Tuesday September 6th 2011

We decided to go to Springfield IL today and go to Linda’s brother’s (Donald) funeral .  We stopped at Ken and Ruth’s place in Carlinville IL and going to stay with them tonight, go to the funeral tomorrow and then back home. A real quick trip!

We had a good trip going up to Carlinville and didn’t get lost.  There was a lot on construction in I55 which took us a lot longer than we expected. The visitation wasn’t until 4PM so we had plenty of time.

Before we left we dropped Sparky off at the vet clinic and Linda wanted to get a small tumor on his back leg checked out to see if  it needed to be removed.  On the way up she got the call and decided to go ahead with the removal and the biopsy to see if maybe it was cancer.  They are really nice at the vet clinic but for the price they charge they ought to be nice!

Ruth was playing cards so we visited with Ken until it was time to leave. We picked up Ruth and went to the funeral home and got to meet Linda’s relatives.  I didn’t recognize any of them except her brother Eugene and his wife Barbara.  I think Linda was glad she got to go and see them even though she had a hard time remembering who was who.  It had been a long time since she had seen any of them.

After the visitation we stopped at a Mexican restaurant  for supper.  It was a very nice place, the prices were decent and the food was excellent.  Didn’t get a picture and I should have.  The name of the place was Xomilchco or something like that.  I think it was a Mayan name.  The food was very good though.

We visited with Ken and Ruth for awhile after getting back to their place but I was so tired I couldn’t hardly stay awake. Ruth had to kind of make a joke of it, she said that people can only listen to her for about ten minutes then they start doing strange things!  This wasn’t strange for me, more like normal!  Got a picture of Ken and Ruth….

We always have a lot of fun with them, she is kind of crazy (funny)!

That was about it for the night.  I had to get to bed…Night Y’all…

Monday September 5th 2011

Beautiful morning!  It is so much cooler this morning than it has been, the cold front made it through.  It rained just a little bit but I can see blue sky to the West and will probably clear up soon, well, it cleared up by about 1PM.

It was nice enough and the wind was blowing out of the North so I decided to bake bread.  I don’t like to bake when it is so hot out that the air conditioner has to run that much harder to keep it cool. Bread…

The red and green stuff is jalapeno peppers!  This bread will bring tears to your eyes!  For some reason our peppers are exceptionally hot.  After I made bread Linda made zucchini bread.  We had a few fresh zucchini and decided to grind them and make some bread and freeze some more.  We have enough to last us a long time now.

I took over our okra, yellow squash and peppers to the neighbors, his mother loves the jalapeno peppers!  I couldn’t eat them, they are to hot for me! 

We are making plans to go to Springfield, IL tomorrow, well actually to Carlinville to see Linda’s brother, well, actually Linda’s older brother passed away and we are going to the funeral.  I’m not looking forward to the drive up there for some reason and I really didn’t want to take the time off work, not because of the money, but I just don’t like to call off but I did.

For our supper we had tomato and bacon sandwiches.  Linda used the jalapeno bread and at times she had tears rolling down her cheeks, “really good stuff”.

Oh, I mowed the lawn today, figured it was nice enough to do it, and it was!   I even wore a sweater, it really wasn’t that cold but I was comfortable.

Time to go for another day, will be a long day tomorrow, we haven’t figured out if we can board Sparky or not being a holiday, they aren’t open until 7:30AM Tuesday so will have to wait to see if we can board him, if we can’t I suppose he will have to come with us….Night Y’all….

Sunday September 4th 2011

It is a little cooler this morning but I think it may get warm, not like it has been though.

Went to church at Fellowship again, nice church, I like it there. We have a new Sunday School teacher and I can’t remember his name, I think it is Tom but not sure.  He is pretty good and I think we will enjoy him as a teacher.

In Church we had special music by Sheila, and she is a very good singer. She sang a song called “When it Rains, It Pours”.  Very interesting song and she did a very good job.  I guess she lost her place when she started so she started over but I sure couldn’t have told you she  lost her place.  She is also very animated when she sings, makes me wonder if she has done this professionally?

Our choir in the back ground is pretty small and I will probably join if I can get them to at least go over the songs once before church.  I need the practice and some songs I just don’t know.

We had left over steak and short ribs for lunch.  Still very good and I made some instant mashed potatoes which were pretty good and Linda even said they tasted better than the mashed potatoes in Nutrisystem but then I think dog food tastes better than Nutrisystem food, not that I eat dog food but Sparky has some that sure smells better than her food!!!

I was going to go to church at Morehouse 1st General Baptist Church but I guess they cancelled it tonight like Fellowship did.  I ended up going to the 1st Baptist Church (Southern) in Morehouse and a young fellow had the sermon which was pretty good, very short but to the point.  I enjoyed it!

Tonight is a night that we won’t do much again, sound familiar???  We don’t do a lot in the evening.  We opened up the house in the afternoon and it was cooling down nicely.

The temperature in the house is going down and I’m sure it is going to be cool tonight, great for sleeping….Night Y’all….

Saturday September 3rd 2011

I’m glad I have today off, it is going to be another hot day.  It isn’t cool this morning so I know it is going to get hot.

I worked a little in the garden, picked some okra. It is coming on pretty good now, everything else except for the tomatoes are gone and the tomatoes are starting to produce again, I think.  There are a bunch of little tomatoes coming on and in another couple of weeks we should start getting some more.  I’m not sure what happened but I may be allergic to okra!!  My fingers and my arm itch like crazy.  I put some stuff on them but didn’t help much so Linda has some chigger cream that I used and that did a pretty good job of relieving the itches!

