This morning, I opened all the windows. Not all the windows, as all the windows don’t open, but the one each in the living room, den, and kitchen. Let’s see how long I can make it today before I have to turn on the air conditioning. Yesterday, I made it until 3:30 pm, but I only had the kitchen window open, and I didn’t turn on the ceiling fans. Right now, it’s very pleasant in the house, but I don’t mind being hot as much as some people do.

I’ve already been productive today and got an early start. The dishes were done by sunrise, and then I went and tended to my plants and pulled some weeds in the yard. I am beginning to enjoy being outside early in the morning, which is a good thing seeing as we are already having days with temperatures in the mid-90’s. Being outside later in the day is impossible due to the heat, and it’s only the end of May.

I’m still not having much success with all those blossoms on my various pepper plants setting and turning into fruit. I’m uncertain if this is due to my impatience — peppers take a long time to come to maturity — or if there is some other problem, like too much nitrogen in the soil, improper watering routines, or it’s already getting too hot outside. I’m going to move the jalapeños to a spot on the porch that doesn’t get quite as much sun and see what happens. It’s completely depressing to see a ton of blossoms on them one day and then find most of those blossoms have fallen off the next. I did find a hint during my research on blossom drop which suggested spraying the flowers with a mixture of one tablespoon epsom salts with a gallon of water, and if I don’t see improvement this coming week, I may give that a try. Apparently, the magnesium in the epsom salts helps the blossoms set.

I’d planned to spend the rest of the day finishing up the heavy cleaning in the den and kitchen, but I might put that off until tomorrow or Monday. I’m feeling lazy. Well, not lazy, more like not interested in doing any heavy cleaning today. Lin’s planning to mow the yard when he gets home from work, so that means I’ll be out there later helping him with yard stuff. I most definitely don’t feel like spending the early afternoon doing housework and then the late afternoon sweating my butt off outside. There’s only so much a lazy chick like me can tolerate. Getting the rest of the house Mom-Ready is only going to take a couple of hours. I’m not worried about getting it done by Monday evening. Besides, I’m thinking I will have a lot of nervous energy on Monday in anticipation of Tuesday’s early morning dental event, and I am a tornado of household cleaning when I am totally stressed out.

Oh, and I went over to the convenience store this morning, because I knew Insane Neighbor Lady was working. How long did you think I could resist? I now know her whole work schedule for the week. She’s going to be gone a lot. Yippee! It occurred to me on the drive home that anyone seeing us chatter in public would assume we were good friends. We probably could have been good friends, if she wasn’t an insane and racist harpy. I have to at least seem to be friendly with her for two reasons: I’m likely to be living next door to them for a long time, and it’s the only way to find out things like her work schedule for the entire week.

So what to do with the rest of my lazy afternoon? I believe I shall pour myself a nice tall glass of root beer and read one of the several books I am in the middle of reading. Am I the only one who usually has several books in progress at the same time? I can’t help it. I have a short attention span, am easily bored, and there are so many books to read before my time is up!