Out and About

Ely, IA

Hello,

We are getting out walking each day in this nice weather. Any time I go on the trail I am amazed at how many people are out there considering this is a relatively small town, but only ten miles at the other end is a city of about 120,000.

Birds were out this morning. Six ducks were on the small pond with two geese hanging out on the bank. Later a flock of red wing blackbirds sang nicely as I passed. Four killdeer flew over calling loudly. Was a nest near? There were other small brown birds that I was incapable of identifying. It is nice to have this company along with the humans.

My sister loaned us a number of Readers Digest Condensed books. Usually I turn my nose up at such, preferring to read the original. However, I might get hooked as I can race through these stories at a great rate. The only problem with these books is that we have to move them and return them. The other books that I have finished I pass along to a person or the library. It gives me great satisfaction to lighten the load.

Leroy and I are not of one mind when it comes to moving our things out of here. Leroy thinks we should use plastic bags and I vote for boxes. We will probably use some of both. Our winter coats, along with the hats, scarves, and gloves, fit nicely into the extra suitcase that we brought out from storage.

We have one of those plastic clothes vacuum bags that you can suck the air out of to make the clothes fit in a smaller space. That bag might have to travel as an independent unit rather than in the big suitcase. It will still be easy to handle. That bag contains most of the summer clothes that we had used last fall. I packed clothes for a couple seasons. It is so good to have had them. It is astonishing to know that we have been on the road or loose for almost two entire seasons.

With the warm days I was hoping that some of them were more accessible, but we can manage until after Saturday when we can unpack easily everything we might want. That is if we can find it. Can you believe it? Saturday night we should be in our own beds once again. We have now been sleeping in a king sized bed. Are we spoiled? Yes, but not to the point of no return.

Paula