It Was The Best Of Times, It Was the Worst of Times ...

It really was the best of times, our daughter arrived Friday night to spend her birthday weekend with us.  Leaving work a bit early she was on her way by 5:30 and with plane changes she was here by 9:30.  She's an only child and we miss her very much, wish she lived closer!  But since we moved to the east coast we do get to see her oftener than we use to.
I'd asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday and she said she wanted to see the new Harry Potter movie that was opening this weekend.  Knowing that everyone wanted to see this movie  I'd ordered tickets in advance and that's how we spent Saturday afternoon.   We all enjoyed it and thought it was a pretty good conclusion to the series.
 Sunday, her actual birthday, was time for gifts and a brunch at a local restaurant.  In between was time for talk, talk, talk and more talk.   But all too soon it was time for her flight home, though we're hoping to see her again in August.
It was also the worst of times for when we got back to our car at the airport after meeting her plane our car wouldn't start.  It didn't come as a huge shock because it's quite old, 17 + years,  and it has been ailing for awhile.  So the decision was made to leave the car  at the airport, rent a car for the weekend and call AAA in the morning to have the car towed home.  Unfortunately most of the car rental places were out of cars by the time we got to them, but we were finally able to get a behemoth of a car that was as big as a city block.  I won't name names because it turned out to be a decent car, just HUGE.

We also had a bit of trouble getting someone to tow our car the next day because it was in the parking garage and AAA said most of the tow operators felt their trucks were too big to go in there.  But I got on the phone, found someone who said they could do it and before noon the car was at home, at not too bad a price. which AAA should reimburse.
Now our daughter's home and this week we're going car shopping.  It's no longer economically responsible to keep pouring money into such an old car.  So the car games begin.

Georgia Wildlife

Georgia is abundant with wildlife and one of the critters we don't see very often is the Squareback Marsh Crab a small crab that lives in our salt marshes.  Our housing area backs up to the salt marsh and that is their natural habitat, but once in awhile you'll see one scuttling across the street.  I thought it was a fiddler crab when we first saw one, but we looked it up and discovered what it really was.  They live on vegetation and insects in the marsh and never stray too far from it.  But a nice treat when we get to see one.

A less welcome treat are the alligators that inhabit our waters.  We live a "stone's throw" from the Ogeechee River, one of the largest in the area and I'm frequently reminded why I don't swim in natural bodies of water in Georgia.  About 8-10 miles from here on the Ogeechee the Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR) called in Trapper Jack to capture some alligators that had been spotted at King's Ferry a local park, boat launch and swimming area.  He captured 2 of the 3 sighted.  One was 12 feet long weighing more than 500 pounds and probably 30-40 years old, the other was a smaller 9 footer.  Another 9 footer got away.  He said that people were swimming less than 200 yards from where he captured the alligators.     There are signs saying swim at your own risk, but not warning people of the alligators.  When asked why the alligators were killed he said that anything over 6 feet is too dangerous to be relocated so they are killed.
Very near this spot on the river is Love"s Seafood a very popular local restaurant where you can dine outside near the river   They have alligator on the menu, but I'll bet most folks don't realize how close they might be to their dinner.

Addictions

Hungerford Antique Mall

How do you know when you've done too much antique shopping, well perhaps it's when an antique arcade 4,200 miles away "friends" you on Facebook.   The Hungerford Antique Arcade sent me a friend request on Facebook and of course I "friended" them.  I've spent many a happy hour, and dollar/pound there so of course I wanted to be friends with them.  Can't wait to visit them on our next trip.  They are one of my favorite antique shopping places.
My favorite though is the Stationmill in Chipping Norton, it had burned the weekend before we got there last year and was due to reopen in May of this year, so I'm  really looking forward to visiting it again.

