August of 2016 was spent on several fishing trips to local fishing holes, new litter of kittens, first day of school with Andy starting high school and Alex in his last year of junior high.  Wish the boys would stop growing.  They are both taller than me now.

Had some success in the garden with zucchini.

It's been awhile since I wrote.  Today I found my first sign of Autumn approaching.  This morning I opened the chicken's feed storage and found a mouse.  This evening he was back and brought two friends.  Obviously Elvis and Ellie, the outside cats aren't doing their job.
Work is going well, have learned a lot, met some awesome people and have discovered I still don't like cranky  rude people.  But dealing with them is part of the job. Thankfully they are few and far between.  Some of the patients (did I mention I work for a medical clinic) are really very nice with a large sense of humor.

Andy and Alex have started 8th and 7th grade.  Just thinking about their first days of preschool.  Alex is all excited about the upcoming football season.  Andy is concentrating on his garden, faithfulfly tending his tomato plants and his newly planted cauliflower and broccoli plants.  We are planning next years garden already.  Going to get some little known (for me anyway) heirloom tomato plants.

The four dogs and Sheba the cat are doing well.  Elvis and Ellie, as mentioned earlier, need to buckle down and do their job.  10 hens, `8 pullets or baby roosters and 6 baby chicks.  2 ducks and she is sitting on about 8 eggs.  Wait and see if they hatch in about 2 weeks.

Medical woes

It has been a roller coaster of health issues for half a year.  We didn't have health insurance for a long time.  And we stayed healthy. Except for Peter's hernia but he had that back when we had insurance and he did nothing about it. So whatever.  We got insurance effective July 1.  July 3 I was in the ER for being dizzy (high blood pressure) and chest pains (acid reflux...again)
the health insurance we had just bought didn't bother to tell us, and we didn't think to ask, the emergency room component was only for accident, not illness.  So not only do we have to pay  for health insurance, which is just useless, we get a hospital bill in the thousands.
The insurance only paid a wee portion of Peter's hernia operation.  More thousands of dollars to pay.
So we switched to a better and incidentally cheaper insurance on January 1.  It pays for my bp meds and most of the other meds cost.
The boys have dental on their plan.  the adults don't.  And I am having two teeth pulled on Friday.  I hate, hate hate hate hate going to the dentist.  Going to have nitrous oxide for the first time. The regular dentist is having her partner pull the teeth, she says he is faster.  Fast would be good.  Figures it would be the day before Valentine's Day.  And one of the local restaurants is having prime rib as a special.