“Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don’t have time.” – Taluulah Bankhead.

I’ve really wanted to blog more regularly, but not enough to actually blog regularly. Sometimes I do not think about this blog for weeks at a time, then I do and with pristine intentions, I think I will do it NOW, then the phone rings or the doorbell or Christy wants to do something and my intentions continue to pave a road to hell! But, this week I’m at my computer actually posting on my blogs. Yes, I have two. The other is listed on my “favorite blogs” on this page. Sometimes I’m tempted to just copy what I write on one to the other, but I always refrain from doing that because it doesn’t seem creative enough for my overly developed sense of self.

I’m off to Montana for most of July. Christy will drive with me as she has a week off work and we will be followed by our friends Deb and Kathy. I’ll buy a new car in Montana (no sales tax there) and assess the damage to my property caused by Spring flooding of the back acreage and dead trees caused by pine beetle blight, which has completely killed the pines in the Helena National Forest (our land backs up to it) and has now killed most of our pines. The saving grace for our property is an abundance of aspen. I’m having the trees uprooted because I don’t want hundreds of stumps. The cost of this seems astronomical.. The “tree pusher” tells me he charges $85.00 per hour where his heavy equipment is needed.. I’ll start with the 15 large pines that threaten the main house and see what more I can afford. We also have a plumber lined up and the well man, because the flooding has probably contaminated the two wells that serve the back 10 acres. C’est la vie!

I did not get to Montana at all last year so there is probably a lot to do. Erin’s husband (my step son-in-law whom I love,) Carl, will visit in Montana the weekend of the 22nd and he will do whatever we decide is most pressing. He will also fly fish the Missouri in a float he will row and we will have an exquisite meal at the Montana Club in Helena. I’ll also take the girls to dinner there next week.

I’m looking forward to all of this and more as I continue to enjoy life as I know it in my “golden years.”