I've got a lot on my list of crap to do today but I'm not feeling it. Still trying to outmaneuver this cold and it's trying to get a foothold. Tenacious little bug. My eyelids are at halfmast so sleep wouldn't be too hard to coax. But I can't. I need to make a loaf of banana bread today. The bananas are quite frothy and pungent....perfect.

I also picked up a bunch of chocolate chips for baking so I guess I should make some cookies. Otherwise the husband will just open the bag and eat them like M&Ms. I had planned on making a pumpkin cream cheese pie, too. I really don't need this as I have gained a couple of pounds but it is the season and all that. The Grandmother is taking the kidlet Trick or Treating this weekend. I picked up the kidlet's ninja costume yesterday. She wanted to wear it to bed. Everything is ninja now. Anyway, I want to have some cookies baked for Grandmother. She deserves them.
Almost time for NaNoWriMo. I'm starting to panic. My outline is really sketchy. I keep getting bogged down in chemical compounds and gene manipulation and the overall timeline. I think the novel itself should only span 10 to 14 days. A lot of action can take place in that time...Die Hard was only one night. I've got so much to do around here but all I want to do is work on the book. Get in a position to start writing November 1st. I better get to it then.
After I finish this cup of tea....

11:39 pm Thursday night. I just took some Alka-Seltzer Plus. I'm hoping it will stop this headache from getting worse and take care of the sinus pressure. The husband is developing a cold. He coached soccer tonight and must have worn the kids out. The kidlet was zonked out just after 8:00. She barely got through dinner...which was excellent by the way. Chicken stirfry. I'm having a cup of tea and an english muffin. Comfort food. The kidlet was sick last weekend. She hasn't bounced back yet. I just made the mistake of watching the news and saw a story of a 6 year old Amelia County girl who died of Swine Flu. The mother was interviewed and she said she had taken the child to the doctor who sent them packing without a diagnosis.

Then there was the story of a manatee spotted several times in the James River. They usually don't travel much farther north than Georgia because they need warm water.

Other news: A Virginia teen was killed during an exorcism in her home. Apparently her Korean parents wanted to beat the evil out of her.

And a guy is arrested for walking around his house naked. His own home.

I knew there was a reason why I don't watch the news.

I had to break out my little under-the-desk heater this morning. The frost isn't on the pumpkin yet but it soon will be. I need to go up in the attic and pull down all the winter clothes today. The kidlet was asking for flannel sheets last night. I don't see why she needs them. Last night when I went in to check up on her she had company: Orville, Wilbur, and Smudge. Then Toast came in and Wilbur went outside. Those little beasties throw off a lot of heat. It's time to start putting food out in the winter house I guess.
I think I convinced the husband that we can recycle the monster wooden swing set into something useful. I see all sorts of possibilities. His view is rather limited. We could probably rehab it with free building supplies from Craigslist. Someone is always giving away pallets, plywood, old windows... Just the other day someone was giving away four sets of sliding glass doors. That would have been great if I was going to convert the space to a greenhouse. That would be so cool. I'd love to have a greenhouse but I don't see that happening any time soon. Man, that would be cool. We could move the frame down by the garden, use the elevated area where the slide is for a gravity feed watering station. I guess I need to draw up some plans.
But today I need to sew some pants for the kidlet. She is so tall and thin that store bought clothes just don't fit her properly. To get the length she needs she has to keep pulling her pants up all day. My heart bleeds.
2.5 weeks to NaNo. I really need to get my head around that, too. The whole transgenic microbes thing has to be ironed out and more thoughts on chimerism are needed. I'm excited by the possibilities.

