Exceedingly Mundane

Boom Shaka-laka, now June is almost over! Good grief. My mom always told me that the older you get, the more time seems to fly by, and as I’m learning, she was right about that too. She was right about a lot of things. I wish she was here for me to admit that, sheepishly, to her. I observed the thirteenth anniversary of her death this past week. 13 years that I’ve missed my mom every day. And over a year since we lost my dad, good grief, I’m getting old.

OK, back to the topic. June mostly flew by. I had my follow-up appointment after my second surgery and got a good report, it all seems to be healing. I have one final appointment, a 3 month follow-up, in late September. Maybe most of the bruising, numbness and tingling will be gone by then. Either way, I’m no longer wearing the hose, I am no longer in real pain (just the aforementioned numbness, tingling and occasional shooting pins and needles stuff), and I am so tearfully happy to have it all behind me!

My sister Suzanne also had surgery in mid June. She had a torn meniscus (I don’t think I know how to spell that word!) in her left knee and had it repaired. Crutches and PT are in her immediate future. Tim and I got her a few days after her surgery and took her out to lunch, brought her here for a change of scenery and a shower, and to visit. Gail and I saw her this past week for lunch at Jason’s Deli and she seems to be doing better.

My mother-in-law and Tim’s Aunt Jackie both had colonoscopies on the same morning at a place near our house. I went to check on them and keep Aunt Sandra company. They both had a bad time, getting sick and vomiting, which I did not experience with the prep you have to do, drinking the stuff, and I felt so sorry for them. Thankfully, this type of procedure is over fairly quickly and I think they are both fine now. Good reports, no polyps and no cancer, thank goodness!

We went to Tim’s parents house on Father’s Day weekend. Tim helped Terry all day in the new store and I got to visit with Linda and Emi and also to help snap a few bushels (it seemed like!) of green beans. Tim was wiped out by the time we got home, about 15 hours later 🙂

Gail came last week and stayed with us. It was my “make-up” shopping day, as we called it. I spent 4 1/2 weeks mostly home, recuperating from the two leg surgeries and wearing those hot, ugly hose, limping around, so I didn’t want or feel like going shopping. So we made up for it this past week! We hit most of our favorite places like TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Home Goods, Target and Steinmart. Maybe next time we can hit Belk, Penneys or Kohl’s, because I wanted to find some shorts and couldn’t find a single pair that fit. I did, however, buy 4 new tops (3 casual and one for church) and some jewelry. I got a few kitchen things like a set of 3 red bowls, new measuring spoons, a grill basket, some food specialty items, etc. Needless to say, we had a blast and I look forward to her next trip down to visit and shop! 🙂

It’s gotten really hot. We had to turn the sprinklers back on and run them this past week. Then, we got a good rain one night and I was hoping for more, but alas, just hot and dry. We finally hit 96 or maybe 97 one day, which is our hot summer weather, considering how humid it is. Tim is doing his norm, continuing to play a lot of golf, no matter how hot or whatever the weather is. The only thing that keeps him from playing is when he is at the course, a thunderstorm with lightning blows in, and they blow the horn to get everyone off the golf course. That’s the only reason he is at home and not playing golf these days 🙂

I don’t tend to blog about current events or hot button topics, so I’ll only remark quickly that I was saddened and grieved for our nation, with the Supreme Court decision that was handed down two days ago. Legalizing gay marriage is something I expected, but was holding out hope that it would not be the law of the land. It doesn’t change my feelings, I believe in God and in his Son Jesus Christ. I believe the Bible is His holy word and what we all need to live by, I know it is what I try to live by always. It is clearly stated in God’s word that homosexuality is a sin before God, so our nation legalizing it doesn’t change anything for me. I deal with this personally every day, but that doesn’t mean I love my sister or others any less.

Lastly, we knocked another place off of our to-try list. We went to The Gathering at Livingston today for lunch after church. Their Sunday blue plates are fried chicken and pot roast. We both had the roast and it was deeee-licious! Good sides, good cornbread and a nice new fun place to eat. I hope we go back again soon 🙂 Of course, we have more new places to try, plus all of our regulars we love. Not enough time!

