Wonderful Day--for a Monday

Today's high temperature was:  65 degrees

Today's humidity was:  34%

Cloudy, a few sprinkles, no sun, I love the cool.

I DID get up early and pulled in Pearl's driveway at precisely 10:00.  Off to Costco we go.  I actually hate this store so much--my main reason was to get my glasses adjusted--which I did and they did a great job!!

I trudged around the store a bit and got just what I needed, no more then that!  Pearl was wandering, so I had to wait up in front for about 20 minutes for her, but that was all right.

Do you think 40 AA batteries will last me for awhile?

While I was waiting, the guy that was the leader for the Grief Share meetings I went to last fall, walked by.  I called out his name and he came over.  He asked how I was doing, I replied "great", and he said, like he used to say at the meetings when that was my reply, "Are you really?"  and I said, "Yes Mark.  I really am!"  He said that tonight was their last night for this spring session--tonight the "memorial night", which was really difficult for all of us.  Then his eyes filled with tears, which didn't surprise me because he is such a sensitive man and often cried at the meetings, even though he wasn't in grief.  "My wife has just been diagnosed with liver cancer.  They are going to try some treatment, but...they told me...it's a death sentence."  I just hugged him and told him how sorry I was.  Poor guy--now he is going to walk the journey the people his counsels, have walked. It has made me feel really sad and quiet the rest of today.

After Pearl and I left Costco, I had to run into the ACO hardware to get my big jug of Round-Up because Costco didn't have any.  Then we drove down a bit and Pearl sat and read, while I ran into the Rich People's Store for some of their deli salads, fresh fruit, milk and medium size croissants for my lunch time sandwich.

We got home around noon and I helped her take in her stuff--once again we forgot to take bags or boxes with us to load our Costco stuff in, so we had to make 3 trips.

So it is the first day of the month and I have already spent 1/3 my allowed grocery budget. ARRGH!

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Pammie called me and told me that "THE IDIOT" has finally found a house and he is to close on it this Wednesday.  Of course, now that the bank had loaned him the money, at 10% interest (gulp,) a few things have come up.  Like he was going to install a water heater, and now the bank wants him to hire someone to do it--he is perfectly capable of hooking up an electric water heater and plugging it in!  You see, now that the housing market is coming back, it is getting more difficult to find a home.  This was a bank foreclosed home and they are pulling all the strings.  He has his 20% down payment.  She is just hoping that the deal goes through.  We ALL are hoping the deal goes through.  Whatever--he is to be out of her place by August 10th!  

He insisted that he had to have a house with a good sized garage for his work shop.  He really hasn't been able to find that until now.  Pam offered to rent him the barn that he uses at her place for his work shop--she is too good hearted in my opinion, but I can see me doing the same stupid thing.  LOL  Then he could buy a trailer and have a place to live.  I don't know--but things are moving forward and already, her place looks much better with his junkers and crap out of her yard!!

I no more got off the phone with her and my pal Bethie and her hubby drove up.  They had been to Costco too and on their way home, Bethie brought me two big jugs of cat litter, two bags of dry cat food and some wet cat food.  What a God-send she is!!!!! I was just about out of everything cat related, so that just made my day!!!

When Dar was over yesterday, she was moaning that the planter she hired the kid to build for her, and place for her, was so long that her lawn mowing guy can't mow in that area.  Pearl and I wondered at the time why she had made it so long that it stuck out way past her porch.  

She just was so distraught about it yesterday.  

What to do.  What to do.

So I suggested, "why don't you pick up that east end, swing it around and have your raised garden run along side your driveway?  That way the lawn mowing guy can get between you and your neighbors.  It's on their lot anyway and it's a wonder they haven't complained to you."

"Oh, I don't care what they say.  I just am worried that Don can't mow in there and he will charge me more for the time it takes to weed whip that whole area along side my porch."

     Oh Friends--it's always all about Dar, isn't it?

This is the long, heavy raised planter she had to run around and find aged neighbors to help the kid lift it and put it in place because the dumb kid built it on the driveway instead of in place.  I tell you---some people don't use the brains they were born with!!! So I am expecting a whole team to show up, lift up that left corner and swing that thing parallel to her driveway and sidewalk.  GEEZ!!!

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I just saw some pictures my daughter, Karen posted on Face Book. I suppose now that they are "for public view" she won't be mad if I post them here--not that she would know anyway, LOL.

She, her husband Mark and daughter Madeleine, spent 3 days last week in Detroit Inner City (Yikes), once again cleaning up vacant lots, painting and sleeping on the floor of an old abandoned school.  This is one of her projects that she does every summer--she takes volunteers from her classes at the girl's Catholic school where she teaches.  They all seem to think it's real fun?

 Karen and Maddie, weeding the community garden.

Look at the abandoned house behind the garden.

You couldn't get me to stay in Detroit for 3 days,

let alone the inner city.  My daughter is a far

better person then I will ever be!!!

 Painting the fence around the community garden

 Their first vacant tire site

Tire brigade

 Karen rolling tires

Mark loading up the take-away truck

They collected and disposed of 2,657 tires in vacant lots, in 3 days.

Plus, taking cold water and food to home bound people, and

working in a couple of soup kitchens.

What do you want to bet, those vacant lots will be full of tires before year's end.  Do the people in Detroit REALLY give a shit how their neighbor hoods look?  Apparently not BECAUSE they know people like these three above will come in every summer and clean them up.  

How shocking for Conservative Republicans to care!!! 

(Just had to put that jab in there for Dar, because, she hates Republicans because, "They don't care for anyone, but themselves."--AS IF SHE DOES? She also doesn't like Catholics because, "They are so cliche-ish, they think they are better then anyone else.")

Okay--mild rant over. LOL

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So--the Detroit Tigers baseball team are such wonderful fellows that this afternoon, in Toronto, they helped the Canadians celebrate Canada Day, by losing the ballgame.  WTG fellows.  (Mid-season is in full swing!)

Today, it has been 18 months since Fred died.  My gosh, that sounds like a really long time.  I can go quite a few days and don't think about him and then BANG--and it all comes back like it was yesterday.  I am not really sad though, when I do think of him, I always smile to myself.  I am still so grateful that we found each other and had such a wonderful seven years and, I am still so thankful that he died so quickly.  

That sounded weird.  I'm not glad that he died, but he never had a bit of fear. He didn't have cancer or a stroke.  He had heart disease and COPD and he lived with that for quite a while.  That morning, New Year's Day, 2012, he kissed me, we laughed and he was gone.  You can't die any easier or better then that...if you have to die, that is.

  The day we got engaged.  At the softball park, LOL.

Gosh--we had fun!