Well, then, if you only hit 90, we were 4 degrees warmer than you. We hit 94, but only briefly, although we had stayed at 93 for quite a while. It was so hot out there! I am not ready for 90-anything degrees yet. My sugar snaps have behaved as yours---stalling during hot spells and then resuming growth, blooming and setting peas during cooler days. I don't know if Saturday's cooldown with kick them back into happy land right now because they definitely are not happy in this weather, and it shows. I hate to yank them out if it is going to cool back down but I am not sure how much more of a roller coaster ride they can tolerate. I planted peppers and tomatoes in molasses tubs today. I really wanted to put more of them in the ground, but I do have to save some room in the big garden for southern peas, okra, melons, pole beans and winter squash. I'd like to find room to squeeze in sweet potatoes....but I'm rapidly running out of space. Tim looked at the garden this afternoon and said "it looks like you have more planted in there this year" and, bless his heart, he said it with a straight face! I think maybe he's referring to the extra 50-something tomato plants I have in the ground compared to last year. Or, maybe it is the seven rows of bush beans. I was determined to get beans before the heat arrives, and we have teeney-tiny baby beans now, so I believe we'd have beans to harvest--but the heat did beat them here after all. I don't think he realized how many extra tomato plants I was sticking into the ground here and there. I put a couple of tomato plants in the onion bed where I'd pulled out a lot of green onions over the weeks, and some alongside the fence beside the rows of beans, and some in the cabbage and broccoli bed. I've been putting mini-tomato plants like Little Sun, Sweet-N-Neat Yellow, Sweet-N-Neat Scarlet, etc. in the lettuce garden whenever I remove a head of lettuce. I just stick a tomato plant in the bare spot. Today, Tim noticed there's as many tomato plants as lettuce plants in the lettuce bed. I feel like the season is accelerating without me. I'm stuck in planting mode, and there's the beans almost ready to pick while I'm still harvesting snap peas, and the corn's tassels are starting to appear. It's like Alice-in-Wonderland where we've fallen down the rabbit hole and found ourselves in a different world we don't understand. After all my whining about endless mud and wet ground in January through March, we've had very little rain the last 3 weeks, and you know the rest of the story....the big pond is dry already and the little one only has about a foot of water in it. The clay ground out behind the barn is cracking. I'm not liking the dry trend during what usually is a pretty wet month for us. You know, I hear that the Norman area will be having perfect weather on Saturday, so if I was going to visit someone in Oklahoma, I'd head for Norman. : )

sierraeast: you're talking mostly about doing building projects for other people--not yourself--right? Is it different when you do it for yourself? Here's my take on that: First, those of us who know nothing about building are more tossed about by all its jaggedness because we have no idea what specifics to expect. Or how they get dealt with. To a pro, you are (eventually) aware of WHAT can go wrong. And also, of how to fix it. Or, at least, that it CAN be fixed. We amateurs know none of this. Secondly, even for a pro, when it's your own it's more emotional. I would think. Just like when family has some problem rather than a stranger you hear about. My own pathetic attempts to prepare myself for all this have consisted of learning all I can about what's ahead (to cope with the first aspect I just described). And for the second, everyday I try to adjust my attitude. Since we got tossed around on the sea of home design and architects, I decided to try REALLY hard to act "as if" this is someone else's house. Just a project I'm working on. As much as I have gotten involved in my own professional work, a project there has never been as gut-wrenching/mind-warping as a project for myself outside of work. So, I'm trying to act like this is "just" a job. (Bear in mind I have never been good at professional detachment either! But, a little better.) The one benefit I can see so far is that I'm approaching things more on an intellectual level. Doing a lot of learning, listening, problem-solving. TRYING to act like I'm doing this for someone else. I try to interrupt myself, distract myself with another activity or other thoughts or TV or music or talk radio, or something--every time I start to wallow in emotion. Remember years ago when the mental health field was recommending expressing your anger? Beating pillows, screaming in the bathroom, etc.? I do. It was 20 years later when the research came out indicating this was exactly the wrong thing to do. That it resulted in a vicious cycle of more and more anger. The better way was said to be to simply acknowledge, to yourself, your feelings. And then go about your business and let them sort themselves out. So, I'm trying to apply that tidbit of knowledge and not let myself increase my own misery. I'm admitting what I feel, then trying to just let it be. Not feed it or whip it into a frenzy (and I'm totally capable of frenzying up anything). Strong feelings will dissipate with time if left to be. I'll find out how well this works. Cause I gotta say, going into this I thought I'd never get this far. I really thought I couldn't STAND it.

Joanie38, the bridge you refer to is the other Chesapeake Bay Bridge - it crosses the bay down at the bottom in VA. I've been on that one once years ago but I don't remember much about it. Annie, I used to drive the Deegan all the time. I went to Fordham in the Bronx, lived for a time up in Westchester as well as in Manhattan. I've driven pretty much every highway around NYC. None of them are much of a pleasure, especially in the South Bronx! Allison, I've only had the one panic attack. The first few times I had to use the bridge following the panic attack, I used a variety of mental/physical exercises on my approach to the bridge and was able to stave another attack off when I could feel my heart starting to beat faster. Now I just focus my mind on other things as I cross the bridge and have really just tried not to think about it at all. Interestingly, the way the bridge is designed, with separate spans, one eastbound and one westbound, I discovered that driving eastbound was fine. But westbound, the span has a different curve to it, so you can really see how high you are going and right as you near the top, the cement barriers change over to rails that allow you to see directly down below. Anyway, thanks for the advice about diet - I actually don't drink much alcohol and don't have caffeine at all, and very rarely smoked or processed meats. But I always have water with me when I'm driving, so I'll make sure to follow that advice! Unfortunately, there is no way though I could have taken my hands off the wheel during that panic attack to drink water! I didn't even realize what was happening until it happened. But now I know what the signs are so I can prepare myself in advance!

Jefferson was notoriously bad with money. However, Washington and Madison were both quite good with it - then again they may have been considering their purchase a "donation" to the government. Jefferson was so broke that when he died he was deeply in debt and could not even afford to set his slaves free - they were sold to other slaveowners to settle a portion of his debts.