Well Sunday I had a church meeting at 4:30 that lasted until 6:30ish and then zipped home to walk the "wild child" before it got real dark and cold - and forgot to do a post. So a few days late - but here goes.
My hibiscus were still looking pretty good on 10/27/12 - check out the pictures below. It took me a few seconds to realize what was in the upper right corner of the first picture.....Cruz' nose. She's such a goober.
I treated myself (no pun intended) to one of this year's Life is Good Halloween tees. I wasn't going to get it but somehow the image makes me think of Cruz.......or maybe how she would look with a sheet over her head and body.
Saturday I finally decided I had lost enough leaves in the backyard that it was time to mow (hopefully for the last time this year) with the bag attached to catch the leaves. I waited until early afternoon for it to be as warm as it was going to get, and the sun started shining, so that helped with the work I had to do.
Lately I had been feeling somewhat sorry for myself that I had to do everything around the house now that Mike is gone. Take the garbage out - me or it doesn't get done. Lawn work (or soon to be snow blowing) - me or it doesn't get done. Cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, dryer finally konks out - you name it - me or it doesn't get done. And now being in my 50's, that just made it worse in my mind. But I read in "The Names Of God" that I don't own any of my possessions (home, car, appliances, etc.), everything is God's and He has given me the stewardship to take care of His possessions. That really hit home when I thought about it and put things in a totally different perspective for me.
So after working on the front lawn Saturday, I headed to the back lawn. I had used my rechargeable blower in the front yard to get the leaves and pine needles out of the planters and on the grass so the mower would bag everything and when I was finished in the front yard I took the battery out of the blower to recharge it before doing the backyard. So I headed into the basement to walk over to Mike's workbench to get the battery for the blower and walked smack into one of the overhead vent pipe deals from the furnace - yow. I have NEVER run into one of those things before but Saturday I made up for it. I started to cry, grabbed the battery from the charger, muttered to God about being thankful in all situations and kept crying a little as I started to blow the leaves off the rocks in the backyard. Of course I had no kleenex on me so I used the next best thing - the sleeve of my sweatshirt to take care of my running nose and tears.
I kept plugging away mowing, emptying the bag from the mower into lawn bags and mowing some more. Then I found it - part of a dead snake. I just stared at it thinking, "so that's how far you got into the yard after I completely covered you with wasp spray a couple of weeks ago". And it wasn't that far from my patio - ick. So I looked at the snake body, and looked at it, and looked at it and finally told myself to stop looking at it, cover it with one of the lawn bags and keep working - so I did.
I have no idea how my handyguy connected my two hoses this past summer but for the life of me (and my niece too) I could not get them to come apart so I could drain them and put them away for the winter. So I had texted one of the guys from church early Saturday morning if he could help me with my hose issue - he said he could Sunday after church. I asked him at church Sunday morning if he would be able to pick up a snake body and get rid of it - he said he could. So after church over come Jim and his wife Katie to help with the hose and snake. I had my two plastic WalMart bags double-bagged for the body with paper towels ready for Jim to pick up the snake. I had barely gotten outside, and he had the lawn bag that was sitting on the body as the marker to where the body was - moved, and had started to pick up the snake before I could say "here's a couple of bags for you". I took one look at what Jim was doing and threw the bags at him and I went the other way - blick, blick, blick. And before I could say that Jim could put the bags with the body in my trash can, he buried the bags in my lawn bag. I'm like, "you can't leave the snake in my lawn bag" and his reply was that it would decompose or something like that. I just looked at him.
He was also able to get my hoses apart - using vice grips - and we stretched them out so they could drain. After he unhooked the one end from the house he told me I needed some type of cover to go over the spicket (sp?) for winter. I'm thinking that I hadn't covered either spicket in front or back of the house the past two winters........oops. So off to True Value the three of us go to find the syrofoam spicket cover dealie. Got two - one for the front and one for the back. The front went on slicker than snot but of course the back spicket is not a normal configuration so the cover didn't work. I went to True Value Monday night to talk to them about what was going on - and showed them the picture of my spicket - they have ordered another cover they had in a supply catalog and we'll see if that works.
And as I headed out to my meeting late Sunday afternoon, I drug my trash bin to the curb placing it by the lawn bags. I looked at the lawn bag where the plastic bags and snake body were buried, and could just barely see the top of the plastic bags. I found a stick in the lawn bag that I could unbury the plastic bags with the body, loop the stick through the handles of the bags and dump the bags with the body in my trash bin.............blick, blick, blick.
