Art, Flowers and yard work

How it was planned 

How it went in reality. Not too shabby. 

A cute little watercolor that I picked up at an “estate sale” that turned out to be a garage sale. Talk about a let down!  But I managed to find this cutie for a whopping $1.50

Future planning and work in progress. Please be kind as we are working g to put everything back together ever so slowly!

Picked this up @ Homegoods. I liked the little pop of color but that it was a calming painting for the bedroom. 

 



Yard work. Work is soo true. I had picked up bulbs and planted them a few weeks ago from Aldi. They are coming right up!  Makes me happy!!!

What YOU see will be a hot mess of weeds. What I see are hours of work and pulling bags full of nettle weeds and other weeds. Is it done?  Heck no!!!! There are so many weeds so I’m working on it a little at a time. I pull until I have issues standing up then I move on. This is after pulling nettles and bagging them along with as many of the wild pea as I could. That stuff is EVERYWHERE!!  But what I see are the shoots of the lilies coming up along the fence. 


Here

And here

And there!  So of 6 it 8 bulbs I had 5 come right up. Makes a gal happy!!

I also see the straight up shoots of gladiolus or something similar shooting up!  I’m excited to see what comes up!!

Got busy and cleaned out the REST of the drainage. 

Both sides and have the water flowing well and have the weeds pulled from the pea gravel. 

Planted tomato #1!

Elephant ears. Look at the new leaf to the right of the main bulb. I may regret putting these at the top of the stairs but I don’t think so. I can move them back from the lights as needed as they grow. 

This side I choose two smaller bulbs to put in this pot. 

Tomato #2. 

More Amaryllis!  I think this one is a candy stripe. We shall see when it comes out all the way. There are lots of odds and ends on this side of the wall. 

Candy stripe are under the pergola. 

Deep red are up by the house. 

Lots of them are getting ready to bloom!

And this is the price I paid. What I thought were just gnats were NOT. They bite and they were stealth about it!  They were just sitting in my arm. No pain. Nada. But when I brushed them all off there was blood!!!  Day one - all day no welts. Just red spots. 

Day three I’m an itchy mess today!!  Welts and itching. I jokes about no more yard work but we KNOW that’s not gonna happen. I’ll be out there again but I’ll spray the yard first!!!

Menopause the Musical

My friend Barbara (far right) asked me to go with her to see Menopause the Musical with her as well as a few others who opted out. We had a great time. Went to dinner before and laughed our way through the play. There were a few cringe worthy parts that I’m glad Liz didn’t go with us. She wasn’t invited because she’s not menopausal. Ha!

Scrapbook/crafting weekend

The clouds as I was driving out to the event were phenomenal!  Enough that they made the news. It was called a shelf cloud

Very interesting to say the least!!

Some from the news as well!

Anyway it dumped rain. 

But the weekend was fun and I enjoyed myself. 

The crafting room 

The bunk room (they have 6 bunks in this room) there are three bedrooms upstairs as well with queen beds. I had a ripe bunk and let me tell you getting up to pee in the middle of the night was a challenge!  Ha!!

What I did was odds and ends. I made some cards. I made a calendar (it’s not done). I then went shopping with Barbara at the goodwill outlet and the liquidators store in Columbus GA. We were in Pine Mountain up by Calloway Gardens. 

AND on the way home I stopped at an Estate sale. ;) bought nothing of mention. 

All in all a good weekend break. 

The gifts that keep on giving

I had a PET scan last week. 

I saw my oncologist this week. 

Things that didn't light up and can be celebrated: lung nodes, fatty liver, right pelvis. 

Things that did light up that need watching: left pelvis. Sigh. We win some we lose some. 

They offered me the signatera test (blood) and I asked what would change if it's positive? Negative? 

Nothing would change. So I skipped it for now. They will do a CT in 3 months as they know where to look now. And we wait. Again. Too small for biopsy at this point and in a difficult spot (peritoneum). I worry as it's cancer adjacent location. Nothing to be done at this point. 

Then I start looking at the odds of things being false positive and really wigging out. Lord save me from Dr google!!

