I bought one book at Target and felt like a big spender. Then Wizard went to Barnes and Noble and bought three books. He beat me, LOL. He’s been reading a ton this summer because the heat is keeping him inside. For me, these last couple weeks of August are super busy.

Anyway, that single book I bought is MAGIC HOUR by Kirstin Hannah. I’m only about 30 pages in, but it looks interesting so far. I think I’ll like this book. And I finished listening to EVERY SUMMER AFTER. It was an okay romance, but it had a infidelity plot line that didn’t work for me. That’s a personal taste thing, I guess.

What are you reading and/or listening to?

This one is easy to roundup my weekend — cleaning. Not exciting at all, but good to get done.

One bright spot — I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies (gluten and dairy-free) for Youngest. Then later that day Youngest tried to shake me down with a text: “Send my $75.00 for a picture of Cigi”

I replied, “Are you visiting her?

His reply was a rude demand. “Now it’s $80.00” I was being shaken down by my own son for a picture of my granddaughter. Can you believe the nerve?

But I had an answer for the amateur blackmailer. “I baked you cookies.”

He sent the picture. I mean seriously, where does he think he learned to do these shakedowns?

And this is the kind of text shenanigans that go on in our family text chain, or in separate texts, all the time.  Last week, oldest was taunting me with a picture of me making a crazy weird face at Cigi. I really should change my phone number.

How was your weekend?

TGIF! Time to share five random things about our week. Here’s mine:

1. I wasn’t impressed with the peach picante pork chops. I need to find a better recipe with a peach glaze, I think.
2. I’ve cut my walking this week due to my legs aching. It’s really annoying to work so hard to reach goals, then have factors beyond my control get in my way. Could be anything causing it, but the usual suspect is my RA flaring up. And in good news, I can lift weights fine still. It’s my legs that are whining. I think reducing the walking for a few days will help that. Also my idea of resting my legs is to reduce my walk to half a mile or so, and THEN spend hours vacuuming and washing floors
3. I finally was able to connect on the phone with a friend — we’ve been trying to connect for two weeks, LOL! That called led to a plan for lunch in two more weeks time. It’s pretty funny that we’re both retired and can’t get our schedules to align! Family, grandkids, some health stuff is keeping us busy. But the great thing about friends is we understand and work around these days.
4. Yesterday we went to see Cigi. I love that she wants me to hold her right after I get there. She played for hours with both me and Wizard. She’s cruising around furniture and speed crawling all over. But while doing all that, she’ll just randomly come up and hug one of us — baby/toddler hugs are the best! Here’s a pic wherein Cigi gives us her stamp of approval on our new car.
5. This weekend is up in the air. I believe two of Wizard’s sisters have his Mom covered, but we will make ourselves available if we’re needed. I have a list of things I’d like to do like check out clearance on outdoor furniture for my deck, and some cleaning that I haven’t gotten to yet, but we’ll see what the weekend brings. I’ll always skip cleaning for better offers!

That’s my five, now I’d love to hear yours! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Um…what reading? I’ve been too tired at night, although last night I did read for about an hour. It’s still the Simi book by Sherilyn Kenyon. It’s slower and mostly what I would consider backstory of the characters in the original Dark Hunter Series. It’s not bad, just not what I was expecting. It is good for my distracted state, meaning it’s easy to put it down, then pick it back up whenever I feel like reading.

I also started an audio book “Every Summer After” by Carly Fortune. It’s not really catching my interest yet, but that’s probably me. Lots on my mind and all that. We are still worried about my MIL’s living situation but it’s a fluid and complicated situation — which is probably a good description of life in general

Wizard and I are planning a trip to the bookstore soon, in the meantime I have 3 nonfiction books in my Amazon cart that I’m thinking about. Lately, I’ve been on a bad judgement streak on books and movies, LOL!

In other news, I am excited to try an easy slow cooker recipe for Peach Pork Picante using boneless pork chops this week. I’m not big on pork, but these sounded good. Hopefully I’ll be able to update you on Friday.

Also, I’m thinking about those Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins Silver posted on her blog yesterday. Click on the link if you’d like to see. Such an easy version of muffins! I can can make and eat them with regular cake mix, but if I make them for youngest, I’d probably try to convert my gluten free cake batter to work with the pumpkin puree…hmm…it might work if I make the dry ingredients. Not sure it’d have the same rise and texture though. I must ponder this

What are you guys reading?

