May 15 - city of Dresden

We had breakfast in the villa's kitchen that morning.... coffee and tea, fresh rolls and jams, sliced cheeses and fruit. My husband has yet to drink a full cup of coffee anywhere... every cup has been much too strong. Quite a difference here from Amsterdam, where all the coffee was so delicious. I don't drink coffee at all, but I've been finding chamomile tea wherever we go.

We love this villa.... the property is very large, very lush. You can't see the neighbors on either side, because their properties are also large and lush (translation: overgrown, but lovely). My husband said that if we could buy a vintage house on a piece of property such as this one, we'd be moving to Germany in a heartbeat. (I wonder how many Euros that would cost? And how many Euros for property taxes?)

We drove into the city of Dresden after breakfast. We saw the King's city residence, as well as all of his treasures in the Historical Green Vault. There are two vaults that you can visit-- the other one is simply the Green Vault. We chose to see the Historical Vault simply because the items had more prominence, value, and provenance. The "lesser" vault has lots of porcelain items, and we felt we had seen more than enough porcelains in Meissen. We walked through the historical rooms filled with ivory, silver, gold, bronze, diamonds and sapphires and emeralds... enough to take your breath away.

The huge cathedral in Dresden (Frauenkirche) was beautiful beyond belief. And to think that this city was bombed during WWII.... and now it's rebuilt and lovely and proud and glorious. The Frauenkirche was beautiful, gorgeous, ornate, over-whelming. Gold and gilt everywhere you looked..... a painted ceiling so high above your head that you got dizzy looking up at it. Side altars as beautiful as the main altar, which was indescribable. We were lucky enough to hear an organist practicing on the cathedral's huge gilded organ, and we sat in the pews and just listened for a while. It was beautiful enough to bring tears to your eyes. (I walked around Germany with tissues constantly in my pocket and in my purse.)

I have not lit a candle in a church for years and years... but I started lighting candles when we were in Leipzig, and I lit candles in Dresden as well. For the rest of our trip, I would be lighting candles in nearly all of the churches. I lit them for friends, for family, for spouses of good friends that have passed away. It just felt like the thing to do there. And whether or not lighting a candle does anything except add a bit of light to a church, it just felt right and good and purposeful. So I kept dropping coins into the money-boxes and lighting candles in all the beautiful churches.

On to the Zwinger Palace.... filled with room-sized paintings, delicate masterpieces, red-carpeted stairways. The palace grounds with their waterfalls and stone walls and sculptures..... your eyes didn't know where to look first. We just stood in the midst of it all before we went inside and looked up and around and back again. My husband got a map of the museum and we walked through every inch of it, with a break inbetween for lunch at their outdoor cafe. (Fresh fish and fruit, served on lovely china, in a sunny outdoor garden cafe.)

After that, another beautiful cathedral by the Elbe in Dresden. Wherever you look... churches, buildings, homes... it's all just so beautiful. With one exception-- apartments that looked like they were built in the 1960s or 1970s-- modern blocks of cement and steel and glass, so unlike the rest of that charming city.

Traffic in Dresden was busier than Leipzig, but maybe that's because we were now driving in it rather than walking around it. We chose to go back to the villa at the end of the day and have our evening meal at the little restaurant by the Elbe, rather than finding a cafe in the city. We enjoyed watching the ferry going back and forth the night before, and it was just more peaceful there than in the city itself. I think we were also overwhelmed by everything we had seen in Dresden, and we needed to get back to the green countryside of the villa.

After dinner that night, there was a steamboat cruise along the Elbe. Dresden had a jazz-fest that weekend, and some of the jazz lovers were enjoying the river cruise while a band was playing American jazz tunes. We sat on the balcony of our room and listened to the music and watched the boat go by, and we felt as if we had suddenly been transported to New Orleans. With the lights on the steamboat, and the music floating up to us from the Elbe, it was a nice way to end the night.

