Cloudy Wednesday

Yesterday's sunny, warm and summer-y day has disappeared and we have a cloudy day today. Not quite as warm as yesterday, but a little bit of sun, should it decide to make an appearance, would take care of that.

I drove into League City yesterday for a hair trim.... still letting it grow out a little longer, just getting the "ends kissed by the scissors," as they call it here. Such a minuscule amount of hair is on the floor around the chair when Nancy cuts my hair-- you'd think she was just making noise with the scissors rather than actually cutting anything. But that works for me, and I'd rather have way less cut off than far too much. She also used a flat-iron thing to straighten my hair after the cut. Looked nice, but that straightness would take some getting used to... and I don't think I'd want to keep it that straight. Too much of a "young" look when hair is that straight.

Stopped into J's antique shop after the haircut... he took one look at me and said "Which hair did you let her cut this time?" -- He knows my less is more theory about haircuts. J also said he's getting ready for another Charades party. I reminded him that we just did that a couple of weeks ago. "So? That was two weeks ago. I'm ready again now." I just smiled... rather than telling him that I will expect my invitation in the mail when he decides on a date to have the next Charades party at his house. Jeez... he could wear you out with parties.

On the way home, I stopped in at the Hallmark store. Yet again. And, again, they had more things out on the shelves that hadn't been there before. The woman who owns that shop must be emptying out her storage units as the shelves get bare. I found beautiful napkins for Thanksgiving, as well as little gift-bags that I can use for Thanksgiving. (Yes, even on Thanksgiving, no one leaves here without a little autumn surprise tucked into a gift bag.) There were more Christmas ornaments on display... pretty green glass ones that looked like crystal prisms which are perfect for St. Patty's Day. With the 70% discount on those, they were less than a dollar each. I've got them in the dining room hanging with the clear crystals on the lighting, so those will become permanent additions to the green glass embellishments for our St. Patty's lunch party.

We had our air-conditioning company come by yesterday to give us an estimate to replace the duct-work up in the attic. Over three thousand dollars. Unacceptable and overpriced, according to my husband. He called another company, recommended by neighbors, and they were here this morning. Their price was just a thousand, for the same work, the same duct sizes, the same everything. Before the guy left, my husband had signed the contract to have the work done tomorrow. They'll be here before 8:30 and will have the whole job done before dinner-time. The duct-work is original to the house and needs to be replaced... especially since the raccoon we had up there a few years ago tore up some of the insulation that was on the air-conditioning ducts.

After this job is done, the next project is to get a rotten board replaced by the front porch... then we need some landscaping done-- there's too many things growing and thriving in the small backyard flower beds, and not enough growing in the larger front flower beds. We had our gardener replace older bushes that were getting too tall and thin with newer bushes that are nice and thick. That was done last year, but the new ones are not growing fast enough and the flower beds look too bare for their size. Before I get busy planting impatiens, I want someone to dig up some of the plants in the back and re-plant them in the front. Someone who has more of "an eye" for landscape design, which my very nice gardener just doesn't have. His design plan is simply "You plant dees here in sun, it grow.... you plant dees under tree, it die." Very nice man, very reliable, but not a landscape artist. And neither are we, so we need some help here. But that's another project.... and we're taking just one at a time.

We're also trying to plan a birthday dinner for young Miss C, who will turn 16 next week. We'll take her out to dinner, along with her friend L... we told her she could invite one friend, and she picked L instead of one of the boys. We also thought of surprising her at the restaurant, and inviting the boys there without telling her, but then we'd have to arrange to get them there, then arrange to get them home because we all couldn't fit in the car. Suddenly it just seemed too complicated to do with such short notice. We kept waiting to make birthday arrangements for C, thinking that her parents were going to do something this weekend. We know our place in C's life... we're not her parents and we never over-step our bounds with that child. C's dad is off at his job for another week, though, so that might be the reason that her mom didn't plan anything for the weekend coming up. We'll have our little party for her, just the four of us, and then her parents can do whatever they want next week when C's dad gets back home.

I just did a spell-check on all of the above... the computer doesn't like my "dees" word up there when I was talking about the landscaping. Apparently, this computer wasn't hard-wired in a town south of the border.