Dog Joy Cookies

I found these "take and bake" cookies for dogs.  They were peanut butter and oatmeal flavored and baked in 8-12 minutes.  My dogs LOVED them.  It is making me want to try making my own from scratch.  If anyone has any recipes they would like to share, I would love to try them.

Orange Crush Daylilly

They are finally in bloom.

Home Ownership

Sometimes the tests that come with home ownership can make you want to become a renter again.  This past Friday, hubby and I came home about 5pm to find our air conditioner had gone out.  In fact, it had completely frozen up.  Being that it is 5pm and on a Friday, getting someone out was a little tricky.  We do have a home warranty, but they couldn't get anyone out until maybe Sunday.  We have a company that did our annual maintenance on the a/c just 2 weeks before, so I called them.  They were able to come out on Saturday and we discovered our blower motor was dead.    It was finally replaced on Monday, but it was a really long weekend with no a/c.  The highest it got in the house was 90 and we were able to muscle through by opening windows and using lots of fans.  But when things like that happen, I sometimes miss being able to pick up the phone and have the landlord deal with the issue. 

Then I think about my garden and the great neighbors I have and I am glad I have my house.  Pros and cons, I suppose.

Garden Goodies

Today I picked my first cherry tomatoes and my first jalapeño peppers from this years garden.

Day 3 with Chigger Bites

Well, today is definitely better than the last 2 days.  I no longer want to scratch my skin off on a constant basis, the new bite marks have stopped forming, and we were both able to sleep most of the night.  Through trial and error, we did find some things that have worked for us;  solarcaine, ice packs, epsom salt baths, and benadryl.  I have read so much stuff online and from what I have found, there is basically no remedy that works for everyone.  Remedies that one person swears by, another person says did not work for them at all. So we have just been doing a combination of things to get relief.  I don't know how I have lived in Texas all my life and never gotten these pesky little bugs before, but I certainly hope I never get them again.  I think even poison ivy was less irritating.  I must say though, this has not really stopped us from geocaching.  We have still managed to go out each day to grab a cache, we just pick those that are in a more urban setting.

Chigger Bites Suck

Hubby and I were geocaching Thursday and apparently picked up the lively creatures then.  We had no idea at the  time, but Friday morning I woke up with tons of bug bites, most of them in a private area.  A little bit later, hubby woke up and realized he had them too, but mostly on his legs.   We each have about 50 bites.  It took us a trip to the doctor and lots of Internet research to figure out what we had. 

We searched high and low for the best remedy and opted fur Chiggerid.  We found this does not work well for guys with hairy legs.  For me, it felt good initially, but the itching came back really quick.  Plus, that crap is hard to get off of you.  So far, we found that hot showers, rubbing alcohol, and Benadryl work the best.

Flash Mobs

This weekend, hubby and I attended two Flash Mobs for "May the Fourth Be With You".  It was a lot of fun.  The first one you had to take a bendable alien figure and pose the figure.  Then you had to pose in the same position, with your bendy and have your photo taken.  The second one we had to show up with our Star Wars garb and "fight" with each other for a brief time.  We had a lot of fun.  The look on people's faces, especially at the Star Wars event, was the best.

Crazy Texas Weather

Today our high temperature has already come and gone.  It was 65 when I go up this morning at about 6am and according to the weather service, our high today is supposed to only be 57.  We are actually expected to reach record low temperatures tonight.  Last year at this time, we were already pushing triple digit temps.  I actually love the cooler temperatures and hope this means we are in for a mild summer. When we start counting the number of days we stayed in the triple digit range, that is way too hot for me.