May 14 - Meissen and Dresden

We had breakfast early that Wednesday morning, then we picked up the rental car (conveniently located right near the hotel) and we were on our way. My husband reserved a car with a GPS, to help us get to all the cities, towns and villages he had mapped out for our trip. The GPS spoke to us with a slightly German/English-accented voice, so we named her "Greta," which sounded like a solid German name. There were a couple of times that my husband lost patience with Greta and called her other non-German names, but for the most part, we were happy to have the GPS along for the ride.

Our first stop was Meissen. We found St. Nicholas Church, a tiny, tiny two-room church tucked into a corner of the woods near a village-- the church was filled with a porcelain altar as well as beautiful life-sized porcelain statues of saints. For a very small church, on the outskirts of the town, it was breathtakingly beautiful. The stone altar of the church was bulit in the year 980, I believe.

We also went to the Meissen Porcelain factory and museum...... filled to the brim with everything imaginable that could possibly be made out of Meissen porcelain. Of course, the museum had a gift shop-- filled with everything expensive made of Meissen. I had planned to buy a tea cup or two (and have them shipped home to avoid possible breakage). I changed my mind quickly when I saw that two tea cups/saucers would be nearly $500 (American dollars, not Euros). I told my husband that I had more than enough tea cups.

We had lunch at the restaurant in the Meissen museum--- a pretty little cafe with bistro tables and sweet little chairs. In the center of each table-- a Meissen sugar and creamer set, filled with sugar cubes and cream: six hundred dollars worth of Meissen on each table. When our lunch was served, the cups, saucers, and plates were all Meissen. I calculated that our two place settings were would cost about $1600. We were extremely careful as we ate.

There was a gorgeous white castle with a red-tiled roof in Meissen that we were able to tour, as well as a beautiful cathedral. Time and again, as we walked into churches during our trip, we would be overwhelmed by the beauty and painstaking details of these tributes to everything holy. Gorgeous and beautiful and breath-taking will be words that will be repeated over and over again, unless I dig out the Thesaurus.

After Meissen, we stopped in Morritzburg to tour the castle there, which is on its own little island. We walked across a little bridge to get to it. Quite an imposing castle, very stately and beautiful, and the outside of the castle walls are lined with life-sized bronze statues. The castle's exterior seemed to be golden, and once again, a red-tiled roof. The most memorable room in this castle was "The Feather Room"-- all of the tapestries and fabrics in this bedroom are made of birds' feathers. All different sizes and colors, woven into the most intricate designs. Outstandingly creative..... I can't even imagine how many hours, days, weeks, months, years all that work could have taken the royal seamstresses.

Then on to Dresden, to the Therese Malten Villa. We stayed at this guesthouse for two nights... wonderful villa in a quiet community on the Elbe River. The villa was built as a private home in 1893, and is what we would call a large Victorian. Each of the bedrooms had a private bath, and each of the two floors had a lovely sitting/reading room just off the center hallway. We could see the Elbe from our window, and our bedroom had a private balcony where we could sit and watch the river. Breakfast was included with our stay, but for our dinners, there was a restaurant within walking distance, set right on the Elbe. The Fahrhaus, built in 1860, served delicious fish, local meats, homegrown vegetables, and homemade desserts. We ate there two nights in a row, watching the ferry going back and forth across the Elbe.

There were birds singing in the trees all along the Elbe while we stayed in Dresden-- and the birds' singing sounded exactly like the birds in the German "cuckoo" clocks. When we found someone who knew enough English, we discovered that there are real cuckoo birds in the forests there. So it isn't a coincidence that the birds in the cuckoo clocks make a cuckooooo sound. We never did actually see the birds, but we heard them up in the trees often enough that we grew to miss the sound when there weren't any cuckoo birds around in some of the other villages.

