Hot hot hot!

109 is the heat index temp. UGH! Don't wanna get outside at all!
Need to be hoeing my mater plants...aint gonna do that for awhile. Tomorrow will be more of the same. Heck when I got up this morning, it was already hot and sticky.
Got some fresh Alaskan king salmon from youngest son. He caught em Thursday, sent em UPS Friday during his lunch hour, and we got em Saturday morning..wrapped up tight with three ice packs that were still frozen!
Baked the salmon...oh man it was GOOD! Saved a little to make salmon dip. The rest we kept in the sealed bags and put it in the freezer to make later. Didn't want to have all that salmon at once!
Since it is so hot, and even though we have our a/c on, I don't wanna do ANYthing! Haven't even picked up my knitting needles once today!
Went to the dentist and got my teeth cleaned. Came home...then decided to go to the store and get cream cheese and parsley for the salmon dip. Didn't do even one load of laundry. Yet the day just sped by so fast! I'm afraid the rest of this summer will speed by too fast. Before I know it, school will start, and I will be going back to work, daughter will be going back to school, and we will have to get back into some sort of routine. Then, there will be no more Thursday night knitting guild meetings...not until school is out for the summer again! They will still have meetings, but daughter and I won't be able to attend on school nights. Too much going on.
Well...time to go see what we can have WITH our salmon dip!
Oh here's a few pix of the salmon and then baked salmon and then the supper plate.

Another gloomy day. It rained in the wee hours this morning.
Was going to do laundry and hang it out on the clothesline (drying clothes free via the sun!) But, it does look like it may rain again.
Been doing mostly knitting...knitting the modern log cabin blanket for my youngest son and his wife. I know he will appreciate it, and I'm sure she will too. I just hope that the finished project is perfect...without any flaws. Can't wait to send it off. But to whom should I send it? She is in college in Canada. He is in Alaska.
THEN I need to get my tons of dishcloths made. Don't know if I will make lots for the craft show this fall, or just keep making a bunch for the family reunion next year. I could possibly make some money at the craft show, but....I would love to make more for next year's reunion. There's always a chance that we may not be able to go next year...depending on whether we still have our jobs.
Need to get some cedar shavings for the bunny we have sorta adopted. I will be posting a found ad in the newspaper. But I have a feeling the bunny might've been dumped at the park. It is such a sweet little black bunny. I didn't wanna get attached, but right after I saw it....I was holding it. Why am I such a sucker?

What a very muggy day it's started out as! Makes me feel like I live in a tropical rainforest! Got laundry to hang outside to dry...I just hope the later the morning gets, the more likely the fog will be burned off and it won't be too humid. Gotta get clean laundry dry! And I prefer to dry it for free...via the sunshine!
Had a few storms roll through day before yesterday. Lots of wind, lots of hail and lots of rain! My mater plants look a little rough...some had little broken branches or whatever they are called. Yesterday they looked better and today they are looking better than yesterday. Most of them have blooms on them.
Gotta go through my books and put them somewhere. Got em stacked on my bedside table right now...pretty soon I wont be able to see the little lamp sitting there! Can't help myself...love to read. What an inexpensive pastime! Even less expensive if reading material is checked out through the public library, or going to the annual book sale there, or getting books the high school librarian is getting rid of. I know there are also books at garage and rummage sales. I just haven't been to any sales for a long time. Mostly because the price of gas outweighs the bargains from the sales. Costs lots of expensive gas to go here and yonder to the sales. So is it really cost effective? Not really....not unless I am hunting for something specific that I can't find anywhere else.
I still worry about keeping my job. But I am 70% sure that I will have my job for the next year. After that, who knows. Hubby is now starting to show his worry about his job. He's the main breadwinner here. So if he loses his job from more layoffs, I don't know what we will do. Of course my hubby is the type that WILL FIND WORK. He's talked about going thru truck driving school and then driving a truck. There are several different possibilities. He also thought about going to college and getting an associate's degree. But that doesn't help the money situation....even though the military would pay for his college classes.
Sure wish I could sew. I would end up making some of the kid's clothes...and mine. I do have a very basic sewing machine...very easy to operate. BUT, I was never taught how to sew. Knitting and crocheting...yes. Sewing...no.
Will be excited if our gardens do well. I will be putting up a lot of jams and veggies....Hubby said because times are getting harder...I may want to go ahead and start getting canning lids. I jave the jars, but no lids. I have the rings, but no lids. So I gotta get lids (flats). I may get a few smaller jelly jars, so I can give out jams as gifts...and maybe a few next year for the family reunion...if we can go. I hope so. I had so much fun this year....and there is always the chance that someone may end up not coming next year, because of serious illness or passing away. Gotta stay in touch with my hillbilly family. Love em all!
Family is the key word here. The harder times get, the more we depend on our family and friends and they us.
We try to live one day at a time, and not worry so much. (I am the world's worst (or is that best) worrier. Now hubby is worrying...which means things definitely will get worse. But I think we will be okay. Hubby says we have already cut back on things. But I know we can cut back more. It may be rough, but it will happen. Even my cutting out my homemade patchouli soap....which is my main luxury that nobody complains about. It's gotten more expensive, as the lady who makes it charges by the ounce now. And the last batch I bought has not lasted near as long. Maybe she is cutting back on some ingredients too. Who knows. But hubby said the kid and I will have plenty of time to go to the soap place and check it out and maybe buy some soap to replenish my supply. The woman lives in a big old stone schoolhouse! And they have a a small building where she makes the soap. She gives tours by appointment and you can watch her make soap and buy whatever your heart desires. My heart desires patchouli soap and ONLY patchouli soap. It stays with me all day and into the night. It isn't a strong scent either. But wherever I go, someone will mention they smell patchouli. And that's when I tell them it's my soap and where I buy it. I think the soap lady needs to give me a discount for so much advertising of her products.

