The squawking of a guinea cock woke me this morning and there is the sound of a cardinal bashing into our windows downstairs. There are lots of other birds out there and I would like to figure out which ones they are--it's on my bucket list to ID bird calls.

We had a good time yesterday. Ray went to teach, of course, My Dad came for breakfast and we ate eggs and "bacon." The guinea cock was back and this time he was clearly chasing my hens. My Dad came up with the theory that he is trying to mate with them (which we don't think is biologically possible). He was definitely chasing them. Cameron seems to be afraid of him. We picked some more peas and a few stalks of asparagus. The Captain replaced on end of one of the raised beds that was rotten and we have half a bed ready to plant something. Beans, peanuts, I would try corn, but he says it is not going to work. Other than that, it's too hot for most things until fall. It's acttually still quite pleasant, hot in the middle of the day, but cool enough morning and evening (60s). I don't expect that to last much longer though.

I rendered a third batch of lard--the best yet--and froze it. I have containers full of the little fat chunks that are left, which I give to Cameron every now and then. He sticks pretty close to me these days. I have eaten some bits myself--they don't taste like much and are surely very bad for me, unless I needed to gain weight. I hate to waste them.

I sliced and baked the nut cookies I had mixed and chilled the day before. That's the other great thing about cool mornings. I can do some baking before we close the house up to keep it cool. I also made a brownie pudding, which is a version of pudding cake. It was in the oven a little later than I wanted, maybe until about 11.

I went walking with Ray without my ankle brace, a little further than I had been since I hurt it. It felt fine at first, but started to ache and I went home before he did.

For lunch, I had leftover pork chop and leftover salad and shared the asparagus with my Dad. Plus, I found Macintosh apples in the grocery store on Wednesday, so I had one of those.

Ray left the car at CVS and got the bus to his office, so I rode with my Dad and got the car. I had an OLLI class at 1:00 about end of life health care. The teacher was an interesting woman named Toni Miles. She is a medical doctor and a Ph.D. and the director of UGA's Gerontology Institute. One of the things she is interested in is having Athens be a Compassionate City. Sounds good to me. Her entry point is improving sharing information about death and dying. The people that came to this class told stories about their relatives--several from Alzheimer's, but other causes as well. Hospice is a really good thing--I've never heard anything negative. Often, though, surgeries are performed on people who have a limited time to live and mean that the end of life involves unnecessary pain and medication and confusion. Not a fun conversation, but an exciting discussion. There are people who agree that we need to talk about death and prepare for it. Almost everyone in the room had a Health Care Directive.

After that, I went to Earth Fare and bought a few groceries. Then I went to campus to pick Ray up. We headed over to the Fellowship to help set up for the going away party. It was done and there was no one there, so we ran an errand (picking up some things at the hardware store--they are such fun), and headed home. Unloaded groceries, admired the garden, let the chickens out again and picked up eggs.

At 6, we went to Debby and Peter's for a hootluck--a potluck supper and sing-along. We had to leave before the supper, but we brought cookies. My Dad brought a watermelon. Amber's children were very entertaining. There was a hot tub, but we didn't get in.

At 7, we were at UUFA for the going-away party. There were a few people there we knew. It was fun. Ray did some dishes, but we left before everything was cleaned up. I hope someone took care of it, I'm afraid it might be the guests... We stopped back at the hootluck just as my Dad was leaving and brought in the brownie pudding, which was a big hit. We got to sing a few songs before people left.

Then we stopped at the KR community center a little before 10. The community was providing baby-sitting for the kids, so any parents that wanted to could go out. Even at that time, there were more adults than kids and we heard that more had stopped in through the evening. Nancy S. was playing go fish with Soli and Sophia and I joined them for a bit before the parents arrived. Ray was helping other adults "walk" Ruby around, holding onto his hands. Pretty fun stuff.

Home and to bed, with a very small amount of reading.