Saturday Odds and Ends

Thank you all for your kind words on my last post on Thankful Thursday. I had lots of things to be thankful for then, and I have a few more to add today.   Just some "odds and ends" of different little things that are kind of interesting or special in some way.  So please come along on this addendum to my thankfulness post.

First off, please excuse the poor quality of these photos. When we went for our evening walk last night, this is what we saw as we approached our walking place.  It was dusk, so the light was not very good, and I didn't have my good camera with me...just the the cell phone, and it was at a distance, but you "get the picture"  I hope.  First this deer was crossing the road in front of us, and paused to watch us coming near.

Then she bounded into the woods, white flag tail flying behind her...

And standing there in the woods was this young buck...now, this enlarged photo looks more like some kind of impressionistic painting doesn't it?  

Here's our doe again, camouflaged in the trees:

And here's the young buck, waiting for the signal to move on...

I can't get over how much these look like paintings! Maybe I should frame them!

A very pleasant way to end a busy day...

Now, let me tell you that my pre-op appointments went very well...even better than expected. I was scheduled for two different appointments, both in the same building, but one at 9:45 a.m. and the other at 1:30 p.m.  So we went expecting to spend a long day since this is about an hour from our home so no way to go home in between appointments.  However, the 9:45 appointment was over in about 15 minutes, and the nurse attending us suggested that we go over to the lab where the later appointment was scheduled and see if they could work me in earlier.  And so we did, and thank the Lord, yes, they were able to take me right in for my lab work and to meet with the anesthesiologist.  Oh, one rather little  "unpleasant surprise" was that they had to do a "Covid Test".  I was not expecting that...and thankfully this was my very first one, and I hope my last! That long Q-tip swab felt like it was poking and probing all the way to my brain!  Thankfully the results were negative! Anyway, I passed all my other lab tests and answered all the questions to their satisfaction apparently, including the memory test..."I am going to tell you three words, and I want you to repeat them back to me. And then I am going to ask you to draw the face of a clock on this piece of paper and set the time for 11:10, and then when you finish that I will ask you to repeat the three words again."  Right now I am struggling to remember those three words...the first was Cabin, (that was easy, because everyone knows I would love to live in a cabin in the woods) the second was table, (I think), and I had to ask my hubby right now if he can remember the words since he was there with me, and he thinks  one of the words was truck, but I can not honestly be sure...but I did get them right for the test yesterday, whatever they were! LOL. And so I am scheduled for surgery on Monday at 10:30 a.m. 

We were done and out of there by 10:45!  Amazing! So we stopped at our "favorite" little cafe' on the way home for some lunch.  Sadly, that was NOT so amazing. Must have been a bad day or something. All the tables were still waiting to be cleared, and so we waited for someone to clear a table that we selected, and instead the girl went around and cleared some other tables instead of the one we were waiting beside...that should have been the first clue.  After about what seemed like a ten minute wait to actually sit down at a clean table, it was another 10 minutes before the waitress took our order...now mind you, there were probably only about 3 other tables filled...but what we noticed was a lot of people must have called in take out orders because they were coming in left and right and getting their food, while we, the customers sitting in the restaurant waited.  Anyway, we finally gave our order. I ordered a quesadilla and a salad, mainly because my son Scott, who is the consummate quesadilla creator at our house, made for himself this amazing creation the night before, and my mouth was still watering for it:

His creations are always filled with the most interesting combinations. This particular one had sausage, ham, fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, spinach and of course, lots of cheese, with sour cream on the side.

So, I asked the waitress for a chicken quesadilla with spinach and cheese, envisioning something almost as nice as what Scott could make.  Well, let's just say that it wasn't even picture worthy. The chicken was dry and hard, there was hardly any cheese, and the worst part was, we had to wait almost an hour before we ever got our food...meanwhile, take out orders are going out the door, and we sat there. Hubby wanted to leave before our food came, but I was too hungry and there wasn't any other place close...so we decided that was it.  We will have to find another place to stop on our way home from the hospital from now on.  That was the only downside to our day.