I had to wear crusty old contact lenses because the husband was taking my frames in to the optometrist to get the glass replaced. At one point I absently rubbed my eye and pushed the contact back behind my eye. Lovely.
I just got done performing surgery on my face. Lots of blood this time though. We called the husband's dermatologist the other day to get an appt for me to find out what these damn things were cropping up all over the place. Their first opening is April 2nd. There's no telling what I'll look like by that time. I'll have to find a ninja costume somewhere.
Mom called yesterday. Started prattling along about how well her sponging sons were doing. I told her I'd rather not hear about it. Later that evening I called her back to see what kind of limit they were placing on the house they asked me to find them. "No more than $100,000" she said. At least 5 acres with a house, well & septic already installed. It boggles the mind. I asked, "You're still planning on putting this place on the market in January, right?" "Well--we haven't talked about it much lately. We really love it here." She had told me that they were going to have to sell their property and move to someplace smaller so her kids wouldn't follow her. Deep down I knew she was fantasizing aloud. I did waste a few hours looking for them but it occurred to me, if they were going to back out of the "ultimatum", and do a complete 180 on giving Rick money for his Egan road trips, then they weren't thinking lucidly or rationally. I want so much to just be out of it. It disturbs me so much. Anyway, I won't be looking anymore for them. They've done this to me time and time again. Jim was with me on speaker and he asked if everything was going well down there. "Oh yes, everything is great". "I hear that Rick is going on a road trip soon. Why'd you change your mind?"
That question was followed by lots of stuttering and stammering and finally "I have to go. I'm cooking and it's burning. I'll talk to you later."
And that was that.
The husband looked at me and asked, "Did she just blow us off???" I said, "Yep." And now we look like flaming assholes for our part in the "intervention". When we found out that the brother wasn't going to accept a part time job, or collect welfare, or hell, help himself in any way besides helping himself to another piece of chicken at the dinner table, we had an intervention. The husband called my mom to make sure that we were all on the same page. She said NO MORE MONEY! NO MORE ROAD TRIP MONEY! He had just pissed away $500 bucks on a trip to Jersey when he was told to stay out of Jersey since the interview was two hours away in Pennsylvania. He told the husband that he needed to get laid and knew a girl...and that he also owed a buddy about $100 or so and that he'd need him later so... So, a one day trip for a job interview turned into four days and a $75 overdraft on his bank account. Now the bank is calling here. I guess Mom will be paying for the ticket he got while up there, too.
I'm so sick of it.

In other news, the kidlet got out of school 3 hours early. We were supposed to go back to JoAnns to get stuff to start reupholstering the chair. I picked up a few yards of a beautiful green fabric to do the chair....$3/yd. I had a 50% off coupon, too. I just couldn't drag myself out of the house. Dizzy, shaky. Something is wrong with me.
Ambien is beginning to influence my typing here so I think I'll end it on that note.

The kidlet has gone to school. The husband has gone to work. Most of the cats have come and gone to do whatever cats do during the daylight hours. Sleep, most likely. And the brother is no longer here. The husband took Friday off so he could transport the brother back to my parents' house. He said he never heard the F bomb so many times in one day. I didn't go. There's no way in hell I'd subject myself to being trapped in a car with him for two+ hours.
A few quotes from the whole debauched attempt at my good deed:
"No good deed goes unpunished." (Mom) She wasn't kidding.
"He's your headache now." (Dad) More like one continuous migraine.
"He doesn't have a handy bone in his body." (the husband)
"I'll beg, borrow, or steal if that's what it takes." (brother) Apparently he won't work though. I think the appropriate quote would be "lie, cheat, and steal" but that's splitting hairs. Apples/apples. He said that dad abused him as a kid and he's still abusing him now. The brother is nearly 60 years old. He had the opportunity HERE to get away from that "abusive" situation but he decided to beg, borrow, lie and cheat from us instead.
The parents gave him their version of an ultimatum: They'll put tires on his car and get it on the road, rent him a Uhaul, clear his debt with them, and give him a fat check for $10K provided he never darken their doorstep again. That would be his inheritance. End of story.
Or so you'd think.
Who knew ultimatums had options. It was a brilliant move on his part. He had everyone here buffaloed into thinking he was a bit brain-dead but the cunning gears were silently cranking away the whole time he was here. He said, "No." Shut the front door!
He knew full well that he'd run thru the 10 grand in a heartbeat. It will be much more lucrative for him to stay in their home and wait for someone to die...and maybe even help the process along a little bit. Dad, "the abuser", is 86. Mom, 78. They both have high blood pressure. It wouldn't take much. Besides, he couldn't let his brother on the hill get away with what he was doing: living on the parents' property without paying rent, or the electric bill, snuggled down all cozy with his girlfriend, his wife and her 46 year old unemployed son (who was paying the brother rent when he had a job but now spends his days hiding in the woods drinking beer). That brother's extended unemployment is about to run out and yet he has every satellite cable channel imaginable, smokes like a train, drinks beer (although there was a NO ALCOHOL ultimatum in effect...haha), and apparently has had certain illegal substances DELIVERED to him on occasion. That brother has his knickers in a twist because brother #1 is living in the house with the parents and not paying rent or utilities. So, I guess, if brother #1 isn't paying the parents anything, he won't either. The parents complain about it to me. I hear it all. Every excruciating detail.
"We're not funding him (brother #1) for another trip!"........right.
"We're going to tell the electric company to pull the plug!".......right.
"We've sacrificed enough!"........enough is such a subjective term.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein)

