Friday, June 17

Today is Hubbie's birthday. Happy Birthday, Hubbie!

We were up around 6:30 this morning, so we could finish getting ready for company. No matter how much we prepare ahead, we can count on three more hours of preparations on the day of an event.

I skipped my exercises, of course, so I could start the day by making lemon pudding for Hubbie's favorite cake. While the pudding cooled, we had breakfast. While I was getting ready for the day, Mother came over, and she and Hubbie did some last minute swiping of counters, cleaning the downstairs bathroom, etc.

When I came downstairs, I sliced tomatoes, while Mother made coleslaw. Then I made a meringue icing for the lemon cake, which I had topped with the cooled lemon pudding. After we set the table, made tea, etc., we were ready to relax.

Just before lunch, Hubbie's oldest daughter arrived, followed by his son and grandson. Soon his two sisters arrived. And finally his other daughter, who came the greatest distance (a four and a half hour drive) arrived.

We had put the baked beans and barbecue into the oven around noon, so we were ready to sit down to eat by around 1 p.m. Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal and lemon cake dessert.

Hubbie received several cards to one of his favorite home improvement stores. Mother (at my suggestion) gave him a mop for the camper, because several days ago, after we'd bought a new mop for our home kitchen, he said he'd relegate the old mop to the camper. Yuk. I was having none of that. If the old mop was too scuzzy for the kitchen, then it was too scuzzy for the camper.

Anyway, I bought a mop, and Mother and I decided to make it more interesting by decorating it with flowers, adding ribbons to mop string braids, and putting a pair of kids' cheap sunglasses on it. We also added a sign to the mop that says "Take Me to Your Camper." The family got a good laugh out of it.

After a tour of the yard and gardens, folks decided to head home. It was around 3 p.m. by then. Everyone seemed under pressure to get home and complete tasks for upcoming events...the daughters needed to shop and decorate the church fellowship hall for a baby shower at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon for the wife of a grandson.

One of the sisters is getting ready for a trip to Illinois to visit her daughter, so she needed to get back home to pick up an order of something she's to take on the trip.

Hubbie isn't up for traveling the hour and a half east of us to attend the baby shower, so we sent a card and cash.

After the family left, Hubbie, Mother, and I went to the local farmers market, where I bought three cartons of sweet banana peppers for the freezer. I'll go back next week and buy more, since it seems we won't be getting any from our garden (only hot peppers growing there).

Back home, Mother went to her house, Hubbie went out to work in the yard, and I created a web cam message for a home improvement store video gift card. The card is a novelty that I'm obviously more interested in than Hubbie. But he'll be interested in spending the gift, I'm sure. I was at a loss for an idea of something to give him this year, so the novelty gift card, and a bunch of scratch-off lottery tickets, are what I came up with. As usual, the lottery tickets yielded less than half of what I paid for them. But they were worth it for the amusement they provided Hubbie.

Funny: at the grocery store where I bought the scratch-offs, there is now an automatic digital ticket dispenser. I didn't know how to use the machine, but upon reading the directions, I saw that no one under age 18 can buy the tickets, and to verify the buyer's age, he or she must scan a driver's license. This information is on a window with what appears to be a camera eye.

So I swiped my license across the window. Nothing. The machine wouldn't accept my money. Maybe I needed to turn the license around. No, nothing. Maybe I needed to hold it vertical instead of horizontal. Nope.

A young woman walked up, but said she had never used the machine, so she didn't know how, either. I said I was probably wasting my money on it, anyway, to which she responded that her brother won $75 on a ticket recently.

She walked away, and a man approached. "Let me try it," he said, whereupon he basically went through the same routine I had, with no better success.

I finally called a store clerk over to help me. Turns out there is a small awning-like thing low down on the machine. When a license is passed under it, a scanner activates. Then the machine will accept money, and allow the buyer to push the buttons for a choice of cards. The clerk assured me I wasn't the first to be confused by the machine. Obviously not, since two other folks were mystified by it as well.

Later, Hubbie and I watched the Lifetime Movie Network feature, "Patricia Cornwell's The Front," starring Andie McDowell. In this sequel movie, a woman attempts to breathe new life into her flagging political career by ordering the re-opening of a decades-old murder case of a supposed blind woman.

After that, we watched the 1966 Alfred Hitchcock thriller, "Torn Curtain," starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews. An American scientist (Newman) publicly defects and goes to East Germany in hopes of stealing a formula and then sneaking back to the U.S. Andrews'character is in love with the scientist, and when he tells her he is leaving and won't be back, she follows him to Germany, where the two get into cloak and daggar situations that threaten their lives. Eventually, they are aided by sympathizers who help them escape the country.

Note: another accident near our house tonight: about 9:30, a neighbor was riding his motorcycle and hit a deer on the highway at the west corner of our yard and the neighbor's yard across the street. We are personally acquainted with the injured neighbor, who has a broken ankle, a cut on his head, and road rash on an arm from the accident. Police cars, a rescue/fire truck, and an ambulance visited the scene, where traffic was held up for quite a while. This accident reinforces my hatred of motorcycles.

The wife of the man who had the accident is our former insurance agent (she is now retired), and the injured man was in cardiac exercise classes with me a couple of years ago.