Of Parties and Pollen

I think it is really Spring here!  The live oaks are now getting their new leaves and shedding the old ones.  Along with this comes the POLLEN!  The only thing I am allergic to is live oak!  I get those itchy eyes that drive me crazy!  These beautiful breezy days with temperatures in the low 80's are so nice and I just don't like to stay inside!  So  I itch and itch some more!  Eye drops help, but not much.  The pool is so nice these days and I still go for my swim around 3 PM.  I manage to control all this a bit by coming inside and sloshing out my eyes with cold water often.
Today was especially nice as cousin Natalie and hubby Jerry had a party at their place to celebrate four birthdays.  We had a nice luncheon with birthday cake and key lime pie for dessert, YUM!  Nat's sister and brother, their spouses and her nephew along with our high school friend and her hubby, Dennis and I had a great time visiting and eating and catching up on each others 'doings'.  Here's a picture of our gathering.

 

Tomorrow we party again!  A nice lady is throwing a party... with great food of course, for the carpenters who built her new screen porch and their wives are included.  With all this good eating, we will have to roll home if we don't really practice that portion control!!

This week we have had house guests, Natalie's sister and hubby.  Janice's kitty stayed with Natalie but as we have a guest room, we had the honor of housing the people!  Her kitty and our Miss Lizzie are both 'only children' and don't like to play nice with each other so it is a better plan to keep them at separate houses.  Samantha settled in nicely at Natalie's so that was good. They will be leaving for home on Monday and it will be pretty quiet around here then.  It is always nice to have company. 

 I thought that it was time to upgrade my phone so I bought one a bit 'smarter' than my old one.  It does have some nice features, like a real keyboard to use when texting, which I do very little of but sure like when I do!  It is a touch screen phone but not a real genius like the iphone, which I have on my wish list!  (BUT I am to frugal to pay all the fees necessary to run the thing!)  SO now my so called smarter phone doesn't get as good a signal as the old simple one!   Sometimes I am ready to just toss all the 'techie' stuff which has such temperamental moods and go back to the good old days, you remember, just crank up 'Central' and when you hear "Number Please" just give the nice lady the number of your party and BINGO! she connects you right up. BUT I sure love email!  Snail mail took way too long to get an answer! Guess I have one foot in the old days and the other in this crazy present.

It is count down time now.....only 30 more days and we will head back to the hills.  The time sure went 

fast this year.  I hope to have more interesting things to write about when I have time to just be quiet for a bit and do some thinking and pulling up some good memories to share.  I'm thinking of the garden already and  getting my annual sip of sap from the old maples and looking for the crocuses to peek their heads above the melting snow. Maybe there will be some snow left,  just enough to go on a short snow shoe hike.

Miss Lizzie is telling me to quit and come to bed so I guess I'd better do just that.  Goodnight moon!!