As we were driving from Leipzig to Meissen to Dresden, we passed hundreds of thousands of fields filled with tiny yellow flowers. I thought farmers were cultivating those flowers for sale, but we soon found out that these "Butterblooms" are a wildflower, and the farmers dedicate some of their fields to these flowers for the simple reason that they grow easily and plentifully, and they're just appreciated for their beauty. I cannot even describe how beautiful it was so see miles and miles of yellow, for as far as your eyes can see.

Towards the end of our trip, I found a small patch of butterblooms near one of the parking lots near a church. I picked just a sprig of the yellow flowers and pressed them between a paper napkin. I took them home, and I have it now just sitting on one of the shelves of my curio cabinet. The butterbloom stems are pressed as flat as flat can be, but the brightness of the flowers are still blindingly yellow and bright.

My husband and I loved Dresden. The feeling of the town, the river, the community that the villa was nestled in.... we loved it all. It was hard to imagine that the city of Dresden, the very cathedral that we had visited that afternoon, had been blasted to bits by the bombings during WWII. For most of our trip, when I thought of the horrors of WWII, then looked at the beauty that is Germany today, it was difficult to fathom that a country so rich in royal and social history, so steeped in religious traditions, could have been a part of all of that horror.

I found myself thinking of what my husband's mother always said.... No matter what happens in this world, life does go on in a sensible way. And in the Germany of today, it certainly has.

May 13 - Leipzig

Tuesday was the last day of the conference....... my husband was busy all day, and I had planned to be busy also-- all of the stores that were closed yesterday for the religious holiday would be opened up today, so it was my day to shop.

And that I did... in and out of nearly every shop tucked into the winding streets around the market square in Leipzig. I found my European-outlet hair dryer, a nice small size that will be great for traveling. I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before, instead of worrying about adapters and connectors and plugs.

I also went into the shoe store that looked so interesting the day before, and I bought a pair of walking shoes made in Spain. The brand name is Pikolinos, and they are, without a doubt, the softest, most comfortable, supportive pair of genuine leather walking shoes that I've ever had. Plus, they look nice, and cute, not like little-girl shoes, and not like old-lady shoes. If the store had two pairs of this style in my size, I would have bought more than one. But Pikolinos has a dot-com web-site, so I will order another pair when we get home. I put the shoes on right after I paid for them, and I felt like I could have walked in them all day long--- which I did, on all the rest of the days of our trip.

Tuesday in the Leipzig square is one of their open-air market days, and the square was filled with carts and booths and small refrigerated trucks filled with olives and nuts, cheese, fruit and vegetables, meats and fish, potted plants and freshly-cut flowers. It seemed that every woman in town was out there with a large wicker basket on her arm, filling it up with what she would need till the next market day, which would be Thursday. I looked at all the glass-sided refrigerated trucks... delicious-looking cheeses of all kinds, fresh-looking meats and homemade sausages.... all the vendors competing with one another to get the most sales. I lost count of how many vendors were selling the thick white asparagus.... the roots look tough and raw before they're cooked, and they reminded me of wood dowels.

In one of winding streets around the square, I found a tiny antique shop that was fun to look into. So much porcelain in there, all very pretty, but also very expensive, plus I didn't want to buy anything that could break on the way home. Near the door of this little shop, I found a basket filled with small gold spoons-- demitasse size, the same size that is served with the cups of tea that I've had since we've been here. Of course I had to buy them.... I found eight of them with the same design, for a price of three Euros.

It was a wonderful morning and afternoon.... I had lunch at one of the little cafes, watched all the people in the market for a while, then looked at some of the other shops. I was so happy to be in those comfy Pikolino shoes that I just walked and walked till I had seen everything in and around the market.

After the conference was over that evening, my husband and I had dinner at one of the outdoor cafes near St. Thomas Church. I ordered a small cup of potato soup and grilled salmon. Everything was homemade, very nicely presented.... as soon as we looked at our dinner plates, we knew the food would be delicious, and it was.