Happy Monday! Time is flying over here. Sheesh, I can barely keep up.

Friday, I had a really nice lunch with Biker Witch. It was great to see her. We only did lunch and not shopping because it was blazing hot, and she had some appointments to handle. But the lunch was so good!

Saturday, we went out to see CiGi. Oldest son came over too and made the mistake of taking CiGi from me. She cried Okay she’s not really that much a grandma’s girl, she was just overwhelmed at first by Uncle Oldest. By the time we all went to lunch, they were fast friends and having fun. We all had a great time.

Sunday, we bought a car. We’ve been seriously looking for weeks, and finally made a deal. First, I’m thankful that we can now do Internet/phone deals before we drive over there. We’d already looked at the car (we’ve been really busy lately, LOL) We are very happy. Normally we’d have held onto our Camry much longer as it’s a good car, but CA is really pushing electric vehicles and EV’s just don’t fit our drive-all-over lifestyle, so we accelerated our typical plan to get a gas car we wanted. Man I’m glad to have that done!

So the weekend was good, but another wild ride in various ways. I’m tired, but I have absolutely nothing to complain about this weekend

Oh!!! Cigi is eleven months old!! And her mom and dad have a One Year Old birthday party planned for her in early September! We’re looking forward to that, but does she really have to grow up so fast? Turbo is seven and starting second grade! Do grandkids grow up even faster than our own kids????

That’s my weekend, how was yours?

TGIF! Time to share five random things about our week. Here’s mine:

1. August is here with 100+ degree heat. It’s too hot to function. But at least we have A/C. Wizard and I are stressed and tired, but dealing with things we need to deal with.
2. Maggie had her yearly checkup and is in really good health (as much as they can tell). The vet tells me every time that she loves Maggie because she’s so joyful. It’s true that Maggie doesn’t really have a lot of special tricks or play with toys, but her one talent is being happy to see almost everyone. First she wags her tell, then her whole body wiggles and when the happiness overwhelms her, she squeals and “talks”. So I’ll take the vet at her word Maggie is getting older, obviously, and the milkiness I see in her eyes is real and from age and hardening of the lenses. Maggie is still seeing pretty well though. Otherwise, she needs a mild teeth clearing that they think they can do without anesthesia. I’m really happy to get goods news with no surprises about Maggie this week.
3. I also had a good eye exam and this time, I bought glasses too. OUCH on the cost! It doesn’t help that my prescription is so high (which I heard four different times), we added on had all kinds of options to get the lenses in the frames as light as possible, and as comfortable as possible. But I like the glasses we chose, and I can still wear contacts (with reading glasses), so I have options. My eyes appear healthy and the exam was easy. Overall, I call it a win, even if it’s an expensive win.
4. Oh my CT scan approved for my sinuses to hopefully find out where/why my nose is bleeding. I think it’s August 20th or thereabouts. I’m too lazy to check my calendar to be sure, but I’m happy about that. Even if we can’t find the source on the CT, we’ll know what it’s NOT from and that’s helpful too. My GP will decide where to refer me once he has the CT results. So things are moving along.
5.  I might be going to lunch with Biker Witch today but we haven’t officially confirmed that as I write this. Chaos is running amok, so it’s hard to make real plans. This weekend is a wait and see what happens. We are doing our best to go with things the best we can.

That’s my five, now I’d really love to hear yours! I hope you all have a good weekend, and if you’re in the heat, stay inside, hydrated and cool!

I’m here!! Sorry I missed posting on Monday. We had to unexpectedly go to my Mother in Law’s house, stay with her, and handle some issues. All four siblings in the state are helping out, so it’s not just us. We had very limited internet access and zero time for me to try to post. Between that and celebrating my birthday,  it was a weirdly fun and very stressful few days. But seriously, I had a great birthday, and as of yesterday calm had return our lives to normal business not wild and a little crazy.

Now onto reading. I quickly downloaded Sherrilyn Kenyon’s “Simi, (Shadow of Fire, Book 5) onto my Kindle, but haven’t started it yet before writing this blog. While driving all over the place, I finally went back to listening to the audio book I was mad about. I find the plot and setting really interesting, the romance bores me. But I’ve decided to finish the book, and then I’ve loaded two other books on audio. I feel like I might be driving a lot, so I’m ready Audio books and interesting podcasts make long drives and traffic a heck of a lot more bearable!

Did I miss anything Monday? What are you reading or listening to?