Baby Scropion in Closet!!!!

Yesterday when I got the vacuum out of the closet I noticed something on the floor, like a odd shaped piece of wood or something, said to myself I'll pick that up later. Put the vacuum back and still didn't pick it up so this morning while getting the vacuum out again I must have knocked the thing a little closer to the door. When I pushed the closet door closed I could see the think so I bent down and started to pick it up. Then I could have sworn it moved a little I bent down closer and still couldn't tell, and I had my glasses on. So I went and got the magnifying glass and yelled for Dave. I said is this a scorpion and Dave said if you have to use a magnifying glass to tell then it's not a scorpion. I said bull you come look, he told the magnifying glass and sure enough it was a baby scorpion laying on it's back with its little legs moving, it was dieing but it was still moving. Dave stepped on it to put it out of it's misery, but where did it come from and where is mama and papa? I am really not a happy camper now, needless to say I'm getting the inside of the house sprayed again!

Last Thursday we had one heck of a Monsoon, there was so much rain, hail, and the lighting was all around us. I was talking to Kim on the phone and she couldn't believe how loud it was. Dave had to run out to the club house for a meeting and he said it was a river running down the road. It is Monsoon season here so just about every afternoon we have rain, but this was the 1st time is was right above us, very scary.

We have been doing swap meets, garage sales and estate sales this last week and have gotten some great buys. We found a dresser for the spare room, Dave needs to paint it which he is in the middle of doing right now as I write. We found a soda fountain like table set that we will put in the front yard. Dave is going to build a bridge that will take you to it so you don't have to walk through all the rocks. I got some great deals on pots for the kitchen cabinets, and a pretty basket thing for our bedroom. I'll post new pictures.

What is weird here is seeing guns being sold at the swap meets, plus seeing people with guns hanging from their sides. I guess if you walked around with a gun showing no one is going to mess with you.

I was going through picture albums, looking for stuff for David Jr. and ran across Kim's baby book, she was walking when she was 10 months old, so I guess that's where Miss Madison gets it from.

MRI Results Are In

Dave and I both had appointments with the Orthopedic doctor, Dave's knees have been hurting again so he thought he would let the doctor look at his knees too. The only problem is you have to have a different appointment for each knee, the doctor will only look at one knee at a time, you know they have to make their money. Anyway, Dave picked his right knee so they took x-rays of his right knee and also they take a picture of both knees side by side. When the doctor came in he started with Dave, he took one look and said his knees are gone. He needs both whole knee replacements. (They 1/2 knee replacements now, who knew?) The doctor was amazed to hear that Dave and I walk 2 1/2 to 3 miles every morning. He said "on those knees, boy you must have a high pain tolerance" as long as they don't hurt I won't do knee surgery. When you can't stand the pain anymore then we should do surgery.

Then it was my turn for the MRI results. Well it ends up being a torn meniscus, which everyone thought, but I also have a moderate-sized Baker's cyst, which is what my mom had. A Baker's cyst is a condition in which you experience a bulge and a feeling of tightness behind your knee. The pain gets worse when you fully extend your knee or when you're active. Well, we have a problem here, I must stay active, the doctor and the therapist said to keep moving, as long as it doesn't hurt, so that's what I am going to do.

The doctor still said to go to therapy but when the pain is too much we should go in and fix the torn meniscus but that I was also a candidate for a 1/2 knee replacement. What the hell is he talking about I'm too young too even talk about knee replacement, my mind still thinks that I am in my late 20's early 30's, but my body sure isn't agreeing with my mind. Hell, in my younger days, I thought I would never live to be as old as 25, now at 51 could I live to be 70, 80, or 90, I sure don't think so, but the closer you get the more you think about it.

Last Saturday, 7/18, Joaquin showed up to fix my treadmill, well that didn't happen. The parts they had sent us, they were guessing what was wrong, were not the right parts. Now they think it is the counsel, so that is on order now. Darn, I what my treadmill back soooo much. Once the new part shows, that they are shipping us, then again we have to set up an appointment for Joaquin to show up again.

