Oh Rats

I turned 53 and now there is nothing to blog about :) Here are the highlights of my week.

In all of my efforts to eat like a mouse (okay not exactly like a mouse, but at least low fat, low sugar, low sodium) along with exercising, my "bottom line" :) has not budged. Rats. One theory is that my body is trying to function on hormonal imbalance and holding on to fat cells in an effort to produce estrogen. So, I am going to start taking an herbal supplement to try to "balance the imbalance". I'll let you know how that goes. (this is one of those mid life - "50 something" things)

On Monday evening Ron and I attended another health care town hall meeting. Boy, there are alot of angry Americans out there. And no wonder- all of those big government rats are doing things like trying to mess up health care, giving big bucks to corruption, wasting lots of money, and turning off vital water in CA. (so I will admit we don't really know the "fish" side of the water story, but the "farmer" side of the water story is absolutely unbelievable. All I can say is that there better be a really really good reason for the "fish" side- which I personally don't think is possible)

Along with struggling to keep a small business afloat amidst economic crisis- one of the challenges I have had at the store is something called PCI Compliance. (Basically this is meant to be sure that all credit card information I take is secure. Which is a good thing, it's just that the steps to compliance are like jumping through hoops! And many of those hoops apply more to big business than to small business) My deadline for completing that was about 6 months ago. Rats. I'm finally almost there.

Now that you have heard my first three "rats" stories- here is my real rat story. We have rats running around the yard at home and there are rats running around in the attic at the store. Ron is trying to trap the ones at home and an exterminator is trying to trap the ones at the store. So far the results are sprung traps, but no rats. Ron tried peanut butter as bait first, then last night he tried taco meat. He said, maybe they are Mexican rats :) I don't really think the taco meat is going to work either.

Other than rats...life is good :)

BDay Flowers

BDay flowers from GG.

She also went grocery shopping on Monday and cooked great food for dinner last night. Roast beef, carrots, squash, spinach salad, shrimp cocktail, corn on the cobb, and dessert.

Thank you very much.

Quality Time

At Port Aransas, Texas.

The Tarpon Inn.

The Beach.

The Sunset.

The Sunrise.

Cheerios on the porch.

Beautiful boats and clouds.

Another BDay

This one is for Dr. Simms!

ROCKS....

And BOYS....

And a RED HAIRED GIRL!

Happy Birthday. You are amazing.

And it was smart to not give your MIL any embarrassing childhood pictures :)

Town Hall Meeting

Being the rebellious, rabblerouser that I am (yeah right? :) - I decided to go to a town hall meeting this morning. I went to the health care town hall meeting by congressman Michael McCaul today. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. There was a good number of people there, but not overwhelming. Most of them were conservative republicans- so not much contention amongst the crowd. Mr. McCaul was very respectful of every one- even the people who disagreed with his opinion. Definitely no buses of trouble makers showed up, not all that many people carrying signs (but a few- most of them pretty humorous), no expensive food flown in, no crowd "set up"- just average people from Katy, Texas. I won't give all of the details of what was discussed, but I do want to give you my over all impression. I came away knowing why we like Texas and why we are going to stay. Texas has many good things going for it- one of those being a large population of conservative, religious, down to earth, patriotic Americans. If the health care bill passes, I am hoping that Texas will say they have had enough and become the Republic of Texas! It could stand on it's own and we are staying. (Sorry if that sounds extreme , but alot of things are getting extreme).

That's all I have to say about that :)

From the Houston Nuts...

who spend date nights canning peanut butter :)...we are going to go wander around Texas for a couple of days. Okay, so I will fess up, I have a birthday on Tuesday. One of those "50 something" ones. So when Ron asked me what I wanted for my birthday- at first I said "nothing". Then we came up with a little (dream building) trip. We will put the cooler in the car and take off after church on Sunday. The first stop is the Tarpon Inn, Port Aransas, Texas. When I told Ron I wanted to go stay in a historic hotel, I'm not sure if he was cringing about the last old hotel we stayed in or about the cost of this one. Anyway after a long silence he said, "Okay, it's your birthday". Go to http://www.thetarponinn.com/ - we have room number 29. The only glimmer of hope here that it's good, is the fact that they only had one room left on Sunday evening. She couldn't even hold me to the "two night" rule on weekends. She only had one room on Friday night and one room on Sunday night left. Hopefully Sunday evening, after we check in, we will go have a picnic on the beach. Otherwise, if the weather is bad we might just be driving around in the car or sitting in an expensive room with no TV or computer. On Monday morning we are going to go look at the Southern Living Idea House at Cinnamon Shore just west of Port Aransas. Go to http://www.southernlivingideahouse.com/ . I already have an idea of what kind of house I want to build at Bandera. Now my task is to convince Ron that he wants, what I want :) :) We will also be looking for a place to dock the house boat. Wait a minute...did I say house boat? Okay, so we don't actually have one yet, but it's on Ron's wish list. Then we will drive to Bandera to look at our river front- oh I mean river bed property. Since Texas is still in the worst draught ever- no chance of water there. (We have been wondering what the drive is like from Corpus Christie to Bandera.) I did manage to get us a free room in San Antonio for Monday night. One of those credit card rewards certificates- that is only good at obscure places at obscure times. (Never where and when you really want to stay) On Tuesday morning I'm hoping we can stop at another development just southwest of Katy and look at some more model homes. But if we are running late, we'll have to skip that- I need to be back at the store by 11:00 am. It should be a fun trip. It's always fun to hop in Ron's car and take off. But Annie, I am thinking this "quality time" thing, takes alot of time and money:) Actually, we shouldn't spend too much money other than the Sunday night room- I decided I can easily do cheap food, but not cheap sleep. I also told Ron that he can garnish my allowance if he needs extra money :) Besides- it's my birthday. (although that's a pretty crumby excuse )

Thanks to Sam...

all of the dust bunnies are gone. After Ron read Sam's comment, he assumed it was his job to clean up. When I got home today it was all done. I'm just glad I didn't have to watch. Some how he put the vacuum cleaner over the railing and then climbed over himself and just vacuumed it all up. All GG said was, "I'm glad we didn't come home and find you on the floor." (Remember that landing in on the second floor :) So the real thanks goes to Ron. Thank you very much.