Tap Tap - Drum Drum

We are all familiar with having to wait in traffic and how the seemingly endless seconds go on and on.  We find ourselves tapping our foot on the floor or drumming fingers on the console getting a bit more impatient as time drags on.  This past week, each time Dean and I have been in the car I have heard those sounds and a few more but they aren't coming from my side of the car since I'm not the passenger right now!  Since Dean's surgery, he has to put up with my chauffeuring him around and those sounds are his way of letting me know he's not impatient with the slow traffic but with my driving skills!

Any of you ladies that have had to step up to Driver #1 know what I'm talking about and also know that we often do this only under duress!  If it weren't for illness I wouldn't drive Dean anywhere!  But - he's stuck with me behind the wheel until Tuesday and lucky for him that appointment is with his cardiologist - we might kill two birds with one stone that day - get his stitches out and make sure his heart is strong enough to withstand more adventures on the highway if I have to drive him around for another week!  Tap - Tap - Drum - Drum!  I can only pray the doctor relents and allows him behind the wheel soon.  I've already given him my ugly "knock it off" like I used to do to Angela when she'd misbehave in the car (about 30 years ago!!)  Much more tapping or drumming and I may tell him that I'll stop the car right where we are and make him walk home from there!

On a much happier theme we have been having some great weather here and enjoying walking the park each day.  We live amongst approximately 280 other mobile homes so we have quite a nice little community here.  Nice wide paved streets, a library, community center, pool and hot tub, exercise room, shuffleboard, horseshoe pit, bocce ball and pickle ball areas and a great place for outdoor gatherings with 2 grills.  We walk the outer perimeter each day and that's about a mile.  When Dean is really back on his feet we will go up and down each street and that will add another 1 1/2 miles.  This time of the year many are heading home and we are saying good-bye more each day.  It is a beautiful time of the year in the East Valley with the base of the mountain very green and much of the cacti beginning to bloom.  

This bougenvilla has really been beautiful all winter. 

Across the street from this house are 4 smaller bushes in 

this rose color and 1 in gold.  The gold one is the only one of it's kind that

we have in the park that I know of.

This is our ocotillo off our back patio.  It is taller than the

patio roof with orange blooms.  

Once the stalks die some people make walking

sticks out of the thicker branches.

Sorry but I don't know the name of this one!  

I do have the same one in my yard but it hasn't bloomed yet!  

Mine will be pink instead of orange.  

We found this one on our walk yesterday. 

Of course all of these lovely blooms have caused lots of sneezing and stuffiness for lots of us and that has not been the fun part of spring!  But I would rather keep that box of tissues close by than be anywhere else right now.  Besides - to be anywhere else, I would have to drive and that means more of that Tap - Tap - Drum - Drum and I'm not sure I'm up to that!  I'm running out of 30 year old threats!

Have a great day in your part of the world - we're having a wonderful time livin' on valley time!