Yesterday the day was sunny and hot. Then a sudden storm developed. The wind was whipping around and the sky was dark. Toot and I walked outside onto the driveway and stood in the wind. It felt great. The day had been so hot and muggy but it was suddenly cool and windy. Leaves were blowing around us. We walked towards the end of the driveway where we have a large tree with low-lying limbs. Toot climbed up onto the lowest limb with a boost from me. She sat there while the beginnings of the storm raged around us and leaves blew in all directions. Then the rain started so we ran back into the house. Danny had gone to the church on his motorcycle and he came rolling back into our garage just in time before he got soaked by the storm.

It is nice that Toot is not scared of storms. I have had many friends and family members over the years who were very fearful of storms for various reasons. But not me. I love to sit on the porch or covered patio while a good rain storm rages. Lightning and thunder don't scare me at all. I suppose if I ever get struck by lightning or attacked by a tornado, I may change my thinking.

Then on Facebook I saw that three different friends in our area here were doing the same thing as us and sitting outside enjoying the storm rolling in!

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I overheard two old guys at the gas station this morning discussing the BP oil spill in the Gulf and of course, how it should be fixed. It reminded me of back when we owned a family-style restaurant and all the old geezers would come in each morning for their coffee and biscuits while they solved the problems of the world among themselves. There were always big ideas floating around their tables.

One of the old guys this morning said that BP was just getting back at us for the fact that the US was once a colony of Great Britain and we threw off their rule and became our own successful country. He said that the British have been waiting over 200 years to get back at us and now they have. They are ruining our coastlines from Louisiana to Florida and beyond.

Wow. Talk about conspiracy theory.

I am mad as heck about the oil spill too but I don't believe that the whole country of Great Britain is on a mission to "get back" at us. I mean look at some of the good things they've given us: ...um well, what are some good things they've given us? I'm pulling a blank here. Oh yeah, Queen, the greatest rock and roll band in the history of the world. Yep, they gave us Queen.

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Luckily for me, the former owners of our property planted nice flowers and shrubs. Lucky I say because I don't really have a green thumb. The only plants I seem to be able to grow and keep alive with any degree of success are vegetable plants. I am pretty good with a kitchen garden.

But other plants? Not so much. This is the latest flower to bloom in our back yard in addition to the huge stand of oleander and canna lilies.

We have completed the total remodel of the exterior of our house. Now we are steadily working on the inside remodeling project. We are repainting almost all of the rooms of our house plus getting new flooring in a couple of rooms. We are almost done with the master bedroom. I will post pictures of that part of the project soon.

Now we are working on the master bath and closet area. This area is the primary reason I wanted to buy this house. It is simply amazingly designed and laid out. I completed the painting of my end of our closet today. It doesn't seem like much but it turned out to be a large amount of work.

Our entire closet area in the master bedroom is about 30 feet by 6 feet. There are four parts to the closet. As you step down two steps from the bathroom, you face a tall built-in area of cabinets and drawers. Turn left and you are in the area where I have my shoe shelves and hanging clothing. Walk on through and you come to another walk-in closet where I hang dresses along one wall, belts and scarves on another wall, and robes on a third wall. There is also a tall skinny window in this area that looks out on the back yard.

Turning back and walking to the steps again, if you had turned right, you would be in Danny's end of the closet which has large, deep built-in shelves on one side and a long rod for hanging clothes on the other. Go down to the end, there is a door that opens into another walk-in closet that is completely lined with cedar.

Here is a picture of my end of the closet:

It was very difficult to get the colors to come out correctly but this closet used to be all white walls with white shelves. I painted it a Valspar color from Lowes Laura Ashley Home collection called Taupe 4 in matte finish. The shelves, trim, and cabinets are basic black done in a semi-gloss.

This project has taken forever to get this far. All of the trim, shelves, and cabinets had to be primed. Then painted a first coat. Then painted a second coat. The walls had to be painted. And finally it all had to be touched up. Quite frankly, I am sick of painting! But I can't wait to get all my clothes and shoes back in place and organized. At the present time, everything is stashed all over the guest room. My cousin says that this gargantuan closet of ours is not a walk-in closet. It is a drive-in closet. Of course, he lives in San Francisco. In the Haight. So my closet probably seems like a palace. In fact, if this closet was in the Haight right now, I could probably rent it out as a studio apartment for big bucks.

