Showers & Sunflowers: July 2007

DID I ALREADY SAY THAT I HATE SWEATING?

It's getting to be sickening, this heat. And this morning I was up very early just as the sun was coming up, so I decided to head outside where the air was much cooler than in the house. Ahhhh it was refreshing!

This is why the birds love our MayDay tree so much in the summer, the berries must be very tasty:

All the windows have been open through the night, letting in as much cooler air as is possible without any breeze.

Hubby has been watering like crazy, but the midday heat is just scorching our plantings and cracking the soil.

Some things are still thriving though.

......while some are not. We're about to lose this I think.

It's "sister" here in the foreground is doing okay so far. The dying one is in the background.

What used to look like this with their flowers:

Now looks like this:

And another shot from before:

And now:

Yes the sun is taking it's toll not only on me with heat exhaustion sickness, but also on our poor gardens.

All is not lost though, Christmas is only 5 months away!! **grins**

I hope you're all staying cool where you are. Take good care of each other!

PEACE!
Love Jude

I HATE SWEATING

After 5 months taking the liquid Glucosamine, I must give up on it and try something else. That something being Shark Cartilage. I was hopeful but my arms are just as painful as before. Wish me luck on the new stuff, it gets really hard to sleep well at night when I keep waking up in pain from laying on one arm and having to roll to the other until it wakes me up.

I'm still hopeful though!

And yes I am stating publicly that I HATE SWEATING!!! I'm sick of never being dry for any length of time. We had 2 days reprieve from the really hot stuff this past couple of days but the temps are right back up there again now.

At 80F degrees, this room is cooled as much as I can get it with the use of fans. We have 5 fans going in the house, some sucking cooler air at night in, others blowing hot air out, and yet others just blowing on us to try and keep us dry at least.

Today being grocery shopping day (in a NON airconditioned car) there were some things purchased to help keep us cooler.

This is mine:

This is hubby's:

I remember as a kid Mom making us popsicles in those Tupperware popsicle thingies out of fruit juices and Freshie (like Koolaide). Those were so good, yum!

I hope you are all staying cool where you are. I'm starting to wonder if I'm really going to Hell and this is my dress rehearsal?

Ah yes, Hell's Hippie Chick. I hope they play lots of Def Leppard there. And have popsicles.

Have a great week, and take good care of each other!

PEACE!
Love Sweaty Jude

THE HORNIEST SOUND IN THE WORLD

Further to my last post, I wanted to share the sound I love so much (and grew up with).

Stupid me, I didn't realize our city's big parade was happening the other day. That's why we were having the flyby's!

This is the sound of my favourite military jet, the CF104 Starfighter "Widowmaker"

TURN YOUR SPEAKERS WAAAAY UP to get the full impact of what it really sounds like!

Widowmaker Howl and Scream

Oh yeah baby. That makes me so horny.

Jude

HOT STUFF

Well *blushes* yes I mean ME of course!!

Except that "hot stuff" and me right now refers to the hot temperatures here of late and my hot flash blushes which are worse in hot weather.

Once again I am posting a week later, this time due to the heat in this non-airconditioned house. It's been a week now, and the temps according to the Weather Channel will be staying up there for at least another week. (it only goes as far as a week in advance, so who knows how much longer this heat wave will REALLY be kickin' my ass!)

And kick my ass it does. I don't just get "hot" and sweaty. I mean I DO, but I also get very sick with heat exhaustion. Not a pretty sight.

Anyway I get online to try keeping up to date with my emails, forums and bloglinks but can't sit here long enough to post anything much on my own blog. However you'll notice I have posted on the last 3 Thursdays (as today) because it is my first day off during the week and I can get to this in the morning before the house goes from 85 degrees to 100. LOL

So I'll just keep doing the best I can until we get some normal summer weather again. And in the meantime please be patient with me as far as posting here.

Something I realized I've been really slack on was posting the pics I have been entering in the monthly photo competition over at my favourite photography forum, Opacity. It's been months, actually!! No I haven't "won" any, but that's not what makes it fun anyway. I just love the excuse once a month to try hard to get a few decent shots of something, and mostly to see all the really terrific entries!

So here are some of the last ones, I'm too lazy to dig back in my archives to see where I left off so my apologies if I've already posted any of these before.

This theme was "Christmas Gifts."

This theme was "Weather."

This theme was "Rust."

This theme was "Nature in Macro."

This theme was "Stone." (last month, so this catches me up)

This month's theme is "Texture" and I have 3 shots lined up ready to go for the end of the month. I'll try to remember (with my heat-fried remaining brain cell) to post them once the competition has begun.

I just had an orgasmic moment here!! As a lot of you know, I'm an Airforce brat, which means growing up listening to military jets screaming overhead daily. It's been 37 years since I graduated from high school and left that life behind, and probably 15 years or so since I last went to an airshow where they had military jets. I still miss that sound so much, I think I always will.

