Questions And Odds And Ends…

I got to thinking about the way I’ve tended toward blogging and decided to ask you all a couple of questions…

The first one I was wondering about is if you enjoy me answering your comments and if you come back to see if I’ve answered your questions or responded to your comments.  I don’t mind doing it if that’s one of the things that you look forward to or come back to check out or if you check when you come to read the next post.  I’ll keep it up if you want but if it is an exercise in futility I’ll just do the random comment or write a post if there is something someone would like an explanation about such as a ‘chunk floater’.

The next question is do you have any preferences about the things I write about such as more growing up stories, more flower and garden photos and stories or more dog stories?  I plan to continue writing about all of the above but if there is more interest in one or the other I can write more about whatever subjects.

The third question… You all know that I like to string beads and make pretties to wear, necklaces, earrings, bracelets and such. Would you find it interesting or offensive if I occasionally put photos up of something that I’ve made for sale.  I don’t want, especially in this economy, anyone to feel I’m pressuring you to buy something.  Carol told me that she can fix me up a related site to post my little artsy stuff if need be but I thought I’d ask what you all think.

This little girl wants your input.

Thanks and talk to you tomorrow!

Hi Folks!!!

Decided that the smart thing to do was to write before the storms hit.  We’ve got thunderstorms with high wind gusts (60-75 mph) preceding the storms coming across the Okla. City area towards Norman.  No tornadoes are in the storm but we are gonna get a chunk floater for about 15 or 20 minutes then the storm front will pass on by us and keep on going east.

I don’t know with all that has been going on (and not going on) this summer if I told you all that I’ve moved from the country back to Norman.  I love my cousin and being out in the country but I found that what I didn’t like was driving for an hour to visit friends and other family.  I’ve still got some things to move and I’m doing some painting for my Cuz and my Bro but I’m in Norman now.  I went to the country earlier today and painted the ceiling in the bedroom we are working on re-doing, packed up another load in the pick-up and took some photos of the garden so I could wind up my vegetable garden reporting for this year

This is the last squash and about the last of the tomatoes.  I took this last week when I was out there to do some stuff and to get a load to bring back to Norman.

Okra is, however, a different story…

The okra plants are still putting on blooms which, in turn, means more okra… mmmmmm.

These okra buds and flower are taller than me.  These I can still reach but just barely.  That means that they are more than 6 1/2  feet tall. 

The electricity just went off (7:15 p.m.) but I still have some power in my computer so I’m just going to continue to write.  Since I’m writing this off-line I don’t need the internet back up until I post and the weather man said that the gust front and the rain has only been lasting 20 to 30 minutes, start to finish.

Meanwhile, back to the ranch…

You can’t hardly tell it, but that’s me in the lower left corner.  The okra plants behind me are over seven feet tall.  Either going to have to get the Bro out to cut them or Cuz or I will have to take a step stool or a ladder to harvest the tallest of the plants.

The tomatoes are just about gone… the heat that the okra thrives on pretty much wiped out the tomato vines.

The marigolds we planted with the tomatoes are still blooming…

As are the zinnias.  You can tell how hot the sun has been here in Oklahoma by the looks of this flower… beautiful pinks with the sun and heat faded lower petals almost white. The squash plants have adios’d this world for this year.  This is the part of gardening that is hardest for me.  Dealing with death, even of the plants, makes my insides hurt.  The squash from both the good day plants and the bad day plants that made it through the summer were very, very good.  They had a thin outer skin that was not tough in the least, even towards the end of their producing time.  They fought squash bugs and survived long after the other squash plants had given up the ghost.  So I thank you Tipper for doing your good day/bad day experiment this year.  I will be trying to learn more about good planting days before garden time next year.

As soon as I can post this it’ll go up…  In the meantime I’ll ‘see’ you all tomorrow.

Power is back on… 8:40 p.m.  Yea!!!

Crap!

