The drought continues. We're starting to lose some leaves from some of the trees. And last night, for the first time ever, something got into our dumpster. We've also discovered a very, very skinny cat outside, who wouldn't dream of letting us come near her, but who was happy to eat quite a bit of cat food. She's probably already been drinking our water, but she was extremely hungry. I think right now she's curled up in a corner of a barn somewhere, purring. We thought we saw a collar, so she was probably a pet. I wonder how some people would feel if they were suddenly dropped in the wilderness somewhere. This is how we've gotten almost all our cats over the years.
Had a busy day yesterday--went to town, had lunch, dropped off one daughter at a church meeting, went to the dollar store, went to the grocery store, went back to pick up the daughter when the meeting finished earlier than expected, and had a very late dinner. In addition to watering everything and putting away two weeks worth of groceries. And I mowed the lawn.
The lawn mower, I think, is finally fixed. Parts of the lawn haven't been mowed in many weeks, because of all the breakdowns, and the tall 'grass' almost choked the mower. Other parts of the lawn were completely dormant. Our 'grass' that isn't really grass (lots of weeds that we just mow short to make it look like grass) is an advantage now--the grass is all brown almost everywhere else, but our lawn still has some green. There's a lot of green in our 'forest' of a yard, too, but the strain is really starting to show out there. There are a lot of curled up or wilting plants. Maybe we'll get lucky and all the ragweed (the half I haven't pulled up already) will wilt before it pollinates.
Our surrounding bean field is just starting to turn yellow.
Anyway, today we went back to town, got gasoline, went to spend a bookstore gift card one daughter has had since Christmas, walked around a beautiful outdoor mall with lots of very green grass, got bird food,and went home. This afternoon I've been playing the piano and doing some cleaning--the van, the camper, the chicken coop where the girls play house and we store outdoor and outgrown toys. We've finally got the chores caught up now. I'll be spending a lot of time indoors the rest of this week--after a couple of decent days, the high tomorrow will be 90, and then the next day it'll be 101. Tomorrow morning I will water everything early before it heats up, and then I'll be closing the windows and turning on the window air conditioner that tries to cool off our entire downstairs. I'll try to do some serious cleaning inside. But I think I'll be taking a lot of breaks Thursday.
I'm also planning to spend a lot of time home in the near future--we're just broke. My parents will be helping us again with the mortgage and health insurance and van payment. I don't know how long they can keep this up. They're already buying our groceries. I am trying very hard not to worry about whether or not I'll be living with them one day. I'm trying to figure out how we can save money--we can't cancel the health insurance because of my husband's National Guard, at which he makes enough money to--pay for the health insurance. At some point we may have to cancel our phones and internet. My husband needs his phone for his part-time job. We can cancel Netflix. We can stop the lunch out when we get groceries. We can start eating more pasta and bread and less meat and produce. That's about it.
On the bright side, my wonderful sister (and I'm not just saying that because she might be reading my blog) is offering to look for a good lawyer for us, and pay for it, and for some medical testing as well, so I can appeal the Social Security decision. I'm tired of trying to prove I'm not a lazy deadbeat, but all I can do is jump through the hoops--I can't pass up the possibility of getting some financial help. My sister is going to talk to my father about the possibility of driving me to appointments, since he's retiring--this is his last week at work. I will once again be trying not to get my hopes up about this. When I got the denial letter last time, I stopped playing the piano for several days.
It's almost bedtime now. I'm pretty tired after all the running around and yard work. At least I'm quite often healthy in the summer. Good night!
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