Friday, June 20, 2025

Happy Solstice!

And just because I can.... this post is going live at 10:42pm EDT!

Gosh I missed Father's Day and the Grandson's Pre-k graduation and all sorts of stuff!
We didn't do much for Father's Day. The item that we bought ON Father's Day is more or less for me. A new lawn mower!! The one we've been using is probably 20 or so years old - and it's a beast to try to start, if I can even get it started.  Plus, it's stored in the shed where the groundhogs have tunnels so there's always dirt all over the mower from those little bastards. 

This one is pretty amazing.  Besides being able to be stored up on end - the self-propelled function practically dragged me around the yard!  So, what used to take me over 2 hours, I was able to get the entire lawn done in about 1 hour and 10 minutes.  I still hate mowing, but it's slightly more tolerable.    

Oh, I mow the lawn because the Spouse is in even worse shape than me.  I'm afraid he'll keel over. 
My old mowing shoes finally needed to be retired to the trash bin. 

Last Friday I loaded up all my plants from work and took them home to do some repotting.  I had every intention of bringing them back Monday, but then I realized I didn't have any place to keep them at home!!  After we attempted to watch the Grandson play his last flag football game (he refused to play, so we left early.  That's a story I choose not to get into) we took the granddaughter with us to drop my plants back off at work.  

On our way there - I was getting texts from my sisters saying watch out for protests, etc, etc.  I hadn't heard about the ICE Protests going on and found out from the sisters that one was happening at the intersection right by my work!  Literally 1/4 mile away.  However, we didn't see anything, traffic was still moving well so it must have been peaceful.   The sister sent selfies of where they were right then, so I hopped out of the car and got a selfie with one of our shiny new trucks.  Last Thursday was my 25th anniversary at work and the entire time I've worked there, company trucks have been boring white with a blue & gray lightning bolt type stripe down the side.  Now we're getting pretty blue ones!! 
Speaking of work - 
We had record high temps one day last week and this is what the weather on my monitor said when I was getting ready to leave at 3:30pm.  Confused much???

How about some flowers?
I got a little rose seedling from Mom's yard right after Dad passed away in 2009.  I call it my Dad Rose.  Normally in the fall I trim all my roses down really short but I didn't last year and now this is the first really good bunch of blooms I've gotten!  Guess I need to get a trellis to put behind it. 
Bumble bee in Sis1's flowers. 
A bunch of us always get together at the VFW in the spring & fall to clean up the grounds and plant flowers.  See those bigger leaves, mostly on the left side?  That's poison ivy!  So that flower bed near the flagpole didn't get cleaned out.  Most of us stayed away - even me and I've never had a reaction to it before.  But the one lady who thought she'd be OK on the other side of that big rock got some nasty lesions on her arms. 
The Spawn & Grandspawn at Pre-k Graduation! 
S'mores to celebrate.   
Yes - I'm one of those people who torch my marshmallows.
Besides being super tasty - it prevents everyone else from asking me to make their s'more! 
I am in the minority at my house.  (chair dance celebration!)  
We had a family reunion with my Dad's side of the family in early June.  It's mainly just cousins who are left to attend. 
  The grandkids couldn't stay out of the water even tho it was chilly that day. 
The granddaughter contemplating whether or not she can shove that whole strawberry in her mouth...
She tried! 

So the Spawn is half-heartedly looking for a place to live.  She refuses to seek assistance from the state (multiple ridiculous reasons) so I don't know how she thinks she's going to afford rent on any place around SE Michigan, unless she chooses Detroit, Flint or Pontiac - none of which I would want my grandkids living!  Right after Pre-K graduation, the Grandson got himself in trouble (pretty sure there's some ADHD there) and his daycare basically kicked him out.  The problem with that is while the Spawn works/ed there - she wasn't paying for the kids to attend.  So now she has no place for the GS to go while she's at work and she can't take GD there if she's not there.  So they're all at home, much to the Spouse's dismay.  He works from home, do I need to explain?  Trying to work with a feral 3 & 5 year old in the house is difficult.   And he's stuck sitting at the kitchen table so he doesn't even have a door to close to keep them out.   I don't know where I was going with that, so just send some prayers & good ju-ju that things fall into place and we can finally become empty-nesters! 

