Thyme to travel

What should I see?

A good portion of yesterday was spent plotting our escape. Since I am trying to use reward points, it was frustrating since there is maybe one seat per flight and depending on the circumstances, required widely differing amount of miles. And then we couldn't find seats for Steve on the same flight, the prices kept changing every time we refreshed the screen, on and on but finally we got something that will sort of work even though we will end up taking different flights but will arrive at our destination within hours of each other.
Ah travelling on a budget...
Steve initially was exploring package deals but of course, I think I can do way better cobbling an itinerary on my own for much less. But where will we go? We have the tickets for the  jumping off place but the world is wide open from there. Plenty of time to fill in the details....
A hint for our beginning (based on it seemed to be the cheapest place to fly)

Yeah I been there before but Steve hasn't

And today's riddle:

????

Thyme on my hands (though it isn't my thyme as my variegated thyme finally died after faithfully popping up for 8 years in my rock garden, not my hands either)

My husband is losing his senses

We don't have as many blooms this year on our lilacs. I did bring some inside as they smell so pretty

Taste, smell, hearing, sight and touch. Of the five senses, only sight and touch remain relatively intact for Steve. The first two are closely related. I assume he can tell the differences between salty and sweet but beyond that, not much. When I first started work in the pilot plant, now 38 years ago, I noticed that two of the old timers had no sense of smell. Could this be a by-product of our work? As for hearing, Steve grew up next to extremely loud trains. Maybe that destroyed his hearing.

So the fragrance of my lilacs will be lost on him.

Finally it is dry but cold. It was in the high thirties when I went for my run this morning but given all the running in the polar vortices I did this year, not a problem.

Agave swan song

The agave flower stalk which is still growing. In a week or two, they will need to open the top of the greenhouse if it keeps growing. It will flower maybe in a month. The blossom will last a few weeks and then the plant will die after living 80 years

Base of the agave

We went today to see this once in a lifetime blossoming of the century plant, a type of agave. Alas it has not started blooming. It is getting national attention. But it was fun seeing other things in bloom, especially the bromeliads. And I never saw their expanded out door bonsai and penjing display before.

Two bromeliads

orchids

I like their chairs

koi

cacao bean

Pitcher plant

I love their gate to keep the deer out

It has been raining hard for 4 days now making running and bicycling difficult.The winds Tuesday were even stronger than those on tornado day knocking down numerous trees. And there is a frost warning tonight!

Still I manage to keep myself entertained. Yesterday I watched Ms. Tess and later went to the 5th anniversary of our cooking for survival class. Subject of our class: grains. My favorite survivor Hope was there. Good discussions as usual.  Best dish? A variety of waldorf salad containing wheatberries and mangoes along with the usual walnuts and apples. Also good: a roasted vegetable concoction that contained farro.
And today, a visit with a friend to catch the agave plant bloom. Well we got there too early.

Take cover immediately!

This was just the first of 3 or 4 tornado warnings yesterday

During my run yesterday, it began to drizzle  and then thunder. I ran closer and closer to home in case there was lightning. The drizzle didn't bother me given how hot and humid it was. In the afternoon, the real fun began with sirens going on and off for 2 hours. The deal is that anytime a funnel cloud is spotted, even at high elevation on radar anywhere in the county, a warning ensues for the whole county even if hardly anyone is in its path. This occurred right before Maya's school was to be let out. Down to the basement for her and her schoolmates. She was there for more than 2 hours as new storms kept cropping up.

Although the first storm barely touched the north border of our county, it was headed right for where Josh lives. Where was he? Driving Allie home from daycare, completely unaware that he was supposed to be huddled in a basement. Then new cells sprouted up that were headed our way. I guess a few funnel clouds were spotted but not in Ann Arbor. No one got hurt but the flooded roads caused some accidents.

I have yet to see a tornado though a few have come close to us. Josh got to see one close up 2 years ago when it destroyed a block of houses less than half of a mile from him. He was trying to outrun it in his car. I was in sunny Boston at the time waiting for Tessa to be born.

In between storms, I got my nails done at a new, fancy place. They even had special pink Panda chairs for kids' mani-pedis.
My nails:

And we will have a repeat performance with the weather this afternoon. So out I went for a run and a bike ride. Weird sight:

Donkey was on a overpass

A Perfect Mother's Day

Started with a 25.5 mile bike ride to Independence Lake

Flowers from the kids. Got some nice presents and cards too.

