On the Patio Again! ~ Monday 7/23/18

You guys!  Guess who's typing this from her patio once again?!  Yes!!! Me, that's who!!!



So for once I don't start my post with woe-is-me tales of my bad night (spoiler alert: it wasn't too bad of a night!) but with happy news!



I typed this morning that our high today would be only 82F but since it rained all night, I fully expected it to be unbearably humid outside.  And then at 9:45 a.m. I went to hang my laundry outside, in case it could possibly dry a bit before the afternoon rains, and I was so pleasantly surprised to find that it felt cool and not all that humid, actually!

So I rushed to hang my laundry, set up the patio umbrella and the cushions on my patio chair, grabbed my laptop, camera and coffee mug, and I'm enjoying my patio for the first time in weeks.  Ah, how I have missed you, patio!

It's a jungle out here now! A  lot of my flowers have died down but the vincas are going strong and I have several butterflies and a big moth that are enjoying them very much right now. Hooray!

The cicadas are out in force, their noise is deafening.  And I've refilled the hummingbird feeders and only just a couple of minutes later, the first hummingbird was out visiting. Sadly, I haven't been a able to snap a picture yet.  My camera really seems to be acting up and I'm having a hard time getting it to focus again. Uh oh. I've only had it a year and a half so I'm not happy about that. I keep thinking it's operator error but I remember being able to take shot after shot of perfectly focused pictures. I made sure I'm still on the automatic setting but since I'd mess up something that interfered with the automatic setting back when we were vacationing, I'm thinking something else must have happened. I probably need to reset it to factory settings and then reset the date and time...



It's now almost 10:30 a.m. so there is less shade and the bees and wasps have started coming out as well. I see some lizards and I'm imagining that everyone is happy that I'm back out here with them :)

Baby lizard on a basil stem

I wonder why they all prefer hanging around upside down? A quick Google Search didn't really

reveal any insight.

It must still be humid because the key stickers that I had made for my keyboard are all coming off now, the humidity is melting the glue from the tape I used to stick them on there. Never mind the nail polish, I might need to get more expensive polish because the Dollar Tree brand is woefully inadequate (quelle surprise!).

I need to try the Sharpie + nail polish "solution".

OK, so let's back up a bit:



I went to bed at about 11:30 p.m. last night.  Remember, I had installed the medium-size fan on the "TV stand" a few feet away from my bed and moved the larger pedestal fan to the foot of my bed, and I had also used a cheap but medium firmness pillow scavenged from Greg's closet.



And the results were: well, it probably was the best combination I've found so far!  My neck and shoulders didn't hurt at all this morning.  I still felt hot at times but it's because I still haven't found the perfect sheet/blanket/no sheet/no blanket combination.  I'm definitely NOT as hot on this mattress as I was on the newer one.  I still woke up every 2 hours to use the bathroom, i'm afraid that I won't be able to avoid that unless I dehydrate myself. That's not very healthy, is it?



It all could be due to the fact that it was cooler overnight, too. But I'm hoping that I continue to have "OK" nights since I can't seem to have perfectly great nights!

Anyhoo, I got up at 6:45 a.m., cooked Greg's breakfast and packed his lunch.  YS got up, fed the cats, and grunted when I talked to him, lol, as he had breakfast. You know, caveman style.



I felt more rested than I've felt in days but I still decided to go back to bed and to try to grab another hour of sleep. Alas, I started thinking about the house behind ours. I checked Zillow yesterday and while it says that it's not for sale or rent, there is a description that stresses the entertainment value of the pool deck and the great remodeling they've done and to me it sounds like they're trying to rent it.  All we need is a bunch of party people moving in!  Ugh. So I couldn't get back to sleep, even when I put on "Forensic Files" and a mask over my eyes.



So I laid in bed and caught up on emails and Feedly, and earned the daily Microsoft mobile rewards.  I got up at 8:10 a.m., and took a quick shower, using the soap that Greg brought back from his Madrid hotel, and squeezing a sample tube of Sensodyne so I could get the very last bit of toothpaste from it.  As a special treat, I remembered to spray some Bath & Body Works body spray on.  I have a bunch of those and I always forget to use them.



I grabbed the dirty laundry from my and Greg's bedrooms and headed downstairs.  The cats had been fed by Youngest Son so they didn't much care that I was up, although Tabby Kitty had been waiting for me at the top of the stairs for a while because the top step was quite warm as I stepped on it after shooing him away, lol.



