'Check in' continued

So where was I?  Oh yeah, Nita had to work Thursday so she left me with instructions to make a chocolate ganache to put over the cheesecake that she whipped up Wednesday afternoon. Who do you know who has all the ingredients to make a cheesecake at the mere mention of it?

 Nita's cheesecakes are divine left as is, but I'm all about the chocolate.   







I spent most of Thursday there at her house knitting and making her a couple of water bottle koozies. 

Nita's surgery was scheduled for 10:30ish Friday morning and we had to be at the hospital by 8:45.   It was a really nice hospital with a huge coffee shop and waiting area, plus nice gardens outside. 

They called her back for surgery and we had time for a little fun and entertainment.  It's so fun to mess with people when their hands are hooked up to IV's and stuff. 

We've always had this thing for crazy hairstyles and headgear.  I couldn't resist...

 And this his how she wore it as they rolled her into surgery.  She said the Doctor and operating staff got a good laugh out of it. 

They didn't knock her out completely to remove the cyst from her foot, so she listened to music for the full 20 minutes she was in there.  I know that I didn't have time to go to the truck, and knit two full rows before they were paging me to return.   We were back at the house by 12:30. 

The rest of the weekend we just sat around with our feet up Doctor's orders, and recreated a few recipe ideas off Pinterest.   This was Garlic Monkey Bread to go with the Rolled Lasagna that Nita had made the week before and put in the freezer for this week. 

Saturday morning we tried the cinnamon rolls in the waffle iron trick.  Nita says her left hand will tell you how they turned out.... don't waste your cinnamon rolls.
And don't bother putting Apple Strudel bread in the waffle iron either.  

Nita's foot wasn't causing her any pain so she suggested that we drive over to Tomball to Arbor Gate and check out some things there.  I'd been looking for a glass ball to use in a water feature and hadn't been able to find one the right size.  Sure enough I found one there!!! 

I also found these awesome wind catchers.  Just take a wild guess at how much these babies run... it ends with a K, two Ks + to be exact.  I ordered two for our yard.  LOL!

Wouldn't you know it, Houston wasn't quiet finished with their home explosives.  As we sat out on the patio watching a movie later that night, the booming blasts started up from the next street over.   I tried to get pictures but the best I could do was a view of the patio from out in the yard. 

We like keeping it dark and mysterious back there.... makes the neighbors jealous that their yards are full of mud, dog poo and jungle gyms.

I was told to 'check in'.

Yeah, she my sister said 'check in'!  We talk to each other at least twice a week but she needs me to post to the blog. 

I'm sure your 4th was festive, that is if you live in the States. I remember Jolea's first 4th in a foreign country, she was confused why they didn't celebrate. Especially in the BVI's. 

I headed down to Houston Wednesday morning.  Mostly to help my sister Nita later in the week, after she had foot surgery, but also to see the spectacular fireworks shows put on by her neighbors.  Houston has some crazy laws when it comes to fireworks.  You can be arrested and fined huge amounts for buying fireworks and bringing them back within the Houston City Limits.  But outside the city limit line.... seems like anything goes. 

You'll see huge firework warehouses and stands set up in grocery store parking lots, right in the middle of a business or residential area.  Where we grew up you had to drive to the boonies to find a stand to buy them and then you had to know someone who had property out in the boonies to set them off, or you could go to the nearest caleche pit to blow up your hard earned paycheck.  It's pretty much the same here in the county where we live.  You buy them in the boonies and fire them off in the boonies.  The nearest stand is about 10 miles from our house. 

At Nita's you buy them around the corner and shoot them off in your driveway!  So that's pretty much how it went down.  Nita's next door neighbors, S and B had already burned up a few hundred on the Saturday before and then dropped $$$ for the actual 4th.  We sat in Nita's driveway with our glasses of wine and proceeded to get a crick in our neck from looking straight up.

I'm not a photographer as you probably know by now, but Nita managed to get a few good shots. 

The pyromaniacs prepare....

B!  Get away from there!

Nita getting a neck crick.

They fired off box after box of fireworks until close to 1 in the morning.  Nita had to work the next day so we called it quits.


This wasn't the whole weekend.... to be continued.

I'm BAAAAACK!

Sorry about that, I hope I can remember what I did to remedy the problem in the event it happens again.  Don't you just love the way Blogger can just flip a little switch and we're all looking at everything wonky?  That's not right, we should have a say so in this, after all, I am just getting over my computer crashing at work and having to readjust my screen.  The $3K eyes were equipped with 'normal' vision, not superhuman-read-the-print-on-a-pinhead vision. 

Since I last posted we had been having an early Tornado season.  I think that may be pretty much done unless we flip-flop back into Winter and then Spring again.  I don't think that's going to happen because we've just leaped into full blown Summer... day after day of temps in the 90's with high humidity.  We've had no rain in a month so we'll probably be back to having drought warnings by next week.  The lakes are all full thank goodness.  We may never come out of water rationing though, which doesn't bother us as we try to only plant drought tolerant plants around the house.

I had my annual migration to Nita's for my birthday.  Not a huge blow-out like last year.  Just Nita and I cooking and hanging on her patio watching movies and drinking wine.  She was pet-sitting both at her house and had to drive to a client's home twice a day.  We didn't even go shopping except to an antique store one day, I have no idea why unless it was for food, we did go see the movie Dark Shadows.  My review... wait until it comes on network TV, yeah, don't even rent it.  If you remember the Dark Shadows from the Soap Opera days, you'll be really disappointed. Why does EVERYBODY think they have to do a vampire movie or write a vampire book?  Good grief don't they know the zombies are coming?

Other than that it's just been the normal high-speed wobble into the last week of school.  Next week that is, and I'm only working 3 days of it, the last one doesn't count because the kids and teachers will be gone!!!!!!!!!!!  Then I'll have two weeks of compressed time (no Fridays) then it's 6 weeks of what the hell am I going to do today?  I'm not really looking forward to it.   I usually travel, but I've got no travel plans.  Maybe I'll pop down to Jody's parents house.

Oh well, I'll think of something.

Nita with Sasha, the one they almost lost the week before.

Have a good week!