Yea!

We are a bit back to normal today!! It's 68 degrees at 11:30am. Oh, the cool breeze is so nice. We might actually be able to sleep in our bed again tonight.

Blazing hot in Tacoma

I'm not sure you can read our thermostat, but it says it's 91 degrees on the first floor of our house and it is 9:45pm. It is freaking hot in our house. I don't even want to know what the temp is upstairs. I took a shower this evening to cool off and my towel felt like it just came from the dryer (and it didn't)! The tile in our bathroom feels heated (and its not). I put my pjs on and they felt like they just came out of the dryer (and they didn't).

So, we borrowed an air mattress from a friend at my work and we are setting up downstairs where it is much cooler. We brought along three fans! I have a feeling we'll both wake up with 20 spider bites BUT we won't wake up sweating! I think we'll be living in the basement until next week.

MileStone

Today I experienced a milestone in my life...I was stung by a bee. I've made it this long in my life without a bee sting and today at work it happened. I went across the street with the owner to take pictures and look at an office & garage that he has for rent (I'm posting it on Craigslist; yet another item on my job description I keep up on all his rental property). He was taking pictures of the inside of the garage so I stepped out so I wouldn't be in the shot. While I was standing on the gravel just outside I saw a weed growing and bend down to pull it and a bee stung me on the arch of my foot. I think I was shocked and when he came out I said, "I think I just got stung by a bee." I spent the afternoon trying to keep ice on it while working. It was difficult and wet.

I always described getting a tattoo like having a bee sting - usually I follow up with I haven't been stung before, but its what I imagine. Today I now know. Having a bee sting is WAY worse than getting a tattoo. Bee sting pain lingers and lingers and lingers. My arch is still hurting and burning. A tattoo you just have to get through it while its happening and then you are done (the itching is another story), but bee stings last awhile.

Its like riding in First Class when flying. I always used to say if you can afford it fly First Class on long trips like over seas and such, but save your money for continental flights and ride coach with everyone else. Then I flew First Class and now I say if you can afford it fly First Class where ever you go!

I've learned my lesson today sometimes you just have to experience something before you can have a correct opinion about it!

Hot, hot, hot!

We are up to 95 degrees and its 2:30! We are definitely sleeping in the basement tonight!

Another hot one

It's going to be hot again today. We are up to 82 degrees at 9:30 this morning. I think we've decided that we are going to have to set up a make shift bed in the basement tonight!

updating

I don't have a temp gauge at home so I have no idea what the temperature is, but I'm sweating at 9:53pm ~ not a good sign for sleeping! I was outside watering the garden just a bit ago and the breeze was still pretty warm. Waymond checked the weather and apparently we are going to have to deal with this until next week! We might be moving our bed into our basement where its much cooler! Crazy!

yet another

4:03pm, 92 degrees and counting!

just another update

It's 2:44pm and its 90 degrees!

update

It's 1:33pm at 88 degrees! Toasty

Heat wave

On my desktop at work I have a temperature gauge from weather.com. I keep an eye on the temp in my zip code. Today at 10am it was 80 degrees in 98405! It hardly gets that hot in the middle of the afternoon let alone 10am. Needless to say we are experiencing a heat wave at the moment.

I know those of you reading this from Oklahoma and Texas think big deal it's over 80 in the middle of the night here, right, but try it without indoor air conditioning! We have a fan in almost every room of the house except the bathrooms. The bad news is trying to get to sleep while you are sweating - not pleasant. Or trying to do payroll at my desk and sweating (not pleasant either)! My boss bought me a fan on Friday and I have the door open and both windows, but still it's a little hot ~ even for me!

Right now at 1:12pm I am eating my lunch (a yummy Thai basil salad from Wild Orchid - have one if you live in the area) at my desk and it's 86 degrees. I'm not kidding, that's hot for here.

The worst part is that we have family visiting from Oklahoma. I know they were looking forward to a little reprieve from the Oklahoma heat, but sorry! We have two fans in each of their guest rooms!

Hopefully we'll get back to our normal 70 degree weather next week!!

Beautiful flowers

Here's a new pic of my sweet peas. I need to pick another round! I have two bouquets in my kitchen window so when the breeze blows in it smells like sweet peas. Very nice!

As promised

Here's an action shot of Waymond pulling the first onion.












































At dinner we had some zucchini & an onion. Very tasty indeed!

Onions

We have two onions that are ready to be pulled from the ground! I am so excited. I noticed them this morning as I was watering and they are huge. Waymond is excited about frying them with zucchini! He's an Oklahoma boy where anything good is either fried or smoked, he can't help it!

I'll post some pictures of them tomorrow. We are going to see the new Harry Potter movie tonight right after work so I won't have any photo opps!

Vashon Lavender Festival

Saturday afternoon we walked on the Ferry to Vashon Island to visit the Lavender Festival. Vashon has three lavender farms. They had a shuttle that picked people up at the Ferry dock and took you around to each of the farms. The shuttle system turned out to be highly disorganized, but we weren't in any hurry so it was fine. At one point we were waiting to go to the last farm and the bus that was suppose to show up was about 20 minutes late. One guy from the farm started loading up his Subruban and driving people himself. We got in the very back on his second trip. We didn't buy any lavender, but we did have lavender ice cream which was amazing, lavender cookies & lavender lemonade. Fun day on Vashon.


I find it funny that there is a Tahlequah in Washington State. Its on Vashon Island. So I guess we spent the day in Tahlequah.





Waymond took this from the ferry on the way over. It was a clear day, but hazy over the mountains.











Here I am at the first farm. The farms were really a family who had an extra lot and have lavender on it (lots of lavender). These guys were on a hill so you can't see the houses below them. They were in a neighborhood of sorts and I'm guessing their neighbors hate this time of year! There were cars everywhere on the streets.

But, I can imagine that the neighbors love the smell from their yard. Its like scented air.




Here we are at the last farm waiting (again) for the bus. It was nice not having to worry about having a car there or paying the $22 for driving our car onto the ferry instead of the $9 to walk on, but the shuttle system needs some over hauling before next years festival. At one point we finally made it on to the bus that would take us back to the ferry and we had to make one more stop at one of the farms. There was a long line of people to get on the bus, but we were already full and no one was getting off. I felt bad for the people waiting because there was no telling when another bus would be coming by!

flowers

Our Sweet Peas are doing well. I need to cut the blooms. The ones that I thought were going to be yellow so far are purple and white. There are many that are about to bloom.


















My other flowers are doing well too. They look nice in the vase, but they don't smell as good or really at all.

Harvesting again

We pulled one of our carrots this afternoon to see exactly how big they are getting. Not huge, but still pretty good. I've never grown carrots before. We are having it tonight with dinner. I think Waymond may actually be more excited about the carrot than I am. He's never grown carrots before either.


We finally staked up our grape tomatoes. They have loads of blooms a couple of small tomatoes growing. Our "early girl" is doing great as well. While we were out staking the tomatoes Waymond picked a few zucchini. I thought I'd been keeping an eye out for ones that were ready but I missed one and it was huge! It's kind of covered by the carrot greens in the second picture.

Sweet peas

So far I've cut every Sweet Pea that has bloomed on my plants! Here's the latest group. The yellow ones are about to bloom. And they smell AMAZING!