After dinner, we walked around the market square for a while, then went to another cafe for dessert. (So many cafes to choose from.) We had apple cake (kuchen), and I ordered yet another cup of chamomile tea. This cafe served the tea in a pretty glass with a thin glass handle.... perfectly cute. I would have loved to buy one of those tea glasses (which I had seen in the shops) but those would be too easy to break on the flight home.

After dessert, we walked around a little bit more, then walked back to the hotel on the main street. We had only been in Germany since the 9th, and already had done more walking than we normally do in two weeks back home. And this was only the beginning of the trip. The next day, the plan was to leave Leipzig (after picking up the rental car) and begin to tour through the itinerary my husband had spent so many weeks planning.

May 12 - Leipzig

That Monday was our 13th wedding anniversary. Gorgeous day in Leipzig, and the first day of my husband's conference there. The plan was that he would attend the conference, I would spend the day walking and shopping around the town, and then we would meet for dinner.

The hotel we stayed at offered a daily breakfast buffet, for 24 Euros per person, which is a ridiculous amount of money for sliced cheese and meat, fruit, bread and soft-boiled eggs. We opted every day for breakfast in the little cafe around the marketplace, and that's what I did that morning.

My plan was also to buy a hair dryer with a European plug..... I had packed my own travel-sized dryer, but the old converter that I had didn't match up with the outlets in the hotel. Easiest thing to do was to just buy a small hair dryer and then I'd have it for further trips across the Atlantic.

When I left the hotel and walked into the center of town, the little cafes were opening, but all the stores and small shops were closed. That day was a religious holiday, and retail businesses were shut tight. But the village was still crowded with people--- they were window-shopping, just like I remember everyone doing along Jamaica Avenue (in Queens) years and years ago, when everything would be closed on Sundays.

So after having tea and apple cake in one of the cafes, and sitting there like a local and watching the world go by, I joined the window-shopping people and saw what each shop had to offer. By the time I was done, I knew which shops I would need to go into the following day to buy both my European hair dryer and a comfortable pair of walking shoes.

Because of the religious holiday, there were some outdoor church services in front of St. Thomas Church, and I sat in the little park near the church and listened to the singing and watched part of the service. There was also one very small shop that was open, and I was able to buy some postcards, so I sat there in the sun near the park and wrote them out.

Dinner that night was with the conference group, at a restaurant/wine celler built in 1497. The Auerbachs Keller presented a delicious dinner buffet, very artfully arranged with meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, cheeses, and the most elegant little desserts I've even seen. Asparagus is one of the main crops in Germany--- thick white asparagus, rather than thin and green, and there were a few spargel dishes on the buffet. I don't care what color it is, I'm not a fan of spargel, but I did have a taste of the white asparagus-- two bites and I'm still convinced that no matter what you call it, and no matter what fancy sauce you put over it, asparagus is still asparagus, even if the Germans do call it spargel.

After dinner, the wine steward of the restaurant gave us a long and dramatic history of the wine celler, beginning in the room where we all had dinner, and ending up in the underground wine celler that was damp and cramped and smelled of ages-old wine.

The Auerbachs Keller was an amazing restaurant, with rich woods on the floors, walls and moldings, painted frescoes on the ceilings, massive decorative wood carvings in every room, sumptuous restrooms, ceiling fixtures carved from tree trunks. It was an amazing experience, and a nice way for all the conference members to get together.

The Whole World is a Germ.....

How in heaven's name do the flight attendants not get sick after each airplane flight from here to there and back again?

I came home with a monstrous cold and sore throat, caught on the flight back from Germany. My husband hasn't caught this, but I surely did, and I've been sick since before we landed. I spent most of yesterday in bed, with ShadowBaby right next to me. That cat was thrilled-- his favorite thing is napping, and he got to do it on the bed instead of on the screen-porch.

I've been drinking hot tea and hot chicken broth, eating oranges, and then drinking more hot tea and hot broth. I feel like I'm drowning in liquids, and my head feels like it weighs a ton.

