Somewhere under drooping pomegranate branches, there's a lemon tree.

Word of the Day

Shemale - A person whose gender is nearly impossible to work out based on their physical appearance. One must admit defeat and ask, or sit in viewing distance of both entrances to a public bathroom.

We're Home! We actually arrived home on Sunday but I haven't had any blogging energy remaining at the end of the day to do more than fall into bed. However, I finally have enough done that I can finally sit down for a few moments to blog.

We left Albuquerque at around 8:30 AM on Saturday. HTP took the first leg of the journey home and I drove the Holbrook to Heber to Phoenix route. We finally arrived back home at around 4:30 PM. After a flurry of unloading, the unpacking began. Batteries had to be put back in the remote controls. Computers needed to be connected. The cooler needed to be unpacked and cleaned. Cleaned?

I checked the cooler to see how the dry ice was doing on Saturday morning before we left Albuquerque. I'm glad I checked. What a mess! Word to the wise...dry ice and pop don't mix. The cans of pop that I had in my cooler had frozen. Liquid when it freezes expands. The pop in the cans expanded and lacking any the cans didn't like it. They exploded. I opened the cooler and found frozen pop all over the cooler. Actually, I'm glad I checked since the frozen pop was still frozen. I'm also glad that the pop was diet pop. At least I didn't find a sticky mess. I fished out the exploded cans and as much of the frozen pop as I could before we left Albuquerque. I cleaned up the rest when we got home.

By the time I finished unpacking my two suitcases, the cooler, and taking a quick inventory of my pantry and fridge, I barely had enough energy left to return to the car so I could make a quick trip to the grocery store to buy enough so we could have supper...a late supper...and food for breakfast on Monday.

Monday...yesterday?...was Columbus Day. Even though there was no mail delivery and all the banks were closed, HTP was able to pick up our converter boxes for our televisions. He was also able to stop at the grocery store to pick up the things that I'd put on my growing shopping list. Me?

I spent yesterday unpacking the boxes. My canned goods are all stowed away and my wine has been unpacked and stored. I sure wish I had a couple of those wine racks that my Dad made me for Wisconsin but...I made do.

Having completed the unpacking, I turned my attention to getting our patio cleaned up and usable. We keep our outdoor furniture stored inside while we're gone for the summer. Dust storms and patio furniture don't mix. I dragged all the chairs and cushions out to the patio and got that set up. Then...I pruned the palm trees and the oleander tree by the fountain. The oleander tree continues to try to morph into a bush. The palm trees tend to droop into the fountain. Both had to be whacked back into form before I could get the fountain set up and started. I ended up with a whole garbage can full of palm fronds and oleander clippings before I was done. Then...I had to sweep out all the accumulated debris from the fountain before I could fill it with water and start up the pump. In the meantime, HTP REALLY doesn't like store bought bread. So, while I was doing everything else, I was also baking bread.

While all this was happening, HTP came home with the groceries and the converter boxes for our TV's. *sigh* You'd think hooking up two converter boxes would be a fairly simple process but... I came inside from pruning the oleanders and the palm trees, water running, filling a now clean fountain, to check up on the second loaf of bread that I had raising on the counter, to find that HTP in the process of pulling dresser drawers out of my dresser...the dresser that the TV in our bedroom sits on. He was having problems with getting the converter box hooked up to that TV so he wanted to pull the dresser out from the wall to check the cable connections behind said dresser. Said dresser is huge and HEAVY. So...working together, we muscled the dresser out of the carpet ruts and away from the wall. HTP tightened all the connections and...the blasted thing still wasn't working right. Then came a flurry of switching out the converter boxes. The converter box in the living room was working just great so HTP wanted to see if the problems we were having were caused by a faulty converter box. He was right. One of the two converter boxes he'd picked up from the cable company was no working. So...the TV in our bedroom still needs a converter box but we took the opportunity to vacuum the area behind the dresser before we muscled the dresser back into its furnident and got the drawers all put back.

Am I exhausting you yet? By this time, I was exhausted...but...I still needed to bake that last loaf of bread and make supper. Oh, and the I turned the water off for the fountain just in time so it wouldn't overfill and flood the fountain area.

After supper, I was more than happy to put my feet up and have Gypsy lick my toes while HTP and I watched our favorite Monday night TV shows.

Today? Laundry...of course. My fountain has already attracted a hummingbird. HTP and I watched it bathing as we ate breakfast. After breakfast, I finished my pruning project and dumped the clippings into the big garbage can in the garage. Garbage collection won't be until Thursday. I'm done with all my pruning until spring. Well...my neighbor offered to help me prune my lantana in the front but that won't be until next week. I want to trim it back to a manageable size so it'll be easier to cover it when the temperatures drop below freezing this winter. She offered to help because she knows how allergic I am to lantana. My neighbor is wonderful!

So...are you curious about my fruit trees? My pomegranate is LOADED with pomegranates! Loaded! That poor tree can't even hold its branches up. Some of the pomegranates have cracked but there's no doubt that I'll have plenty of fruit for wine-making. I may even can some of the juice for....juice. I can decide whether to drink the juice or make jelly with it...later. I ordered a steam juicer online and it should be coming later this week. As for my citrus trees...my tangelo tree has is loaded with tangelos. Plenty of fruit for juicing and making Arancello. My other citrus trees don't look like they've done so well. I think I only have two grapefruit. Limes? They're falling off the tree which looks like it got a bit scalded by the record hot temperatures this summer. As for my lemon tree...I can't see it. The pomegranate tree has it completely covered. It's there but I won't know how it's doing until after I pick the pomegranates and I don't plan to pick them until the steam juicer gets here.

Random Thought of the Day

I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

Noteworthy Quote of the Day

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

- Don Marquis (1878 - 1937)