I think I'll go spelunking down to Wit's End today. Or is it rappelling? Either way it should be a short trip. I am so stressed. Sleep comes in fits and starts. I had every intention of going back to bed after sending the kidlet off to the schoolbus this morning. Instead I have a load of laundry that just hit the spin cycle...
Death and mayhem.
My brother is off doing who knows what in Jersey. He's staying with us for a bit in order to find a job so he can escape the oppressiveness of Mom & Dad. He's been pretty much incommunicado for the past 16 months. Unfortunately, the last three weeks he's spent looking for a career instead of something that will help him in the NOW. He's had one nibble and apparently he thinks human resources personnel are creodonts because they can't see that he is the answer to all their prayers. He's all that AND a bag of chips, people!
It's blissfully quiet here today. No mowers. No chainsaws. No weedeaters. Just the dozy sound of a little airplane buzzing around. It's been so oppressively negative around here lately. The kidlet went nuts yesterday because she forgot her homework at school. It will be total chaos when she gets home this evening, too. Then it is time to pack up for soccer practice. More grumbling and complaining. Not because she hates it. Just because she can. *sigh*
I think I'll go outside and wrap the rest of the day around me like a sweater and snuggle down into it. Days like this don't come often anymore.

My Aunt Peggy died recently. She was buried yesterday. I'm not quite sure how old she was but it was somewhere in the 90s. She had a fondness for antiques and an impressive collection of depression glass. I haven't seen her since Alex entered her destructive phase. Toddlers and antique glass don't mix well. Alex is no longer a toddler but the destructive phase is still chugging along just fine.

Speaking of destructive...
Alex had her first soccer game of the season. 15 - 1. The other team was destroyed. Alex nailed the first goal about 30 seconds into the game. She made 5 total. The referee should have made the team play down a man after the 6th goal. I think that's the rule. Anyway, it was fun being back out at the soccer fields. Sometimes it's downright exciting.

Just wanted to make a post that seemed lucid. Bad news and good. Everything else is pretty much mundane. Cooking, cleaning, yada yada yada.

Yes, I have cobwebs inside my home and creepy looking little spiders doing their little spider things...bathrooms...kitchen sinks...cupboards. They've been faithfully catching and disposing of the trillion or so fruit flies that follow the summer fare on its way to the table.

I noticed that several have branched out to catching the pantry moth menace. I hate thosed damned things! Almost as much as earwigs if you can believe that. The moths get into the cereal boxes and noodle boxes, chocolate, sugar, flour crap i'm asleep at the wheel and i'm not odne yet.''

Anyway I came out into the kitchen one more time and one of the cats was poking something on the floor. A humongous shiny black ant. One of those HUGE ones. It was in the kitchen so I got my little dust tray and ushered him in the darkness of night. He said they would be back. I opened the door wide to sweep him and noticed a deep moving glob of ants piled up in the corner of my doorway. On the inside! I blasted them with water and then sprinkled borax on them. Now I'm dreaming that I'm sliding down a huge slide. Cats are crying to go out.

I don't know what I'm trying to say. Wasp invasion. Followed by gnats. Followed by shiny assed black ants. Oh, and a massive case of chiggers when we walked thru Pocahontas with.
Oh well...I'm tightly wedged between a rock and a hardspot right now. I wish people wouldn'
t unburden their souls on others.

Why is life, in general, such a struggle? Why do people make it so complicated? Gaah! Life is too short!