Not much to report on the tv,movie and book front. Tim thoroughly enjoyed watching the US Open and watching Jordan Speith win his second consecutive major. He’s anxiously awaiting the British Open in a few weeks, to see if he can keep his Grand Slam hopes alive 🙂 We watched a couple of movies we’ve seen before and tried to watch Noah, with Russell Crowe, before deleting it about 6 minutes in. Too far off track for me. We’re back into Major Crimes and Murder in the First. Rizzoli and Isles is on the DVR, but we haven’t gotten to those yet, and I think Falling Skies returns tonight for the final season. On the book front, my reading is subsiding now that my legs are healing 🙂 Let’s see, since my last blog post, I’ve completed “The Dance” by Dan Walsh and Gary Smalley; “Mucky Streak” (Squeaky Clean #7) by Christy Barritt; “A Simple Faith” by Rosalind Lauer (an Amish book I downloaded from the library for something different); “52 Steps to Murder” by Steve Demarree and “Attracted to Fire” by DiAnn Mills. Well, that looks like more than I thought! LOL! Still, that was most of June, so not as many as I would have liked. Not sure what’s up next, maybe I’ll get off the computer and go find a good book to read!

Coming up this week, a haircut, then the big family reunion we go to every year on the Fourth of July. Fun stuff! 😀

More daily ramblings, as we get closer and closer to the closing on the new house (and giving away investing all of our savings for a downpayment!), and hopefully closer to selling our current (aka old) house.

I posted on Wednesday morning 9/3. Tim had a really bad night, Tuesday night, and didn’t sleep much. He’s pretty sick with a sore throat, cold type symptoms, scratchy voice, congestion, etc. I think he got up once or twice during the night and watched tv or worked on the computer because he couldn’t sleep. Poor thing. He won’t take a day of sick leave though, which is why he has more accumulated with his company than he could ever use 🙂

Wednesday turned out to be a nice, quiet day! I kept thinking to myself all day “enjoy the calm before the storm!” I went to Kroger and got a few groceries, then came home and just did some odd jobs around the house, played on my ipad a little, watched a little tv, and basically ignored packing. Until about 4 PM, then I packed a couple of boxes 🙂 We had no showings on Wednesday, so we didn’t have to rush out of the house and be gone, especially at dinner time. I thought I was done with cooking, but still eeking out a smidge more, although what we had for supper wasn’t really cooking. Tim’s friend Tony came around 6:30 to eat, hang out and spend the night, as he has a really early doctor’s appointment Thursday morning. I made tomato soup and grilled cheese, one of my favorite comfort meals. After supper, we were watching NFL Network and got to talking about the house, so of course, we roped Tony into going to see the new house 🙂 We’re horrible!

Thursday started out as another quiet day. I washed sheets and towels and cleaned up the guest room and guest bathroom. Tony might have been our last houseguest in the old house, since I can’t seem to talk Gail into coming before we move 😀 Tim is feeling a little bit better, but digging around looking for OTC meds to take, so apparently he’s not as well as he lets on! We didn’t have any showings, but ended up with another houseguest. Suzanne called around 5 PM and said her power was out, so she was coming over to stay the night. Tim and I worked in the yard till dark. Might be the last time cutting the grass here, without having to load up the mower on the truck and bring it over 😀

Friday morning, I had a haircut appointment. While I was there, Tim texted me that we had another showing Friday morning late, so I ran home to finish putting everything away and tidy up (again!). We were walking out the front door and the realtor and client drove up, that’s the first time that has happened! She didn’t look like someone who would buy our house, and sure enough, about the time we got to a restaurant to order lunch, the realtor texted they were done (less than 15 minutes). Oh well, we had a nice lunch at Krilakis anyway 🙂 Friday afternoon, after Tim finished work, we headed to the new house (yes, again!) to look for more punch list items. I keep telling Tim “they are tired of us adding things to the list” and “they are only going to fix so much”, but he keeps persisting. 🙂 After we got home, we heated up some leftovers for Tim, popcorn for me, and settled in to watch some things on the DVR and clean up a few shows.

