On a cool but very sunny morning LC and I both had chores that we needed to do around the house.
I had committed to weed eat and it was only after I began that I realized what a big and messy job it was going to be.
LC spent the morning working on a weird and unusual contraption outside the house called a Swamp Cooler.
It sounds like the monstrosity that it is, and it is used to cool the house down on those rare very warm occasions during the summer when the house needs cooling.
It turns out that neither the previous renters nor the current owner spent much time either cleaning or maintaining this strange contraption so it took a good deal of work.
We began our respective chores mid-morning and it took until mid-afternoon until we were done.
But we were done and the yard looked good and the Swamp Thing was working.
From blue sky through the morning the sky had gradually become more and more cloudy and by lunch time it looked nothing short of ominous.
It began raining not long after we had completed our respective jobs and rained for the entire rest of the day.
I know that much of the country is sweltering in very hot temperatures right now including family and friends we both have in Tennessee.
But here in Cody Wyoming temperatures never rose above the low 60's, and all afternoon while it was unseasonably pouring with rain it never rose above 50.
With all the rain I spent the afternoon doing not much of anything and took these pictures of random objects in the house.
I have blogged before both in Juneau and since we arrived here about........things.......picked up along the way.
More stories because everything has a story.................
The snow globe above is one of four I have, but it is my favorite one because my youngest son Chris gave it to me for Christmas when he was about 12.
It plays the song Born Free.
When the boys were very young I would take them to the toy section of stores with both of them in the shopping buggy (Sean standing in the main section and Chris sitting in the top section).
I was the kind of mother who would take them through the Barbie aisle just so that we could make fun of all the pink alien girl-things we saw, and then we would head to the wind-up musical toy section and I would wind up every single thing I could reach for the amusement of my sons.
We would then all slink away to continue shopping while the long row of music boxes and musical toys played their respective tunes...............
LC and I were at a yard sale this past weekend and surprisingly came across this belt.
The man holding the sale liked to do leather work and his initials are LCT.
LC's initials are also LCT...............
I bought this owl at a yard sale many years ago and recently he has been through the ringer.
He is tall and solid wood and unceremoniously got shoved down into the bottom of a box when he left Tennessee.
After traveling across country he was stored in a damp and dark place down underneath the Unabomber Cabin in Juneau.
Unpacked and unloved he again was tossed onto the truck, traveled to Cody Wyoming and got thrown into a storage building until we could finally find a place for him.
He is a little scratched up (but thankfully only a little) and now sits on our long table in the living room.
I like him a lot.
He is so homely how could I not love him?...........
I bought this lantern at a yard sale also this past weekend from a retired Cody fire fighter.
I know nothing about it other than I like it.
And yes, that is a Christmas tree behind the chair.
LC makes fun of the "blond girl who likes shiny things".............
I bought this metal sign for the house when LC and I still lived in Tennessee............
If you pull the leather string below his tail his beak pecks at the board.
I bought it at.........yes.......a yard sale.........because it was old and made of wood and cheap and I liked it.
I also bought it because it reminded me of the old cartoon show Woody Woodpecker.
For some unknown reason it was one of Sean's favorite cartoons when he was little.
He called the character Woody Pecker............
The wooden stool was bought for a couple of dollars at a yard sale just recently.
The wooden round boxes have also traveled from Tennessee to Alaska to Wyoming.
I got them all for free and picked them up on trash days on the side of the road.
They were all people's discards.
The bottom two were found exactly as they are now.
The small top box was actually a lamp in a former life.
It had three legs below it, and a long lamp pole and lamp shade above it. After removing all the unnecessary parts it became just one more stackable free wooden box..............
Old yard sale roosters.
It felt very good to unpack things I had in Tennessee, find that they were still OK and in good shape, and that I had room for them both in my house and in my life again..............
My angel.
She sat for a few years on top of an old cracked, metal wood stove that I was using for an end table down in Tennessee.
The wood stove is now gone, and she also sat in the dark down in a musty environment under the house in Juneau.
She is about two feet tall and is now sitting on a counter in the bathroom here in Cody.
One of my favorite prints.
She is beautiful.............
And one of LC's favorite prints.
He bought this print of a Mountain Man many years before he met me.
It is a beautiful picture and it speaks volumes about what he is drawn to and where he is drawn to.............
LC and I bought this 3 foot high windmill at a yard sale a few weeks ago.
As we were admiring it the old lady holding the sale walked over and told us that she had made it herself.
She laughingly told us that she had her husband, under her direction, install every one of the multitude of screws needed to put the windmill together and that he had sworn and cursed every single screw.
It was a nice and friendly and laughing conversation and I could tell that she was enjoying telling it.
I think of that old lady and that swearing (but loving) old man every time I look at this windmill............
In addition to piles of rain we also had a lot of thunderstorms this afternoon.
Jamie is very afraid of thunder so spent most of the afternoon sitting right next to me and often times almost sitting on my lap..............
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