I planned to work on my lawnmower Saturday morning, the part I like least about mowing which I don’t like anyway because the results are so temporary.

I got up really early to beat the heat and all the time I was getting ready for the day, I just felt absolutely awful like there was pending doom.

It was still pretty early when I went up to borrow a wrench from Tom and because I couldn’t find it, Margaret and I called him.
That’s when he told me about Cousin Julie Hurshman’s fatal wreck.

I don’t know for sure if the heaviness was because of Julie, but it has not come back. I got the lawnmower fixed and part of the yard mowed by late afternoon.

We went to the family night Monday and to the funeral on Tuesday. It was really hard seeing her children, her parents, grandma and other family struggling to deal with such a tragic loss.

I’ll just tell you what I told her parents, Charles and Carol Boultinghouse, Monday evening, “I don’t know what to say.”

-It kind of seems like summer is almost over when the Picnic is past. Once the Aug. 3 election is over, things may really slow down. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it?

-We got some surprise rain’– an inch and a half Saturday night and again Monday afternoon. So that’s why the yard is still growing when it is normally in suspended animation.

-What do you think about three state record fish in the month of July? Three surprised anglers, I’d say, but they had to be ready or the report would have been, “The big one got away.” I still remember two huge bass about 500 miles and a few years apart that threw the hook and something big in the Industrial Canal out of New Orleans that I never even turned.

-Kimball is about to get a new kitty. In fact, it will be the first time in our nearly 35 years of hissing and spatting that she has had a kitten. We went to see the breeder Friday and she picked it out. Now we have to wait for the six-week-old ball of fur to grow up a little, get weaned, get on kitten food, get its shots.

Friday when we met the little shaded silver kitten we named Shale, she was still madder than a wet hen as she was being dried off from her first bath.

Kimball is the one who occasionally tries to drown our cats, as far as they are concerned.

KL