Sunny Sunday!

We had a great time with Cathy & Brent last night. Cathy came over early to swim with me for awhile, then we grilled steaks and they were SO good! Cameron even emerged from his room to eat with us, but only because it was steak he said! After we ate, we went on an early evening boat ride and it was so nice and peaceful!!! There was only one problem - a crazy neighbor that we call "Junkyard George." We live in a nice neighborhood where most of the people take pride in their homes and yards and keep them clean. Our entire neighborhood is just 1 street that is 3 miles long on the river, so it is a close knit neighborhood, for the most part. Well, if you remember the post where I mentioned that Walter, who is the president of the homeowner's association, had to go to court over a neighbor who refuses to pay his association dues of $40 per lot per year, which for him is $80/year...he's never paid them in the 6 or 7 years he's lived here and the previous board members didn't want to do anything to make him pay them, and now I know why!!! He also has a really junky yard and refuses to clean it or participate in the neighborhood cleanup days. In the meeting with the Walter, another board member, Junkyard George and the judge, he was yelling and making threats to sell his house to minorities (and if you know me - I do not tolerate racism!!!), etc. The judge was supposed to rule in 2 weeks by mail (does she sound scared too?) but after a month, we still haven't heard anything. Anyway, we are cruising down the river through our neighborhood and we pass Junkyard George's house. We noticed he's out there, so we just sort of keep going and try not to attract attention, but he recognizes Walter or Cathy (who is the homeowner's secretary) and starts to glare at us. Brent decides that waving to Junkyard George is the best plan, so he waves and Junkyard George becomes angry and starts to walk along his yard so that he can stare at us as we pass his house. He looked like a wild animal and I was a bit unnerved. Walter keeps driving the boat, never looking up, Cathy has her eyes glued to the water and wont look at him, and Brent realizes he's made the man madder by waving, so he starts to wave MORE! I'm watching this man stare us down and i'm like, "y'all, this man is crazy!" Junkyard George was almost unable to see us any more and begins to grab his umm, "thing" and shake it at us!!! I tried to grab my camera, but it was too late by then! I was sitting there speechless and Brent yelled something to him and Junkyard George started screaming things that I'm glad we couldn't hear! I am fully expecting the crazed man to burn my house down or something. Yikes. But anyway, beside running across him, we really had a nice time, then came back to our house and watched tv for awhile.


I'm still maintaining my same weight, but i'm doing good on my diet. I had scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, leftover stuffed bell peppers for lunch, and I have a roast cooking in the crock pot for dinner and it really smells GOOD!! Cathy plans to go to our health club tomorrow afternoon, so I'm going to drag myself with her and go work out. It's so hard to make it there, but once I go, I want to go back all the time. I am sure it's going to take some exercising on my part to lose any more weight since I haven't lost anything since Tuesday.

Walter has been working hard all day on the pier. I sat out in the yard with him a good bit today and helped with measuring when I could. I hadn't realized how great the pier will be for just hanging out and watching boats go by. The pier is right under our Cypress tree, which we thought we lost in Hurricane Katrina (before we even started building the house), but it is flourishing now even though it it missing some of its upper branches. The tree was even in the way of where our bulkhead needed to go, but we had the workers build around it! The tree is much shadier than I thought it would be.

Here is a picture of the Wildlife & Fisheries (river police) pulling someone over in front of our house. You never know if they'll give the boaters a warning for something, write them a ticket for a safety violation, handcuff them and put them in their boat, or like today, give them free t-shirts for passing a safety check!

And here is a view of the back of our house from the river.

Nothing much else is going on today. Cameron will go back to his dad's tomorrow, but i'm glad we had him an extra week again due to the cruise! I will be resting up tomorrow for my FIVE little visitors on Tuesday. I need to come up with some activities for them to do and some easy things to cook that they will eat. My friend's 8 year old son, Payton, does not eat ANYTHING, so that will be a challenge.

Questions & Comments:
I really appreciate the comments about my "regret or rejoice" blog and I'm glad that some of you were touched by it, and thank you Lizzy for the standing ovation!!! That is only a small peek into my crazy life growing up and maybe I'll make a point to throw in some other bits and pieces as time goes by!!

Two important points that I didn't include in the post:

• My dad died of pancreatic cancer a year after abandoning our family. His girlfriend in Pennsylvania didn't bother to let us know that he was dying.
• The baby I had when I was 16 was a little girl and I gave her up for adoption at birth. I reunited with her 7 years ago. Her name is Elizabeth and we only live about 30 minutes apart and are very close. When we met, she had just found out she was pregnant with her first child, my sweet little Landen.

I hope you all had a great weekend and have a wonderful week!!!