Okay.. I’m going to go by California time and pretend that it’s still the 1st of September.  We’ve had an unusual weather occurrence this evening… RAIN.  At last a break in the heat and humidity but it sometimes wreaks havoc with the internet.  I’m here and still up and the rain settled down and went away, the internet is up and my girls are finally relaxed and not trying to crawl all over me because of the thunder.

When it thunders and rains hard Chloe just starts shakin’ and wanting to be close to me or Missy.  We also found out that she settles down a lot quicker, even with the noise of the storm, if we cover her up with a blankie so if we know a storm is coming we always try to have one handy.  SueSue, on the other hand, will try to crawl in my lap, up on my head or anywhere else that she thinks will get her any closer to mom.  I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to type with an angst ridden pup or cat in your lap or on your shoulder or head but I’m here to testify that it is dang difficult. 

So this is my day one of trying to re-form the habit of writing and by taking advantage of  west coast time… I’m just under the wire.

I will do better tomorrow.

I hope.

I Know, I Know…

I’ve been A.W.O.L. a lot this summer.  I have no excuses.  I could tell you that it is depression related or that I’ve been tired from working out in the heat although I rarely have been outside from noon or one in the afternoon BECAUSE of the heat.  Or I can just flat out say that other than the garden stuff I haven’t been very inspired by much to tell you about in new or old stories. 

Sue Sue is all ears now… mom is making a BIG announcement…

I’ve been doing some research and if  a person, in this case moi, does something for thirty days in a row it becomes a habit.  So instead of sitting on my butt playing on Face Book (my bad habit)  I’ve challenged myself to do a post every day in September to make a good habit.  It may only be photos of flowers or the dogs or it may be a childhood story or a grown up story but I’m going to write something every day in September to try to re-habitualize myself back to posting. 

Chloe’s saying, “Yeah right, mom… I wanna see this happen.  If you don’t post every day I get an extra treat!”  She threw the gauntlet down.  She needs to lose some serious poundage (as do I but we all know I take better care of my girls than myself) so now I’m locked into this challenge. 

Anyone care to make a friendly wager whether or not I’ll succeed?

Same Song, Second Verse…

Here we go again… second day of play!  There was volleyball going on…

Steve (the dad and husband of Nancy Lu)  and David (my sister’s son, my nephew)were taking on Chris and Jeremy (not in these photos) Steve and Nancy’s boys, my great nephews in more ways than one.

  After each game into the pool to cool off and water to rehydrate and get ready for whomever else calls out to take on the winners.  David was a definite plus for anyone that played with him because he is one tall young man.

Melanie, Nancy and Steve’s daughter, talking to her husband Dave there in the corner, her #2 son and her nephew are getting ready to go into the pool.

Melanie is reaching for her nephew, Kaeden, to help him into the pool. There are very strict rules that no one goes into the pool without an adult outside with them and, amazingly, all the kids understand that rule.  When Kaeden goes in by himself, without someone helping him, he always gets in his ring and along with his floaties on.  All of the little ones that don’t yet swim well are limited to the shallow end of the pool unless they are with an adult and all have their floaties on their arms, even in the shallow end. 

Grandma to most of the little ones, my niece.  Her kids are some of my greats and her grandchildren are my great-greats. Lord, that makes me feel old.  I diapered most of the people that you’ve seen in these photos of the last couple of days.

Not bad for being a grandma!  Nancy has always loved having a pool to play in since she was little.  This is her first in-ground pool and thankfully it’s a big one because three of her five children have children and Jeremy’s fiancé has a daughter that we all consider his.  Her and Steve’s fifth child is adopted and is only four so it will be a while before Melissa adds to the grandchild brood.

Melissa with Steve… one tired little girl having some lunch before her nap time.  This child loves tomatoes more than any child I’ve ever known.

Jeremy, come home again as soon as possible… we all have missed you and I enjoyed getting to meet Heather and Haylee.  What a wonderful addition to our family and what a great reason for us all to be together for some summer fun and catching up with each other.  There may not be a beach in Oklahoma but there sure are a mess of family that loves you all.

What Do You Do?