Okay, on to better things.  When we got home a package arrived via Amazon. I had not ordered anything, so was not sure what this was until I opened it.  My sweet niece in N.C. had told me she was sending me a little surprise package to help out during my convalescence.  She had read the post apparently where I said I couldn't get any birdseed last week, and so she took it upon herself to have some shipped to me, along with this fun TEA word search puzzle book!  Now that's what I call thoughtful!  Now the birdies won't go hungry, and I will have something to occupy my brain!  I was tempted to start on the puzzles right away, but decided to wait until I have nothing else I can do but sit and do puzzles for a while. It will be very entertaining! I am blessed...

Then we got something in the mail that was not addressed to us but came to our address...a coupon that said "Congrats on your new home" from Home Depot.  I did not recognize the name on the address, so it got me to wondering who it could be meant for.  We have a couple of lots next to us that have been for sale, as well as a lot across the street from us that we know just sold, and also a small house that recently sold.  So I decided to check first on Zillow to see if the lots next to us had sold yet, and sure enough, they have!  And I am kind of "sneaky", in that I know how to look up on the property search through the county tax office to see who owns property around us, and sure enough, the name on the coupon that came to our address is the same name as the person who bought the two empty lots next to us! So I guess I should save this coupon for him when and if he ever shows up to build something on those lots! Oh, the offer ends November 15, 2021, so I don't see any new house going up on that lot in less than a month...so I guess the coupon is mine if I want to use it! LOL.    Anyway, the fun part was looking at the ad on Zillow for those lots...apparently the realtor had taken a lot of photos with a drone overhead, and it shows the top of our house and  some great aerial shots of Still Waters Pond!  So I thought you might want to see them too:

That is our house down at the bottom of the picture, and the lots in question are to the right. There's Still Waters Pond, and you can see the little islands that I look at all the time:

This is the view I usually see from our back porch:

Anyway, with all of these lots near us being sold, it makes me think we will eventually be getting some new neighbors. Never too soon to start praying for them to be really good neighbors.  And also praying that we can be good neighbors to them as well.

Let's see, what else is going on? Well I received a phone call a little while ago from someone I had contacted this past year through Ancestry.com...one of the distant "cousins" through my  adopted grandmother's birth family.  She is going to be in the area, well, about an hour or so away, tonight and tomorrow, and has some pictures of her grandmother, who would be my grandmother's half sister, and if there is any way possible we can meet it would be lovely.  Of course, here I am preparing for surgery on Monday, and I have church tomorrow morning, and I don't know if we will be able to pull it off or not on such short notice, but I am so happy she at least called and let me know that she hasn't forgotten about me and if there's any way possible for us to meet, it would be so nice. So we shall see what develops in the next 24 hours. She was still on the road to her relative's home when she called and didn't know what would transpire once she got there...so at least her heart is in the right place even if we can't actually make it happen this time.

Which brings me to a question I've been pondering.  If you read the story of my grandmother's birth that I posted last year,  Elva's Story, you will remember that she was given up for adoption at the age of 5 months, and this was way back in 1896.  Through my research on Ancestry.com, after having my DNA tested, I was able to figure out who my grandmother's birth parents were. Consequently, I attempted to make contact with several descendants of those birth parents.  Of course, no one had any idea that little Elva had ever existed, and this news came as a real surprise to them. Even though this happened over 125 years ago, there was still some hesitancy to accept this information as fact and a little bit of suspicion perhaps about me and my sanity might have been considered. LOL.  But now, my question is, if you know that someone you know and care about may actually have a close relative that they never knew existed, and you know that person to be a wonderful person who would love to know more about their ancestor's birth family, etc.,  what would you do? Do you make an effort to bring them together? Or do you just keep quiet and let "nature take its course"?  

Just asking for a "friend"...

Okay folks, that's enough for one day, I'd say! Tomorrow may be a busy day, so I don't know if I'll get around much, and then you know what Monday is...so thank you for your prayers and kind thoughts, and I hope to catch up with you all again as soon as possible! 

Meanwhile, I don't know if you can see the "hands reaching out" across these clouds below or not, but this was in the sky last night:

Made me think about this famous painting by Michelangelo in the Sistine chapel. The hand of God reaching out to the hand of Adam.

God is always reaching out to us...in so many ways. Are we paying attention?

Just some food for thought.

Good Night my friends.