DeeMarie - PITTSBURGH!! PIRATES!! That is soooooooo close to me. Maybe one of these days you could tag along and we could meet for lunch. I have yet to meet a fellow SS Daily pal. :Speaking of Luna Bars, I always have a stash of them on hand. A Luna Bar and a piece of fruit make a great lunch/snack on the run. My favorite flavors are Dulce de Leche and Lemon Zest. I ran errands all afternoon and grabbed a Lemon Zest bar when I got home to tide me over until dinner. My third bite tasted like PURE SALT! I almost got sick. Couldn't bring myself to find out if the rest of the bar was as salty as that bite. Had to throw the rest away. I emailed the company and filed a complaint, so it will be interesting to see what they have to say. We conducted an interview tonight for the teaching position. The candidate had great qualifications, but I think her salary expectations were beyond our means. I definitely don't do this job for the money and sometimes I wonder if I am nuts because of that. We are still running the ad for a few more weeks, so we hope to get some more good applicants. I am currently reading Expecting Adam by Martha Beck. I just realized that I have seen her many times on The Oprah Show. She is such a witty writer and took a somber subject (Down's Syndrome) and turned the experience into a humorous and uplifting book. I am also reading Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss. The forward alone(written by Frank McCourt)is worth the price of the book. I have been carrying that book in my purse and reading in the waiting room at all my doctor's appts. Tikanas - My gyn. doctor just left the practice at the end of June. I took the first available appointment with the other two docs and hoped for the best. I have decided that as long as the polyp isn't hurting me, it will just have to stay there until my schedule allows me to take time off. I still have hopes that I can get the surgery scheduled in August. My head is pounding and it is too late to take Excedrin (the caffeine keeps me up), which is the only OTC drug that touches my headaches. Would a glass of red wine be in order here?? Or does alcohol make a headache worse? Oh well, maybe I'll just tough it out and hope I can get to sleep despite the pounding. Goodnight, Marci

Good Friday, Ivamae, congrats on your loss and for getting through dental surgery so well! You must feel good about having that behind you. Jan, don't stay away so long. I miss you. Seems everyone is disappearing these days to other social networks. Dee you have a fun weekend! Besh you have had your share of sadness lately. We have to turn that sadness into joy some how! I am glad you are posting here again. I've missed you. Heat,heat, heat, here too. It's awful. This is longest heat wave I can remember. The good news is that I get a break from mowing! LOL This heat is tough on Sweet Pea but she is staying in front of her fan. I wish this heat would end. This morning we put up 300 bales of hay. That's the first half. They came early so that we weren't doing it in the heat of the day. It always feels good to have hay in the barn. Because of the heat, humidity and BUGS I have not been riding. Even at 4:30am the deer flies are out full force. It just makes riding not fun for Casey or me. There has been so much wildlife activity here right now. We have a new batch of three foxes, a doe and her little fawn, a slew of baby woodchucks, turkey hens with all their little babies, a new brood of Phoebes and it looks like the Bluebirds are going to start a new family. I love this. This morning I saw the tallest coyote that I have ever seen. It looked like an eastern Timber wolf. We all saw him cross the pasture and keep going. He was a big one. I am glad he kept going. I must finish my chores before it gets too hot to do anything constructive! Have a good weekend.

