blood tissues stuck up their noses.  Yep, we are quite the attractive group.  We could sure use a break from all this gloriousness just long enough to wash the pollen off of our cars, calm the dusty pollen covering the plants, and wash it into the soil. 

But for now, I am more then willing to suffer a few more days of these sheer gloriousness.

The peeps are doing just fine.  Just fine.  There are some that are a little small and only have the beginning of one feather pricking out, but most are a couple of days older and have 3-4 feathers pricking out.  They are all eating, scratching, peeping, and growing.  They have a box that they run into whenever they feel danger, like me walking in on them.  They scurry away to their box and huddle together.  They are good chickens and are learning so much.  And they are growing and growing.  Right now, they are adorable little balls of fluff; pretty soon, they will grow feathers and get tall and gangly and look like human teenagers.  The roosters will start to act like roosters, strutting around, showing off in front of the other chicks, trying to be tough.  The hens will also start vying for the alpha hen.  After all pecking order comes from our chickens.  I already know that any Buff Orpington that makes it to adulthood will not be the alpha.  Buffs are just too darn sweet.  And it is so wonderful watching this microcosmos of society grow and develop. 

I have a little better control over my skin rash.  I have quit using any girlie stuff on my face.  I am washing with my homemade soap and then using cocoa butter moisturizer to try and cut back on the dryness of my face.  It is helping.  I still itch all over at times, no big deal.  I still have discomfort at the end of the day.  The redness is mostly gone and the bumps although widely spread across my face and ears, they are not that bad.  And after getting a little rest, my liver is not screaming at me anymore.  So all in all life is pretty good.

I am doing better at work.  I am finding all kinds of detail mistakes I made last week while I was a little sort of out of my mind.  But fortunately, my staff has caught most of the mistakes, I hope and have brought them to me to fix.  I really appreciate that we have such a positive working relationship that they are not worried about coming to the “boss” and saying, did you see this?  There is no ego here on my part, I made mistakes, we need to fix them.  They know I feel that way, and I really appreciate them coming and showing me.  I really don’t want these mistakes to go any further.  I really hope we are finding all of the mistakes.  I did my best and reviewed and reviewed again, but my mind was no clearer the second or third review, so I just read over all the mistakes and missed them completely over and over and over.  Fortunately, I only did a limited number of tasks, so we know where I might have made mistakes.

The latest news is that I called the Travel agent to make an appointment to go in and talk to him.  He took the information I had over the phone and then called me back with a draft agenda and first price.  Everything was within our projected cost.  We will be staying at friends homes in Holland and both Badajoz and Barrcarotta Spain, and then at the Wellington in Madrid for 2 nights.  This is probably going to be the last time dad and I go to Spain together, and I wanted the end of our trip to be at the Wellington, he and Mother’s favorite hotel in Madrid.  It will also give us time to go to Mother’s favorite store, and have dinner one last time at Botine’s, a 400 year old restaurant.  And no, I did not mistype the number of years.  Botine’s is on the Square Mayor and has been in the same location for 400 years and owned by the same family.  And actually, I may be cutting them short.  Their speciality is suckling pig, ooooooh yuck.  Sorry to all your pork eaters.  But dad and I love their garlic soup, which I do have to pick out the sausage, but it is so worth it.  And hopefully the way the trip is set up, we do not have to stressful travelling, so Dad should be OK through the trip and make it home, even though, bless his heart, he can barely walk.  And hopefully I will not be overly stressed either, and Dad and I can have a wonderful time and lots of lovely memories.  We will be staying with some of the most dearest special people in the entire world, so that in itself should be just so lovely.

And that is all that is new in my world.  Rehearsal tonight, and if I can get back on line I will order some of the props we need.  I have been fighting with the internet and trying to get on and stay on.  Not much to say, but I really wanted to remember how glorious this spring has been, even though we are dealing with summer temperatures and I have even put the air conditioning on at night so that I can sleep better.