Monday night we went to the Verde Santa Fe board meeting, Dave is going to volunteer for one of the committees. It's another way to meet more people. It's funny, since this town isn't that big, we go places and see people you have seen before, which means we have to start remembering everyone's name. Simi was so big we never had that problem, and with me I have a real problem remembeing names, I just don't listen, that's my problem. People say to repeat the name and then spell it, that helps you to remember, I guess I'll try that. (but 1st I have to try and remember to listen)

The Mexican statue I had sitting on the wall, fell and broke, so I got a bigger one. When Dave was out working out in the garage the other day he heard a crash and realized the wind had knocked over my second Mexican guy. Needless to say if I get another one, which I will, I will need earth quake glue, which I'm sure we won't be able to find in Arizona, or I'm nailing that sucker down.

I mentioned earlier that Dave is working in the garage, boy, is he in 7th heaven. If it wasn't for the heat (98 to 105) he would probably be out there all day. He has so many projects going on right now they all involve the garage. Work bench, cabinets, addition to his table saw, but I have to admit he cleans up everyday so the car can be parked in the garage. In 30 years that has never happened, except maybe Oxnard, cars just were not welcome in Dave's garages.

Happy Belated Birthday to my brother, Mike

61 years young, Happy Birthday, Bro. One Day Late!!

Follow up from the last blog, the farmer's market was just as strange as the last time, it was very hot still at 5pm. The band was setting up and people started setting up their seats to sit and listen to them. They were selling home grown stuff like little heads of lettuce, diff. veg. they also had wood built products, and Tye dye shirts. We stopped at one booth and the lady was spinning wool, which she had gotten from her Alpaca's. As she was talking to another couple we listened in and she said the person that was helping her was her best boy. Well, this best boy had arm pits you could braid the hair, legs were very hairy and when it turned around it was wearing a bra and had boobs. Best Boy???? It(he/she) was covered in tattoos and was wearing the pants down to the knees with the long shirt, you know the guys you see now with that if their shirts weren't long enough their ass crack would be hanging out. Dave decided that with all the girls/ladies that we saw, I now need some tattoo's if I want to fit in here. The guys aren't covered in tats but the females are, so now I need to decide on what I want and how many. (JUST KIDDING)

This weekend I cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed the house and dusted the place. Boy, now I know why I had a maid in Simi. It wasn't bad in the motor home, although I didn't do the bathroom or floors. One thing that is good, after living in the motor home for 3 years you got use to making the bed every time you got up and when you took a shower you wiped down the shower. I decided when we moved back into the house we would keep up the same routine which has really helped with shower/bathroom cleaning.

Sunday we went garage sale browsing again, we found an estate sale and got a paper shredder and file cabinet (government style 2 drawer) for 1 dollar each. Believe it or not they both work, great. Discovered if you go to an estate sale on the last day they will wheel and deal on anything.

Today was the doctor appointment for my knee. They took their own x-rays and this doctor said I do have some arthritis, he believes I have a torn meniscus, like the Bakersfield doctor said, he doesn't think I need surgery yet(and either did the Bakersfield Doctor) He believes I just need physical therapy, which I will be starting. We still are going to do an MRI, our decision, because we are leaving in a month and just want to really check things out. After leaving the doctor's he gave me a prescription for an MRI, which is scheduled for this Friday, and a prescription for physical therapy. The physical therapy place said I couldn't get in until next Monday, but they would call if they had a cancellation.

Dave and I left and went looking at the Polaris Ranger's, off roading vehicles. We drove in the Polaris Ranger 700 together around the place, what fun, then Dave drove the Kawasaki, lower grade, which was very noisy.

The Ranger had the off road stuff we would like to do, plus had a small pick up bed that we could haul stuff in. Pipe dream right now for us, maybe in the future, although they had a six passenger, used 2008, on sale for 8K. Can't really do it right now because we are going to be heading out on the road again, plus just can't afford it right now.

When we were getting ready to leave after looking at the Polaris's I got a call from the Physical Therapist, they could see me now so we went there right away. I was there about 1 1/2 hours going through my evaluation and then was sent home with exercises to do. I now am going to see my new Therapist 3 days a week, starting tomorrow. Chas believes I have a torn meniscus too but not bad enough for surgery yet, so seeing him will hopefully help me get my knee back in shape.

One quick update on Madison, Kim will follow up on her blog but Madison has another tooth coming in, thank goodness Kim isn't breast feeding, the kid is only 1 years old and has 7 teeth.