Well today it's very cloudy and the "ceiling" is extremely low up there. About 10 minutes ago I just heard jets flying VERY LOW overhead screaming over the house, not once but about 5 different times!! I ran outside after the first few times (they go by so fast it's hard to get to a window in time to see anything) but I still missed the next few after I came back in. What a great sound, I loved it!!!! There's an old Airforce base just outside our city that was changed over to an Army base several years ago, and I'm wondering if there's some reason we're landing jets there today.

Let me just try to explain how LOUD these things are. On one of the 5 passes overhead there must have been 2 or more together fly over, because it was so loud that it set off car alarms around the neighbourhood! Woohoo!

I FREAKIN' LOVE IT!!!!!

Anyway that was my excitement for today. I need to go lay down now. LOL

Hope your upcoming weekend rocks, take good care of each other!

PEACE!

Love Jude

SIGNS OF AGING

Apologies for not posting for a whole week folks. I've been sick for the last 2 weeks but at least I got back to work this past week. On the mend, just a nasty hacking cough now.

It got me to thinking how I bounced back a lot quicker when I was younger. And as I took my "old person meds" last evening I got to thinking about a blog post.

There are of course many different signs of aging, many of which you won't see in this blog post but you can be sure they are a part of my "old person" life now. LOL For example, wrinkles, sags and bags. Weight gain. Droopy eyelids.

Hell, I've even got a couple of those dreaded "age spots" on one of my hands!

At my age, you start using products that you once only associated with granny.

The mind and spirit may well be young at heart, just as young as when I was actually 20 and 30 years of age. It's the body that sabotaged me somewhere along the way, and forced me at gunpoint to admit that cute and perky are adjectives describing OTHER (younger) people. Nowadays my adjectives are more like "matronly" and "used to be hot". Heh heh.

It's not all gloomy, and I'm quite happy enough in my golden years. Are the 50's golden years yet? If not, perhaps these are my middle aged years. At any rate, it's not a complete write-off yet and there are some good things about it all.

It's just that those good things all have to do with mind and spirit.

All the crap stuff is physical, like arthritis and high cholesterol, and of course the putty and spackle I need to apply with my makeup.

What I do mourn for at times is the youthful and slim shape that I had so much fun dressing up in the latest cool fashions. Fashions for the young. Today I pretty much wear what's comfortable and call it a day. This body hasn't seen a bathing suit or a pair of shorts since...... well hell my mind is so old I can't even remember. LOL

I must have been 50 before I even heard of the word "exfoliate". For you gentlemen, that pretty much means scrubbing your skin raw to get rid of the outer dry and wrinkly layers. (that's what the little round white scratchy pad is for)
Scrape, rub, scrape, rub.... oh oh now I have less skin on the right side of my face, I need to do more on the left.... scrape, rub, scrape, rub.....

I've always had dry skin and needed to moisturize from head to toe after a shower or bath. But who at my age has THAT kind of energy, I ask you?? Instead, I do the best I can with some wonderful moisturing bath products. The most effort (because it's a smaller body part and therefore less work) I put out is my face moisturizer and hand lotion. I just wish hand lotions would cover up age spots.

What you also don't see is my putty knife and spackle scraper. They're tucked in my makeup case that you see above along with mascara, blush (I'm a pale face) and concealer. (dark rings under my eyes). Oh the joys of makeup time in the mornings!

Let's just say I'm not very low maintanence.

As an update on the Glucosamine liquid you see in the first and second pics, when I finish this bottle it will be about 5 months of trying it. I think it's helped a "bit", but not enough. My arms still cause me problems so I think I might be trying the Shark Cartilege afterall.

As for the good stuff about aging, there are signs to them too!

Those are things I can't take pictures of though, as they are purely emotional and spiritual. Like not giving a flying hoot if I want to speak up about something. In my younger years I was a bit of a mouse. Now I'll say what I think should be said, but the best part is that with my age comes wisdom and experience so I have some TACT! Well okay, for the most part anyway. LOL

And there was a time when I was too busy with life to be concerned about spiritual matters. Now that I'm older and have deliberately slowed down, these things have taken a front seat in my life and I'm much more at peace.

So it's not all bad. Just annoying as hell when I'm all at peace until I try to get up out of my chair, or bend over to paint my toenails. OY. Then peace seems to fly right out the window.

I hope you all have a great upcoming weekend. Since you're here right now and as I'm old enough to get crabby if you don't do as I ask, why not head on over to KIM'S and wish her a very Happy Birthday! She's been going through some rough times for awhile now and could really use some Birthday Cheering Up. Tell her Jude sent ya!

Take good care of each other, and don't forget to help old people across the street!

PEACE!
Love Jude

A LITTLE POT POURRIE

I got myself a new tripod for the camera and I absolutely love it. Last week I decided to try it out, and used the "night" mode on the camera to see how I could do. These didn't turn out too badly. It was a hot and sweaty evening indoors so I grabbed tripod and camera and headed outside to catch some cooler breezes.

Hubby was working in the garage, I love the way this turned out with the bright light piercing the darkness outside:

Down the street:

Looking at my house:

And I've also been having some fun learning a few new tricks with photo enhancement. A friend of mine had an extra Photoshop Elements CD so she sent it to me. What fun!

Some fun with a black and white: