Loose Ends

Just popping in to say we're still alive!  It seems that this blog has been neglected lately, but no fear ... it's not going away.  Now that my Mom is doing better and our daughter is in her new house we should now have lots of free time for the boat, right?  Well, not so fast.

While we're getting close to focusing on the boat, we're still busy tying up loose ends.  Last week I spent a couple of days helping our daughter landscape her new house.  It came out great, and I was able to re-visit a passion of mine ,.. working in the dirt.  I love gardening and taught myself a lot over the years about plants ... perennials, annuals, native plants of Louisiana, shade lovers and sun lovers. When we had a house on the bayou, I spent many years creating our backyard into a tropical oasis.

Our daughter's house now looks like a home, and it was quality time with her ... we worked our butts off in the 100+ degree sun and sweated what seemed like gallons.  For this "almost 50" year old, it was great exercise.  Hopefully it was a good start to a quick shape-up before our trip to the Dominican Republic soon!  If only it were that easy.

Here's a couple of pictures from our house, but not much color the time of year that I took these.  No pics of our daughter's house or the landscaping yet ... gotta wait till she's shared her house first.

Although the kids are moved in their house, Ken's not quite done with their house yet.  In his spare time from work, he's still gotta help build a fence and do a few touch-ups.  He also stopped by the house last week in between jobs with his helper to give my daughter and I a hand with the landscaping and moving a ton of dirt ... whew!

I've also been busy with my own job, but unfortunately not for money ... but hopefully good karma.  A fellow real estate agent went to Mexico for a week and I offered to cover for her while she was gone.  Um .. let's just say I had no idea how busy I'd be last week while also committed to landscaping.  Maybe I'll get real busy just before I go on vacation?  I can hope.

Oh, and of course it's about that time again for a vacant rental.  We had finally found some great tenants for one of our houses last year, but when the lease was up we lost him to the "big city".  His girlfriend wanted to move back to New Orleans.  So, I'm now advertising again and we had a couple of interviews over the weekend.  Don't ya just love it when you get stood up?  Anyway, the good news is that our former tenant left the house in pretty good shape.  We'll be spending time on the house this month, but it's not near as bad as we've experienced in the past and we're thankful for that!

Needless to say, we're not gonna have the boat outta the yard this month.  To be honest, Ken's dreading starting such a project this time of year when the heat index is around 108 degrees.  I'm not a slave driver and I do love my guy, so I'm feeling pretty bad for him.  Yeah, I'll be there in the boatyard to help any way I can, but the responsibility is on him.  He's the one with the knowledge.  Knowledge ... that's another thing.  While he knows how to do a lot of things, boat work is always something new .. and therefore stressful.  I've told Ken that we can wait till cooler weather if he wants.  We've waited this long, so what's a few months?   He's reluctant to put things off, so we'll see what happens.  This is a marathon, not a sprint.

I'm sooo ready for the Dominican Republic ... the beach, waterfalls, a motorcycle ride, the people, and some pina coladas at the resort!

Hasta luego ... until then.  Mid-Life Cruising!