Jamming—Party Of Five!

Today has been great. This morning I grabbed my guitar and went to Kerrville, to play some music, because last Friday, our great friend/volunteer, Jim, invited me to bring my guitar and come to the weekly jam session, he attends, at Club Ed's Auld Center.

When I arrived, it was 9:56 and I was four minutes early, but I was also the last one to walk into the room, filled with friendly musicians. Everyone greeted me and welcomed me to join them, which was good, because I was a little nervous, because Jim was the only person that I knew.

At 10:00, we immediately started jamming and I was so glad that I had tuned my guitar before going there. There were about ten ukulele pickers, a flutist, an auto harp player and Jim, who is an awesome harmonica player.

The nice woman, in the chair next to mine, shared her music song book with me and we played about ten songs, before everyone took a ten minute coffee break and munched on the delicious, healthy cookies, that Jim's sweet wife, Diane, had baked for the jam session.

During the break, this really nice man came up to me and introduced himself to me. "Hi Nancy. I'm Craig. Do you know Les and Denise?"

"Yes. I love them," I said. Then he told me that Les is his very best friend and he and Les go way back, because they met when they both worked and lived, in Colorado. Then I told him, "Then you must know Cosmo, that they adopted from us, a couple of years ago..." After we had talked about Cosmo being one of the cutest and luckiest dogs, in Kerrville, Craig admired my guitar and told me that he also plays the guitar, so I handed him my guitar to play. He loved playing my guitar and he was a good guitar picker. Then the coffee break was over and we played many songs, for about another hour.

I was having so much fun jamming with these fun musicians I didn't want it to end, but it did. While I was packing away my guitar, another nice woman came up to me and asked me to please come and bring my guitar, to a dulcimer jam session this coming Monday afternoon and I am seriously thinking about doing it, too. So, to say the least, "This morning was a total blast for me."

This afternoon Kinky called me to ask if he could bring some friends over to see our rescue ranch, because they are dog lovers and big fans of our rescue ranch. And you can guess what I told him, too.

Thirty minutes later Kinky and his two friends, visiting him from out of town, arrived. Kinky first wanted them to see our trailer aka The Cabin, which was fine with me, because Hazel and I had just finished removing all of the new dog hair that had been swirling around, on the floor, because I haven't vacuumed for three days.

After we had a fun visit, inside The Cabin, Kinky suggested that we move our party of five outside and go into Outer Space, so he could smoke his cigar. Little Debbie and Alice wanted to go with us too and they did, but I didn't count them as part of our party of five, because together they only weigh about twelve pounds. But I should have, because they stole the party being way too cute.

Before I finish writing this I want y'all to know that Nancy J. Bailey's beautiful "Fall Trail Drive" watercolor, is already framed, so I can pick it up the next time that we go to Kerrville and I can't wait, because I already know where I am going to hang it, in the big room.

And last night, when it finally got dark outside, I instantly fell in love with my new solar lantern, on the front porch and that I am planning on buying a few more, at Wild Birds Unlimited. Here is a picture of the blue lantern hanging outside. And the other picture is one of my favorite pictures that I've ever taken of Roy winking with Little Debbie sitting behind him, just because I love those two so very much.

Y'all have a great evening!

A Fine Book!

Today has been fun. This morning instead of walking with Leslie I decided to get another form of exercise, so I decided to paint the drab green colored wall in the big room that I have never really liked. Little did I know that "my little project" would take me over four hours to accomplish, but I am glad that I did it.

After painting the first coat on the wall I decided to paint the kitchen while the paint dried. An hour later I was covered in off-white paint and so were the cabinets, the countertops and the wood floor and it didn't help that my dogs helped me by walking in the wet paint and decorated the wooden floors throughout the trailer with their paw prints.

Since the paint was drying slowly on the wall, Hazel and I then vacuumed up the dog hair and cob webs and dusted and cleaned the pictures that would be soon returning to their wall. After I put the second coat of paint on the wall I got out Sandy, my electric sander and started sanding the paint off of the floor and by now my back was starting to ache from so much bending up and down. And my dogs seemed to be really amused as they tracked me from room to room and watched me remove their tracks.

A little after one-thirty, as I was hanging up the last picture up on the wall, Tony walked into the big room and said, "Nance, we need to go to Kerrville to get dog food and toilet paper. Are you nearly done?"

"Yes. Give me fifteen minutes to get cleaned up." Twenty-two minutes later I took this picture and then Buttermilk took us to Kerrville to get supplies.

As we were leaving the H-E-B in Kerrville we ran into our friend Karen in the parking lot. She's the owner of The Plant Haus, Kerrville's favorite nursery and we had a fun visit with her and then we headed home.

Before turning off of Highway 16 we stopped at the mailbox to get our mail. "What's in the package?" Tony asked, as he turned Buttermilk around and steered us home.

"It's the book I ordered from Amazon. Cindy told me to get it. Her friend's friend, Doug Fine wrote this book about leaving New York and trying to go green and leaving a smaller carbon footprint in New Mexico. She told me I would love it."

By the time we drove the two and a half miles to the rescue ranch I had already read six pages of Doug's book and I was already hooked and could not wait to read it. "Tony, this is a fine book and I love his writing style and you're going to love reading it. The name of it is Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure In Local Living and it has gotten rave reviews by The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Portland Tribune and NPR to name a few.

A little before dark I went over to the Lodge to visit with Kinky and to show him the article that Phil Houseal had written about me and my bucket list for Club Ed in the Hill Country Community Journal. 

As Kink read the article I saw the most amazing thing happen while sitting at the kitchen table with him. Sophie was outside playing. She was getting up and down on her front paws and jumping around like she was playing with someone, so I started laughing. "What?" Kinky asked.

"It's Sophie and I guess she is playing with Frank even though I can't see him. Look." 

Kinky looked through the window and said, "She's not playing! She's found another Tarantula!" And then he jumped up out of his chair and went outside and I followed. "Good, Sophie," Kinky said, as we stared at a big hairy spider. "Get back. You're a good ranch dog, Sophie. Nance, get her to follow you around the side of the Lodge, so I can transplant the Tarantula to safer grounds." Sophie and I took off and by the time we had returned Kinky had removed the spider and he was smiling, so we went back inside the Lodge.

"Kinky, I have never seen a dog do that with Tarantulas," I said. "She is amazing and she really has turned into a great ranch dog. You, know that Thunder does that with Scorpions? When she finds one she will follow it around until she gets our attention and then T. removes it for me..."

When I came home Tony greeted me at the front door and he was laughing. "Nance, Ellen just called to give us an update on Buddy, the goat. You're not going to believe what he did." I shrugged hoping that it wasn't bad news. "Today when Mr. Cooper took off to go to the Medina dump, Charlie and Ellen couldn't find Buddy anywhere and they started looking everywhere for him. Guess where they finally found him?" I shrugged again. "Inside Mr. Cooper's cabin! Buddy had come in through the doggie door with the dogs!" We started laughing. "Ellen said when they went inside the cabin and saw Buddy standing in the middle of the room, he quickly left going back out through the doggie door and nothing had been eaten or destroyed. Isn't that amazing?"

Y'all have a great evening!