Painting

We have been painting the spare bedroom our daughter uses when she visits since Sunday.  Is it that big you ask?  No, not big at all, it just didn't want to be painted.  First problem was that the roller I was trying to use wouldn't stay on its frame, it kept sliding off, Mac tried several fixes and finally got another one to kind of work, but then it didn't want to roll, seeing as its only purpose in life is to roll  I was a bit surprised by this, so painting took forever.
 The plan was to paint 3 walls in a buttery white and then the wall behind the bed would be painted a sort of teal blue.  There was only 1 long wall to be painted white and I started on that while Mac did the cutting in trim.  Other than fighting with the roller it was going along ok when Mac said we weren't going to have enough paint.  Now I'll grant you it wasn't a full gallon, but all we'd painted with it were two not very big walls in the bathrooms, there should have been plenty of paint, but there wasn't.  So Mac mixed in some whiter paint we had, but there wasn't going to be enough of that either.  We ended up mixing all the white paint we had around and repainting the 3 walls.  Yesterday Mac finished the trim and I did the blue wall.  Touch-ups were done today and all the furniture was put back.  The picture makes the accent wall look lighter than it is, it's really a deeper teal.  I liked it so much I talked Mac into repainting the one bathroom wall which we'd already painted a light blue.  Now it looks like that bathroom goes with this bedroom.  No more painting till summer is over, even with air conditioning it's just too hot!

The Things We Leave Behind

I was reading Weaver of Grass's blog yesterday where she was talking about how our past dies with us and what will happen to the things we leave behind.  My husband and I were just talking about this and have always said that our daughter will probably call in Goodwill and have them cart everything off.  She, who is into all things Japanese,  doesn't care for the antiques we've collected through the years and says that she'll probably just sell it all on ebay.  Sort of sad, I hope she'll keep some things though they're not her style.

From her Great Grandmother Maria Antonia Mac would like her to keep a turtle shell she brought from Spain, it had belonged to her Grandmother and was said to keep you safe in thunderstorms which she was terrified of.  Mac says he can remember being about 4 years old and fascinated with it.

From her Grandma Patty I hope she keeps her school desk that Patty rescued from her elementary school when it was being torn down.  Patty had to leave school at 13 to go to work full-time and it broke her heart, so I'm hoping April will keep the desk.



















From me I'd like her to keep a little statue of a fairy riding a snail that Mac gave me for Christmas one year.  It's probably not very valuable but it is "so" me.    I've had a life-long fascination with fairies and and life-long fear of snails.















Mac would like  her to keep his flamenco guitar.  He had his Father's electric guitar for years but finally passed it on to a nephew because he didn't play guitar.  Then about 5 years ago he taught himself to play and then regretted giving up his Father's guitar.  So he'd like her to keep his.

A Garden Just Hanging On

I love to garden, but can no longer deal with the heat of summer, a season I use to love.  Most of my gardening is done in the spring and fall.  In between I dash out in the morning and pull a few weeds and hope it will rain a little so I won't have to water.  You would think with the drought we're having this year that weeds wouldn't be a problem, but they are, they don't seem to need water, they just keep on growing.
Some of my plants (honeysuckle and lantana) have grown too big for my raised beds, I put them in when the beds were empty, so this fall they will be transplanted.  I'm ordering some David Austin roses to put in their place.  He has some that have been developed for our humid southern climate.
Day lillies are not my favorite flowers, but they do so well down here and need virtually no care so I have a bunch of them.

Out front I have a blue Plumbago and it's done so well I think I'll probably add another one to the garden. I really appreciate flowers and plants that can take care of themselves.  Mac prunes and I deadhead and weed, but I don't want tempermental plants that need constant care.

Knees and Stairs

Front Stairs

Every where you go in our house there are stairs to negotiate.  Our house is built on a flood plain and under the newer zoning laws the main living area had to be built 12-14 feet above the ground.  So there are 11 steps up to the front door and from the garage up to the back entry and from the back yard there are steps up to the 2 decks.  Then once you're inside there are 14 stairs to the upstairs part of the house.
That means that every time we buy something it has to be carried upstairs.  And this is particularly true of groceries, we do our main shopping once a month, supplemented with fresh veggies as needed.  But that means there are bags and bag of groceries to be hauled upstairs.  On good days I'm only up and down the stairs a few times, but when my memory lets me down and I forget things, and we all know that doesn't happen very often, then I'm up and down them more times than I an count.
We're in pretty good shape for our age, although  my knees would disagree with that statement. They creak and moan and tell me they're not climbing any more stairs.  They want to know why we didn't buy a single story house like we meant to.    I worry that eventually we won't be able to deal with the stairs,  it's one thing to go up and down them empty-handed, carrying things up them is another story.