Oh well, this too shall pass. At least I caught these germs on the plane ride home instead of during the plane ride to Germany. I wouldn't have been able to make it through all of our sight-seeing days with a cold like this.

May 11 - Leipzig

Sunday the 11th was another beautiful day in Leipzig. We slept right through breakfast and didn't wake up till nearly noon........ jet-lag from the last two days finally kicked in. When we woke up, the church bells were ringing again-- there was a church right near the Hotel Furstenhof and the bells were lovely.

We crossed over the main street just outside the hotel and walked into the marketplace. All the shops were closed (for Sunday) but the restaurants were setting up their outside tables and chairs. I loved that about Germany--- all the outdoor eating. People were just sitting there and watching the world go by... no one rushed you away from your table. On the contrary-- no one ever brought you "the check" until you asked for it, and even then, they didn't rush to get it to you.

One thing I just couldn't understand..... the Germans are very health conscious, with their homemade foods, fresh fruits and daily-baked breads-- but nearly everyone around us was smoking. We ate outside a lot, and kept our fingers crossed that the table next to us wouldn't fill up with smokers.

We walked to the Botanic Gardens in Leipzig--- nice enough, but not worth the time it took us to walk there. They also had a butterfly exhibit, which we paid extra for--- but there was only one lonely butterfly in the entire exhibit, for goodness sake. After a little bit of language-Charades, we managed to get our Euros back for the entrance fee to the butterfly pavillion.

After the Gardens, we went to the Leipzig Zoo--- much better than the Gardens. As far as zoos go, it was pretty small, but it was very family-friendly and set up very nicely. All the animals looked happy to be there, except for one elephant who stayed off by himself and wouldn't go near the other three that were in the enclosure. I swear, no matter what zoo we're in, I always manage to find a depressed elephant. Which depresses me, and makes me wonder why we have to build zoos in the first place.

I can't even imagine how many miles we walked in Leipzig-- we didn't pick up the rental car until after my husband's conference was over. I had bought flat shoes, but my Texas-flat shoes just weren't as comfy as they could be on all those cobblestones. I knew I'd be looking at the shoestores before I left that town.

There was also an Egyptian Museum in the center of Leipzig, which seemed strange to us. Tiny, tiny museum, with a few glass showcases of artifacts and a couple of impressive-looking mummy cases. I think it took us ten or fifteen minutes to see everything they had in that small building.

That night, we had dinner at one of the outdoor cafes near the marketplace. We chose an Italian restaurant for the simple reason that it wasn't crowded and that meant we would probably be lucky enough not to have smokers come sit near us. We ordered individual pizzas.... absolutely delicious, like real NY pizzas. While we ate, there was an orange and white cat looking down into the square from an apartment window above the cafe. The cat was large and serious-looking, and reminded me our our cat Rusty (who died a few years ago). I told my husband that we shouldn't have worried about poor Rusty..... he died and was reincarnated in Germany.

I spent most of our walks around Leipzig looking up, as my Uncle Mino always told me to do when I was walking around a city. Uncle Mino was an architect and he loved and appreciated the designs of buildings, especially the older, more intricate ones. "Look up! Don't forget to look up!"-- that's what he would always tell us when we were kids. Leipzig has some beautiful, awe-inspiring buildings...... Uncle Mino would've spent every minute there just looking up.

May 9 & 10 - Leipzig

We left for Germany on a Lufthansa flight..... I refused to use an American airline for a flight overseas. Lufthansa was more money, but I didn't care. In my opinion, if you're flying to another country, then use the airplanes of that country. I just feel that it's safer that way.

One of these days, I would like to fly First Class. We were tucked into the Economy seats, and we were in a row of four across, my husband and I in the middle seats. Not as comfortable as you would like to be, especially for that long a flight. I wish I had taken the headphones when the attendants were passing them out, because they showed the movie "Juno" on the way to Germany. But I watched it without the sound, and got the gist of the story anyway.

