Life is just a bowl of cherries

Yesterday I turned 72, and a fine day it was, but I'll get back to that in a bit.  

I have a weakness for cherries.  Cherry pies made with sour cherries, ice cream with chunks of cherry, Smith Brothers' Wild Cherry cough drops; but I especially love sweet cherries.  Most of the time I can't bring myself to pay the going price for them, but about once a year I'll find them on sale.  This year, it was a wonderful sale:  $1.99 a pound at Price Chopper.  I do most of my grocery shopping at Walmart, and I realize they price-match.  However, when it comes to produce, I make Cliff take me directly to the store having the sale, because Walmart produce just isn't quite up-to-par and fresh.  So the day before Fourth of July weekend, I bought two bags, probably adding up to five pounds of cherries.  I ate cherries for four days, all I wanted of them.  It was glorious, but I realized I had not yet reached the limit of cherries I'm able to eat.

Tuesday I had a doctor appointment in Oak Grove.  It occurred to me that those cherries at Price Chopper would still be $1.99 a pound until midnight, when the new weekly ad would take effect.  So I asked Cliff to take me for more cherries.  "We'll burn more gas than you're saving on cherries," he said.  But when I told him the regular price vs the sale price, he agreed to drive to Blue Springs.  I bought another five pounds or so of cherries.  

Yesterday was my birthday.  My birthday breakfast consisted of a boiled egg and two cups of sweet cherries.  (I repeated that breakfast this morning, since it served me so well yesterday.) 

After I'd had my birthday breakfast yesterday, Cliff got up, went through his usual wake-up routine, and then offered to take me to Sedalia to "that store you like".  He meant Menard's.  Then he suggested I buy anything I want there (up to a certain amount of money, ha ha).  I thought hard, and then told him, "I'd love to go browse at Menard's, but truthfully, there's nothing I want, so you can keep your money."

Let's face it, Amazon takes care of about anything I might want to buy.  

By the time we arrived in Sedalia, I was starving, and there just happens to be a pretty decent Golden Corral there.  I had pot roast, potatoes and gravy, creamed spinach, fried okra, a dinner roll, some green beans, watermelon, a piece of carrot cake, a piece of cheesecake, and some CHERRY PIE with ice cream.  Did I mention I'm taking Prednisone for what the doctor claims might be walking pneumonia?  I've been eating nonstop for four days.  Rather convenient, though, with all the celebratory birthday meals I've been having.  First the nurse tells me I've lost four pounds (no doubt from constant coughing), then she gives me something that makes me eat like a hog.  Thanks.

After eating, I told Cliff I wanted to go tour that ammunition place, Sierra Bullets.  Our tour guide was a congenial man, a twenty-five-year employee.  He took us through the place, explained how things worked, and answered our questions.  Even though I have little interest in bullets, seeing the work that goes into making them is fascinating.  I would recommend the tour to my local friends.  You'll find the information HERE.  No cameras are allowed inside, though.

After spending ninety minutes on the tour, we  went to Menard's.  They had some pretty flowers marked down, and there are some bare spots in my flowerbed, so I bought myself some birthday flowers to plant.  It was a perfect day, spent with my best friend. 

On another note, we have been getting huge amounts of rain, far more rain than we want or need.  Five inches over the weekend, and we've picked up another inch in the last two days.  The future doesn't look much drier, either:

 Yeah, just look at next week.  *sigh*

Tomorrow we go on a tractor drive with the club, so Cliff will get the big Oliver cleaned up and ready today.  The drive is held in connection with the Mayview picnic.  Cliff finds the tractor drives rather dull, but I enjoy them, creeping through the countryside at five miles per hour.  It's like a motorcycle ride, only in slow motion.  And there's a police escort, so I feel safer than I did on the bike.

I'm sorry I've not been blogging, but we had a big weekend with our Georgia son here, and I really haven't been feeling up to snuff.  I believe I'm ready to return to my regular routine now, such as it is.