What a past few days!
I was GOING to finish hoeing around the mater plants yesterday morning. HAH! Then decided to do it after the sun was off the mater garden, in the evening. HAH! Oldest kid and husband mowed the yard (has an extra lot too), yesterday morning. I think someone needs to weedeat though. I aint gonna do it! The mater plants are looking really good. But two plants look like they've been nibbled on. My cats must not be doing their job...scaring away the rabbits or whatever is nibbling on the mater plants! Maybe the cats are eating too well...so they are less likely to hunt for their prey.
Hubby FINALLY fixed the outside faucet leak. Much to the chagrin of Sam, our half siamese cat. The faucet has been dripping for several years, and this year it has been more of a slight trickle. We've kept an old pan under it so the cats can at least benefit.....get a drink. Sam won't drink from the pan though. He likes sticking his head under the leak and licking the water as it drops out of the faucet. He likes it fresh and cold....not after it's been sitting in the pan and has been heated by the sun. Cant say as I blame him. Now he will just have to come in the house whenever he wants a cool drink.
We've been getting nice turnips lately. I think some have been left in the ground a bit too long, but they aren't bad. I prefer eating them raw with a shaker of salt, but I've cooked em a couple of times. Hubby said I need to cook a bunch of em, before they go bad. (He pulled up several yesterday.)
Oh how I love eating fresh garden vegetables! In another month, we will start getting maters! YAY! We've also been getting a little bit of broccoli. YUM! Green beans have blooms all over them. I weeded them day before yesterday. I wanna make sure that when I pick beans, that there are no creepy crawlies hiding in the weeds waiting to scare the crapola outta me!
Hubby has the mater cages out along with posts. Now if I can just finish hoeing, he will put them up. But, we do need at least enough mulch to put under the mater plants before he puts the cages around em. I can hoe and/or till the weeds around the plants, but not very close, after the cages are set. Which is why we need mulch....to keep the weeds down close to the plants. Make sense? We were wanting straw, but nobody seems to have any. The wire used to bale straw is getting expensive I guess...right along with everything else!
Hubby decided he wasn't going to set up our swimming pool this year. Said the pump went out, but even if it didn't....he didn't want to mess with it this year. Well, I am the one that usually has to put the chemicals in it, and all three of us are always constantly cleaning the stuff out of it. But it would be nice to be one with the sun. I mean....if you can't beat the heat....get out in it! And at least take a dip now and then in the pool. Water....it's a good thing. But it also costs to fill a pool the size we have. I don't remember how many gallons it holds, but it's a heckuvalot!
Been cutting back alot more on stuff. Hubby is thinking about losing the cellphones and going back to having a landline phone. The cellphones sure are handy though. And since he has to travel to another town to work, it's great to have during bad weather. Just never know when an accident might happen, or he can't get back home because he's stuck or the snow is really bad. It's also handy for when daughter gets to drive on her own. So if she has any problems she can call us. AND when she goes to school tournaments and field trips....she can call to let us know when she gets back and needs a ride home. I didn't realize just how much we depend on those things, since we got them! I think instead of getting rid of the phones, we may get rid of cable tv. There's no premium channels....just basic channels. But, if we get rid of cable tv, we may have to go to dial up internet. UGH! After being used to cable internet for so long, it would be a BIG pain in the butt to go to dial up....it's so pokey and you get knocked off all the time! AND if we went to dial up, we would also have to have landline phone to HAVE dial up internet! Oh there are lots of things we can cut back on besides those things. For now anyway.
We were thinking of getting the daughter a safe but cheap old clunker to drive. Of course, WE would expect her to take the school bus home, since drop off is only a block and a half away from home. Then she could drive to work in bad weather, walk when the weather was good. And if she had to go back to school for activities, she could go without waiting for one of us to take her. It would all be good. If the school was in the same location as the old school, she could ride a bike or walk. It's about a mile from our house, or WAS. It was torn down recently.
Considering not renewing our subscription to the newspaper. We can always go to the public library. Of course that would be a pain, because then we would have to go there every day that there is a newspaper....Tuesday through Saturday. At my workplace there is always a paper in the lounge. But who has time to read it with only about 20 minutes to eat?
We do have a half of beef ordered from the meat locker. Don't know when it will be ready. But I consider it a good investment. So if we end up losing our jobs...either one of us or both of us....we will have meat, and we will have veggies that I will be canning/freezing.
It's funny how much most people take for granted. That there will always be money to buy food, eat out whenever the fancy hits them, money for gas in the car and lawn mower.
I have a feeling things are gonna get worse, before they get better. I have heard, however, that people are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel....the end of so much unemployment and stupidly high prices on everything. I think that prices will always be high, and they will continue to be high. Even after the economy is back on it's feet.