Garage Stairs

Inside Stairs

My knees complain, but who knows, maybe going up and down stairs is good for them, so perhaps  I need to sit down and have a talk with them about it.  Can anyone remember the old Alka Seltzer commercial where the man sat down to have a talk with his stomach?  LOL

Names Will Be Named

About  18 months ago after we painted our upstairs family room and put down a wooden floor, we decided it was time to replace our old boat anchor tv, a Samsung, with a flat screen tv.  So after reading a number of reviews we went with one of the new guys on the block, Vizio.  When we bought another larger Vizio  we moved the first one downstairs.  Sunday the Vizio died, with little advance notice.  And the Samsung we gave away is still going strong, as is the JVC that we also gave away.
Before buying a replacement tv  I went on-line to see if other Vizio owners had suffered the same fate.  Instead of just reading reviews I typed in "complaints about Vizio" on Google (don't you just love Google) and found that there were numerous complaints just like ours, in fact some Vizios barely lasted 6 months.
So I did a lot of reading Sunday, looking for a tv that would fit in our  armoire which meant a 37 inch tv. Unfortunately there are few tvs in this size, Vizio seems to dominate.  Most tvs were 32 inch which it too small for the room or 40 inches and bigger which is too big for the armoire.  But after much reading we decided on either a Samsung or a Sanyo, and with this in mind we headed out to WallyWorld.  It quickly became apparent that we wouldn't be able to get a 37 inch  tv so we decided to ditch the armoire, it was huge, 7 feet tall, and instead move in the large antique blanket box we'd shipped back from England  a few years ago and put the tv on that.
So we bought a 40 in Samsung and brought it home.  All we had to do was empty the armoire, it had a million cds in the bottom of it and part of my Victorian glass jug collection in the top of it, slide a towel under it so we could move it (it's solid oak and weighs a ton), and then carry in the blanket box.   All was accomplished.  Goodwill is coming to pick the armoire up tomorrow and the only problem we have now is that we need to lower the paintings that were hanging above the armoire, they're much too high now.

And here's hoping that the Samsung lasts a long, long time and that the Vizio upstairs  (it's 6 months old) doesn't decide it needs to die too.

Fourth of July

Happy Fourth of July!  It's not a perfect country, but having lived  in others and traveled to many more I can truthfully say there is no place on earth I'd rather live.
So enjoy your barbeques, fireworks and family it's our day to celebrate a great experiment that's still going strong after 236 years.

Painting Update

Mac has been busy painting two paintings to go with the painting he did from Rosie's Blog, it's a big painting and the two he's doing now are smaller and will be companion pieces.    He's working with 4 pictures from Rowan's Circle of the Year Blog.   He's combining the first two pictures to make one of the paintings and he's adding a dog.  

The lady and the boy have been added to the other picture

Then he's combining the next two pictures to make the other painting.  When they're done they'll hang on each side of the bigger painting he's already finished.

Seeking Dr. Who?

No this is not a Dalek, it's a portable room air conditioner.  We're setting all kinds of records here, today is the 44th day in a row with 90 or above temperatures, we'll break that record tomorrow.  There's no end in sight nor hope of cooler temperatures, and we won't even speak of the humidity.  Plus every  day in June topped 90 degrees  and that has never happened before.  So we're in for a long, hot, humid summer.  Which means lots of air conditioning.  Our house has central air conditioning, two units in fact, one for the lower floor and one for upstairs.  But unless we want to fund the national debt we can't run it all the time, and it makes little sense to cool a whole floor where some of the ceilings are 20 feet high when in fact we only want to cool the room we're in.
We have lots of fans including ceiling fans in every room but truthfully all they do is push hot air around so we went on-line and started looking at air conditioners and discovered that they have portable ones that you can wheel from room to room.  So we zipped over to Home Depot and bought one.   So far we've used it each night to cool our bedroom before we go to bed and it has done a nice job.  It's rather loud and you have to vent it out the window but it's quick and we're pleased.
I'm very much looking forward to our trip to England to escape some of this weather.  Summer sounds good in theory, and for a week or so it's fine, but it's only July 2 and it already feels like it's been here forever.