Like that Scottish moss

Exercise ball was a big hit for the 4 older kids

I love Oliver's smile

Maya's aunt had braided her hair earlier

The adult table. Julie's father joined us

doing push-ups

Brought the Ziggle and the balance bike. Oliver was especially good on the ziggle

Allie woke up after dinner. Her hat was Naomi's

My grandbaby rainbow

How to get 5 kids to look in the same direction

Even harder when you throw 7 adults into the mix

It was supposed to rain but if it did, it was in the middle of the night. I rode out to Independence Lake, site of my first biathlon in which I got 'lost' in the water. A very pretty ride though it involves travelling on dirt roads, some of which are in better shape than the paved roads; others washboardy. When it is is sunny and riding through the woods, one has to play "shadow or pothole". Fortunately on the way back, the sun hid behind clouds so I had no shadows to confuse me. Even though I had stronger head winds than tail winds (the opposite of last week), I felt strong so yay for that. Still I didn't cover even half the distance of the first day of the Michigander, which will be 58 miles.

I brought the balance bike and the Ziggle to Josh's. New sidewalks, a courtyard to ride, a new sub nearby that has the streets blocked off: a good place to ride. Unfortunately neither Daniel or Maya was very adept with the balance bike. The Ziggle was much more fun. Even Tessa wanted a turn though she had trouble understanding that she had to wiggle to get it going. What she would do is say Wiggle, wiggle. The kids spent a good portion of our dinner rolling on top of a balance ball down the hill in Josh's backyard. It was fun watching them all have fun together with very little tears. Tessa jumped right in roughhousing with the older kids, a tough little girl.

Allie joined us after dinner all pretty and smily. I am so blessed.

The high cost of false alarms

Again photos have nothing to do with the subject: candy stripe spreading phlox in rock garden Also have lavender and bright pink phlox

Costco tulips which are actually purple and white. Dark purple does NOT photograph true

First thing to bloom: primroses (thanks mk) Finally my old primroses bloomed too.

Six months ago (?!!!!) a new lesion appeared near my scar tissue on the screening mammogram (the screening instantly morphed into a 'have to pay for it" mammogram plus a whole bunch of high resolution mammograms ensued. Now if I were anyone else, they'd say, let's see what this looks like in 6 months but since I have had TNBC, it could have come back and grow very quickly so no time to wait. At the time, they made it sound like it was cancer and I was told to do genetic counseling and quickly have a biopsy. They would have done it that week if it weren't for my aspirin taking. I get a biopsy the next week though it was clear that the radiologist doing the procedure thought she was on a wild (but extremely expensive goose chase) and the lab results proved her right. Over the next 2 months, I got a whole series of bills, lots of them. I assumed they were finished billing me but no, yesterday, I get a bill from the hospital itself for a huge bill,way more than all of them put together. Six months later!!!!!! Of course, we filed our taxes a month ago. As all the co-pays put together along with all of Steve's dental procedures took a huge chunk of our income. So now we need to file an amended  return with our newly expanded 'medical deduction'. Steve wanted me to call to complain how bad their timing is. I assume complaining to a clerk in the billing department will get me no where but someone there needs to know that bills need to be billed in a timely fashion. And the insurance company reimbursed them back in January so why the lag?

So if University of Michigan Hospital has bots, fix your billing department stat!!!!!!!!!

I am no stranger to delayed billing by the medical field (every other service bills promptly). My favorite bill was from the attending physician in charge of my dying father. Beyond calling me in the middle of the night to tell me that my father's heart stopped, I never heard from him again until 6 months later when he billed the estate (c'est moi!)for his services. Boy I loved writing that letter! In it, I reminded him that my father had died under his 'care', which he may have forgotten. Then I said something snarky about how he must not read the Oakland County Legal News in which it was published how claimants have 3 months to present their claims. After that, c'est effing dommage. Who does read the Oakland County Legal News? other lawyers I guess. When I dutifully posted the opening of my mother's estate, I got a zillion calls from lawyers offering their services. Well obviously I had done the heavy lifting already.

But that won't work in this case because I am alive. It was perfect out today. Cool but sunny. Good for biking, running, gardening and just sitting outside watching the world go by. How can I be crabby?
And last night, just sitting watching the birds (the swifts just came back from Peru), the setting sun making all my glass pretties aglow and then my own private Vegas with a friend drinking wine and laughing about this and that.

And tomorrow, all my precious ones will be in one place.

Porches

We sat on the porch eating strawberries and hummus

Daniel

85 degrees! We went from polar vortices to summer just like that. Too warm. But it was nice sitting on the patio last night trying to repair damage the squirrels did biting through wires of my solar light strings (success with the first string!!!), sipping my wine and watching the hummingbird (so far only one and he's kind of shy). Silly Sue. I decided to make matzoh ball soup on the warmest day so far but it was good. Naomi decided that riding a bike might make for a good workout. She hasn't touched the bike in 9 years when we did our last ride together.

But when warm, unstable air hits the cold front, storms ensue, which was the case this afternoon.I watched Miss Tess this morning while Shanna attended a Mother's Day Tea with Daniel. Shanna's subdivision is trying to get people to connect more by having little private lawns but lots of public space, houses close together and front porches versus patios (though most people end up building one of those too). Before the storm hit, it was nice sitting on the porch watching the world go by. I did bring the Ziggle for Daniel to try out. He enjoyed it for awhile. I think Oliver will like it better.