I don't think I posted the picture of the cats' Wubba last time. Check out the picture below - that's Sadie's paw checking it out while I'm taking the picture. I just laughed and laughed when I saw it because of buying Cruz her dog Wubba - of course this Wubba is cat-sized :)
It's been a challenging couple of months with scratching my eye and it swelling almost shut - to goofing up my left shoulder with mowing and bagging all that grass that had grown in my yard - to somehow either bruising a rib or stretching the muscles by my ribs that caused me horrific pain at times to even breathe a little breath - to the latest. I missed the bottom step of two steps walking out of one of the buildings at work late Tuesday afternoon. Flew through the air just a little to skid and land on cement. I was more "bruised" egowise that the passing traffic saw what happened than my injuries - until I looked at my elbow. Let's just say that the angles God has assigned to me were working overtime Tuesday afternoon to make sure I didn't get hurt any worse than I did.
It took over five minutes for someone to come to my building with the key to unlock the door of the closet where our first aid kit was located - I won't even go into that ordeal but to say I was dripping blood on the floor the whole time I was waiting. The two pictures below are after I got home Tuesday night to really take care of my boo boos. I know it looks like I got "goosed" from behind in the top picture - I was concentrating so hard on getting the picture of my elbow that when I realized how my face looked, I tried to look "happy" and that's what I got. Times like this are when I wish Mike was here to help me with my boo boo and maybe baby me a little Tuesday night - but oh well. I also have some abrasions on my left foot - found those out in the shower Wednesday morning when shower gel got into them - ouch, and a big bruise on my upper left leg.
Wednesday night our small group didn't meet but my small group leader and family were going to go to Yankee Doodle Pops on the capital grounds so I thought I'd go for my first time. More of his family showed up, another couple with kids from our small group and our lead pastor's family arrived so we had quite the group - in the middle of 100,000 other people. There was a reason Mike and I never went to this event - the crowd would have driven us crazy - but on my own it was ok. We even had a surprise guest singer with the DSM Symphony - Iowa boy Simon Estes sang two songs and chatted for a while - that was way cool. And then the fireworks were good too.
July 4th I headed to the zoo first thing in the morning. I hadn't been there since Mike died - that was our last real outing as a couple before he could only go for rides in his truck. We have loved the zoo forever, been members through the years and helped with many Night Eyes events. I think we have a great zoo - yes it is small - but sometimes that's just fine. You don't have to walk forever between exhibits or really hunt for the animals in the exhibits. And they are continuing to do amazing things out there and bringing more animals in to the zoo.
I didn't think I'd need to take my digital camera with me - surely I wouldn't take THAT many pictures at the zoo would I? Hmmmmmm 52 pictures later on my phone camera I walked out the gates of the zoo. Just a small sampling of the animals below.
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I'm not sure what happened to my favorite animal at the zoo - the Serval - but the two cats are no longer there :( The little guy above has become my new favorite - his name is Scoots. One time on a vacation Mike and I went to a zoo in the Caribbean and we saw an armadillo run laps around his exhibit and just chuckled - so I've liked armadillos ever since then.
After the zoo I checked my movie app on my cell phone and saw that I could probably make the 11:15 showing of "White House Down" so off to WDM I zoomed. It was a really good movie - yes the White House gets taken like in "Olympus Has Fallen" but they are two totally different storylines. The daughter in "White House Down" is the little girl from "We Bought A Zoo" and she was really good.
I didn't go to the fireworks Thursday night since I was going in really early Friday morning to flex my day and leave at 3:00. But I wondered if someone down the street would light off their mini fireworks like they had the past couple of years - yep after going to bed and turning off the light I saw a few fireworks out my bedroom window - cool.
Friday after getting off work I headed to my vet to buy more "bland" cat food and medicine for the kittens. Their little poo and tummies are still not in synch. The vet assured me giving the medicine wouldn't be bad - it should be easy - the liquid medicine had a chicken flavor. I have one little eye dropper bottle for Rowdy and another for Sadie - since Rowdy is over 9 pounds his dose must evidently need to be stronger. Plus two diabetic syringes to give them their meds. Let's just say "easy" is not the word I would describe when I've given them their meds (and I have to do this twice a day). After getting a death grip on their little heads and dragging them back toward me several times as I try to squirt the liquid into their mouths - it ends up all over their faces and my hands. But I know some gets inside them. I know nothing is wrong internally (no parasites, etc.) just maybe started them off on too strong of cat food and we need to get their systems to make hard poo.
Saturday I headed to Pella to pick up Dad to head to Bloomfield. My cousin that is 9 days younger than me that lives near Athens, GA had made her annual summer trek to Kirksville, MO to see her family. And it worked out that my cousin that lives in Warrensburg, MO had come up to visit my Aunt that lives in Bloomfield for the 4th with one of her daughters. So Jana brought Terri along from Kirksville and we all met up at the restaurant Dad, Bertie, Aunt Verta and Uncle Gerald and Aunt Elaine and I met at in May. I don't know why the group picture wouldn't load to my blog but here's a picture of four of the six remaining Hills cousins. Stan and Gary are the two that are missing.
It was a lot of fun to catch up and listen to Dad, Aunt Verta and Terri talk a lot about Grandma and Grandpa Hill and our family tree. My great-grandma (Dad's grandma) was full-blood Seminole so I'm 1/8 Native American on that side. Plus Grandpa's Mom was Cherokee or some other tribe.
On the way down Dad and I talked about how his WebTV is going to no longer be available for email or Internet come September. Both of us have been doing some looking at tablets for him - me at Best Buy and him in Pella at Radio Shack. For some reason I thought it took 2.5 hours to get to Bloomfield from Pella and we ended up being early. Dad told me he thought my "clock" was messed up - I just looked at him and asked him why he didn't tell me that so I wouldn't have had to wake up so early :) We killed some time at the Ottumwa WalMart looking at a Samsung Galaxy tablet so that was good. I still shake my head thinking my Dad will be more techy than me with a tablet..... :)
Today our lead pastor preached on the life of C. S. Lewis and it was really interesting. He will preach on Spurgeon (his absolute favorite man of God), then a guest speaker will preach on Martin Luther and one of our deacons the last Sunday in July will preach on Calvin. This month's sermons are "Four Old Dead Guys" or something like that.
After church I had to run errands and ended up at Earl May looking at hibiscus plants - hadn't bought any this year. Just couldn't justify $19.99 per plant when I used to get them for $10.00. But a friend at work had given me her two Earl May bucks and all the tropical plants were 50% off - so check out my two new hibiscus plants that are just off the back patio next to the dog tribute stone a friend gave me last year after putting Butler down. The red one has a little bit of yellow in the middle - can't remember the name of that type of hibiscus right off but thought it was pretty cool. And the yellow one was really pretty too.