The first flight went from Houston to Frankfurt, then we had to rush through the Frankfurt airport to catch a second flight into Leipzig, where we had to start the trip because that was the site of the conference that my husband was attending. We practically ran from one end of the terminal to the other at Frankfurt, only to find out that we didn't have to rush at all because the flight into Leipzig was delayed about half an hour.

When we got into Leipzig, we took the train from the airport to the hotel (The Furstenhof). We didn't exactly know when to get off, but managed to find someone on the train who spoke a few words of English, and he let us know where our stop was. (The conductor on the train spoke only German...... a sign of what was to come in many places.) On the outskirts of the town, along the path of the train tracks as they wound through the industrial section of the city, we saw a lot of graffiti, which was disappointing to see.

Gorgeous day when we arrived in Leipzig..... warm and sunny, but not too hot. I had worn jeans on the plane, and I was thrilled to know that I had a pair of capris in my suitcase, which I changed into when we got to the hotel. We had decided to just check into the hotel, freshen up, and then walk around the town, trying to stay awake as long as we could, even with the seven-hour-ahead time difference between home and Germany. We had both taken naps on the plane anyway.

Leipzig was like a small city and a quaint village, rolled into one. Cobblestone streets winding this way and that way around a central market filled with shops, restaurants, cafes, and some of the most beautiful buildings I had ever seen. There is a church in Leipzig where Johann Sebastian Bach is buried. Bach is big in Leipzig-- there is a monument, a museum, a cafe--- filled with everything Bach.

During the few days that we were in Leipzig, there was a Gothic Convention--- there were hundreds of Goth-outfitted people.... some teenagers, but most were in their 20s and 30s, and some were way over 60, for goodness sakes. The goth outfits were very elaborate, very ornate, with lots of black leather, silver chains..... none of them looked to be too comfortable, especially in those warm sunny days. I have to say that even though the goth-group weren't too "pretty" to look at, they were all there just having a good time and enjoying their convention.

With the time difference, we were up for 24 hours, not counting the little naps on the plane. By the time our heads hit the pillows that first night, we were too tired to worry about not being able to sleep on a bed that was so low to the floor. The hotel was extremely nice, but their beds weren't what we were used to-- the mattress wasn't a box-spring, but a thick slab of foam that was set on top of a wooden platform. If you got out of the bed too fast, your knees would hit you on the bottom of your chin. But on the bright side..... when we came back from an afternoon of walking around the town and having a dinner at a cafe, the maids had turned down the blankets and left ladybug shaped chocolates on our pillows.

We got lucky that first night for dinner...... we found a cafe that had all of their foods laid out behind glass counters. All we had to do was point to what we wanted, without having to worry about the language barrier. I was thrilled to see salmon and tossed salad behind those gleamingly clean glass counters.

Friends of ours had told us that the German sky stays bright till nearly 10 p.m., so we weren't surprised that when we fell into bed at seven o'clock that night, it was as bright as noon-time outside. We were surprised, however, when the sky was noon-time bright at quarter to five the following morning. The brightness woke us up, as did the church bells ringing out all over the village, starting at six in the morning. Welcome to Germany!

Back in the heat of Texas...

We stepped off the plane yesterday and felt the heat....... which we haven't experienced for the last two and a half weeks. As much as we thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Germany, it was nice to be back home. No matter where we go, no matter how much we love where we visit, home is the place to be.

My husband put nearly a month of research into our trip to Germany. He had about 35 pages of places to see, things to do, guesthouses, hotels...... and the thick stack of papers dwindled down to just one or two pages as we ended our trip in Frankfurt. We were at the Frankfurt airport twice (once going, where we had to switch planes for a short hop-over to Leipzig, where our trip began..... and then coming home, where we took a direct flight from Frankfurt to Houston). We saw nothing of the city of Frankfurt, just the airport.

