"Roll me up and smoke me when I die.........." ~ Willie Nelson

No, I'm not dead.  Although, some days I feel brain dead, like altered mental status.  We had days of pretty violent thunderstorms roll through about a month ago bringing quite a barometric pressure change which caused my RA to flare.  The inflammation made me tired and "brain dead", cranky, moody with loss of appetite for a couple weeks.  My doc told me to soak in very warm Epsom baths, rest, and try to avoid biting Cliff's head off.  Try soaking in warm bath water for 20 minutes when the temperatures are in the 90's with high humidity.  Oooof!  I've got it under control..........for now.  Barometric pressure hasn't really bothered me so this was a new symptom that I hadn't experienced.  I've been lucky.  I was so moody that Cliff wondered what he had done wrong and was ready to bang his head on something hard except he had just finished taking a course on head trauma and knew too much about brain injuries.

I'm out on the porch with my hummingbirds and a few chickadees and nuthatches typing this.  I figured I'd better bring the laptop outside or nothing is ever going to get written.  Most of our afternoons are spent reading out back under the fan.  My daughter-in-law, Jen, enjoys Faye Kellerman mysteries so I'm reading Murder 101 now.  It's a good thriller, a well-tangled web of intrigue and murder.  No gory details.  Cliff's been picking at staining the porch rails, working for about an hour-and-a-half at a time after we get home from the gym.  Doing the rails is slow and tedious but they look so-o wonderful when done.

Recently we've found acorn remnants and seed hulls stashed near the outside fridge, behind the lounge, and on the grilling tray.  The little gray mouse was probably sleeping in the grill cabinet when Cliff removed the cover to fire it up for my grilled zucchini and summer squash.  It darted across the porch floor so quickly that it flew off the porch into the woods below.  My sister emailed us the peppermint solution that Vic continually uses around their property to deter rodents and other creatures.  Cliff sprayed the porch, in the grill cabinet, and around the foundation and I sprayed my sewing room in the garage. No more seeds or acorns.  Also, we've been running the CO into the vole holes every few weeks and there's no evidence of new holes.  That takes care of the little creatures.  But at night now I'm bringing in the hummingbird feeder and the one seed feeder from the back porch because our neighborhood raccoon sits on the rail, tipping the hummingbird feeder to drink the nectar, walks along the rail, eats the seeds, then leaves his sticky footprint trail as he heads home.

If these are our biggest problems, I'll take them.  Life is peaceful in the trees.

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