A New Year

My first blog post of the new year - January is always tough because you have to remember a new month and a new year at the same time, no small feat, particularly when you are not working - the days and months just seem to flow into one another.

The weather continues to be a major player everywhere in the country I think. We have received a lot of snow pictures from up north and reports of the bitter cold. I do not miss being in the middle of that, and I do have much sympathy for those who are. There just has to be a break coming sometime soon, doesn’t there? The cold weather further north continues to impact our weather here as well – those who have been coming here for 20 years say they cannot remember a winter as cool and wet as this one. Sunny south Texas has not been seeing the sun very much. The end of this week could bring record lows for us!

In the meantime, we get glorious days from time to time. The park comes alive on those days, with everyone out enjoying various activities. Curt went golfing (a foursome) on one of those days last week, and they are planning another today. I washed sheets and hung them on my little clothesline that day. Because our clothesline is in back, facing north, it doesn’t get much breeze or sun and the sheets had to be sort of bunched up, so it took all day for the sheets to dry, but it was so nice to have fresh from the outdoors sheets that night! Gee, simple things make me happy, huh?

Curt has been watching as many of the bowl games as possible. We watched the Husker game with our Iowa friends – not quite the same as watching with other Husker fans, but the Big Red made us proud! Iowa State better watch out next year!

New Year’s eve there was a dance at the hall, but we opted to stay home that evening. The card players in the hall had an unpleasant surprise that night – a bullet came through the roof and brought insulation and all raining down close to where people were sitting. Along with the fireworks which kept us awake for quite some time, people shoot guns in the air (even though all day the police had been warning people not to do so) and evidently one of those came through the roof. Kind of scary because it definitely could have injured someone. It was a rifle bullet by reports from those present. The police came, but I am not sure what they can do.

We have made several trips to the farmers’ and flea market at Donna. We got pecans, fruit and vegetables and a few other items. I took a photo of my fruit and veggie haul when I unpacked it - can anybody tell me an approximate cost for this pile at home? Just curious if we made a buy. We spent $9.50 on a seedless watermelon, cleaned and cored pineapple, green pepper, 5 baking potatoes, basket of grape tomatoes, a cucumber,a bag of radishes, four oranges, bag of four sweet onions. I have a lot of pictures, so perhaps will split into two posts. I did find the picture of the step building so I will include it in this post.