Surprises
Joani turned 50 on Friday, August 10 and a small circle of her friends & family succeeded in throwing her a surprise party on Saturday and she was, in fact, surprised!
I have to confess that I was surprised, too. I didn’t hear about the plans until Thursday, but I somehow got it mixed up and thought the party was going to be Friday, instead of Saturday. I kept my head enough to know I shouldn’t ask Joani about it, but I showed up at the appointed time on Friday – and the place was deserted. A phone call to one of the planners straightened me out, so I went home. Everyone got a chuckle out of it when they heard about it at the real party on Sat. I told them all I went home early Friday because it was pretty boring to be the only one at a surprise birthday party, and I wasn’t even the one who was supposed to be surprised.

Sunday evening, Bubba and I reported to the starting point for the Washington County Fair Parade in Arlington at 4:45 pm. Just as I finished cinching up the saddle, it started to sprinkle. We took refuge with two other horses and Gina, our saddle club pres., in a picnic shelter. We all stood in that shelter for the next hour and half while the skies opened up with rain, wind, thunder & lightening. Every time I thought it looked like it was letting up, another mighty gust of wind would blow through and soak whatever part of my anatomy happened to be facing it, while the thunder rumbled.
The parade was scheduled to start at 6, but they postponed it to 6:30. The sun never broke through, but the rain stopped and the storm passed. The parade snaked about 2 miles through Arlington and a lot of people came out to watch, in spite of the stormy weather.
There is a guy from around here who has a flock of geese; he calls them “The Dirty Dozen Puddle Jumpers” and he takes them in parades. We saw him the Blair parade, too. The man has decidedly Amish features, dresses himself in overalls and a "Snuffy Smith" hat and puts little outfits on the geese to make them look like they’re wearing suits and ties or pinafores and petticoats. They’re really cute and he must have imprinted on them because they follow him every step of the way. They weren’t a bit perturbed about the rainwater flowing through the gutters!
When I got home, I found a furious husband – the severe weather warnings on TV had interrupted a golf tournament that Tiger was winning. Boy, was he TICKED! Especially since it wasn’t storming at our house as badly as it did in Arlington, though we did get 1.2 inches.