The alarm went off at twenty after six. Five hours of restless sleep at best for me. I feel mostly like crap. I brushed my teeth and then dragged myself down to the basement to be logged in and working by six thirty! I can’t believe that I am working at six thirty on a Saturday morning. And after working until the wee hours of the morning yesterday.
The Toccos are coming down to Peekskill today so in between things for work I needed to do some cleaning. My initial office work wrapped up at ten but there was more to do after that that required some paperwork that I did not receive yesterday as planned. I emailed several people hoping that someone would have it for me today.
My next task was to do some cleaning. That lasted until around eleven thirty when the Toccos arrived. Since Ramona was here last weekend until Monday we actually had the house in pretty good shape so it was not all that bad to make it presentable again.
Today I finally made the call that the second palm tree, the “healthy” one, was finally past the point of no return and had to be thrown out. So I carried it out to the dumpster and tossed it. The palm trees did very poorly in the move from Newark to Peekskill. They were so large that they really got abused and once here they were competing for the little sunlight that we get which is practially nothing compared to how it was in Newark. The cycas is doing quite well, the mandarin is hanging on, the tree in the nursery seems to be okay but I can’t be sure and the ivy is impossible to read. All of the plants are hungering for sunlight but there is nothing that we can do about that.
Liesl was very excited to have her grandparents here visiting her. She was little miss social all day. Oreo and Dexter were quite happy to have another Boston Terrier with which to play. They get along so well – especially now that they are both getting older. They are more snuggle oriented rather than play oriented these days.
Dominica’s parents brought along Dominica’s “new” cedar chest that came from her papa’s house. It is a really nice, sturdy piece of modern furniture. It is not what we were expecting at all. It is actually a very normal piece of furniture that we plan to use in the main living area of the house – most likely as some combination of seating and storage. It is very heavy-duty. We had no idea what to expect but this is definitely a really nice piece of furniture that we are going to appreciate having around to be able to use. We had not realized that this was a relatively new piece before. We are always desperate for additional storage space so this will help a lot.
This afternoon we all went out for a nice walk as the weather is great. The sun is out and it is in the fifties outside. We made it up to the top of the first hill and we realized that Dexter had had all that he could handle as he was still on his drugs from the drive (he is terrified of traveling in the car and has to be drugged to keep him from getting too upset and having a heart attack.) So we walked back to the house and dropped him off and then set out again which was great for Oreo as it gave him a longish normal walk before embarking on a really long walk. What a happy dog he was.
So our real walk was the big look of Chapel Hill from our house, all the way around to the nature trail in the front of the complex and then the long way down by the back entrance and back to the house. It is a nice, long walk without any backtracking and a good climb as well. We all got some good exercise and Oreo had a wonderful time. Liesl slept, of course.
For dinner this evening we went out to the New City Diner in Yorktown Heights. Dinner was very good, as always. Dominica and I decided to slurge on our diets and each got some dessert to take home for later. We were not able to eat it with our meals as it was too much food all at once.
After dinner we came back to the house and everyone watched As Time Goes By. Dominica’s parents have never seen the show so it was nice to have such a great, classic show to be able to introduce them to.
We all went to bed on the early side tonight. We were really tired.