There's so much to write about Germany...... I think I will start at the beginning, look at the notes I took as we traveled, and write about every place we visited and everything we saw. It was a trip to be remembered, and I'm sure we'll be talking about this adventure for years to come. I'm also sure that we'll go back again for another visit.

Gracie and the cats were happy to see us when we got home yesterday. Even though our pet-sitter takes such good care of "our gang" (as he calls them), I know they miss us and they know that someone else is in the house with them. ShadowBaby and Mickey Kitty followed me all around the house yesterday, and AngelBoy hugged my legs and rubbed his fur all over my slacks...... and Gracie has barely let my husband out of her sight since we brought the suitcases back into the house.

Reality set in this morning..... suitcases to unpack, laundry to do, mail to go through....... before I know it, my nail polish will be chipped from cleaning out litter boxes. And if I want tea in the afternoon, I will have to get it myself. Oh well..... it's still nice to be home.

The first heat wave......

.... and thankfully, the new air-conditioner is up and running just fine. So fine that I'm freezing. I guess the old unit wasn't as efficient as this newer one--- it feels colder in here than it did before, even though the thermostat is set at the same temperature. The temperature keeps changing, however, depending on which one of us is pressing the numbers... my husband likes 72 degrees, I prefer 76 degrees. And when I'm alone in the house, my number changes to 78.

Our young Miss C came by after school today, as she did yesterday and the day before. She comes here from time to time, some weeks more than others. She's always bubbling over with news about her friends and school, and the upcoming summer. She will be volunteering time at the local nature center...... that child loves animals, all of them, big and small, tame and wild.

While C was in our living room today, she noticed a new photograph on my bookshelves... the wedding picture of my friend's son. Right away, C said: This one is new! Who got married? I told her who the young man was-- she was familiar with his mother because she's seen her picture in our wedding album, and today I told her the story when her first little boy was born and how I held him in my arms when he was the tiniest little baby.

C studied the wedding picture and told me that she loved the bride's dress, and "look at her sparkly shoes!..... and then she looked even more closely at their faces and said They look like they belong together. I told C that I thought so too. She said they looked so happy in the picture-- really really happy. Sometimes I wonder what really goes on in this child's mind.

Child. She's not a child anymore. C drove up here in her own car after school....... and we watched her drive away when she left. It's strange, somehow, to be waving to C as she leaves our house. Used to be that she'd be in her house, waving to me as I drove away.

And the tiny little baby boy from years ago, another life-time ago, is now in a frame on my bookshelf with his bride.

What's that old saying? Time waits for no one. Indeed.

It's freezing in here....

After being without the central air-conditioning since the outside unit died a quick death on Friday, now we're back to the thermostat wars in here. This new unit is more efficient than the old one we had, so naturally it's going to keep the house cooler than we're used to.

But no matter what kind of air-conditioning system is sitting outside this house, my husband and I are always going to want different temperatures inside. He turns the thermostat down, to make it cooler...... I turn it up, to make it warmer.

The service people gave us a new digital thermostat, so now there's no "fudging" when it comes to telling what the thermostat is at..... you can easily see if it's set at 72 degrees or 75. I had gotten very good at tip-toeing silently into the hallway to turn the thermostat up--- that thermostat is right outside my husband's office (bad location for tip-toeing). With this digital thermostat, it makes a tiny clicking sound when you re-set it, so there's no way to hide the temperature change. (Who designed that?)

Oh well..... we have air-conditioning again, and we were very lucky to have the old system die out in May rather than in July or August when outside temperatures are over 100 degrees. I think little Mickey Kitty liked it better in here without the air-conditioning. Once the new system was up and running this afternoon, Mickey curled himself into a blanket and took a nap.

Maybe I can teach that cat to tip-toe into the hallway and work the new thermostat. =^..^=

Cool and cloudy Monday....

