AWOL Brain

I just walked out to get the mail, and when I got to the road, I remembered that I'd already picked it up when I came home from the grocery store this morning.

If anyone finds my brain, please return it to me. I miss it.

Remember when I wrote about my Mom finding raisin bread at the store for 50 cents, so she bought twelve loaves? I am my Mother's daughter. One of my favorite things at our local store is stopping at the area where they have a couple of carts filled with clearance or discontinued items. I've gotten bottles of wine for four dollars, cans of carrots for 40 cents, and other good bargains. I scored big today with Campbell's Chunky soup, the chunky sirloin burger kind...50 cents a can! Wow! That stuff is usually over two dollars a can! So I bought ten. Haha! I think there was one more can, but I wanted an even number. It was the healthy kind, with less fat and sodium, but I can doctor it up with plenty of salt, and throw some lard in there. I'm kidding--I try to get stuff with less salt when possible, and we put some on as needed. I save stuff like that for the winter, when we've been out and I don't have time for a "real" dinner--I serve it over rice. Aren't those little sirloin burgers just the cutest?

I get my stocking up tendencies from my Mom, obviously. I don't mind taking after my Mom in a lot of things--she's a very kind and sweet person, and that's much better than...the alternative!

One of the rare disadvantages to having a wooded property is the limbs that can come down in a storm. After yesterday's intense thunderstorm (we got over two and a half inches of rain in our area, more in neighboring areas), we had lots of small branches and a couple of big ones down. I walked around today and picked up the small stuff, but the big problem was in the front yard. Those branches didn't look as big when viewing them from the house! One was as big around as my arm, and I was able to pick that one up and toss it into the woods, but the other was more the size of my leg, and that one wasn't budging. I was able to move it a little bit so it wasn't against one of our little pine trees, but there was no way I could pick it up.

Even worse, there's a good-sized tree that is leaning over, and will eventually fall. It's been shedding bark for some time, so I think it's been in distress for a while. The storm yesterday finally did it in. It hasn't fallen, but it's leaning over the power line that goes from the pole to our house. I called the power company, and unfortunately, they can't do anything if it's not on the line. I suppose I could have said, "Oh look! It just moved and is on the line!" but that would be dishonest, wouldn't it? Bummer. Ken will have to take a look at it when he gets home. Maybe he can saw off the smaller branches at the top so it won't take out the line if it falls further, at least until he can get to the main part of it.

I'd much rather have a place out in the country with trees, though, than a place in town or in a subdivision. I don't like neighbors being too close, and I love being hidden back here (the foliage is especially thick in the summer). When we started looking for a house a few months after we got married, we agreed immediately that we wanted something away from town and not in a subdivision. We've both done the subdivision life, and didn't want to go back to that. We were just talking the other day about how fortunate we were to find this place. It's been seven years, and I still feel that way every day.