Saturday, Tim had an early tee time, but woke up feeling bad still, so he decided not to go play. Which is VERY unlike Tim. Usually if he makes a commitment, he keeps it. But that is indicative of how bad he’s still feeling, if he doesn’t want to go play golf! We had a lazy morning, then got busy with more packing. My inclination is to get everything packed, everything, even though we still have 4 more days to closing and a week before the “big” move. Sigh. Suzanne popped over (unannounced!) around lunch and visited for a while. We packed (and sweated) all afternoon and into early evening. I can tell I’m going to be sore for the next couple of weeks, LOL!

Sunday is SO my favorite day of the week! We are loving church and our new Sunday School group. I told Tim today after we got out, I was just the epitome of happy, because they gave us new Sunday School books for the fall period (“Bible Studies for Life” from Lifeway). I nearly squealed in delight when I was handed one 🙂 I was always a teacher’s pet, you know 🙂 Anyway, we are nearing the end of the sermon series “All In” and had another good sermon from our regular pastor, this week’s symbol was the altar. And he did a play on words, and urged us all to live All-In, “all-tered” lives. Sunday School started in the new book, and this week we talked about church membership, and what it means to be a “member” of a church versus a part of the body of Christ (from Ephesians 2:17-22).

After we left church, we stopped at the auto parts store to get some injection cleaner for the engine of the Explorer, since the “check engine” light keeps coming on, unless we put in ethanol-free gas. Then we went to Taco Del Mar, where we have not been in ages. I had two avocados left at the house, so we decided to pick up enough tacos, burrito (for Tim), rice and beans to go along with the guacamole and chips, to last us for lunch and dinner. I packed all the cookware, all the dishes, all the glasses yesterday, so we are down to using paper plates and plastic cups. We got home late, changed into Saints shirts and started the recording of the first Saints game against Atlanta (which they ended up losing in overtime by a field goal), when our phones started going crazy. We got a text from Tim’s mom that they were headed to town and wanted to catch up and maybe see the house and do some shopping, and we got a text from one realtor, and then a phone call from a second one, wanting to show the house, one at 4:00 and one at 4:30. We finished eating, cleaned up the house, changed clothes, turned on all the lights and left around 2 PM. We met Tim’s family at the outlet mall, where Linda got some clothes for the Gideon meeting and Mitchell got a new suit (he’s going to go back to speaking in churches in the area for the Gideons). I got a pair of black ankle boots for fall/winter at the Clarks outlet, not sure if they are what I want, I might should have looked around more, but I don’t have a lot of extra time right now to clothes shop! LOL! Tim’s family ate before we got there, so we met them to shop, then headed to the new house. Brittany and David saw the house for the first time, and we got to meet Emi’s brother Lazarus, who arrived recently from Mexico. After that, we all headed back to Pearl and shopped for Terry’s store until closing. Tim and I came home, ate leftover tacos and finished the sad Saints game. Now, we are watching Sunday night football. I’m glad football has returned! This is our ONE Saints game in this house, next week we will be watching (hopefully!) from the new house!

I expect Monday and Tuesday to be very busy… lots of calls to make, I’m sure last minute things will pop up, and we are waiting to hear on the closing time and location on Wednesday. After we sign papers and give them all our money, we’ll get keys and start moving in! The big move is scheduled for next Saturday, we should have a crowd, all of Tim’s family and a lot of mine who are here. We can’t wait!!!

I’m counting down the days to closing on the new house!

Let’s see … the last boring rambling post ended on the Saturday before Labor Day. I posted in the morning, while Tim was playing golf. After I got off the computer, I got in the kitchen and tackled the last great job – starting to pack my kitchen. I made a small dent, packed about 3-4 boxes and partially emptied a couple of cabinets. Still a long way to go, but I hope to get more packed on Labor Day. I got a call from our realtor while I was slaving away, that she wanted to show the old house at 1:30 PM. That was a first, so far she’s just been the listing agent and had not shown it herself. It was a friend of hers, she said. Tim got home from the golf course after lunch, so we got cleaned up and headed out around 12:45. I let Tim pick where to go eat (after all that hard work lugging his heavy golf bag for 18 holes, he should get to pick!), and he picked Five Guys. Not exactly healthy, but still very tasty! We love their drink machines, and the burgers and fries cannot be beat. After that, we left and drove to the new house and met Tim’s buddy Charlie. We spent a couple of hours there, going through the house again and adding more items to the punch list. Charlie works for a builder and has a great eye and pointed out a lot of things we had missed. It was raining when we got to the house (yeah for not having to water at the old house for a few more days!!) and I got to stand out on my back screened porch and see it rain, hear it in the trees, smell the freshness. Bliss, sheer bliss. I told Tim, expect me to be out there quite a bit when it’s raining. Now that the screen is up, there are no bugs and it’s just heavenly. Anyway, after that, we headed back home and settled in. USM was playing on the brand new SEC Network against Ms State, and as I feared, it was a huge blowout. We used to have such a good football team, always having winning seasons and going to bowl games almost every year. That came to a screeching halt two years ago, and our poor Golden Eagles have not won but one game in two seasons. Ms State humiliated us on tv, beating us 49-0. Excruciating to watch, to say the least.

Sunday is always my favorite day of the week! Church, with our regular pastor, still in the sermon series “All In”. This week’s symbol was the yoke, as from Matthew 11:28-30, “come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you… for I am gentle and humble”. Another great sermon. This week in Sunday School, Skip led the lesson rather than Tommy and chose a passage from Leviticus 25:1-7, about the Sabbath and the land taking a break on the seventh year, as well as the people observing the Sabbath. Very interesting discussion and we really enjoyed it 🙂 After church, we texted Suzanne and told her we were going to lunch at Newk’s and invited her to come. She was having a hard time and said she really needed to see us, so she was glad to come meet us. Tim had a bbq chicken pizza, I had a half caesar salad with salmon, and Suzanne got the grilled pimento cheese and tomato basil soup. I can’t wait to be in the new house and it gets to be fall, and I make my homemade tomato-basil-parmesan soup in the crockpot, LOL! We visited a long time at Newk’s, till a little after 2 PM. After that, we came home and Tim did the live draft with our fantasy football league. I decided to let it auto-draft for me this year, I have enough stress with the two houses and packing and moving to worry about fantasy football, LOL! 🙂

Monday morning, Tim had another early tee time. Nothing like waking up at 6 AM on a holiday 🙁 He left to go play, and I started cleaning up the house. We had another showing at 10:45 AM. I have already (after ONE week!) gotten tired of dressing and going to a store to wander for an hour, so I took my Kindle, went down to the gazebo near the lake and read while the house was being shown. Tim called after I got back, and was headed home, after helping a buddy with his golf cart (translation: they had to soup it up!). He stopped and got us Chick-Fil-A on the way home, which was good and also very sweet of him. After eating, he went down to the neighbors to help with his fence, but he’s still not ready for help (which I think means he is stalling, because he knows we are moving in a little over a week!). We ended up visiting with our neighbors for a while, which was nice and might be the last time we sit and visit 🙁 After that, we both got to work packing, me in the kitchen and Tim in the garage. After several hours, our next door neighbors came over to check out our current house, and stayed to visit. We offered to take them to see the new house and we were so happy they agreed, and they said they loved the new house, just beautiful!

Tuesday, we got back to work. Tim woke up with a sore throat, and unfortunately I had packed most of the medicine! Lucky for him I knew where I had put that box 🙂 I got busy cleaning the house, defrosted the outside freezer (MAN, i can’t wait to upgrade to a frost free one), cleaning bathrooms, floors, sinks, etc and basically keeping the house “show ready”. Good thing too, because we got a call from the realtor saying that we would have a second showing this afternoon from one of the ones that came to see the house this weekend. Anyway, I made some supper, early in the day and put in the fridge and I told Tim, this may very well be the last meal I cook in this house! Sniff sniff. We got the house ready and left, and headed to the new house. We were happy to see more of the punch list done, and that they had started to do the cleaning. Also, the gas was on, so the gas lanterns were burning out front, the posts and corner pieces were installed on the front porch and I got to play with lighting the gas burners on the cooktop 🙂 After we got home and had supper, we watched a little tv, then Suzanne came over to visit for a while. She tried to run, but it was raining, so she had to do the treadmill. She’s training for her 10K in November, so she really does need to stick to the schedule of running.

