Snippet

Kith and Kin Everywhere on this April X, 2018,

Quite a day here in the Arizona desert.  I got up to a blood sugar of 116, indicating that I should skip breakfast.  No idea of the cause.  Showered and My Marvelous Marlene drove me down to #1 Nails to get a pedicure.  I gave up driving several years back while keeping my drivers license "in case."

Too large a belly and 92 years somehow prevent me from grooming my own toenails  -- and Marlene refuses to do so for which I don't blame her.  They're tough as -- well -- toenails and grow prodigiously.  Medicare provides for a nail cut every 60 days, but I require one every 30, so we skip Medicare and seek out professional nail artists at our expense.   You're welcome, taxpayer!

The podiatrist who cared for our feet retired and the remaining ones in our small and remote town are booked solid, so we rely on the Vietnamese gals at #1 Nails.

While we're on the subject of our small town (55,000 permanent), our block "do be a-changin'."  The house directly across our one-block-long street is occupied for 3 or 4 months a year by a couple from Iowa, Tom and Carol, who prefer the humidity, the rain, the snow, the insects of Iowa over Havasu's heat.  The paper this morning says 95° today, so they fled eastward.

Next door to them down toward the lake, a couple named Liz and Frank moved in some stuff after buying the house.  Several months later and they still haven't taken up residence from Burbank, CA.  Evidently, they will be retiring a little later.

Uphill from Tom and Carol, toward the mountains, is a house that went up for sale yesterday when 86-year-old Betty from Corona, CA, decided to sell.  They never really moved in and her husband passed away shortly after they purchased it. 

Anybody want to be our neighbor?  A lightly-lived-in 3 bdrm w/3 car garage and great neighbors; Art and Carolyn on one side, seldom-seen-Iowans on the other and us across the street.  We are in need of more Lunies on Lunar Drive!  Three houses in a row unoccupied.

Yes, our roadrunners are still around, patrolling the neighborhood for snakes and lizards.  At 0630 this morning, Babe, a young-un, was peering in through the all-glass door begging for a meatball.  Each has its own character.  Hardee will eat at my feet while cooing his greeting; but Babe prefers no conversation and to eat atop the wall surrounding our rear patio.  Babe comes with inches of my face to accomplish that.

We are beginning to see a pattern in the fourth or fifth generation of roadrunners in that the adults apparently leave the easy pickin's of our meatballs to the kids while they seek out new territory.  Isn't that strange?  You'd think they'd kick the kids down the block to keep the meatballs coming to them.

Jim in PA and Laura in Upstate NY may still be getting snow, but we are luxuriating in our 90° + and anxiously awaiting triple digits.  I've been slowly constructing some walking sticks and hiking poles at the same time I'm cleaning out my workshop side of the garage.

There's an almost new bandsaw, an engraver, a scroll saw, a bench grinder, a belt/disc sander, a Delta drill press and various other power hand tools out there that maybe our kids might covet -- or might get donated to the schools for a tax write-off.  I've reached the age of tinkering rather than woodworking.  Rifle stock carving is long gone; the old fingers no longer capable of the fine precision required along with the patience required.

As you can deduce from the above, all is well around our place and we hope all is well around yours.

PT Jack, the Neanderthal -- and the Marvelous Marlene