No matter how it's written it's hot!!! That's one very large number. In fact the hydrangea on the June 7th post is burnt to a crisp! I feel like I had a hand its death; maybe if I hadn't brought it home with me someone else would have taken it home to a safer place. I moved it to a shady spot, but that didn't help it to survive. Roses are also crispy along with a few vines and some annuals are fainting from heat stroke.
The background on the digital piece, obviously seeing how it's definitely not hand-done, is a piece of cross stitch fabric that was rusted, the dark blotchy areas, and then painted with Dy-na Flow fabric paints. I plan to do some creative embroidery next. "Creative" being the operative word. My stitches never seem to look anything like the examples I try to emulate. The newspaper clipping is from the front page of today's newspaper. I love how they word it, "Good Morning! Today's Valley high, low 114 76." The 76 is wishful thinking seeing how the nights haven't been below 90 in a couple of weeks.
Tomorrow marks our 9th month of living in the desert, which I've decided is the hottest place in the country! The joke going around it that if you want to cool off you go a little north to Death Valley. I'm starting to feel a little more at home here and while the traffic isn't as "light" as I was led to believe, it isn't as bad as even Monterey was becoming. That it itself is a good thing. I don't do well with a lot of noise or in crowded situations; too much sensory stimulation has an effect on my health. When I was in school I had a difficult time sitting in classrooms and often felt the urge to get up and run. Maybe it was a form of panic attacks, but I now know it to be a part of the FM/CFS. Most of us who have one or both of the chronic illness tend to lead quiet lives. The tolerance level for having too much activity isn't good. So, when two weeks are jammed packed with errands, doctor appointments and having medical tests done I'm left exhausted and unbalanced along with a flu-like flareup that sends me to bed, but wait! I can't go to bed to recuperate because I have daily calamities to deal with, not mine, but mom's and Stacy's. Mom has "conveniently" forgotten about my health issues and looks at me like I'm nuts when I say that I need to wait awhile before tending to her latest crisis. A mini-blind falling off of the window isn't going anywhere, but confusion over remote controls and not being able to turn TV channels gets immediate attention.
This is the second time a mini blind has broken in her room and the 3rd one that has needed to be replaced. I'm fed up with Home Depot's cheap brand so we're having an estimate done Tuesday afternoon for some Hunter Douglas ones. After coughing up $4,500 for the few in the living room along with drapes in the Casita I know I'm not ready to hear the estimate. The only good thing is that if the cord breaks someone comes out to repair it!! And hopefully it will be years before that happens and not a mere few months. That was yesterday's calamity. I'm still waiting for today's . . .
Friday night's crisis involved trying to use remotes for the VCR or the CD to turn on the TV. "I haven't been able to watch TV since we arrived in this God forsaken place! I can't turn the channels and the picture is fuzzy. I need a new TV!" Seeing how I got her a new TV and VCR a little over a year ago (and now realize that they probably weren't broken, she probably couldn't figure out how to use them) I decided that there must be an easy explanation. There was. She had turned the VCR on making the picture on the screen fuzzy and was trying to turn the channels with the remote control for the CD player. The TV remote was conveniently sitting on her nightstand but it didn't look familiar. Once I got everything figured out and bit my tongue to keep from saying that she has watched TV (I'd seen it on while I was watering a few nights before) she said. "Well aren't you something! Is there anything you can't do? I always feel so stupid," in a tone of voice that wasn't pleasant, I left her alone. I guess she figured that she'd annoyed me because it wasn't until yesterday morning that I learned that the cord had broken on the blinds. She's taped them to the window with packing tape. Packing tape on glass isn't something one should do! There is now a residue left all over the window! "Oh well, you'll just have to figure out how to clean it off," I was told. Somehow she'd bundled up the blinds and taped them to the window with about a roll of tape! This isn't something she would have done a few years ago, but she no longer has reasoning skills and does the strangest things.
I did have something grand happen this week. I went to Home Depot to pick up some shade cloth that will hopefully prevent the death of a few vines and spotted a couple leaving the nursery with My Tree! I'd had the pleasure of watching a flowering plum grow for 21 years in Pacific Grove and have been yearning for something to replace it with since I started planning the backyard garden. The tree is deciduous, which I love because every Spring the entire tree gets new leaves. The leaves seem to be great food for a variety of insects so by Fall the tree ends up looking raggedy. Every Spring I looked forward to a couple of weeks of white and pink flowers. I was putting the tree into the cart when a nurseryman told me that because I'm planting the tree in hot July I might not get blossoms the first year, just the beautiful purple black leaves. Right now I don't care! The tree has provided the yard with something that was missing; colorful leaves!!! The tree is small and once it's in the ground all 5 feet 8 inches of me will either be at eye level with the few branches or tower above it! The photo on the upper right is of the tree I left behind.
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