Friday, May 30, 2025

SkyWatch Friday - 5/30/25 Memorial Day edition

Monday was Memorial Day here in the US. 
My VFW always puts on a nice ceremony at the post with lunch afterwards. 
It was a beautiful day. 

I also attended the ceremony that my city put on.  
There was a choir and a "siren salute" put on by the police & fire departments. 


Much to the delight of my grandkids, we stopped the ice cream truck on our street for the first time this year and we all got a treat. 
I'm not sure when I took this - it was a random photo in my phone!
But I like it. 

I also stopped at the cemetery to 'visit' my dad. 
I love the road going back to his location!


linking up over at SkyWatch Friday


 

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

A sad Saturday....

Here we go again! 

This time it was Rusty who crossed the Rainbow Bridge, on May 24. 

We adopted him from Sis1's barn where he'd been dumped. 
 So we don't have any idea how old he really was. 
4/29/17
the day we brought him home.
This was the day before his 'adoption' - completely uncaring that I was standing there holding the leadrope of a grazing horse.  
He & Daisy did a lot of snuggling. 
He was all cute with the Spouse.
Me?  I got smashed. 
So what happened began Thursday 5/22 - he'd been fine.  He jumped up on the bed like usual when I got home from work and we had our "together" time. Then sometime after that, he went to stand up and all he could do was circle to the right.  Obviously we were concerned.  We did a little research and honestly were hoping it was his ears or something.  But we decided to call the emergency vet and take him in.   Dumb me, didn't think to grab a cat carrier, so they put us right into a room so he could get down.  We noticed that he was walking ok, but as he cruised the perimeter of the room, he kept bumping into corners and such. 

They checked him out and they basically thought he'd had a stroke!  They showed us that he couldn't see out of his left eye and when they messed with his whiskers, he didn't do anything.  

So we got sent home (at 3am) with antibiotics and steroids and to follow up with our vet.  Friday he seemed as OK as could be, I got him some soft food to go with his meds and he went crazy over it.  He wasn't happy about the pills (I still have the scratches to show for it) but ate the food all up!  The Spouse said he used the litter box, etc.  Saturday he still was the same.  But when I went to give him his evening meds, he was laying on the floor in the bedroom with his leg twisted awkwardly underneath of him, so his left paw was by his right hip.  It took me a minute to even figure out how he was arranged!  I checked to make sure he wasn't broken and set him up on the bed.   He wasn't interested in the food and it was like his left legs weren't working. He was lethargic so I just held him for a long time, then the Spouse took him so I could eat dinner, then he (Rusty) wanted the Spawn to hold him, but when she took him, I saw his eyes were open wide & dilated and he opened his mouth and drool just poured out.  So I called the vet again and they said to bring him right in.  They were waiting for him and took him right back.  

So of course there were options.  They could have done MRIs and hospitalized him, but being away from his people wouldn't have made him happy.  They could have ran all sorts of tests, etc.  But again, would it even have helped?  Would he get better or would he be unable to walk?   There were no guarantees.  So we decided to help him cross the Rainbow Bridge. 

We weren't able to get him in at the same emergency vet that we took Maddie to, so it was the same yet different.  This place took us into a dimly lit room with a comfortable couch & chair, with a Himalayan salt lamp and noise machine playing ocean waves and let us spend as much time as we wanted with Rusty both before and after. 

He always loved the grandkids. 
And the grandkids loved him back! 
Bags were always inspected. 
No box was ever safe, either. 
Moral support - sick grandson and injured me!
Early Saturday before we said goodbye. 

His little box matches both Maddie's and our late dog's (I thought I had a post about him, but I guess only about how we got him).  And the Spawn still hasn't told the Grandkids that's he's gone!!  They just think he's either hiding or just not where they are at the moment.  Poor Daisy is all alone now!   She did see him before we went to the vet, so she had to have known something was wrong.