I started the laundry: 1 super load and then 1 XL load on cold/cold.  I washed my clothes and all the napkins and washing clothes first, along with a sheet and a duster, because I was planning on hanging them outside for a bit before the afternoon rains started.  Greg's clothes and the bath towels will go in the dryer, as usual, although I "line dry" his socks.



I poured myself a mug of DD Cold Brew. It's still too strong, but I have to finish it!  I keep it in the fridge, hoping it won't get too acidic. I can't wait until I'm done with it and I can just switch to the room temperature decaf brew :)  Then I had a bowl of cereal. Tabby Kitty tried to woo me into giving him some by licking my neck as I was eating. Nice try, buster. You can lick the empty bowl.



I typed a Day Book post, continue earning the daily Rewards, and composed comments for various blogs.



Jeff, our neighbor, called me at 9:30ish to ask if our water was all rusty because his was!  What?!  I went to check but ours ran clear.  We were flummoxed because we both have city water and we live right next door to one another. He said his wife took a shower this morning and the water was clear.  I was worried that ours had turned rusty too while my clothes were in the washing machine so I went to check that too, but no, our water was clear.  I suggested he tried calling the other neighbors and the city. He said he'd checked the city website but there were no alerts.



A bit later, as I was hanging the laundry outside, I texted him that I had just filled up my washing machine for my 2nd load and our water was clear.  He replied that our neighbor across the street had told him her toilet had rusty water in it this morning but that now it was running clear.



I called Greg and asked if he'd noticed anything this morning and he said the downstairs toilet had slightly orange water in it but he thought YS just hadn't flushed it overnight.  So I started getting worried that perhaps something was wrong, even if the water is now clear, because it eventually ran clear last week but we were still under a 2-day boil order!  I checked the city website and there is no alert so I decided that perhaps it was due to the construction they're doing on the water mains, a few blocks away.  Keeping my fingers crossed but I'm not going to freak out about it.  Worst case, we catch a horrible disease, sue the city, settled for a shitload of money, and I can buy the house behind ours :)



Anyhoo, that's when I decided to come sit outside. Before I did so, I refilled the hummingbird feeders with my homemade nectar.



So it's good that I did some chores this weekend because I might not be too productive this morning!



I  decided to not sweat the dinner menu either and use the one that I had printed weeks ago and posted on my fridge. The first Monday dinner on there was "pan fried chicken breasts, mashed potatoes, canned peas" and guess what? I have everything I need so I put some BS chicken breasts to defrost.  I'll peel the potatoes later on.  I was thinking about baking a cake outside but now that I'm sitting on the patio and it's somewhat cool, I don't feel like heating it up with the roaster, hahaha.



I just went back indoors to put the 2nd load of laundry in the dryer and throw a comforter in the wash, and, coming back outside, it's quite obvious that is IS humid outside. It gets worse as the temperature rises because then the heat index rises too, but if I don't move, it's not too bad. Think cool thoughts, Nathalie!  At least there is a breeze, so that helps.  I wish the hummingbird came back and let me snap a picture of it.



Random thought: when I cleaned the upstairs toilet yesterday,  I used lavender-scented Clorox toilet cleaner. I always have to fight with the cap, though, so I end up taking it off and then squirting way too much cleaner into the toilet.  Yesterday, I forgot to go back upstairs during the afternoon and flush the toilet.  When I went upstairs at night, my staircase and the upstairs landing smelled really good and I was wondering where that came from... well, the lavender Clorox, of course!  So now I'm pondering putting it a daily dose in the morning, just so that I can be greeted by a nice odor as I go upstairs when I do, lol.  I wonder if that would be cheaper than buying air fresheners...

My daughter has a big Calculus test today so I texted her good luck last night. I hope she got all her studying done this past weekend since that was the reason why she stayed in Gainesville.

I don't think I've mentioned it yet but there is an event called OrlandoiX that will take place at Full Sail University mid August and Greg's employer is one of the sponsors. It's described as  follows:

OrlandoiX is the Southeast's Largest Gathering of Creators in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Video Games, and Digital Arts. Open to professionals and consumers alike, OrlandoiX sits at the intersection of creativity and technology, bringing together creators, investors, influential brands, and tech enthusiasts for industry-leading keynotes, speaker presentations, interactive exhibits, gameplay, and networking.

Greg had sent me the info because he was able to get free tickets to it for himself and his dependents so he wanted to know if there was interest.  I think it'd be a good event for YS to attend, and possibly for my Daughter too, so I asked him to get tickets. My Daughter is interested but decided not to attend because it's the weekend when her roommates come back to town and they've made plans.



