Yeah, yeah, yeah

I know. I've been AWOL.

First, I had company. I think. It was a long time ago. Then there was the Bastrop County fire. My parents and youngest sister and her family live in Bastrop County. The fire was mostly closer to Bastrop, but it got pretty close. That's the view from Baby Sister's back yard during the fire.

And since the fire was between them and our brother's house up north of Austin (it's closer), and the kids were out of school (well, the nephew who's a freshman at Texas State was sent back to San Marcos), it seemed like a good time for a road trip to the beach. So they checked Daddy out of the nursing home and everybody came to Galveston, including Lucy the cranky old lady terrier mix and Flash the fish. (He's a Siamese fighting fish, and came in a canning jar.)

We had a really nice time, believe it or not, even though we spent a lot of time watching TV and online looking for news about the fires. Since there was a fire north of Houston at the same time, most of the local news was about that fire, but we did get the Austin stations on the internet.

We worked Daddy about half to death. Tuesday, we walked him and Mama around the block. Then in the afternoon, we made him walk down to the beach with us. It's not but about 2-1/2 blocks, but this is a man who gets up in the morning, eats breakfast, takes a nap, eats lunch, takes another nap, eats dinner, and goes to bed after watching a little TV. He's still skinny as a rail. And he took a nap on the beach. (We had some big beach towels spread out, so he didn't get too sandy.) I went out in the water with the kids. Laura and her 21-year-old daughter Molly hung on to Mama so she could stand in the surf without getting knocked over--that surf just washes the sand right out from under your feet, besides being surfy and shoving at you.

We went out to good ol' Shrimp 'N Stuff for supper and Daddy missed the step as we were leaving, and fell and skint his elbow all up. (Ack!) (also, sigh). He got blood on his shirt--just a scrape, but sometimes they will really bleed. The fella got him all bandaged up, and he went to bed fine, but the next morning, I had to make him go change his bloody shirt, because he put it on again. You kind of have to take away his dirty clothes to keep him from wearing them again. (sigh again) Anyway, they all left to go back home Wednesday afternoon, except for Molly, who gets migraines from smoke. It was really smoky back in the fire area. She stayed with her boyfriend, who lives somewhere in the area--but there are a lot of south-of-Houston suburbs...

That's pretty much all the excitement we've had. I'm trying to get some writing done. Trying to get my "independent publishing" stuff set up. (Argghh!) Every time I think I'm ready to upload a story, I realize there's something else I need to get ready first. I keep backing up, and backing up... It's just craziness.

Now that the heat has finally sort of moderated (It's still reaching the high 80s to low 90s pretty much every day), I'm walking more. I even have gotten myself back into decent enough shape that I took the Dolly-dog out for a walk yesterday. She's put on a little weight, gotten herself out of shape, so that her tongue was dragging by the time we reached the halfway point, so she wasn't dragging me so much. I also found a whole angel-wing shell, about 5 inches long (okay, maybe only 4-1/2), out on the beach, and I've seen some new birds out fishing. At first I thought it was a snowy egret that was just silhouetted in the sun. But when I got a better angle on it, it was pretty much the same color as the sand. And it was jumping around and raising its wings and--well, dancing in the surf as it fished. I think it was a reddish egret, going by the color and behavior mostly. Its neck wasn't that red, and I don't remember the pink on the beak--but I think the young birds aren't as red as the older ones, so maybe it was a teenager reddish egret.

So, anyway, that's all the news that's not too boring. I'd swear I'll keep up better here on the blog, but I hate to swear to things I'm pretty sure I will eventually do, or not do, as the case may be. I do think about posting. I'll see something pretty, and think--"Ooh, that would be cool to share." And then I don't. Sigh, yet again.