I'm there. At wit's end. It's a lonely area out in the middle of nowhere. The road just stops with a preciptous drop to oblivion. Ragged chunks of asphalt cling to gnarled roots and the slightest breeze sends a stream of dirt and peebles to the depths. There is evidence that I'm not the first to arrive here. In fact, it looks like a well travelled stretch of road. A small stone tips over the edge and I listen attentively for the sound as it hits the bottom of the chasm. I wait. I grab a rock from the ditch and toss it over, straining for any sound. I wait. I wonder what it would feel like to swan dive after the rock, the air washing over me whipping away the stress and responsiblities, no cares, until the bottom finds me, of course. Or would I just keep speeding through the darkness like Alice down her rabbit hole, to land softly and move off to another adventure? Doubtful. Things like that don't happen in the real world. But the deep, dark chasm? Oh, that's real alright.
I never thought I'd run out of road, you know? I always figured that I could take a detour if any heavy duty upheaval loomed on my horizon. Roads just don't stop. They dwindle down to a cart path or a deer trail and at least you know you've made a wrong turn somewhere along the way. There are supposed to be signs, aren't there? Although I guess that doesn't really matter. I'm not one to pick up on signs apparently. I'm very gullible and easily led on. "Friends" and family have strung me along for years.
I wonder how long before someone else runs full tilt into this dead end? Will they stop and gingerly toe the edge of the unknown or will they speed willynilly into it? Maybe I should sit here awhile among the debris that litters the sides of the road and see what happens. Or maybe I should plow through the underbrush to see if there's a way around this. I guess I do have options after all. I guess Wit's End is at the bottom of the abyss and I've just had my first glimpse of it.

I feel like I'm in a really bad '70s movie. The front door is being buffeted by huge hornets. I was able to let in a cat or two but Orville was taking too much time stretching and doing typical cat stuff and he just didn't make it in time. I had to shut the door and turn off the porch light. They really have it in for that light. The husband has been destroying yellow jacket burrows and wasp's nests for the past few days but I haven't a clue where these humongous hornets go during the day. They're like hummingbirds. The kidlet let one in the other night and the fly swatter barely stunned it. They've got to be really close. It takes them about five seconds to get to the light after I turn it on. Vaya con Dios kitty cat.

Got the kidlet's SOL scores in the mail today. How can a person be so damned smart and not have one whit of common sense? She missed two questions. Two. One in math and one in English/Reading. She aced science, history and social science. I'm so proud of her.

Dried a batch of principe borghese tomatoes yesterday. They are bigger and juicier this year so they take much longer in the oven but the taste is still phenomenal. I picked another batch this afternoon. Had to chuck some of my heirloom Brandywines to the chickens. Blossom end rot strikes again. I also pulled down the bean vines. The leaves looked like lace. The Chinese Red Noodle beans will come back once the weather cools off. The Mexican bean beetles don't seem to like them as well as the green stringbeans. The potato patch has dried up almost completely. Most of the squash plants are gone. The cucumbers are well on their way out, too. Even the horseradish is getting crispy on the edges. But it rained last night, the rain barrels are all full again. Pulling weeds in the garden was a breeze...the concrete gone for the time being.

Time to turn in. I can barely keep my eyes open. I think I'll go check on a small pump tomorrow for the rain barrels. And a gallon or two of hornet spray.

We need rain. A good day long goosedrowner. I've got a garden bed that needs to be turned over and prepared for the fall planting but it's like concrete despite all the organic matter that I incorporated into the soil this spring. When it gets really hot everything stops growing. I had a phenomenal crop of Mexican Bean Beetle larvae. The potatoes are pretty much done so I'll be harvesting them in a couple of weeks. I guess my best crop this year (so far) has to be the mini pumpkins. Two plants and maybe twenty beautiful little pumpkins. I think dd brought one home when her daycare went to the pumpkin patch on a field trip. Six years ago? I've got them growing on the head board of an antique iron bed. Very cool. The foot board, shown above, is covered by lemon cucumbers.

I've got to devise some way to get the water from the rain barrels to the garden---about 75 feet away. Lugging bucket after bucket to the garden just isn't cutting it. Especially when it's 90 degrees and humidity is at 70%. Excellent way to have a heat stroke. I was able to run a garden hose out one time by priming it with the aquarium vacuum but it only produced a trickle and quit altogether when the barrel level fell to a certain point. Perhaps if the barrel was elevated the gravity feed would be enough. However, I'm not about to dump the barrel in order to get it on a platform. Who knows when we'll get enough rain to refill the barrels. So far we've been lucky.

