AARP Eye Center
MORNING ROLL CALL July 2025
Top of the morning to everyone on this First day July of 2025
Happy Birthday to all of our July Birthday members.
@LisaS961881 , I had a 2009 Tacoma (which I bought new) with about 200K on it, but last October, it got rejected during its annual inspection for rust on the frame which basically sounded the death knell on it. 😢 They suggested I could get it block welded and I did check with a few body shops, but no one wanted to touch it. It probably wouldn't have been worth the cost anyway, so it was time to bid farewell.
The flowers are nice, but I really love the skeleton family with all the fur babies. 😄 There are a couple of houses in the area (including one across street) that have giant skeletons up year round, and dress them according to the season/holiday. Right now, they are sporting bunny ears. Here is a picture of the one across street. The other one about a mile from here is humongous!
I have a couple of cat skeletons and was thinking of putting them out with little bunny ears and maybe colored eggs too.
@SpringIsHereVA , speaking of cats, yes, they definitely shed when it gets warmer and they even get mats which hopefully, they usually can groom themselves, although a brush definitely helps the process. Giorgio has long fur, so he can be a mess sometimes. His mama, not so much. When I had indoor cats, I wore cat hair. A friend (with cats) gave me a canvas bag that says "Cat Hair Both a Condiment and Fashion Accessory". I love that bag! I don't worry about hairballs, since they're outside and if they puke, so be it.
Willie Mae showed up with her 2 kids in tow in 2016. We think Willie Mae had her babies in an abandoned trailer at a house next door and then, when the homeowner discovered them, she moved them to under my deck. She may have had more, but only 2 survived. Yes, they were absolutely TNR'd. The boys were fairly easy to trap once they became old enough to fix, but Willie Mae proved elusive. She would NOT go near the trap no matter how well we tried to disguise it. AND she was a priority, since we already knew she could pump out kitties. Finally, we got her trapped in a shed and my neighbor put on a Carhartt jacket with leather gloves duct taped to the sleeves and I had on leather gloves to hold the trap and door open and he manhandled her screaming and fighting into the cage. Impossible mission accomplished!
And lastly, about weights and exercise -- yes, I have weights, a weight bench, exercise bands -- I am even typing this on my desktop sitting on a exercise ball. My rule of thumb is when I am watching TV or Netflix or whatever, that I also need to be doing something -- whether it be pumping out bicep curls, tricep dips, leg lifts, etc. Of course, I love hiking and bushwhacking can be a challenge -- climbing over, crawling under fallen trees, boulders, rocky and steep terrain. I don't walk around the neighborhood because the furkids would follow me. So we go on walkabouts and runarounds on the property. I stick in my Airpods and we're off on epic "adventures".
I miss your gardening posts Nicole!
I wanted to share that I saw the first Monarch Butterfly of the season yesterday. I figure planting more pollinators helped! 😀
I also wanted to share a photo of an Iris that a friend gifted me with last year. It’s in full bloom and made me smile this morning!
~ Have a great weekend everyone! 🌈🌸🏠🪺🪴
Nicole,
I found a photo from last year. Every flower you see here is from Dollar Tree!
I just picked up this cozy mystery from Dollar Tree. It will have to wait until I am finished with ~ The Mirror & the Light -. It’s the final book in her trilogy about the final years of 
Thomas Cromwell. The first was ~ Wolf Hall ~ , and the second ~ Bring Up the Bodies ~.
I enjoyed the PBS adaptation, and want to finish this book before I watch the final segment on PBS.
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