My husband and I got to go away for the weekend. It wasn't actually a vacation. He was making money and I was spending it! He referees high school wrestling and had a two day tournament about an hour's drive from our house. Another half hour drive beyond that is an outlet mall. Sooooo.... we took the camper and while he was working.... guess what I was doing!

I got my son's birthday gifts and I got a few things for myself. This time of year there are some good clearance sales. Unfortunately a lot of the stores there are empty. I don't know why. It always seems very busy there. It is right on the way from southern California to Las Vegas. The road is heavily traveled. I guess people just aren't buying like they used to.

Then, on Sunday my husband and I took a leisurely drive to the beach to celebrate our anniversary. We walked along where fishing boats and private boats are moored. We took a short cruise tour of the Los Angeles harbor. We ate at a restaurant that overlooked the harbor. It really was nice.
Every time we do something like that we say, "We need to do this more often," and we don't. Why is that?

Oh dear. I have been working on getting back into some kind of physical shape. I was going to say I was working on getting back into shape, but the shape that I used to have is forever lost in that mysterious place called "youth." My poor lungs aren't keeping up with the rest of me. I think they shriveled up. I get a mild case of asthma when I try to get my heart rate up. I'm going to keep working out, though. I want to be able to hike and ride my bike whenever we get a chance to go on vacation. Oh, yes, and there is another not-so-minor thing I want to accomplish. I want to be able to fit back into my pants!! They seem to have shrunk, so I need to shrink, too, to be able to wear them. LOL!!!

I did it! I did it! I caught up on my email! Well, at least, up until yesterday. I still have some to answer, but I have read them all!!!

My husband had another tournament to referee (high school wrestling) on Saturday and I decided to go with him. I had six hours of uninterrupted time.... finished reading over 300 pieces of mail. I had already weeded out the junk mail... so I mean I READ them all!

I have a bunch for those of you that are on my mailing list. No, don't worry... I will post them in the archive list and you can go read them at your leisure. I think there are a couple that I will mail, but the rest you can read later.

I was supposed to go to visit my mom last Monday and Tuesday and the wind started blowing really hard. I just wasn't in the mood to wrestle with them. I drive a large pickup with a large camper. It does really well in high winds, but it is difficult. I am not fond of driving the freeways anyway, so I postponed my visit to this week.

Then, yesterday morning, I woke up with an awful sore throat. It got worse and worse all day long. This morning my sinuses are going berserk, too. So, I had to postpone my visit once again. My mom doesn't need my germs. Her immune system isn't so great and I would feel awful if I made her sick.

So, I will sit here a while this morning and work on my Clarion stuff.

At least my cold isn't hanging on as long as the one I had in December! I am about 85% over it and it has "only" been a week.

 I tried to take it easy so I got a lot of work done at the Clarion Call. I've been designing a lot of my own graphics and came up with some good ones.

I enjoy making the graphics. I have found pictures of eagles on the Internet and have transformed them into my own backgrounds and clipart. It takes a long time and sometimes I get totally frustrated.... especially when I have hours invested in unsaved pictures and my graphics program freezes up!

I'm still staying caught up on my email. Well, pretty caught up. Sometimes I let a day or two go by and just read the most important ones, but I am NOT going to allow myself to get so far behind again. (I hope.)

I found an interesting thing that had happened in our back yard. We have an ash tree that is a nice shade tree for our summer heat. My husband and I often would go sit out under the tree in the heat of the afternoon in the summer. Well, our tree was splitting right down the middle of the trunk.

So, Sunday afternoon my husband and I got to play "chop up the tree." There is still another day's worth of work to be done, but we got a bunch of it all chipped, chopped, and gone. My poor hands are sore from breaking and cutting small branches apart. I'm surprised the rest of me doesn't hurt more.

We are providing ourselves with a lifetime supply of firewood. We've lost quite a few large trees over the years from wind, fire, and rain. Each time we lose a tree we gain firewood! We recently made an investment in a fireplace insert. It is more efficient in providing heat than the fireplace was. We figured since our firewood was free (cost-free, certainly not labor-free) we might as well cut down on our heating bill and make the fireplace work for us.

This spring my husband and his friend are going to build an RV cover over a slab in our back yard and the height of it will provide us with some of the afternoon/evening shade we will lose due to the tree being gone. However, we still need to find a way to provide some morning and noon shade in our yard.

We used to have an old motor home that sat in the back yard. We sold it and bought the camper for my truck. Since I drive my truck all the time with the camper on it we will have extra room in the RV barn for our gardening tools and my husband's tools. We do have an old ski boat that will benefit from being covered. We've had to redo the upholstery once because of the abuse it takes sitting in the sun. We put tarps over it, but they aren't weather proof.

I didn't like the idea of an ugly building in the back yard, so we are going to decorate the front side of it to look like a western town. If we have to have a large thing in the back yard it might as well be an entertaining-looking large thing. Right?

I went shopping yesterday morning. My husband bought me a miniature rose for Valentine's Day and I needed to find a pot for it. He has bought me miniature roses in the past and I've planted them all outside. I think I'm going to try to keep this one happy in a windowsill. I was working on this yesterday but abandoned it to go shopping. I'm glad I did. Today would have been a bad day to do it because it is pouring down rain. It is supposed to rain for a couple of days.

I found the cutest thing when I bought the pot for the rose. It's a little statue of a Springer Spaniel puppy (I used to have Springers) with a lantern in its mouth. It has a sound and motion detector that makes it bark and the light comes on. I put it on my front porch. The funny thing is that it doesn't work when it is too dark. Go figure. Why put a lantern in its mouth if it doesn't work in the dark? Sheesh!

I bought one other thing that wasn't on my list. It's a metal sign that says, "On this site in 1897 nothing happened." I picked it up, laughed, and put it back down. I picked it up and put it down about three more times. Usually, when I've picked something up for the third or fourth time I buy it.

I really enjoy silly things like that. I need to figure out a good place for it. Perhaps I will have my husband build a signpost for it. He'll love to hear I have one more thing for him to do!! LOL!