I have a jigsaw puzzle on my kitchen table now, haven't done one of those for years, boy is it fun and keeps the mind active.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MISS MADISON

1 year old today, finally. It seems like we just had a 1st birthday party for you just a month ago, oh yea, we did. :)

We got back to Arizona yesterday afternoon and decided it was a lot cheaper driving in the car instead of the motor home. We only had to stop for gas once and it cost 40 something dollars vs. the motor home fill up which is 250. We had the car packed with everything and so far we haven't missed anything yet, but then again we have only been back 1 day.

Yavapai Fence Inc. came by this morning and started putting in the post for the new fence. They just dug the holes and cemented them in and will be back tomorrow to finish the job. Tonight at 5pm is Cottonwood's Farmers market and band, will have to go check this out. We went a few years back and strange people showed up and were dancing around, will go a see if they still do the same thing.

My right knee is not getting any better, the swelling just won't go down so I have an appointment with the surgeon next Tuesday. I've got to get this taken care of before we leave on our 3 month trip, don't want to be on the road and needing surgery, that's for sure.

Kim starts back to work tomorrow night, her baby bonding is over, Danny has one more week left. All the girls they had all week go back this afternoon. Kim had to go to CPR class all day so Danny had all the girls all day, he took them to the Wild. That's a place where there are jungle gyms and other things the kids can play on. Kim said she will give a run down on the week in her blog tomorrow.

That's it for now.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADISON

We love you

New Photos and New Update on Mice

To begin with, new photos have been posted. They are of Aimee's wedding, one of Kim's best friends, and all of our grand-daughters plus Danny and Kim's niece's, Karla and Jessica. In other words Madison's cousins. Got to give Kim and Danny credit, they took on 5 niece's plus Madison, which they have to take on! Kim thought it would be a lot of fun to have Danny and Kim's nieces, Karla, Jessica(Danny's sisters kids) Bryauna and Jayden(Jeff's daughters) and Riley(David's step daughter) up for Madison's 1st birthday. 6 girls, maybe having them for 5 days will change Kim's mind about having 4 kids, which she had mentioned in her blog. There are pictures too of all the girls swimming in the pool at the RV Park that we, Dave and I, stay at.

There are also pictures of the fruit place we went to today where we got a hay ride and you got to pick your own fruit. All the kids got to go to the petting zoo after we had lunch that Kim had made for everyone. I'm very impressed, Kim is really handling everything very well, I still hope she changes her mind about having 4 kids tho.

Let me back track, since we have gotten back to Bakersfield on 7/1. After setting up the mouse traps, the smart little thing had managed to get the cheese out and not set off the trap. We stopped and bought a couple different mouse traps. These were a little bit bigger and round, you are suppose to put peanut butter in the middle of the trap and the mouse has to climb inside to get it and that's when they are caught. The top of the trap says, set, not set, and caught, well when we got up Sunday morning the trap said "caught" and when Dave picked it up he said it was heavier then when he put it in. You can't see inside the trap you are only suppose to through the whole thing away, which we did. So, the other traps we had set we changed from cheese to peanut butter, and the next morning we had another mouse. Hopefully, we only had 2 because nothing else has been touch or seen around the coach since catching the 2nd mouse.

There is one picture of Bill and Karen, Dave had grown up with Bill and they haven't seen each other for 40 years. We met up with them in Pismo Beach and had lunch at one of my Mom and Dad's favorite places "Fat Cats". We visited with them for a few hours then headed back to Bakersfield.

I mentioned in the last blog that we had over heating problems driving down. We took the coach today to Cummins and it ends up we have a leak where the pipe & hoses connect to the radiator, so we need a new radiator, luckily we have an extended warranty, not through Monico but another company, and it is covered, thank goodness. The bad news is the new radiator won't show up until Friday, maybe, and Cummins still needs 3 to 4 days to install. We leave Bakersfield on this Wednesday for Arizona so Cummins said they will just store the RV on their lot, no problem. My biggest fear is leaving something in the RV that a week down the line we might need. Before if we had forgotten something we just went up to 1000 Trails to retrieve it, but with the RV in Bakersfield we just can't make a quick run to get something. Needless to say our car will really be packed when we drive back to Arizona.

Another problem is, which Dave reminded me of, when we come back in August to pick up the RV is when we leave for our travels for 3 months. We will be going to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, North and South Dakota. We need summer clothes and for the Dakota's we need winter clothes, remember we are doing the Sugar Beet Harvest. He didn't need to remind me of that, I am now already stressed.

