Waking Up

 What time do you wake up in the morning? For me it varies, but it is almost always before 6am, sometimes much earlier. The first thing I do when I wake up is try and guess what time it is. More often than not, I can guess it within 10 minutes. Other times, I am way off. 

First, I listen. If I don't hear birds, I know it is early and I should go back to sleep. Many mornings I cannot. If I do hear birds, I know it is at least 4am as that is when the little tweet-tweeters start tweeting. Then I open my eyes. Is it light out? The amount of light gives me my next clue of what time it is. The first vestiges of light take place about the same time as the tweeters. The lighter it is, the later my guess. 

This morning I woke up when there was no light. I guessed 3:30. I was 12 minutes off at 3:42. When my internal clock is off, I will do this exercise only to find out it is something like 12:40am and try to go back to sleep. Sometimes my brain will let me, sometimes it will not. If it does not, I will ever so quietly go to the closet and grab my robe and a blanket. As I am sliding the door closed (it is a sliding barndoor), Barb will often say, "You are not a church mouse". Other times she will say, "Seriously?", to which I would say, "I am a church mouse". To which she will say, "You are not a church mouse". 

I will then go out to the couch sit in the recliner and either try to get back to sleep, work on the blog, or just watch TV. Sometimes I will take sit in the hot tub and enjoy sound of the tweeters. 

I have a friend who will remain nameless, but you read his name in almost every blog, who on several occasions as gotten up, made himself breakfast, ate it, got ready for work only to find it is like 12:30am and he does not have to be to work until 7!

At some point, I may fall back asleep for a bit, usually for 30-60 minutes before I am up for the day. And there you have it, my morning routine probably 5 out of 7 days. The other two days I sleep until 6ish, now those are good days!

Barb was busy working on her landscaping this week. We borrowed Neighbor Jim's dump trailer and went to the rock store and got some landscaping rock.

Barb also made a rolling rack for our kayaks so we can move them out of the way and load them easier. 

We also spent an afternoon at Neighbor Jim and Carmen's helping them put trusses up over their garden. You see, there is so much hail here that most gardens have some kind of covering over them. Jim and Carmen are expanding their garden, putting trusses over it and then laying hardware wire over the top.

Now, that is going to be a garden!

I continued work on my deer blind. It is basically done, I am just waiting on the plexiglass to come in. The stuff they carried at the store was not thick enough. I wanted 1/4" plexi and had to order it online. 

In the fun category we went over to Kevin and Cheryl's for supper one night. Kevin's mom came up from Arizona for the week so we went to see her. Well into her 80's, she is a sweet woman and a joy to visit. 

We also got out fishing again! Same lake as last week. A beautiful day, 80 degrees, light wind and the fish were biting. 

While our target species was walleye, we caught 3 different species as well; crappie, smallmouth bass, and catfish.

I know many of you are wondering who caught the biggest and who caught the most but the thing you understand is that fishing is really a team sport and keeping track of things like that are really unimportant and if you really think about it, petty, so on this day I am going to say there was no outright better fisherperson. We are just going to move on and focus on other things.  Overall, we caught dozens of fish, keeping 5 walleye for the supper table. 

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there. We both miss our dads to this day. My dad has been gone over 26 years; he would have been 100 this year. Barb's dad has been gone for 14 years now and would have been 88 this year. 

Here is your dose of cuteness for the week. While the baby fawn did not return for a visit, some other forest friends did in the form of a baby squirrel and bunny!

Then there is Ms. Maisie......we can pick her up in less than 5 weeks!

Have a great week!