I never thought that would happen after today. The daughter and I had errands to run in town and she complained the entire time. Exhausting.
Had some bad news this morning. FIL (dh's stepdad) passed away last night. He was at the hospital getting a dose of chemo for his leukemia and I guess it did him in. He was just diagnosed recently. You never know how much time you have left.
Dh is taking the day off work tomorrow to go spend some time with his mom. He hasn't been able to do that for a few years now. I'm sure it will feel weird stepping back in that house after so long. Hopefully their relationship will get back on track.
I know how dh feels about it and I know how dd feels about it. I'm not sure how to deal with it from my perspective. Fil and I started out great. Or so I thought. I felt like he and I shared a common upbringing...not quite as privileged as the rest of the family. I really didn't know he harboured such resentment toward dh. And me? I don't know where he came up with the accusations against me. It's just not logical. All I can do now is shrug. One thing I can say for the man, and I'm not being flippant, he sure could cook fish. Holy Moley! The feud really messed that up. He fried the best fish I've ever tasted. He gave me a bag of seasoning once and told me how to do it but I failed miserably. I just can't cook fish. His was crispy and flavourful on the outside and moist and flaky on the inside. Just perfect. He did his fishing off his pontoon boat down in Urbanna at the Holiday House. Rappahannock Rivah fish. As he was fond of saying, "That's some good eatin' there."
I need to get some sleep. I have garden work to do tomorrow and I need to seal the grout in the bathroom. I also need to exchange couches so I can start work on reupholstering the sofa. I figure that will be my next big project. Give the tiling a break for awhile. After that I'll have to make a slipcover for it but one thing at a time.
Ambien is kicking in and I want to read a few paragraphs before I fall asleep.

The house is quiet. It ought to be since it's midnight. Too bad it's not quiet in my head. Way too many thoughts zizzing around in there for this hour of the night. I can't seem to formulate a complete thought these days. I can't form a coherent sentence half the time since I've been losing my words.

Summer break is particularly hard on me. My daughter is around me 24/7 and the constant noise sucks all of the energy out of me. The only time I have to recharge with quiet is the middle of the night. I try to read and my mind wanders. It doesn't go anywhere constructive....just goes. Fragments of my past, daydreams of a wishful future, it doesn't matter. I vacillate between admission of complete failure and a surge of spiteful ambition. It lasts a few minutes and then I'm over it. Nothing changes. It just is. I try to pinpoint that moment in life when it all went pear shaped, when I lost whatever drive I had, when I lost my nerve. When I lost my friends. All of my eggs went in one basket. A big no-no but that's what trust is, isn't it? Putting all of your eggs in one basket knowing they'll be safe?

My daughter is becoming beautiful. And while she's book smart, she has no common sense at all. Not a bit. She, like her father, needs constant entertainment...a steady stream of external stimuli. She has completely taken over my computer with her free realm games. I barely have time to play a few games of mahjongg before hitting the sack. Too bad M*A*S*H isn't showing at night anymore. That always calmed me down and put me in a right frame of mind for sleeping. Now I rely on Ambien. I still wake up several times during the night and now I'm having these really vivid bizarre dreams. Damn. I nearly nodded off while writing this. I saw my daughter in Florence...............crap. I have to crash. More tomorrow maybe.

I picked the DVD up at the library last week. The cover said it was based on true events so I figured what the heck. The DVD was in pretty poor shape so there was a lot of skipping and freezing. Not good since I was really enjoying the movie. I watched it alone. Dh thought it looked cheesy.

Anyway, something in the movie struck a nerve with me. I can't put my finger on it. Something just nagging at the back of my mind. Maybe an association with what I saw in my window as a child. I googled cursorily. Not much came up that wasn't movie related. I requested the book from the public library and should have my sweaty little hands on it soon.

Yesterday I thought I'd check online to see if the movie was posted somewhere. I found it on Crackle. I figured I would check out the bits that got skipped on the library copy but I ended up watching the whole thing again. It was just as creepy the second time around.

There's a good chance most people have never heard of the mothman of Point Pleasant, WV. I vaguely remember hearing something when I was a kid in Pennsylvania. It was probably 1966 or '67 when I saw what I saw. Something so frightening it still affects me to this day. The movie came out in 2002 and was hardly the epic blockbuster, starring Richard Gere. So what happened next shocked the hell out of me.

My daughter came home from school bubbling over with excited chatter as usual. And then she asked, "Mom, have you ever heard of the Mothman?" I told her I had just gotten done watching the movie. In fact, I still had a site open on the computer with an artist's rendering of the creature. My daughter is in third grade and as the school year winds down they get to spend the last two weeks on frivalous topics. The class chose "mysteries". Her friend Julianna mentioned the Mothman during class as an unexplained mystery.