We went to town to take care of some business and of course, go to Wal Mart.  Linda looked at the “eBooks”  and decided she needed the Nook. One thing about the eBook is they don’t take up hardly any room at all, not like the paperback books.  The books are a little cheaper too.  When we got home she practiced on it for the rest of the evening.

Got a picture of the corn field across the road…

Now this is the field in back of use as the sun is coming up..

This field will be gone in another week probably.  I put moth balls around our house  trying to keep the mice out.  Hope it works, I know they will make the big move when it gets cold but moth balls are pretty cheap.

We ordered steak dinners, T bone and a rib eye, from Johnson’s grocery store in Matthews.  They have pretty good meat there…

The steaks were excellent!  The baked potato was probably the best I’ve had since I don’t know when and the price was probably the best part, $5 for the T bone and $6 for the rib eye!

The T bone was 16 oz and the rib eye was 12 oz. They have these on Friday and Saturdays.  We will probably get them again.  Also got a large package of short ribs for six dollars, they were half price.  Haven’t tried them yet though.

Time to call it quits for today I guess and get some sleep…Night Y’all…

Friday September 2nd 2011

Glad today is Friday, I think I’m ready for some relax time! It is supposed to be hotter today than yesterday!  Supposed to be around 100 today but it could be worse.

I didn’t have any mobile home to clean so I helped Cole for a little while and closed and turned on the refrigerator in another mobile home that I had opened to let it thaw out (the one that had a ton of ice in the freezer) and it had ice in places you couldn’t see.  It was open over night so should be thawed out by now!!!

Mark didn’t really give me any job to do today so I’m looking for things to do. I did some spraying (lots), weed eating, mowed some weeds down and used my trusty Swiss Army Knife to cut some others down that looked like small trees.  Also used my knife to cut some sucker limbs off a tree that really didn’t look good.  That took awhile because they were quite big!

Well, I left work early, about 4:30PM, only worked seven hours today.  When I got home the neighbor across the road, actually it’s a corn field, was picking it.  Didn’t think it was quite ready but what do I know.  I will have to take a picture tomorrow.  I also used the tiller and tilled up some of the grass in the garden, took awhile and then it took about as long to get the grass from around the tines!

Going to take it easy tonight and rest up.  Can’t believe how thirsty I am!

Time for bed I guess, got things to do tomorrow…Night Y’all….

Thursday September 1st 2011

Kids are back in school already, fields are turning brown and won’t be long before they will be picking corn and harvesting soy beans.  Summer is coming to an end, but, it is still hot out!  The mornings are really great but by about 9AM it starts getting pretty warm and by 2PM it is hot!

I cleaned another mobile home today and it wasn’t to bad but after being empty for a year or more it gets a lot of spider webs and also a lot of saw dust from being remodeled.  Took about three hours to clean it. Later I took some carpeting out of a closet which had a hole in the floor so that is something else now that Cole will have to repair.

I did a few odd jobs around the park and then sprayed a little more Roundup!  I’m hoping the weeds aren’t getting immune to it because they don’t seem to die off like they used to.

I was ready to go home.  The heat and walking around is making me tired. After getting home I picked the Okra which is starting to produce now so we are getting quite a little bit from the plants.  Looks like the tomato plants are starting to get more little ones on them so maybe by the end of September we will get some more.  I was almost ready to pull them up.

Linda got some bad news yesterday, her brother Donny died.  He had stage four cancer and to use oxygen also because his lungs were shot from smoking for fifty years or something like that. We probably won’t get to go to the funeral, not sure yet though.

I’m tired tonight, so we just laid down for awhile just to relax and the rest of the night went pretty good.  Can’t believe how much I drank after I got home.  Think I may have been just a little dehydrated.  Well, time to say, Night Y’all…

Wednesday August 31st 2011

Last day of August!  Supposed to get pretty warm today.  Not sure what I will be doing at work except for cleaning one of the mobile homes.

I started on the mobile home that was just finished  remodeling. Mark said the freezer part of the fridge was full of ice.  It sure was! I got out most of the ice that was loose and dug a bunch more out but there was still about a twenty pound chunk hanging from the top front and it was pretty solid. After getting what I could get I vacuumed the floor in the bedroom which had a bunch of sawdust and wood splinters etc.  I had to sit on the floor and use the hose to get it cleaned up.  After doing that I went back to the freezer and worked on it for awhile and it is starting to come out a little easier.  I should have had my camera!

I worked on that all morning and finally got the freezer cleaned out then Cole and I moved a set of old steps to the back door of another mobile home.  The steps are about eight inches to tall so I will have to dig holes for them to set in and get it leveled out.  Wasn’t to hard and Cole thought that it looked good. At least they were solid after I got the dirt back around the legs.

Had a couple of hours left and I decided to stain a couple of doors that Cole had put in.  I really wasn’t looking forward to that but I have plenty of time.  They didn’t look to bad after I was done, the first was kind of sloppy but the second one looked nice, at least I thought so.

I fixed some jambalaya for supper, I used smoked sausage and turkey. As an after thought I added brown rice and okra.  Turned out pretty good..

Linda had a turkey sandwich but this was pretty good…

Not much going on tonight going to rest up and take it easy until bed time… Night Y’all…