Happy May Day! We have a gorgeous day here in Saint Louis to open a new spring month.
It was not your typical week for us. The anomalies began Tuesday around mid-day when I knew I had a urinary tract infection. It came on quickly - before lunch I felt fine...after nap, I hurt. No one ever wants a UTI but this one was particularly poorly timed as I was supposed to join some music friends at a movie theater that afternoon to see "Bravo Maestro" - a documentary on conductor Gustavo Dudamel. I sadly had to cancel and spend my afternoon instead at the doctor peeing in a specimen jar. I am on a five-day antibiotic regimen but I am not sure it is the best medicine for the job as I have felt kind of crummy the rest of the week. Nothing to put me in bed, no raging fever....just the tiny aches one gets when sick. I even wondered if I was coming down with some other kind of illness. Even the doctor's office is not sure it is the right medicine due to the inability to exactly identify the kind of bacteria in my urine. So, I might be put back on another antibiotic next week. Time will tell.
My overall malaise had an impact on my yard work the rest of the week - that and the rain that fell off and on from Thursday onward. And that is not good as I have so much work still to do out there. We did manage to plant the lovely little dogwood tree. Steve got his two blackberries in the ground and I put in the 25 asparagus plants. We also managed to remove some more sod from the front yard. THAT will be slow going so at least we made some headway in that area. I just would have done a whole lot more if I could have.
We also had some quality time this week with Elise, Beckie, and Emily-Noah-Lucy-Quinn which we don't always get to have. Elise came in to town late Wednesday afternoon and stayed through Thursday evening. She had dinner with a mission friend Wednesday night. She and Steve visited the Missouri Botanical Gardens Thursday morning and we three attended the temple Thursday night. Beckie and I went to the Botanical Gardens Friday morning. Both mornings were overcast with rain in the forecast but we carried our umbrellas to ward off any precipitation and it worked! The gardens are finishing up the tulips but the azaleas are just magnificent as well as some late flowering Japanese ornamental cherry trees.
And, speaking of flowers, both Beckie's and my Christmas cactus have decided to bloom again. This is the third time this year for both plants!
Our time with Emily and kids (Joe was involved with SIUE graduation all day) on Saturday was after our work in the temple baptistry. I did piano lessons and all the grandkids are doing so well. Noah's composition and transposition skills are blossoming, Lucy played beautifully and there were no tears this week (she hates to mess up and often will start to weep when she does), and Quinn has, I think, turned a corner in his playing. The lightbulb has turned on for him. Even Larkin did well with our little chicken-picking-up-corn exercises I do with her off and on when she feels she need a piano lesson. Only, it is not chicken but kitten-picking-up-food for her! After piano time, both Noah and Lucy wanted to play their spring concert music for me on their cello and violin and that was wonderful. Noah is regularly playing up in fourth position and Lucy is so confident in her playing. She got a size-larger violin and she loves how beautiful it is (and I agree - the flame (wood grain) on the back is particularly lovely). When it was time to leave, Emily sent us home with a pretty little May Day bouquet.
I had a fun time at pottery and my glazed pieces were out of the kiln so I was able to bring them home.
Elise brought Spiderman Homecoming with her so I could watch the next movie in the line of Marvel movies Wednesday evening and then Steve and I have started watching How Green Was My Valley. (I have no idea where I get the idea to watch some of the old, random movies that I check out from the library). This film is rather long for a 1941 movie and so we have not had the time to finish it. Last night, Steve needed to work on a lesson for today and I needed to bake a dessert Sunday dinner as well as make a batch of granola. So, I suspect we will finish it either today or tomorrow. So far, I am having a hard time understanding how it got a Best Picture award. It is pretty disjointed as it tries to pull in all the parts of the book that it is based upon.
Probably the biggest news of the week is that we bought a used car! We have been dragging our feet on this endeavor for several reasons - first, we weren't sure what kind of car we wanted. Second, we are still paying off my crowns. Third, it is just scary purchasing something that expensive, particularly right now when ALL used cars are SO high in cost. But, it had to be done as summer heat is approaching and we didn't want to face another summer having to drive with windows down since the Element's AC is too expensive to repair (plus, at over 220,000 miles, it seems risky to invest so much money on a new condenser). SO, Tuesday morning, we visited a local Enterprise Used Car lot to just see what cars we could be comfortable in. With our recent car rentals, it was clear that some small cars were just not going to be good for Steve's and my old bodies. We identified a few models that might be suitable but didn't go any further than that. Enterprise used cars are pretty pricy and understandably so since they are late model, low mileage, and have a great warranty. We checked out cars online on Carvana later that afternoon and remembered how much we liked the Nissan Versa Note that we rented back in 2016 for our Iowa trip. We wanted to see if we could still get in and out of this kind of car so we stopped at a Nissan dealership Wednesday morning just to ask if we could get in and out of a Versa Note and, four hours later, we had purchased a 2017 Kia Soul! We got a good price and added a 6 year/60000 mile extended warranty and we can still handle the monthly payments. The Soul was roomier than the Note we were shown and it was in better condition. It had just barely been traded in so it had not gone through the dealer inspection, cleaning, etc. so we have not picked it up yet. Hopefully the windshield will be installed Monday or Tuesday. At least this summer, we will be able to drive in air-conditioned comfort! We are still keeping the Element for now because of it's hauling capacity.
And so, there you have it. April is over. May is here.
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