.... and we're thanking our lucky stars for that. Our air-conditioning unit won't be fixed/replaced till tomorrow morning. But the weather gods are being good to us... the temperature has dropped fifteen degrees, thanks to a cool front passing along the northern mid-west. Today has been very cloudy, and downright dark this morning when we had a good thunderstorm.

We were supposed to get another estimate from a second air-conditioning service this morning, but their technician called in sick and they only have the one guy who can give estimates. What?! Well, shame on them, because we can't sit around praying for more cool and cloudy weather. Tomorrow is supposed to be back up in the high 80s, with lots of sun, which means the house will be like an oven.

Back to the first air-conditioning company we went, which is fine with me because we've been using them since we moved here. They're more expensive than the rest, but they're also the best, in my opinion. As my dad would say: You get what you pay for. Our next-door neighbor laughs when he sees the guys from that air-conditioning company come into our house--- the service guys have these little blue cotton "booties" that they slip on over their work boots so they don't mess up your flooring. Our neighbor says he's never seen that done before and it just tickles him because he says "Y'all are paying extra for those booties, you know." Well, we know, but I actually like those booties because they do keep the dirt and grass out of my house.

They will be here first thing tomorrow morning, and by lunchtime they should be done. And if those guys have to go up into our attic for any of the connections, they will really be done before lunchtime. I can't even imagine how hot it must get up in our attic when the temperatures get up into the high 80s and 90s.

My husband and I were talking about growing up in the 1950s and 1960s..... neither of us had central air-conditioning where we lived, and we had never heard of such a thing in the first place. Summer was summer, and summer was hot, and you just dealt with it. Now we're melting and wilting without the air-conditioning, and even with the cooler weather, it seems that this house just soaks up the sunlight.

Our next-door neighbor has a solution for that..... new windows. When these houses were built, they didn't have the double and triple glass windows, which are more efficient in keeping out the heat in the summer and keeping out the cold in the winter. Neither my neighbor nor my husband wants to invest in all new windows for these houses. Both of them say they'd rather move into a newer house and start all over with new windows, new kitchens, new bathrooms, new everything. With all the new subdivisions going up all over this area, the older ones can't compete with all the bells and whistles that the new builders are adding to the current homes.

In the words of our neighbor B-- "We need to sell these houses for whatever we can get, buy one of the newer homes, and don't look back." B's wife V looked at me when her husband said that and told me "Should we be getting this in writing?"

Poof goes the air-conditioner.

We knew it was bound to happen..... our air-conditioning system has gasped its last cool breath. Every time our service company came out to check the cooling system, the technician would say the same thing: "Do y'all know this here unit was installed in 1989?" Yes, we do. "And do y'all know that replacing an old system while it's still running would be better than waiting for it to just die a slow death?" I think we'll just let it die on its own, rather than yanking it out by its innards.

Famous last words. Its innards are about to be yanked out, come Monday or Tuesday, and right now the air-conditioning system is just working with the fan, not the cooling unit. Oh well.... on the bright side, at least it's early May and not mid-August. The temperatures are only in the mid 80s, not the low 100s.

The technician was here this afternoon to give us an estimate. On Monday morning, we will get an estimate from the second company (which saved us $2000 when the duct-work in the attic had to be replaced). On Monday afternoon, whoever gives us the best price is the winner. And hopefully, by Tuesday, this will be just a memory. These air-conditioning companies are in and out in a day's time, so once they start the job, it will be over quickly.

For right now, the screen-porch is very cool...... today wasn't too hot and tonight there's a nice breeze outside. I've got the porch door open and the breeze is coming through the house--- along with AngelBoy, who was very surprised to be allowed into the house this afternoon. I'm watching this cat like a hawk, not letting him out of my sight while he's in here. Actually, that hasn't been a hard thing to do, because he's been right at my heels wherever I go. Does that mean that he missed me? Or just missed being in the house? Maybe a little bit of both.