Updates on life.

Scans on the colonoscopy were clear. Next colonoscopy is in 2027 unless something else goes awry. 

Planning my next trip out to see mom and dad. 

Not a picture one!  Shame on me!!

Spent Presidents’ Day weekend at Sally’s. 

Just two  pictures of us going through the Yarn cabinets!

Instructions were “give the girls first choice!”

 Mission accomplished!  The girls are in HEAVEN with all the yarn choices!!

Angela in a pile of yarn!

Liz came over to join in on the fun!

They picked out some yarn to work with and promptly started to knit!

The rest went to our semi-local consignment shop that I love!

We finally bought a coffee table and end tables over Presidents’ Day weekend. So the living room is coming together with the new entertainment center and now coffee table. Living the life!

Finding something we could both agree on was tough. It’s actually stone tops. I like that factor. 

Today I’m getting outside!!  I’m in my yard working in my poor neglected flower beds. Three years of neglect had really done a number on them. Weeds everywhere. Wisteria was/is trashed with dead wood all in there. I had to really CHOP it back. 

The mud fest that USED to be pea gravel drains. 

Pile of trimmings 

OTHER pile of trimmings

The hair cut. Need to get the ladder out and do the top!

Note there are THREE saplings trying to grow here. One in the foreground and three smaller  behind the drain. 

But what a pretty flower!!

Before. 

After

And so much more to go!!!

Joy!

I have zero pictures as I was soaking in the moment(s)

The last few weeks we have had family dinners. Two or three weeks ago it was both girls. Last week was Liz alone as Alex was out of town. This week was Liz, Angela and John. It is SO great to be close enough to have them for dinner. I LOVE it!

Last week was request night of goulash. A staple when they were growing up. It’s NOT what most call goulash. It’s hamburger with cream of mushroom soup over rice. 

This week was a request for spaghetti. 

As summer approaches we will move to grilled meats. 

We had discussions about how we are definitely food centric in our house. We shouldn’t be but we sure enjoy food and trying new things. 

I’ll see if I can remember to take pictures!!

Plants

Plants are coming back into the office!

It’s taken me a while to want to bring plants back in, but shockingly it only took a visit to Lowes rescue rack to get me going!

Yes that’s a few plants ready to go in!

One Dracaena with dying spots that we will address with some love and care. 

One Chinese evergreen. I wouldn’t have guessed that name but we’ll go with it. 

Snake plant 

Came plant 

Succulent 

These succulents are all from IKEA. They have been repotted into MY pottery. Fun stuff. 

Oh and one more. 

. 

Actually a rescue as well. Can’t beat the prices at half off. 

Office without plants

Office with plants. I need a small plant stand for the corner but it’s coming together. I actually have a third stand that will work quite well here. I’ll bring that in tomorrow. 

Keeping up with life

Has it really only been a week and a half since I left Utah from my visit?  It seems like a lifetime ago. Weird isn’t it?

Since I have been back I have done very little. I work. I come home I sit. I’m tired. Not physically but mentally. I went to my first appointment with a new colorectal surgeon. I have my colonoscopy set up for the 18th of February. Fun times. 

I had my security interview for my new job. Talk about feeling under pressure. Ha. I am fine in that but it’s embarrassing when the forms get squirrelly and you inadvertently answer something completely stupid like “have you traveled outside the US in the last 7 years”. Mine came up NO. I distinctly remember answering these as yes because was happy they had a “numerous times in this time period” answer that made out trips to Switzerland easy to answer as apparently that was our go to place while there :). I do love Switzerland!!  It was infuriating with that on line form because if you did anything a touch off (or needed to save to get additional data like your passport number) you had to go through the whole thing again. As in every immediate relative you have to go into them and answer AGAIN “alive/deceased” like the answer would change in 10 minutes since you screwed up in the first (or third) attempt to complete the form. Crazy stuff!!  The gal who interviewed me was sweet though. She, too, was 6’ so we had that in common and lamented we didn’t get to do face to face to just revel in the moment of looking another gal eye to eye. Anyway. That’s done. If folks show up in your doorstep. Sorry, not sorry!!  Ha!  Just answer their questions honestly. I’m an open book.

This weekend was sort of fun. Saturday we met Liz in Atlanta to go to IKEA. Met you ask?  Yes. She was flying home from California and came in at a decent hour so we met up with her and spent hours browsing and shopping. And buying the wrong size pillows BUT we have new pillows. Meh. Good enough. We then went to Anticos pizza. Our favorite place to go and Butch even wanted one to go home with us, so ordered that as well. 

Sunday turned horrible - I had a “sick” headache. Haven’t had one that bad in three years. Got up. Felt like doodoo. Got tea. Already knew it was bad. Proceed to vomit before I even got tea in me. Sigh. Back to bed. Toast and tea. Sleep. Repeat add drugs when toast stayed down. Sleep. Woke up to Liz coming over around 4ish. Soooo got up and filled through Easter and spring in an effort to get things ready to go to consignment. 

That leads us to this week. It’s my last week in my current job. Next week I start with SC. I made my “meet and greet” appointment and invited my team to it. Scheduled the conference room. Made the slide show. Ready to kick this off. 

Amid all this I have been finalizing and tracking move payments. I had to file a set of forms to pay for food and lodging in Germany. Another form (2) to pay for airfare and transportation in German. Another form (3) to pay for food and lodging in Georgia. Another form (4) to claim damages from our temp storage items. Another form (5) to claim damages from our actual MOVE to Georgia. Can you see me pulling my hair out yet??  There is yet another form (6) for the RITA tax credits that I will need next year because although I moved last year o got paid for it all this year.  What’s sad is that each of these “forms” is likely five or more documents and forms to be filled out so I’m going bonkers. I think I’ve been paid for ONE form so far!!. 

What have YOU been doing?

Visit with mom and dad

I made plans to take a longer than normal MLK weekend and go see the folks!  

Pretty moon over the mountain one evening when we were driving out to get salads for dinner ;). I do miss these mountains! (NOT the snow!)

What did we do?  We ate and ate and slept and played games and ate some more. Remember last post when I said I had gotten fat?  Now we know why!!

I did shave Dad while I was there - had fun pulling faces at each other! Mom had fun playing camera man.   

I also took mom shopping with very little success. She found this shirt. Yep. That’s it. One shirt. 

Robert and Janet also came down so we visited and chatted in the evening and spent time talking and enjoying our down time. 

I had a good time spending most of the day with the folks and plan to come down about every three to four months. 

Look at that sky from the drive down to Vegas in the early morning!  So pretty!!

Leaving Vegas

The ONLY hiccup in the flight was me losing my keys to my car. Yep. Seriously. I need to stop losing things!!!  Oh well it’s only keys. I can get them replaced ($300 - dang programmed and electronic things in cars are expensive now!!)

Scanziety.

Ok I have had a flurry of medical appointments but without results and just meetings. First was the regular doc who took blood for a prescription refill and wigged out because my sugar was high. Well I didn’t fast. I wasn’t planning on blood work as I was JUST there for a script refill, thanks. I’m sure that’s fine. We shall see they will take my A1C on the next draw to see where I am. 

Next was oncology to tell them I have not had a scan in YEARS and I have changes. So I had scans ordered. This is a worry and a relief at the same time. Next up is gastroenterologist on the 20th (Thursday) to schedule my colonoscopy. Ah the gift that keeps on giving. 

So one way or another we find out what’s going on. The Amount of accidents I have had lately compared to the last three years is concerning but maybe it’s just because I got fat!  Time will tell. Time will tell. 

Covid booster

I decided to get my booster when Butch took his mom to Florida. I had the afternoon free shipping why not, right?  Oh and I knew I needed (should get) the flu shot so I asked if I could/should get them both. The nurse said “sure”. 

Yeah. NO. Don’t do that ever!!!!  I was not feeling well that evening. I had a low grade fever and felt yuckie. The good news is that it only lasted 24 hours and I was back at it. However I would recommend you get those shots separately for sure!!