Anyhoo, Greg wanted me to take YS son to it because he doesn't like dealing with work-like stuff on the weekends, but I told him that since it was his field, I'd come along with them but HE needed to come too!  And, oh yes, YS said he was interested in attending.  We probably won't stay the whole day, though, and we'll only attend the Saturday, not the Friday.  Anyhoo, Greg said the tickets were about $150 each so that's a major freebie for us!  Of course, we'll need to use gas and lots of tolls to get there as it is clear on the other side of Orlando and we're already about 30 miles away from Orlando itself, and then we'll have to buy lunch, etc.  Still, I'm excited that we'll do a family outing centered around YS's possible career interest.  I really wish my daughter would reconsider her plans and come too, that can only be good networking, I would think!



On another thought, I saw an article in the paper last week touting that Greg's employer had held a 1-week camp for teen girls last month to teach them about video game creation.  I was put off because he never mentioned it to me, and also because I've been wondering if they had similar opportunities for boys.  Well, he said he never knew about it and in the same conversation revealed that the HR recruiter that I had met when YS and I went to visit his office a few months back, and who finally was my "in" with his employer to try and get direct information about such opportunities for our two technical kids, has moved away to another office out of state. Well, poop.  Now I'm back to not knowing anyone there and with a husband who is never aware of such opportunities. Maybe that's why he sent me the information about OrlandoiX, lol. At least he's trying.



I looked at my camera's manual to see what I might be able to do to make it work the way it did in the past. I think I need to reset it because there are just too many explanations that I don't understand. Within the automatic mode itself, there are 2 submodes (automatic and automatic plus) and no real explanation of what the difference is, save for the fact that automatic plus seems to be more customizable than "automatic" and I'm wondering why the hell I'd want to customize "automatic". To me, "automatic" means that the camera does all the thinking for me so why would I want to customize that and mess it up?  But apparently the camera ships in "automatic plus" mode.  Arrgh. This is too complicated for me, LOL.



I haven't seen any birds. Nary a dove, cardinal, wren, ibis, crow... nothing!  I can't wait for it to be spring again, I tell ya.  But there are lots of varieties of butterflies around, and of course they're all fluttering around too fast for me to be able to snap them. I saw a sulfur, quite a bit of fritillaries, a zebra longwings, and others.  Various types of dragonflies are out and about too.  The hummingbird did come back but I was in the middle of reviewing settings on my camera so I missed it again. Aaargh, so frustrating!

My laptop battery is down to 33% at almost noon and it's really warmer now. I've been thinking about going back indoors but every time I'm tempted, the breeze picks up and entices me to stay with a promise that maybe something interesting will happen if I stay, lol.  So I keep moving my chair back into the shade and look, I just saw a vulture gliding on the breeze far above our neighborhood.



I also hear what seems to be the distant drumming of... thunder?  I hope not. I want the laundry to finish drying and I don't really feel like going to do chores!



Hey, I met my 1st daily Swagbucks goal for the first time in a long time. It's down to 40 SB and I got a Search award for 11 SB earlier. I'm only meeting it because I received the bonus for having printed coupons this weekend, but it's still not crediting me for the "1 step from To Do List Completion" bonus. Swagbucks is aware and has recognized the problem and told me "keep monitoring your account and if it still happens after the 6th, recontact us." What bullshit. They're not even crediting me for the missing Swagbucks when that happens. It's almost the end of the month and I only have earned 1,255 SB so far, so I won't be able to get a $25 gift card at the start of the new month.

Hey, a bird starting calling from a nearby tree! I hope it comes to visit my backyard!  I can't recall which bird sings like this.



Aaargh, I saw a hummingbird at the farthest feeder so I raised my camera to snap it and it had fallen asleep and took a long time to wake up!  I thought I had missed it so I lowered my camera and set it to "burst" so I'd have a better chance next time. It's a pain to go through hundreds of shots to find a good one to post, but at least I have a chance to get one!



As I was doing that, I realized that it had just landed on the back of the feeder so I waited and was able to get some shots.  Then I went to take the burst setting off, and two hummingbirds materialized right in front of me!  Arrgh. Like an idiot, I was too slow to do anything and they flew off as soon as they saw me move. I rarely see more than one hummer at a time, so I was very excited!  So glad I stayed outside, thanks, Nature!

This is the male

And then another one came back to the far feeder so I snapped hundreds of pictures on "burst". It's really overcast now, though, so I don't know if they'll turn out well.  My zoom doesn't seem to be zooming as far as it used to. I'll definitely reset the camera once I'm back indoors.

This is the female.

Oh, by the way, I snapped pictures of the flower solar lights last night. They actually looked prettier than I thought they would.  The picture in the dark didn't turn out too good, but then there was lightning so I was able to snap that too.

