7ToF: The how the heck did it get to be Labor Day end of Summer Update

1. I've been to South Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Indiana, Idaho, Washington, and Texas this summer, and I still have one more trip (to Alaska!) scheduled. Lots of traveling, and all of it was fun. But traveling that much always makes the summer seem like it goes by in a flash. Huh. It's already Labor Day Weekend. How the heck did that happen?

2. I know it's boring to discuss the weather, but seriously-- our weather has generated front page headlines all summer. It's been hot and dry, and then hotter and drier, in record breaking ways. We had the least amount of rainfall ever for June-July-August. And you could tell, because the forest fires started weeks ago. The smoke was so bad here a couple of times that we weren't supposed to go outside, and of course for me, like any good migraineur, that means feeling rotten. Ugh. The gorgeous warm, dry weather in June and July almost wasn't worth it. But the good news is that we've had pretty good rain two days out of the last three, so things are getting better.

3. OK, done with the weather report. Several much loved friends and family members have been dealing with serious health issues recently. So here is the obvious: it is impossible to be grateful enough for good health. It's such a crapshoot. I could be in a car accident tomorrow and not be able to walk for the rest of my life (or worse). Or one of the kids (speaking of worse). We're so lucky. I've been thinking about this a lot, there may be a future post on this topic.

4. Jazz, our elderly mutt, continues to deteriorate, but she is amazingly cheerful. She sort of wanders around in her own private sensory deprivation tank, pretty much oblivious to everything except food. At some point over the summer, she stopped going on walks with us--which she could only barely do before. But she's still hanging in there.

5. People ask me fairly frequently if it's difficult to raise chickens. I always say, no, it's easier than any other kind of pet we've owned, as long as nothing goes wrong. You feed and water them every day, clean their coop once a month or so, collect the eggs. Easy. Until one of them gets sick, and then who knows what you're supposed to do? If we had a big flock or a money making venture, it would be worth it to track down a poultry vet, but for our tiny group, it's just not worth it. We had one come down with some kind of dread disease about ten days ago, and in a week she was gone. I have no idea what she had or if there's anything we could have done about it. So we're down to seven again. Still getting lots of eggs, which is both good and bad.

6. Summer Reading Report: I'll spare you the stack of books I read that weren't worth the time and recommend The Martian (especially for science geeks) and One Plus One, JoJo Moyes' latest. Also, just so you know, if you share a Kindle account with family members, apparently you also share a Goodreads account. A couple of books that Dean read and I didn't have showed up in my Goodreads feed. I'm obsessive enough that I had to ask him to stop doing the Goodreads rating that pops up automatically when you finish a book. It's a wonder he puts up with me.

7. We got a new washing machine. Our old one was only about five years old, but it was becoming increasingly temperamental until finally it just refused to function (less than a month after we'd spent about $135 getting it repaired, the same repair it had needed twice before). The next step was replacing the motherboard, which would cost about half as much as a new machine and I'd still have a machine I never really liked and would have been happy to donate to Mythbusters so they could blow it up. Maybe a sparkler bomb or something.

Anyway. After spending a couple of days researching washing machines online, I came to the realization that there is no perfect machine. All of them had prominent negative reviews. So I just picked the highest rated top-load that was in our price range and went with it. Turns out I love it. At least so far. Who knows about long-term. It is a vast improvement over our old one.

Made it through seven things! Since I haven't really written a blog post in six-ish weeks, it was kind of hard to get this one written. It occurred to me for the millionth time that maybe I should just quit doing this--I guess I had a little too much time to think about blogging. It's an odd thing to do, and in the grand scheme of things it's hard to believe that a small blog like this matters. But between what's in my head and what's sitting in my drafts folder, I do have a pile of half-written posts. So I will slog on. I guess it matters to me. I had to force myself to do this one, maybe the next one will be more interesting. Happy holiday weekend if you're here in the states, and if you're elsewhere, have a great weekend, too.