Awm, yes, I do believe that the bigger reason my knee is feeling better is due to the better support all around. In fact, that is a big reason as to why I started to exercise. I am not overweight, so I figured that there was nothing I could really do about my knee (usually extra weight is the culprit; lose the weight, lose the pain), but when I read about lack of strength, a light bulb went off, as I had so little muscle. That is really amazing about your shoulder. Wow! Like you said, I know my knee problem is still there (one is far worse than the other), but it helps. However, the last few days I have started doing deep stretching that feels good at the time . . .but yesterday I started hearing my knee make a really loud noise. I have always had clicky knees (since I was a child), but this was something new. It's only supposed to be an issue if there is pain, and the pain isn't worse per se, so I guess it's OK but may be a signal of problems to come? I am really shocked that INCREASING the KB to 3 times a week actually helped. That is very motivating. I know there are specific KB exercises for knee issues, so I will work on those. I feel like my muscle development is decreasing! I was doing everything with 5 lb weights and it was getting too easy, so I went to 10. 10 lbs is hard for some exercises . . .and now when I go back down to 5 lbs, some exercises are harder than they were before. (Even when I have only used 5 lb the whole time.) I am wondering if I am not allowing enough recovery time, though these are very light weights in the big scheme of things . . .

LOL Rosie, my corner that covers a ridiculously large heating duct. There will be a second sink there (more a laundry type sink), that will be handy for soaking clothes to handwash, or even wash vegetables from the fridge before they get cooked. That area used to be a separate room and the plumbing was already there. Spider, I love the blue too, even more now that it is installed. You really do have to go with what you love. Blue it is such fun to watch! Productive weekend here, I actually sold all my old appliances (for money!! Wow) and my big blue tarp covering stuff on my front porch is smaller than it was. Nobody is coming today so I might go and pick up my knobs and pulls.

Ok so how about something like this. Still neutral. It's strange, I enjoy color and pattern but I have a tendency to change my mind and do things like get all red pillows to replace the all blue ones so I don't want to get stuck with something I love now but maybe not for 10+ years. I photoshopped the hood, range and the cabinet inserts that will go in the top (they match the window on the opposite side of the room and will be lit up). Ugh so beige. Taupe crackle

farmgardener, Yay! Congrats on the okra. I am glad it is producing. Desperate times, like this year, sometimes all for desperate measures. It sure has been a weird year. Jacob, Your garden looks great as always and it is so good to hear everything has recovered so well from the hail. The drought news from your area is not good, but in the next seven days I expect you'll get some drought relief, and so will we. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for all of us. We're in Severe Drought here now with increasing fire activity that is keeping me away from home and away from my garden---poor, pitiful, heat-roasted and drought-dehydrated mess that it is. I'm just hoping rain falls soon before we can advance to Extreme Drought. At this point, though, in our area we only want rain if it is going to bring hard downpours of rain---those half-hearted thunderstorms we keep getting that are mostly dry storms with lots of lightning (which starts fires) and very little rain just make things worse at this point since the lightning striking in dry fields can start fires so easily. Here's the 7-day Qualitative Precipitation Forecast, offering us a glimmer of hope. Now, y'all, don't take this thing too seriously because it updates multiple times daily and can be all over the place with regards to amounts. Still, as we watch it evolve over the next few days, we should have some clue about how much rain to expect. 7-day QPF Larry, I loved Little Lucy and was so unhappy when the seed company that carried it dropped it from production. It was so pretty and so productive. Rebecca, Hmmm. Baby Bubba usually produces a lot. Know what I'd do? I'd hit that sucker with Bloom Booster type fertilizer to push it into flowering. I don't know why it is being lazy this year. It isn't like we are cool and cloudy, so it ought to be happy with the weather. I am so happy that Seeds of India worked out well for your co-worker. Please tell her how thrilled I am to hear that their garden is doing so well. I was only able to work in the garden yesterday for a little while. I deadheaded flowers, dodging all the bees who take it personally when I start snipping off blooms. I did a little weeding, but there's not many weeds at this point since I've worked so hard to mulch heavily and remove each weed when first noticed. I have one path that gets a bit weedy because I never have gotten it mulched. Mulching that path is on my To Do list but I never seem to get around to getting it done. I harvested okra. I talked to the tree frog who was sitting on top of my sun umbrella. I scared the deer to death by walking out of my garden while they were trying to sneak into the driveway to steal the doves' cracked corn. We had four fire calls yesterday. I didn't go on the first two as they were relatively small and minor, but the third was a big one and we were out there for 7 hours in horrific heat. The thermometer on our fire dept. vehicle showed 121 degrees at one point, and that was because we were being heated up by residual heat from the adjacent fire, which was just a 100' or so from us at that point (but not moving towards us). It was so hot out there, and so dry. When we finally made it home, we rushed off to town to grab a quick hamburger. Wqe'f fed the firefighters cold cut sandwiches and chips, but we still were starving when the fire was extinguished anyhow. On our way back from town, wolfing down our hamburgers as we traveled down the highway, I saw a familiar orange glow in the night sky and told Tim that our fire had rekindled. He didn't want to believe it and thought it was somebody else's fire---maybe across the river. (This is what I call magical thinking....wanting something to be true so you just believe it is......). We went to investigate and, of course, it was our fire. So, we sounded the alarm and then spent the next two hours back out there again. Having a wildfire rekindle is not unusual because when hundreds of acres burn, there's inevitably smoldering trees and logs and such that will flare back up----there's not enough water in this county to soak down hundreds of acres, so you just do the best you can with what you've got. Now, as I am typing this on Saturday morning, Tim is back there on a very small rekindle. It probably is going to be a rough day here again today since it started out with a fire call around 7 a.m. So, I guess we are having the August I expected and dreaded----a drought-decimated garden full of grasshoppers, and fires daily, and with the fires seeming to increase in number and severity daily. I'm hoping we'll start getting rain soon and that conditions will improve. Even in 2011 when it was hotter, drier and we were much deeper in drought than we are now, we got our first hint of drought relief on August 11th, so that gives me hope for this coming week---that maybe we'll be getting some real drought relief within the next 7 to 10 days. The forecast looks kinda good right now, but then you really cannot trust a forecast 7 days out, so we'll see. I hope you all have a good day today. Dawn