I am sweating a lot, just sitting in the shade. As Bless said, when it's hot, you might even know that you're having hot flashes! Maybe "hot flashes" weren't discovered until the AC was invented.



I went ahead and moved all the water jugs (well, most of them) away from the exterior wall so Greg can set up his ladder over the weekend and go fix the underside of the 2nd floor windows.   I saw a big turd that some animal left on top of one water jug. Who does that?!  It was full of seeds, it seems, so I don't think it would be a cat, it was too big of a turd for a cat. What largish animal would eat bird seeds, you think?  Racoons? Armadillo? I need to research it.  It was right under the exercise room window, which is low to the ground, so it's a little freakish that something that big might have been trying to peer into our window.  I wonder if the cats saw/heard it.  Yuck.

After I put the jugs away, I noticed that crabgrass had grown along the wall and insinuated itself behind our internet cable and even under our siding in some places!  So I pulled it all out, making sure not to rip the cable off the wall.  The good thing about having all those jugs in place for months is that it killed all the weeds under them. Greg will just need to weed whack those that grew between the jugs.



When I came back to the patio, a pair of cardinals had just flown to the feeder, but as soon as they saw me, in my red T-shirt, they figured I was either the cardinal from hell or a human, and they flew off.  I decided that it was too hot outside, and the thunder kept on rumbling closer, so I checked on the laundry. The sheet and duster were dry, but the T-shirts still felt a bit moist, so I put the one rack away and brought the other one indoors, where the clothes can keep drying. As soon as I was indoors, I started sweating so much!  So I went back outside, put away the patio umbrella and the cushions, and brought my electronics back indoors.

And of course it came back as soon as I left!  I took those pictures through the sliding window.

I restarted the dryer for another 20 minutes since that laundry was still moist too.



Ah, after 2 mugs of the DD Cold Brew, it was now time for a mug of room temperature decaf! Still refreshing but not as strong or cold, and more importantly, no caffeine. We'll see if that helps with the hot flashes. Once I'm out of the DD Cold Brew (another 2 mugs, I think), I'll try to only drink cold decaf.

It's now 1 p.m. and Youngest Son should be coming home soon.  I don't feel like eating anything that we have at home, maybe he and I can go back out and get a sub from Publix or something. Or maybe I'll just get French bread and we can make sandwiches here. I just saw a gas station charge come through from his credit card, so I texted him to call me if he wasn't driving, so I can ask him to stop by Publix on his way home and save us some time and gas, lol.  Poop, no call, he must be driving.  Good boy, he probably didn't even read the text.  Oh yay, he actually called!  He was still at RaceTrac. He's going to get us a loaf of French bread.  Good compromise, we can have more delicious sandwiches than boring sandwich bread, and it'll only cost a couple of bucks.



Walgreens finally emailed me that my photo order (the free bookmarks, from July 4th) was ready to be picked up.  I'd forgotten about it! I'll get it on Wednesday when I run my errands.



I called the vet's office to order 2 bags of cat food and make an appointment for Male Cat and Mean Kitty for their annual check-up. I made sure to request the vet that I prefer and asked the receptionist, with whom I have a very good rapport, to switch all my cats to that vet. She said she'd put a note in their files but that I still need to make sure to request that specific vet when I make the appointments. Duly noted. If it's an emergency, I don't have the choice, and that's what stresses me, but hopefully we won't have too many of those because I don't care for that other vet at all and yet I don't want to leave the practice!



It's now getting darker and the wind has picked up quite a bit outside. I hope YS doesn't get soaked getting our bread. I hadn't finished typing the sentence when it started pouring. I had put an umbrella in the driver side door pocket of his car, so hopefully he brought it along if he's already in the store.



I worked on my shopping itinerary for Wednesday so I don't waste gas unnecessarily and also don't forget to go to Walgreens and the pharmacy.  Yes, Walgreens IS a pharmacy but for that particular Rx, we use a local pharmacy because their price is much better.  I'd use them all the time but they're in Clermont and not as convenient than Walgreens or Publix, not that we use prescriptions often anyway.



I really need to be scheduling credit card payments so I'll spend this afternoon inputting all the receipts that I've neglected over the past couple of weeks, reconciling bills and and scheduling various payments.



Interesting article from NPR about the possible link between hormones and Alzheimer's in women, but I'm still not keen on taking HRT.  I had 4 children and had my period relatively early (I think 11?) so at least I have that going for me.