YES! We are doing laundry together, sistah! You won't believe it, but today, the place gave me the keys to the hearse and I drove it WAY out to a service, casket and all. Then afterwards, I loaded it back up and drove back. Did 2 services today for a full day and my dogs are barking! I really should stop wearing my black leather boots with the high heels to these things! :) Tomorrow, the kids have some excitement planned, but my day will be spent with the lovely Raeanne, in front of matching washer and dryer set, being a domestic engineer. I read reviews on a couple of books that sound good, so I ordered them for summer reading: The Interruption of Everything By Terry McMillan "As Marilyn approaches middle-age, we follow her struggle to discover herself outside the constraints of a passionless marriage, a demanding family and an ever-growing list of dreams deferred. With three children in college, a husband who suffers from destructive professional and personal inertia, a demanding mother-in-law, a senile mother and a drug-addicted sister, Marilyn has more on her plate than she expected at this stage of the game. Torn between taking care of her friends and family and attending to her own needs, she's faced with choices, like deciding to finish her graduate degree, that never before seemed hers to make. Along the way, supporting characters like Marilyn's feisty little niece and supportive-yet-opinionated best friends Paulette and Bunny add humor and depth to our heroine's character. And as always, McMillan does a flawless job of incorporating humor into even the most traumatic situations, as evidenced by a scene in which Marilyn ends up babysitting her hairdresser's children while waiting twelve hours for new braids. ("At three, Blue has to make a run. Orange has to go to the bank to get a money order. I ask Lexus to find me a Pamper and I take the baby in the bathroom.") Warm and witty, sincere and heartfelt, The Interruption of Everything is sure to delight McMillan devotees and attract a host of new fans. --Gisele Toueg" and The Friend Who Got Away:Twenty Women's True Life Tales of Friendship the Blew Up, Burned Out or Faded Away By Jenny Offill, Elissa Schappell "Editors Offill and Schappell offer ostensibly the first book on lost friendship between women: 20 accounts of bonds that faltered, snapped, or slowly disappeared. Some of them are torch songs; some express anguish on a par with that of divorce; some are sly, tongue-in-cheek explanations of "lifelong" friendship's tenure. "I do not believe in . . . Meaningful Talks, except when they relate to . . . hair or makeup," opines one woman. "Otherwise, confrontations, in my opinion, serve only to make the plaintiff feel better for making the other person feel bad. I hold those I am really fond of to a lower standard than I do other people." Another contributor, one of a trio of friends, finds that her three miscarriages ruined the mythical story ("that wildness of being the same") of the threesome's bond. By breaking the silence about failed friendship so literately, this book appeals to many more readers than just students of interpersonal psychology. Whitney Scott Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved" These books sound like interesting summer fluff for me. Anybody else? Oh! DeeMarie, BTW, I love Janet books! You may also find you like Nevada Barr. I always actually learn something from the Nevada Barr books, since she throws in actual facts about whatever she's writing the mystery about. Try her Lake Superior book as a start if you feel like it. Okay, I'm done!

Hi Everyone! I've been MIA. My laptop died, got another one and managed to spill and entire cup of fresh coffee all over it, soaking the keyboard....talk about getting depressed. Really could not afford the laptop to begin with but hubby said it's our only real form of entertainment and he insisted. We don't have cable or satellite or antenna out here. I wanted to use an older laptop of his but apparently it's dying too. He's working on removing all data now before it shuts down for the last time. I left the laptop to dry for a couple of days....fired it up and the keyboard still did not work. Major depressive. So I hooked up a keyboard. I did not feel like talking much because the laptop was the icing on our financial cake...we're fine at the moment but still watching our pennies. It just got to us. Dave was even looking to spend a further $200 to get/replace the keyboard. I said no. I'll use the keyboard. Today I tried the laptop keyboard and it is working completely fine. It apparently needed more time to dry out. Thank you Toshiba for continuing to build better and better laptops! So I'm back. Emotionally it's been a rough week but I'm snapping out of it now. Dave just installed our first piece of kitchen yesterday - the sink unit with 3 drawers on the side. It's beautiful. 6 ft long with the second piece to be built as a mirrored image on the other side of the stove. First he's taking a break from cabinet making to make some storage shelves for his shop. It desperately needs to get stuff off the floor properly and room to sort his small stuff better. Safer working environment. It's late and I'll be off to bed in a few minutes. Tonight I watched Joan Crawford's 1945 Mildred Pierce online. WOW - what a great girly movie. I love black and white movies. She was fabulous in this movie. We're hitting a 5 day run of hot weather (by my standards) - 86F or 30C. Tomorrow morning I'll be watering my gardens and again in the evening. I don't care to lose my started tomatoes and peppers that are finally appearing. Socially this week has been very good. Finally got to spend decent time with our neighbour/friends across the road. They had us over a few times last summer/fall for proper dinners when we were living in the trailer. I was able to do something nice for Gail - I made her bedroom curtains which she loves. I was pretty pleased the way they turned out considering we went to a major charity shop and got a beautiful large silky looking table cloth in a purple/burgundy and a lavender/gray heavy curtain for the backing to add weight and keep the light out at night. We also had great girly time and got together here for a card night. Much needed. Very much needed. I'm back - I'm sure BJ will be back soon too! Still maintaining my weight, drinking water or heavily watered down ginger ale. I'm not nuts on pop, just bored with water sometimes. I only use part of a can. The rest goes back in the fridge for another day. Sweet dreams everyone - will be in touch tomorrow! LOL Peggy