We went to see the latest Shrek movie yesterday afternoon. We liked it! We like all of the Shrek movies. I won't write one of those reviews that spoils the plot for everyone else. I'll just write a review of, say...the movie theater experience.

We bought our tickets on-line ahead of time because we thought it might sell out for the 5:10 pm showing. We gathered Toot and a couple of her friends. We got there half an hour early and we were the second people in line to get into the theater. We got the best seats ever. I cannot stand to get into a movie theater that is already crowded and have to be stuck with seats way down front so that you are forced to crane your neck upward to view the giant screen. Our seats of choice are in the very top, back row, center of the theater.

We ate too much junky theater food: popcorn, hotdogs, nachos, sodas, Skittles. And we spent far too much money on that junky theater food but we were all starving when we got to the movies so, well, it was all impulse buys. You know what would be a cool idea? If movie theaters offered some healthy options also. Seriously. I know that the whole movie "experience" always involves popcorn slathered with fake butter and sodas filled with high fructose corn syrup and preservatives. But I think movie theaters could offer a couple of healthy options without ruining the movie experience.

The theater filled up, the movie started, and we laughed. The end.

If you want to read the movie spoiler plot: Shrek Forever After on wikipedia

We have a couple of frogs who hang around the side patio of our house. Toot thinks they are the same frogs every night but I am not so sure. Last night when we walked out with the dogs, the frog became alarmed and then squeezed himself down into a crack between the patio and the house foundation. He peeked out at us with his beady eyes:

We have a lady who is helping with some of the interior painting in our house this month. She told me about her mother-in-law who lives in Brazoria. Apparently this MIL cannot stand any kinds of bugs, frogs, or lizards to be anywhere around her house. She keeps cans of Raid around to kill all these things. If she sees a frog on her front porch, she sprays it down with Raid and kills it. That is just all kinds of wrong to me. First, she is contributing all those chemicals to the environment. Second, she has no concept of the fact that the amphibians are already vanishing. I see nothing at all wrong with letting these creatures hang out on our porches and patios. They are harming nothing. I guess this really made me angry and I wish there was something I could do about ignorant people like this MIL.

Last night my sister sent me a message that she was taking her cocker spaniel Daisy to the emergency animal clinic. Daisy is very old and has been having some serious health problems. Awhile later Daisy passed away. I wanted to tell Daisy's story as we know it.

Our family used to own a restaurant in Sweeny, Texas. There was a black cocker spaniel that kept hanging around the front of the restaurant and didn't seem to have a home. After a few days of this, my sister took the dog home and named her Daisy. We didn't know how old Daisy was but she appeared to be a fairly young adult dog.

My dad never allowed animals in the house. But he let Daisy live in their house. He loved that dog. When he was a little boy, he also had a black cocker spaniel whose name was Inky. He was always partial to cocker spaniels. One day I went by my parents house to visit and my mom led me upstairs. She motioned for me to be quiet and then she pointed through the open bedroom door at my dad taking a nap on his bed. And Daisy was lying right beside him with her head on the other pillow. Oh how I wish I had a picture of that right now but I had no camera with me at that time.

About a year after Daisy came to live with my sister and my parents, I was pregnant with our daughter. My sister would bring Daisy over to my house to visit and Daisy would get in my lap and wrap herself around my belly. It is as if she sensed that there was a little person inside me and she wanted to be as close as possible.

Daisy lived all these years with my sister and was her constant companion. She was there when my dad was dying of cancer. She would get in the hospital bed with him and guard him from something we couldn't see.

Oh Daisy, we will all miss you terribly. I hope you are now happy and pain-free living in doggie heaven. We will bury you in Mississippi in the family cemetery next to my dad.

I braved the swarms of mosquitos to take this picture in my backyard. It rained here recently and the mosquitos have hit us pretty hard. No more leisurely walks around the yard for me until I can get it sprayed for those pesky flying biting blood-suckers. I am looking at getting some cedar oil spray that is all natural and avoid the use of more chemicals in our environment. That may not make much difference anyway since the county sprays us down liberally from an airplane with mosquito control substances that they claim are not "harmful."

Canna Lily. Grows wonderfully in our tropical climate here.