I know these posts are NOT interesting to anyone else. They’ve turned into a diary of what we are doing, with nothing really fun or interesting for others to read. Tim wants me to keep a record of showing the house, and this seemed like the easiest way. Hopefully we can get an offer soon, but if not, then maybe it will show better after we’ve moved out. Anyway, I’m glad to be able to get a lot of things down that are going on. I know as the date approaches for us to close, it’s going to be nearly impossible for me to blog regularly, and I hope that I can remember a lot of it once we do finally get to a point where I can sit down and type it all out on the blog. In the mean time, it’s now Wednesday morning and our day count is down to seven, we are set to close a week from today! Tim and I will start moving on our own after closing and then next Saturday, we’ll have the “big” move. I can’t wait!

More later, as time allows!

We’ve had a busy weekend! Gail and Don came down on Friday and had supper with us, then we all went to see Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Tim and I both loved it, good movie! If you don’t see it at the theater, be sure to rent it 🙂 I have several I want to rent (or in my case, probably request from the library) or watch on our Amazon Prime. We watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol the other night and enjoyed it all over again 🙂

Gail and Don spent the night, then headed out Saturday morning. We went by and picked up my dad and then headed to a get-together at my in-law’s house. We normally go to big get-togethers at Linda’s family, but this one was for Mitchell’s family. They are really good about waiting till after the holidays, we always get together in January for that side of the family. It’s nice that the hectic holidays have passed and we can get together and visit. We had a good time! And as always, lots of good food 🙂 We took a smoked pork loin and some brownies and had tons of other good stuff to eat. We missed seeing Terry and Zack though (they went to sign his letter of intent to play golf at a junior college southwest of here), and also Mark, Amanda and their kids (Mark had the flu). So thankful that neither of us have gotten sick this winter, although Tim has been fighting a sore throat and cough for a few days. And I’m even more thankful that my dad has stayed relatively healthy in the assisted living place. He kept getting sick late last winter, so I’m really glad he’s doing better right now. It’s hard to believe that he fell almost a year ago and we moved him up here. Time is flying by!

Enjoyed church this morning, great music as always and a good message. Current series: Reclaiming Life. We went to Corner Bakery again this Sunday after church for brunch (again, we went last Sunday too, always sad when our Saints are no longer playing football). Last week, I had more lunch-type food, a cup of clam chowder and half of an uptown turkey sandwich. This week, I was colder and wanted coffee, so I went with second breakfast (a hobbit thing!). I tried their power panini thin with avocado and spinach. While it tasted good, that was the smallest, tiniest, narrowest imitation of a panini I have ever seen! I got a small cup of steel cut oats on the side, and it did fill me up, but boy, it was a small serving!

I went to Kroger after lunch and got groceries, and after I got home, Tim and I looked at houses all afternoon. I wanted to come home and fix supper, but was overruled by Mr Pizza himself, who wanted to stop at Little Caesars and pick up pizza. Good news – we have tons of pizza leftover for Tim to have for lunch all week! I think I’m going to take it easy this week on the cooking front – I’m planning a lot of salads, some sandwiches, maybe one soup thrown in, and Tim has a boatload of pizza leftover 🙂

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

OK, so this morning in church, I noticed yet again that a lot of kids of all ages seem to be bringing their electronic devices into church. Apparently to keep them entertained, from what I can see. Cell phones, which I can *sort of* see, although I think they should be silenced and really shouldn’t be used. But I have also been seeing a lot of Nintendo DS’s and Playstation Portables (PSP’s). I guess the parents think it’s better to keep them quiet and entertained, or something. But, when I was their age, I was supposed to sit there and listen, or at least pretend to listen. Back in the dark ages, I was allowed, at most, to doodle on the program and fill in the letter O’s 😀

So, do you think it’s ok for them to be using all of these devices in church? Or am I just horribly old-fashioned?

Hope everyone is having a blessed day!