Wisconsin Has Droughts?

Yes, apparently it does because we’ve been in one all month. To add to the misery of excessively high heat and humidity that has blanketed the state, there effectively has been no measurable rain in Waupaca, which has served to sear my normally green lawn and plants. I do what I can to hand-water the plants daily, which takes up to two hours, but weeds have jumped in to take over the now brown, crunchy grass. I am not one to normally use chemical weed killers but there is a type of very hardy, deep-rooted bush which is now springing up mercilessly all over and I figure if I don’t catch it in its wee stages they will grow to look like this whooper.

Obviously, I know we are not alone in our travails; the entire country seems to be ablaze this summer, but it’s come at a particularly bad time for me since I had to deal with it during our annual Humane Society rummage. Our rummage is held in an old tin marina warehouse and this year, both setup and the sale itself were just miserably hot and humid. I think it affected our performance and profits; I would exit daily in the late afternoons, blazing red in the face, feeling like a heat stroke victim and crowds were off significantly from past years. I joked with the other gals that I thought I had moved far enough north to escape the heat; just how much farther could I go—to the shores of Lake Superior? We’re only about 250 miles from Canada!

I hope we can take this as a learning experience and find a different venue, so we can move the date of the rummage to a cooler month. I love heading up the effort but have indicated that I am no longer interested in cooking myself to death, so my participation depends upon a change. Since no one else has shown interest to take on this huge responsibility, I figure I just might get my way,ha!

Planning, organizing, running and advertising the rummage effectively took up much of this month but in between moments, I have done some further furniture refinishing. I tried a dry brush technique on some old Sauder furniture, which is photographed wood, so can’t even be sanded; and I took one of the closet maple doors off the old Travel Supreme and redid it to use as a full-length mirror, using a darker stain and glaze.

Marc and I have our 30th anniversary coming up on September 4th, which I consider to be a huge milestone given my history of divorces, so in honor of that I decided to go all out with a big surprise for him. I have been working on that and all will be revealed in the blog by September. 

He is due to arrive home late next Thursday and will be able to stay until the 5th and plans are to continue working on our front porch and sunroom electric. He will be volunteering at the big EVAA Air Show event, held in Oshkosh every year (the nation’s largest fly-in), so will lose two work days to that but he deserves the time off. 

His project is on the cusp, finally, of getting going the moment he returns to Nevada. Given the late start of this one and the fact there could be little to nothing for me to do with it not being far enough along by the time I would be there, I am seriously considering not traveling west this winter. It’s a difficult decision to make given the age of my mother and my wanting to see her, but on the other hand, sitting in the RV in an RV park with three cats who don’t want to be there and not a lot to do for months on end is not something I would relish. There’s also the monetary expense, which is no trivial matter when putting on that many miles with the rig. Mesquite isn’t exactly a hot spot for activities other than golfing. At least the cats are content at home; I have my puzzles to work, books to read, furniture refinishing, and volunteering to keep me occupied. Oh, and snow shoveling—almost forgot that part!