It's been awhile....

School is out, and now it's time to relax, and do things that I wanna do.
Husband and I have planted 20 tomato plants in the big flower bed. I guess you could say it's an EX flower bed now. Hopefully we will have lots of tomatoes. I noticed yesterday that a roma plant already has blooms. They are usually the first of the plants to bear fruit.
Planted my pepper plants yesterday. After the heavy rain we had last night, I hope they did okay. They were still fairly small plants....had 16 of those.
Had a family reunion on my dad's side over Memorial Day weekend. We had been saving for a few months so we could go. It was very enjoyable, except for the fact that I can't sleep anywhere but my own bed at home. Lots of family I hadn't seen in many years. The raffle was great too. I brought almost all of my dishcloths that I had made over the past year. I put them in bundles of two. Everyone got my dishcloths! Guess what I will be making for next year!!! DISHCLOTHS! And if I can get this log cabin blanket finished for my younger son and his wife, I may make another one to put in the reunion raffle....or at least something similar....a blanket of some kind. The raffle money goes into the next year's reunion for food/supplies and the renting of the building. Lots of singing and guitar picking happened. Lots of hugs and lots of stories to tell. One aunt couldn't make it...but then, she lived the farthest away. Husband and kid enjoyed the short vacation as well. I definitely ate too much and stuff that I shouldn't have ate at all! But we hadn't been on vacation in many years. It was time for one. And I'm glad we went. We saved up some of the money by my emptying the change out of my purse and hanging onto it. Any change was put into a container. This year I am starting earlier on saving up, so we will have more moola for next year's reunion. If things get harder to where we can't go, I will just continue to save the change until we can! I have found that the relatives love ANYthing homemade. So I may have to make some strawberry jam, pickles and salsa to take with us the next year that we go to the reunion...along with my dishcloths and blanket. I'm already excited for the next year! WOOHOO! My dad's family made us feel so welcome...all are a bunch of hillbillies and will give the shirts off their backs if they knew someone needed them.
On another note...hubby is working only three days a week this month. And the last week all employees are on a forced vacation...whether they have any paid vacation time or not. Also, a machine broke down yesterday, so hubby is off work today. So this week he has only worked two days. He took a vacation day today, so he will get paid for it. Thank goodness!
It will probably be another month or so before I know whether I will have my contract renewed or not. I am hoping I do have it renewed. If not, I may have another job in the wings. Only thing is, the other job would be through the whole year. Not just 9 months with most of the summer off. Well, we all have to do what we gotta do. And my daughter is getting older now. Two more years of high school. Doesn't seem possible that my baby girl is growing up so fast!
The weather here has cooled down considerably. The house was so hot and humid, even with the attic fan going. Hubby and I stayed outside pretty much, until it started to rain. The wind came up and the temperature dropped fast. It did feel good, that's for sure. It only got up into the lower 80s yesterday, but the humidity made it very unbearable. It's still cook this morning....61 degrees and windy. I can handle that. Only to be up around 70 today. Fine with me!