To be specific... today I am doing as little as possible due to the heat and my now premature old age, thanks to gardening. After ambitiously creating all new big flower beds around our house and yards, moving MANY tons of compost and mulch into these beautiful sweeping mounded beds, I realize too late that I was a short-sighted fool, since each summer my wife goes away for a month to visit her So California family. I realize too late that NOW I won't be able to go to my lake and drink beer with my brother, because all this beautiful new flora needs watering every day in this oppressive summer heat. Good bye Old Milwaukee and fishing. Hello hostas and coneflowers, plus hundreds of other perennials. I can ostensibly hide soaker hoses under the mulch and use those watering timers I bought last year... but it seems a bit risky to rush into another project when it's 95 degrees. Now when I go to our little neighborhood grocery store, all the nice ladies working there gather to make fun of me, and (baiting me) ask how my wife has been treating me through all my insanely ambitious garden and home projects that I have underway? I tell them that I pretend to be working but that I'm doing nothing more than softly singing negro spirituals and avoiding her. Now don't get me wrong about my wife of 37 years. We started dating when 16 years old, and I love her in a way that's sound as any forever bond or steely weld. I just wish she'd retire before 60 like me. She's a too organized 2nd grade teacher, and I'm a very bad boy it seems. As a result, she keeps putting my name on the refrigerator. Women... I swear they are fussier than an orchid at times, and meaner than a weed. Our yards now look fantastic and have commercial landscape lights... but Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen. jim Palmer

Morning all. How's it going? I've got another full day ahead of me. Makes me feel tired before I even get started. Wednesdays are always full. I knew ya'll would be excited for my TS find. ha Some of the artists I don't know and a few of them are by combined artists, but here are a few.... Pat Olson Sunshine Garden Rose Calton The Evening Moos Dianna Markum Bless Your Hearts Lori Gardner Kristen Cook Jan Wilde Kim Russell Rebecca Carter Donna Farley Pat McClure Diane Richards Pam Coffman Once Upon A Time Chapter 2 Cheryl Frisk Barbara Lloyd Deanna Kirkham Susan Jill Hall Some of the combined artists are Gaye Shoell, Emily Dinsdale, Rebecca Carter and Kathy Distefano Griffiths, Lori Holt, Marie Cole, Fayette Skinner A lot of them are country style books with farm animals (yes I still like them), some spring and some wimsy and some I bought just for the Americana pages. Punk~ it's so funny you saying about the workers getting close, one reached over my shoulder to put a plastic canvas book on the shelf and I was like "Whoa Whoa Whoa what are you doing...get back. No touchy touchy." Kinda acting like I was gonna slap her hand away from them just teasing her back. She started laughing. I figured she could take it since they were teasing me first. ha I'm from the back woods of MS so you'll hear me saying a lot of those things like hog wild if you hang around here long enough. ha I'm a country girl thru and thru. Just read everything I say with a southern accent and you'll pretty much have me pegged. =) No I'm still not 100%. I think I may be getting a sinus infection now and my voice is going in and out. DD has her last home game today. I'm going to check her brothers out of school early today so they can go with me to watch her play. Then I have to take her up to the university on Saturday for their Finals?? BB ends after the 1st week of Mar. DH decided not to take the trip to San Diego this weekend (the conference was full and he would have been sleeping on the floor, sharing a hotel room with 8 strangers...no thank you). So he is going with our boys to their Scout winter daycamp Satuday instead. Luvs~ I thought today was the day for DH to get his cast off. Glad he got it off and hope he didn't lose much strength in it. Tell him no more tripping! Can he drive again? Good of you to take your friend to the dr. No buyers on the house yet? Will there be lunch involved? I cannot believe I used to be embarrassed to go in a TS. Now I can hardly pass one up without a quick run thru. ha So much more exciting than shopping in a "regular" store and cheap to boot. Sounds like you found some fun things. Your GD is gonna love the fairy gear. Have you noticed that things seem to come in waves? Like I noticed a bunch of wedding dresses out yesterday where they usually only have one rack, there were 3 full. Not so much glass stuff out, but the wood bins were full. It's like everyone cleans out their certain things at one time or maybe it's the way the TS stocks the shelves? Kinda funny to me though. Well, I have a lot of things on my to-do list today. Need to go throw some soup fixins in the crock for tonight. I have had this open for a long time and have gotten up and down so many times I can't remember what I've written so I'll just end by saying Belle hope you are feeling much better today and everyone stay healthy and have a good day. I have to go run errands and go do some visiting tomorrow with my DM after the cable guy comes. So far I've managed to leave my Friday empty so I can paint. Keep fingers crossed that it stays that way! Talk to ya'll again soon. ~Anj

Today for "dinner" as we southerner's say....we had all comfort food! Fattening comfort food! My hips are still dancing a gig! Crockpot (simmered all night) mixed pinto beans, mac & cheese and spinach, with country cornbread or warm biscuits...whichever you'd prefer...pull up a chair and dig in! We'll probably have plenty of leftovers for "supper" too! Now who took my slice of onion!

Very, very cold today with winds and snowflurries. Didn't venture outside at all. Have some things in the frig to defrost for meals the rest of the week. Washed the floors, did a couple loads of laundry. We just watched a few shows online, and I looked through some recipes. Earlier hubby and I played a few hands of gin (got hooked on that during the hydro outage). Dinner is on the go now, and we're to to out to some friends tonite. I hope the weather clears. Hubby doesn't drink, and I might have one drink, depending what is in the offering. Edited to mention that we "buried our debts" earlier today. Will dig up the wealth tomorrow. This post was edited by jasdip on Tue, Dec 31, 13 at 16:20