YS got home and we made our sandwiches. Mine had guacamole, turkey, bacon, and a whole tomato. Yum. Then I harvested some mint and added it to some pineapple that I had just cup up. It's been ripening on my counter for almost 2 weeks so the flesh is very yellow.  The mint makes it even better!

YS is having a hell of a time with his Fall college schedule.  He had gone back to meet with the Guidance counselor at the high school last week and then got the email confirmation that his classes had been approved.  Only the Dual Enrollment advisor at the state college emailed him at the same time that she hadn't had time to approve them!  So he emailed her back to tell her he'd gotten the system's confirmation that they were approved but she didn't reply... until today when he got back from class and checked his email and had one from her saying that she couldn't find him in the system to approve them and also a meeting notification to meet with her at 10:30 a.m.  Well, I guess he didn't take advantage of his cell phone to check his email messages in between his classes and was unaware of that (he must be the only teen without his nose in his cell phone) so he missed the meeting and now we're both stressing about his classes.  So I left her a VM, explaining what had happened and asking her to please CALL him directly or call ME if she couldn't get him, so we could get to the bottom of the problem and make sure he was indeed registered for his classes.   I only took this step once YS had tried to get all of that squared away on his own, to no avail. What the heck is going on?!  If that makes him miss the opportunity to earn his AA by graduation, I'm going to be very upset.  Hopefully she can make sense of it all and fix it. She's been very nice so far when I talked to her.



I spent an hour inputting all my receipts into my spreadsheets. I have $72.66 left to spend on groceries for the month.

I submitted my Walgreens receipt from yesterday to Ibotta for $0.25 back on "any item" and they credited me right away.

I reconciled bills, scheduled 3 credit card payments on their due dates, and balanced my checkbook.



Greg's last paycheck was about $120 higher than I expected because it seems that he's hit the FICA contribution limit earlier than I thought. Moving forward I will add what he used to contribute for FICA to the amount that I send to savings with each paycheck, but for this time I'll leave that $120 in our checking account to make up for some of the eating out that we've been doing!  I scheduled the automatic transfer to savings for the rest of the year. This is a savings account for our next car purchase.



I took a good look at our budget and decided to go ahead and finally schedule a monthly automatic transfer to Vanguard corresponding to our former mortgage payment, more or less.  I hadn't been saving that money this past year, choosing instead to cash flow car and house repairs, vacations and other things with it, but it's really true that you need to pay yourself first.  So with this new automatic transfer in place, I'll make sure that this money is invested and not just saved, and if we have any emergencies, we'll need to draw from the emergency fund. That's what it's for, right?  And then I'll go back to truly try to fund vacations instead of just winging it.  Well, we'll see what happens with that :)



Once Greg's 401(k) contributions for the year reach their limit (in about 3 paychecks, I think), then I'll also send that amount to Vanguard, although manually every 2 weeks, I think. That'll give us some breathing room too, at least until the first of the year when we have to restart the contributions.

This is why we can't have nice things: this avocado seedling had 3 glorious leaves last week. We're down to just 1 AND it's been chewed on just today. Arrrgh.

Crap, it's 5:45 p.m. and I forgot to do the dishes!  And I haven't gone through the 300+ pictures for this post.  Arrrgh #2!



And I haven't exercised either :( I promised myself I'd get back on the bike today!  Arrgh #3!  There's just not enough time in the day for procrastinators, is there?

Youngest Son did get his exercise, though, by taking a walk down to the lake and back.



The mail brought some of my Amazon orders, along with a $5 rebate check for the vodka I had bought, and more address labels and a notepad from St Jude's Hospital.

I decided to cook ricotta and spinach tortellini (bought on clearance at Aldi for $0.99) instead of the mashed potatoes. I feel super tired even though I haven't done anything physically taxing!



I unloaded the dishwasher while dinner was cooking, but, sigh, I'll do the dishes tomorrow morning. I promise!



Over dinner I asked Greg to call the tree guy to see about taking down the big old oak tree between our house and the neighbors. He said he would.



After dinner, Greg went to sit on his recliner and... we found out that Princess had barfed all over it!  So I cleaned it all up but now it needs to dry so Greg went to sit in the Cat Room with his Kindle.  She's lucky she's a cutie :)



I decided not to mess with the Superglue to fix the bird feeder part that had broken. I used... wrapping tape!  We'll see if it continues to stick when the bird house is outside in the heat and the rain. But it's better than gluing my fingers together.

It's plexiglas so I think it's stick pretty well to it.

Well, I didn't do a lot of actual chores today so I have my work cut out for me tomorrow! I doubt I'll have the opportunity to sit outside again, but I'm so glad I got to do that this morning :)