Daily Adventures

The high here was 82° yesterday. I was in shorts and we opened the house to cool it off.

Today it's snowing.

Now *that* is a Colorado spring. Yeesh.

... the outdoor thermometer, which is in the sun, now reads 81° F (27° C). It's supposed to snow tomorrow. *grin*

Rode a few miles with the boys to Home Depot and Target for a few things. Had grilled hamburgers on the back porch in the sun. Played a lot of Okami with Jet. Nice, quiet day.

... woke up at 5 this morning thinking the house was going to blow away... the boom and hiss of the wind woke me up and I could hear it when the wind hit the house and the whole structure would creak and groan in it. Normally, I don't hear the gusting, but it's just at 40 mph gusts at the moment, which isn't as bad now as it was then...

Nothing has actually come off the house, but in my dreams I felt like I was going to blow away.

When it's 3° F (-16° C) out, exposed skin KNOWS it's freezing. Add a 15 mph wind chill and I was pretty well covered going to the bus stop today.

Whew.

It's now likely to be single digits tonight (-12 to -17 C), teens (-12 to -6 C) tomorrow, and dead flat zero (-18 C) tomorrow night.

*shiver*

I'm glad we have heat and know that our insulation is good.

Makes the typical OUR Center farewell all the more poignant. "Stay warm."

That when it is a balmy 40° F out (4° C), when the wind is going at 22 mph (with up to 32 mph gusts) and one is riding a bike at a leisurely 10 mph, the wind chill takes the temperature down below freezing.

It was a good thing I had my big down parka and wool scarf on as I rode to help in Jet's class this morning. It *was* sunny, so that was nice, and on the way home I didn't have to pedal at ALL, the wind just blew me home. That was fun. *giggles*

I am realizing that my thermostat is now broken, since 40 feels WARM to me, now. Yeesh.

It's 100 on the thermometer in the sun. Ugh.

I was out in the OUR Center's garden for a long time. Ugh. I am drinking gallons of cold anything just to make myself hydrated enough to function.

It was good to get out there again. See everything all grown up and producing like mad. Nearly all of it I planted, too, so I'm very happy about that. The tomatoes are coming along, the peppers are flowering, the raspberries are going mad, the strawberries are still going. The peas are all out of the ground already, which is a good thing. The lettuce has been cut at least once and is nearly back again with all the sunshine and water and food Charles is giving it.

Charles was doing well, but finding it hard to get volunteers to work in this heat. I don't blame them.

I went to the garden after going to the dentist to get my permanent crown in. That... hurt. *sigh* But the tooth feels mildly less sensitive than before, and I think I'm going to be able to brush it. Plus, best yet the dentist said that it should take a long time for the ligaments and the jaw joint and all the tendons and things around it to feel normal again. Especially since I grind my teeth something fierce, it's going to stay a problem for a while and not to worry about it. Just take the painkillers that I need and get on with life.

So I have confirmation that what I was doing was the right thing. Plus, I stuck with the fitting long enough for it to finally feel *right*, which is a first. Usually, I've just bolted from the chair as I hate being there, and paid for it with pain afterward. This time I stuck it out until my bite felt *good* rather than "uhm... that isn't *bad*... uhm..." Hopefully it'll pay off. He said that it's fine to just call and get thing adjusted again, any time. So I'm glad of that.

Jet's off to his super soaker camp again, and he's having a blast with all the other kids and the running around and everything. Better than waiting for his other friends at home. We get some time, he gets some time with kids, and it's all good. MUCH better than the two weeks we were home and he was driving both John and I a little nuts by not just asking us to play with him but asking us how long until the other kids were home so he could play with them? He wanted kid-time. Entirely understandable, and he's getting enough of it, now that, in the evenings he's really happy to just be with us or in his house and playing with his toys. All to the good.

There's a lady at the church who is going to Peru to meet up with her daughter who is doing volunteer work over there. She asked me for extra knitting needles, and it was a real revelation for me to go to my knitting needle collection and realize that I haven't used ANY of my aluminum long needles for over a decade. So I gave her a whole bundle of them, along with some plastic ones, some double-pointed ones in both aluminum and plastic that I don't like at all. It was nice to de-clutter and get rid of those things I just don't use anymore. I said good-bye to the needles, took a picture of them, and wished that they would get good and used by people that needed them now.

Nice to have the ritual cleansing.

I'm reading Jim Butcher's Proven Guilty and it's obvious Butcher has gotten better with time and practice. Juggling dozens of relationships and histories from the previous books, it's even more fun than the previous books. It's still all mind-candy, but it's fun mind-candy. Mmmm... sweet. Plus, it was an excellent distraction from that moment when the dentist put room temperature cement into the real crown and put it on my exquisitely sensitive stub. Ow does not even cover it. He laughed and said, "Well, if you can even see straight after that, you might want to pick up your book."

I think all good dentist have to be mildly sadistic or else the amount of pain they actually cause would get to them, I think. And I have to say I consented to it as the alternative was probably worse. *sigh*

Here's all the plants at once, basking in what little sun there is as the thunderheads build in the not too distance. *grin* I'll probably have to move them all back in in a little bit, but thanks to dunfalach I may be able to use Jet's abandoned wagon to do at least part of the shuttling. Whew.

Each of the gallon pots is about ten pounds, so getting them in and out all by myself is a bit of a workout. John's good about helping when he's around, but he isn't always around.

They are definitely doing better with a bit of time and more room to grow their roots. Also, two of the cherry plants have already gone on to another home, and about nine others are spoken for from folks that want to put them into their garden and take the surplus. Two other ladies have asked for plants, so I'm likely to be able to give them all homes. Whew.

I have ended up with... uhm... 60 tomato plants.

Hm. Let's see. 12 for me. 12?!?! Uhm... six cherry tomatoes for three Topsy Turvy planters, three bush for that beefsteak tomato eating experience, and three first ladies so I can actually get some tomatoes earlier in the season... that makes... hm... twelve, enough to feed a family of four three times over. Or is that a family of three four times over? *sigh*

Anyway... the other... uhm... four dozen, minus a few for friends that want to do tomatoes this year at a buck a pop for a gallon sized tomato plant, go to the OUR center garden, which has room for... uhm... 20 plants? I guess I better get busy finding homes.

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I got up with Jet this morning. We played Parcheesi on his new car games book, and it was good. John got up an hour later and looked quite refreshed. :-) So he made baked pancakes while I put myself together. Then the three of us headed to a four-year-olds birthday party at Sunflower Farm here in Longmont.

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