You Might Ask
What, you might ask, have you guys been up to for the past couple of days?
This pix is from Monday. I love the mood of this. It's a view out my little window and I'm now using it as my computer wallpaper. I don't mind if you download and use it too :)
As predicted the weather turned cold and rainy so bike rides are out and reading is in. Good thing we hit the Salvation Army bookshelves last week. Two books in three days. I get really lost in the books on days like these....more on that later.
Monday we went to Gurnee to visit with my parents and pick up some mail. Because a frost was coming my Dad had picked all the apples from the Macintosh tree. He must have picked nearly a bushel! There was still a cluster at the top so they got out the ladder (please don't fall) and Jim picked the rest of them. This is the first year the tree produced fruit and it was a bumper crop. My Mom says it's because the tree wasn't producing and she gave it an ultimatum...bear fruit or your dead wood! The apples are especially good. Jim read a health study that claimed two apples a day helps prevent altzheimers. Guess the old saying is true.
Jim's arm/ shoulder is getting steadily better. He's been driving this week which is a relief for me. I was really getting in a panic that I'd have to drive all the way to CA. I could do it but that would mean he'd have to navigate so we might not make it :)
We're sort of boondocking here with only electric plugins so we have to dump and fill the water tank every 6-7 days. We conserve gray tank water by using fewer dishes/ more paper and washing dishes once a day. Today I took that to a new extreme. We had salad for lunch in large salad bowls. So I wiped out the bowls with a paper towel to save on wash water. Later I made popcorn and the bowls looked pretty clean so I used them again then wiped out the butter and old maids. The bowls still looked pretty good at dinner time for soup so they got used again. But after clam chowder I did wash them. Didn't think they'd be too good for cereal in the morning :)
The books I got lost in were both about down and out, poverty stricken girls who made it big...in different ways. The Two Mrs. Grenvilles is a novel by Dominick Dunne about a poor Kansas girl who marries into high society, kills her husband and gets unexpected treatment from his family. It's well written, almost seems true.
Then I plunged into a waterstained paperback autobio of Tammy Wynette, Stand By Your Man, written when she was in her mid thirties and very successful. She lived more in 15 music career years than I've lived in 60 plus. . After her divorce from George Jones she still wrote songs for him including "These Days I Barely Get By" and the ever popular "I Just Drove By to See If I Was Really Gone" (the title cracks me up). It's an interesting look into the life of a tough woman who had a hard life, made some bad decisions but made her dream happen.
Now we are waiting for the snow. Can you believe it? I sure hope we don't have actual snowage lasting on the ground. The squirrels are running around with their mouths full scampering up trees to fill their storerooms. Where did Indian Summer go?