Juneteenth - June 20, 2025

Since yesterday was a holiday, The Husband was home, making it feel more like a weekend than a Thursday.  (I don't know how I'm going to keep up with what day of the week it is when he retires.)  

Around lunchtime, as I was reading in my recliner and he was surfing the internet, I heard him say, "Uh-oh...."  

I looked up.  "What?"

"The garden center is having a 50% off sale."

Ten minutes later, I was on my way.  There were things I legitimately needed - purple hull pea seeds and marigolds.  We need to re-plant the peas.  Of the six or seven rows of peas I planted, less than half came up.  Chalk it up to all the rain we've had; except for scattered days, the garden has been standing in water for weeks.  The marigolds were for a vegetable garden experiment, to see if they really do deter squash bugs.

I also needed to go to the grocery store, a chore I'd been putting off for days.

At the garden center, I remembered the peas but forgot about the marigolds.  Somehow, I wound up with lantana, instead.

(Intermission:  I'm sitting here watching a hawk try to catch a squirrel in the back yard.  The squirrel hunkered down in a little thicket of trees, where the hawk didn't have room to maneuver.  When the hawk flew out of my line of vision for a minute, the squirrel made a run for it, and the hawk suddenly swooped back in and tried to catch it, but missed.  Now, there are TWO hawks sitting on limbs above the battlefield.  I'm rooting for the squirrel.)

Anyway . . . . 

I went to the grocery store when I left the garden center.  I needed some ingredients for a cake and some baked beans, both of which I'm supposed to take to a family reunion tomorrow.

I forgot the beans.

Which means I must get dressed and go back to the grocery store today.  <groan>

An out-of-town relative, Cousin David, is spending the night at our house tonight.  I heard the news flash just this morning, as The Husband was leaving for work.  I happen to know that this dude routinely stays up until the wee hours of the morning and then sleeps past noon.  I said to The Husband, "Tell him he'll have to go to bed tonight like normal folks and get his ass up for the reunion."  

This reminds me of the last time one of The Husband's relatives spent the night here.  It was after a wedding, at least 20 years ago.  We'd invited some of the family to our house for a post-wedding drink.  Uncle Donald, who lived only a few miles away, got plastered, and we offered him a bed for the night.  The next morning, as usual, I got up early and started cooking breakfast.  The spare bedroom is back-to-back with the kitchen, and the rattling of pots and pans woke Donald.  He came staggering out of the bedroom, holding his head, mumbling, "It's too loud.  I gotta get out of here," and out the front door he went.

I think I know just how to get Cousin David moving tomorrow morning.  ;)