When the temperature is 102 F. and the heat factor is 108 F.?  If you are as lucky as me you have a sweet niece and her husband that have a pool and family visiting from out of town that gives me the excuse to drive about an hour to Bethany, a bedroom community of Okla. City, and jump in and play with my nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews and a few great, greats.

Yours truly and my great, great niece Brooke.

A whole mess of heathens…  The young man closest to us with the love of his life and her daughter and his baby sister is my great nephew and his family visiting from Florida.  Jeremy, not to be confused with another Jeremy in the family, brought Heather and Haley home to meet the family.  Melissa (baby sister) and Haley hit it off from the airport.  Where you find one you find the other. Those little girls are having too much fun playing.

  This is what we call fun in our family… get a bunch together and play volleyball in the back yard and play in the pool and eat.  I’ll post more on the eating because we are doing this all again today after church and there will be more of our wild bunch in from Ft. Worth and Nancy and Steve have quite a spread planned for our lunch.  In the meantime I thought I’d post a few pictures for those of you suffering through the sweltering heat with us that don’t have a pool and a mess of kids to play with in it.

My great nephew Chris, brother of Jeremy…

Jeremy, home from Florida, for a few days of mama’s hugs and brother and sisters loving and teasing and story telling…

He’s making sure to get the point of his story across…

Aunt Helen trying to help get the fourth person in the big ring… they all tumped over. 

My sister is up from Ft. Worth for a visit and she and Sandie Kay, another great niece, are talking about Sandie’s nursing courses she’ll be taking this next semester.  That handsome fellow that you can kind of see between them is the other Jeremy, Sandie’s husband. 

My nephew Bill, probably telling his niece Melanie, some kind of story.

Dave is Melanie’s husband.  There is an abundance of tattoos in this family but I have to say, as the old auntie, they are all in good taste.  No nasty uglies, either words or pictures.

My great niece, Sandie.  She is such a doll and I don’t get to see her as often as I’d like because she and Jeremy live up north and east of Tulsa and she is busy with school and being a mom and wife.  When the weather cools off I’m going up for a visit and teach her how to bake a potato.  It’s one thing that I can cook and she says she can’t cook them so I’ll help her with that and Jeremy will grill the steaks…  Sounds like a fair swap to me.

I’ll take some more pictures today but I just thought I would throw these out to you all and ask you what you do to cool off in the heat of summer?

Oklahoma Simmers This Summer…

This is the home I grew up in from the age of about four and a half.  There were six of us kids spread out over a 17 year period and I’m the next to the youngest.  Before this home the only home I remember was a much smaller shotgun home.  For those of you that don’t know what a shotgun home is it’s one that you can open the front door and the back door and shoot a shotgun and it will go straight through.  I don’t remember for certain but I think in was a three bedroom, one bathroom for all eight of us… six kids and mom and dad.  Any way, my dad worked hard in growing his and his partner’s company and dad and mom both were very frugal and so they were able to buy this home about four blocks away from the capitol in Okla. City.

This is the ‘big house’ as I call it from the back.  The reason I decided to post and write about the home I grew up in is because back in the day we had no air conditioning.  The house was built facing the north and there were lots of windows as you can see from these photos.  In the summertime the windows were open and if there was any southern breeze at all even on the hottest of days at night time it cooled enough to be able to sleep good.

Today the a/c quit at Cuz’s house.  It’s 2:45 a.and it’s almost cooling down enough that I may be able to go to sleep.  It was only 104 F. today and is supposed to be 105 degrees tomorrow with 100 + degree heat all week. It’s down to 82 degrees right now, I have the windows in my room opened and the fan blowing on high and it is almost comfortable.   Hopefully the a/c  people will be out tomorrow and be able to repair it.

Ya know, 50-55 years ago the heat didn’t seem to bother us… now it’s almost  impossible for me to deal with in my 60’s.  All I want to do is sit very still in front of the fan turned on to high and for once I can definitely say it’s not a hot flash… It’s just H.O.T.