Back in Bakersfield

We got back to Bakersfield this afternoon, and when we got here there was 100 degree temperature awaiting us, ung!! It was getting close to 100 degrees in Cornville but it just has a different feel to it, like at night it goes down in the 70's but not here in Bakersfield. 8:30pm and it's 97 degrees now.

We went by Kim and Danny's after arriving and visited with Miss Madison and Danny, Kim was with one of her girlfriends chatting. We then went over for dinner tonight, Danny BBQ'd hamburgers, grilled zucchini and asparagus and also grilled onions, excellent dinner Danny, thank you.

Let's see, since picking up the RV from 1000 Trails, on Tuesday, and loading it up and getting on the road you just know we had to have some mishaps. If you looked through my last set of pictures, I posted. you saw the rattle snake that was near our coach, now we know what he was after, a MOUSE. Yes when loading the RV and before we got going I asked Dave where the sunflower seeds where and he said in the bottom drawer in the front on the RV right between the driver and passenger seat. As we were leaving I opened the drawer and saw sunflower seeds everywhere, or I should say it was just the outside shell. I thought maybe the seeds had spilled but Dave said "oh sh_t" we have had a mouse in here. Sure enough the little rodent had eaten through the plastic bag and after eating that many seeds he left his little turds everywhere. Once we had a fuel stop we cleaned out the drawer, trashed what was left of the seeds away and thought OK he/she are gone now.

On leaving Cornville, by 11am, we had planned for no later then noon, so 1 hour ahead of time which was great. It was rather warm when we left and we started having trouble with over heating, we have never had this problem before, we turned off the air and put the generator on to run the air conditioner and just drove in lower gears and slower. When we stopped for fuel, Dave ended up putting 2 things of coolant in so he thought maybe we have a leak and would check when we got back to Bakersfield. Good thing we got going a littler earlier because when we stopped in Needles, at the Elks, we were still in time for dinner. By the way the temperature in Needles was 114 degrees, so needless to say we sweated all night long, so not a good nights sleep.

Before I forget, we learned something new when storing the RV, besides trying to find all the places a mouse can get into and blocking them, you must also dump the black tank. We had full hook-up at 1000 Trails but no one was there to flush the toilet, run water or anything so everything just sat. Needless to say as I was driving down the road and Dave went in back to use the bathroom that just set the smell off, I guess. I'm yelling what the hell is the smell and he said it was because the tank hadn't been dumped. Another lesson learned, when we get back on the 8th we are actually going to put the RV in dry storage, so we will be dumping everything!!

After leaving Needles we stopped in Barstow to fuel up again, and when we opened that bottom drawer again to get the key for the fuel door, we had noticed our little friend was still with us. This time the little mouse had gotten the life savers out, I didn't move those because they hadn't been touched before only the sunflower seeds, I thought those were safe, wrong. This afternoon we went to Wal-mart and got mouse traps. Dave put 2 in the front drawer and put one in the bedroom bottom drawer, just in case. Then he decided to put one in the bottom drawer in the bathroom, when he opened and took out that drawer the little bastard (or bitch) had started building a nest out of the carpet he/she scraped with their nails. Dave vacuumed it out and set up a trap, tomorrow morning we will check the spots and see if we have caught our little friend.

One more thing on the coach that I believe I forgot to mention, I know it's old age I just can't remember all the mishaps that happen to us, especially when it happens on the road. The last trip to Cornville, 5/31, the driver's sun shade came down but we couldn't get it back up. We were going to be driving into the sun when leaving Needles the next morning so Dave, he is so smart but I came up with the suggestion, he turned the passengers sun shade backwards and hooked it up to the drivers side, after we took the broken one down. It looks pretty weird but works, the passengers side didn't have any protection from the sun but the drivers need is more important. Someday will have to get that fixed, Dave tried working on the shade at home but couldn't get it to work.

After seeing Miss Madison she is walking so much better but still needs help, the girl is on constant go, busy busy busy. She has 2 more teeth coming in, the ones on each side of the front teeth. Eye teeth I believe they are called, 6 teeth before 1 year of age, I think that's good, been to long for me to remember. I am taking pictures and will post them when I get a few more. Kim and Danny are doing great and the house looks really good too. They got rid of the glass top tables and have some nice new tables, plus, a new 50 inch TV. They sold the old TV and tables through Craig's List.