This, That and The Other Thing~ The lightning edition.

Lately if I'm able to get a blog post together, they seem to be best in small random doses.

This:
Linds traveled with some friends recently. Since she and Lolo live together and Lolo works 12 hour shifts, Lo really depends on Lindsay to help her with Max. (Lolo's baby) Well, who gets to fill in when Linds is unavailable?
G'ma and G'pa. Or in this case, just G'ma since G'pa was off coaching softball. Max had 8 days at our house; Callie and Cocoa seemed to enjoy the change of pace.

Max loves us all....but he REALLY loves his Mama!
He couldn't get enough of her when she came to retrieve him.

That:
Speaking of dogs.....we've had some atrotious rain storms with a lot of lightning. I caught the dogs enjoying some front door sunshine one day after a big storm had passed.
*sigh, we survived another one*

The other thing:

Speaking of storms.
On Sunday afternoon it was PERFECTLY clear in our front when a bolt of lightning hit a tree.
I actually saw it out of my peripheral. Scared the bejesus out of me. It started a fire in the tree.....I had to call 911. (my first time!) Luckily, since we've been having so much rain, it went out fairly fast. A deputy was on our street and came immediately followed by the firemen.

The victim tree is in the middle of this cluster.

All is well, but I was shaken up. It's about 30-40 feet from our front door and I was thinking of all the times I'm outside piddling around in the gardens....with not a worry in the world.

It reminded me of when we were on vacation about 10 years ago and came home to a hole (the size of a basketball) in our tile roof and our appliances/tv's were going bonkers. We'd been hit by lightening and luckily our house did not catch on fire.

On Monday a friend was here working on our electronics (lot of issues from the Sunday bolt) when he was walking to his truck something and a bolt of lightening hit just outside of our property.
WHAT? It's like we have a target on our home or something.

So scary.
It blew out our a/c, security system, gate keypad, water system and some home automation.

We're slowing getting everything working again and we know how lucky we are; it could always be worse.

Mother Nature is angry about something and I swear it isn't me!! I'm doing more than my fair share.

Now I'm super paranoid about being outside.....I'm gonna go pasty white and misplace lots of caterpillars.  Woe is me....

Gin in the morning

Sometimes I open my mouth and my Mother pops out.

I noticed about a year ago a dull ache in my right index finger.....within a few months the dull ache was also felt in my right birdie finger. Not that I'd ever shoot a bird.....

It hit me.
This is what arthritis feels like.
*Oh SNAP*

A vision hit me from the past. Actually, the past day was in November of 2009.
The day my Aunt, Uncle and beloved Mother came for Thanksgiving and with them they brought this strange concoction and placed it in my fridge. 
Gin soaked (golden) raisins.

They swore that eating 9 of those raisins daily helped with arthritis pain.

I gave them strange looks and laughed at their apparent senility.

*OLD PEOPLE and their silliness*

Well, lo and behold I am NOW an old silly person myself. I honestly thought that would come much later, but unlike most of my life, it showed up early.

Hi, my name is Suzanne and I believe that 9 gin soaked raisins a day actually diminishes most of my arthritis pain.

The way I know it helps is that when we've traveled (even for a weekend) and I didn't have them daily, the ache was more than dull. My joints crave the gin soaked  raisins.

I'm neither a fan of gin or raisins, but I'm really NOT a fan of aching joints.

Here is the link if you'd like to try this yourself. And no, I'm not intoxicated now or when I ingest them.....the alcohol content is very low. The magic has something to do with the juniper berries used to make gin mixed with the golden raisins. You can do your own research on the web. For me, I know it works.

Thank you Beverly!!

XO

More peeps in my life and I'm glad I can swim.

Just after Easter we took in a houseguest for an undetermined amount of time.
Well, I thought it might be for a month....and only because we didn't know the depth of the situation.
You know when you come across someone who isn't directly related to you, but you have connections and they desperately need a new start to their life? And you CAN actually help this deserving person have a new start?
Well, then by all means you help that person even if it means taking a few steps back in your 'empty nest'.
It's all good; our nest will become empty again one day and we'll be back to No-pants Thursday and Naked Saturday.
I'm kidding.
Well, except for the no-pants part.
It's super hot here; pants make it worse.

Anyhoo.....we're getting through it. There have been some rough days and some easy days.
I'm praying that the end result will be positive for her and the Coach and I can look back on this as a little bitty blip in our plans, but a huge leap in her life. (I've skipped all softball travels this summer with the Coach) There's always next year.....



And in other news, it's been raining like crazy here for a few days.

I had no idea we were going to have a tropical storm. Should I put on the news on occasion? Nah.....I like to be surprised. HA!
My biggest concern is my monarch caterpillars that are outside.

Yes, I put up some golf umbrellas to keep them from drowning....'twas easier than making little floaties for them all.

Happy Tuesday!