In no particular order:

1. Parents who don't bring their kids to soccer practice on time or at all but show up for the games and scream at the kids.
2. Soccer moms who park their high dollar cars in the handicap spaces when they don't have legitimate reason.
3. People who don't return a library book when there is a hold on it. 2 months overdue? Really?
4. People who have absolutely no concept of personal space and proceed to have a reunion right over top of you.
5. Being invisible. You'd think it would be fun, right?
6. Getting a sales flyer in the mail with an outstanding coupon that expired three days ago.
7. My coffee.
8. My dog. Seriously.
   
9. Bleach that will eat a hole in my favorite tshirt but won't make my kid's socks white.
10. Not being able to come up with a single halfway decent idea for NaNoWriMo.
    

It's 11:35 pm and I'm sitting at the computer stuffing my face with dry cocoa puffs. I don't know where they came from. I certainly didn't buy them. Took my first Ambien in weeks. Wanted to stay awake tomorrow. I'll probably wake up every hour until it's time to get up and get the kidlet ready for school.
It finally rained today. Is still raining, as a matter of fact. I stood outside in it for awhile just to feel it splattering off of my dehydrated skin. I could hear the plants sighing in relief. The frogs started singing. The chickens didn't think too much of it though. Nor did the cats. All six found their way to the door this evening. I've already kicked a few back out. They have a really nice house of their very own with several sleeping platforms, carpet on the floor, windows to look out of, a ramp to crawl up on and scratch their claws on, and a big bowl of food awaiting them. They come and go as they please in their little cat cabana. Every once in awhile they'll be raided by a 'possum or raccoon, both connoisseurs of 9 lives plus care cat food. The good stuff, the iams, is in the main house. Some of the cats refuse to eat that common tripe that the neighbours cat chows down on when he visits for a gnash.

damn. have to wrap this up so i can still find my way back to my room.

School started Sept. 7th. Two weeks later and she has a cold. Gallons of snot, sneezing. That has to be some sort of land speed record. I forced a nasty chewable vitamin down her scrawny little neck this morning. They're awful. I don't care if they are shaped like zoo animals. They still taste like shit and burn all the way down. She wasn't too happy with it either. I gave her a handful of cinnamon life cereal to chase it. So with her 30 pound backpack slung over her shoulder she trudged to the bus stop snotting and sniffling. I can't wait until it makes its rounds. Soccer practice tonight. She'll be laying it on thick, I'm sure.

Stayed up late finishing Mockingjay (by Suzanne Collins). Today I'm in a kind of funk. That let down feeling I always get when I finish a book, especially when I don't have something fantastic lined up for the next read. Book club is doing To Kill a Mockingbird but they won't meet until the middle of next month for that. I could be working on my own novel but I'm having a spot of trouble with my attention span. Seems it's nonexistent at the moment. I had a rather lengthy inner dialogue over the merits of a healthy snack versus a chocolate chip cookie a while ago. The cookie won. I guess my subconscious was playing devil's advocate because I can't imagine the need for a dialogue at all when chocolate is involved.

I'm off to the library now. Need to return some useless landscaping books and find a story I can crawl into and wrap around me like a fuzzy warm blanket.

Autumn looks like it is well underway. The leaves are starting to change and fall. The crickets are raising hell outside my bedroom window at night. Soccer season started. I'm still waiting for people to break out the plaid. I always associate September with the Royal Stewart tartan. I don't know why. It's not my clan.
I can hear the wind tossing the maple limbs around. The sky was a beautiful crisp blue this morning with feathery wisps of cirrus clouds. Hopefully the rain they promise will be enough to fill my rain barrels. They're all but empty now. I have one full barrel left and that's off limits due to the tadpole population that made it home at the beginning of the summer.
We're in the middle of renovating the foundation plantings on the front of the house. The boxwood and azaleas are dying. We pulled some out to discover that the entire bed was lined with two layers of a very tough plastic. The dirt and mulch that covered it (over a forty year period no doubt) got all of the fertilizer and water but the roots of the shrubs were bone dry beneath the plastic. Brilliant. So for the past few days I've been picking up plants at Lowes to replace them. I've got the basic plan in my head but I better put it to paper to make sure everything is spaced properly. Anything would have to be better than what was there before. Boring! Guess I better get out there and start digging out the old roots. Tempus Fugit...time flees!

I think I'll ram shivs of bamboo under my nails next. I did a little writing today and then proceeded to criticize every word. I had quite the skirmish between my inner critic and I. She won. She nearly always wins. I really stunk up the page and she knew it. It's one thing to write drivel but this a.m.'s attempt was pure dreck. I am going to have to kill that bitch if I want to get any work done.
Meanwhile, out in the boonies of south central Virginia, my dad turns 87 today. He still thinks he's 50-ish. Mad as a hatter, my dad. Or as he would say, crazier than a shithouse rat. Mom's birthday is next week on the 21st. She'll be 79. Neither one of them does anything the easy way. I don't consider myself lazy but I will take a shortcut now and then if the end result meets my expectations. And why not? Why sacrifice time and energy your whole life if you don't do anything you enjoy? Once you get to the end of your life shouldn't you be able to look back on it and say 'man, I had fun!'? Or should you be miserable, disenchanted, and sad because you passed all of the 'what ifs' up because you felt your time and money was better served elsewhere? My mom says she feels like she wasted her life. Not enough to change her behavior and do things she would enjoy in her remaining years though. She's says it's too late.
I went to Europe three times when I was in my late 20's and early 30's. Had a blast. Best time ever! I was 32 on my last trip (Italy & Greece) and met my husband two weeks after I got back. My globetrotting days were over. Just like that. It was time to knuckle down and get serious. House, baby, etc. No regrets on that at all. I do miss the freedom of having to only think about my future and making decisions based on that though. Freedom is a powerful feeling. I used to get quite a bit done. Now every action and/or reaction has to pass through a committee of three. But that's life. It's not going to stop me from enjoying myself. I think I'll get the forms for passports this week. Get the ball rolling. Mine expired long ago. The husband and kidlet have never been off the east coast. Neither have my parents, but that was their choice.
Ok, I feel better now that I have a plan. Glad I procrastinated on the bamboo. That would have been nasty.

It's the eve of a new school year and I'm all aquiver with excitement. The kidlet can't sleep. I know she's excited too but won't admit it. I mean that's so uncool, school is dull and boring and the other kids are stupid and boring. Duh.
I can barely keep myself from packing her lunch right now at a quarter to midnight. I wish I was going back to school. How dorky is that? The last class I took was Medical Terminology. Aced it. Still have the flash cards I made for it. That was over ten years ago though. I haven't learned anything new since. Got pregnant while taking the class and went brain dead during gestation. And ten years of Rubadubbers, Lazytown, and Backyardigans didn't help to rehab the gray matter in the least. Blue's Clues wasn't bad though. At least we made a game of that. I cut out three blue paw prints and put them around the house and the kidlet would find them and try to figure out Blue's Clues. I bet she'd still play if I got them out. I'm sure I still have them. I still have my flash cards so apparently I don't throw anything away. Well on my way to Hoarders on channel 37. You'll find me buried under empty cat food bags and school papers.
Better try to get some sleep. The bus comes super early. 7:25. Another year of 50 minute bus rides to go to a school ten minutes away. If she went to her home based school she'd be there in three minutes. Gotta love how the county divided the districts. Next year the CBG school (if they aren't cut from the budget) will be all the way to the city in a school with suck ass SOL scores. But they need the CBG kids to keep their accreditation. My child, a pawn of the school system. I'm so excited!