Now, if there are no such things as coincidence, then....

Being a cook, it's not. I just burned half a pound of bacon. Ultra-crispy and crawling with carcinogens. Yummy! I think I'll burn some lean turkey sausage for dinner later. The fam won't care. Dh will eat anything as long as it doesn't have vinegar in it or ketchup and mustard on it. The kidlet will make her usual gagging noises but she'll end up picking through it and getting at least half of it down. Charming. She would be a happy camper if I announced that from this day forth we would only be dining on Hungry Man tv dinners...although, she refuses to eat the dessert if "infected" with the veg that escaped its plastic foxhole. Dh wouldn't eat it either. Go figure. Chocolate fudge. Good. Sweet corn. Good. It all goes to the same place. But, what the hell do I know. My parents put peanut butter in their oatmeal. chuck.

I know my purpose is not to be the family activity director. I'm trying to plan our next trip to DC. I booked the room already. Same place as last time but more expensive now. There was no deal to be had. No gas cards from expedia. No government discount. Nothing. Next time he can book it. He's already grumbling about how much time we may end of "wasting" in Old Town Alexandria. Maybe I should leave the itinerary up to him as well. The kidlet wants to go back to what she refers to as "the toilet paper museum" aka The Hirschhorn. If you've never been, the Hirschhorn is a round art museum with a round courtyard in the middle dominated by a huge fountain. I was not a fan of the art. Way too abstract for my tastes. She's also expressed a desire to go back to the waterfall fountain in Crystal City to see if there are any baby ducks this year. That may be doable.

Maybe my purpose is to take care of every stray that crosses my path. I think I got up 5 or 6 times during the night to let a cat in or out of the house. That's also when Toast gets lonely and wants to play fetch with me and crinklemouse. How can I say no? Especially when he brings dead things to me...

Yesterday I took the day off (ha) in order to watch a DVD I got from the library entitled What the Bleep!? Down the Rabbit Hole. It's a 3-disc docudrama about quantum mechanics starring Marlee Matlin. Lots and lots of interviews with physicists, spiritualists, molecular biologists, etc. Mind-numbingly dull in some bits but several parts were really interesting. For instance, I thought the part about Dr. Masaru Emoto's Messages From Water was quite fascinating. Check out his children's book for some interesting photos. Basically, his research claims that positive and negative thoughts affect the molecular structure of water.



There was also a section on amino acids, peptides and how they dock with receptors throughout the body, and how our bodies can become "hard wired" to a certain disposition. How we perceive ourselves greatly affects how our body functions. Fascinating stuff.



This all started for me with a Whitman's Sampler. The box itself actually. The chocolates only offer finite choices but the empty box becomes a vessel of quantum possibilities.

Well. Here I sit again in front of this computer, this wonderful tool that can educate, entertain, and broaden my social horizons. Riiiight.
I check out the weather on weather.com every morning. It's right about half the time.
I check out what Lance has to say on Twitter. Good luck in the Giro buddy!
I check out what's going on with other folk I know on Facebook.
I check out the podcast at morningcoach.com. I listen to it about half the time. I rarely post on the boards there. I don't need a bunch of strangers patting me on the back and telling me how great I am. I need someone to tell me what the hell I'm doing wrong!
I check out my board, squarepegmama.com, to see if anybody posted anything. It's a dead board that I keep dumping money in because I don't want to admit defeat. I spent way too many years in a really crappy relationship for the same reason. Learn from my past? Not bloody likely.
I check out my blog. See if anyone is reading it. Waffle on if I should write in it or delete it.
I check my emails. Mostly notices that the soccer fields are closed. Again.
I check out the public library catalogue, requesting books that look interesting to be put on hold for me to pick up since rarely are they on the shelves in their proper places.
Entertaining? Eh. Educational? To what end? Social horizons? Hmmm. Seems more to serve as a reminder that I'm alone, I don't play well with others, and should just get used to it. My presence here is merely a series of zeroes and ones and more than likely the zeroes dominate.

Maybe it's time to move on. I've been online for quite a few years now. For the most part I thought I played a vital role in various groups but we all know how that turned out. I'm so naive. The excitement never stops, I tell ya!

I made pancakes for the crew last night for dinner. Big hit. Giant pita for me but as long as they're happy. Had to alter the recipe since it turned out like dough instead of batter. Live and learn.

The husband received a copy of his grandma's Last Will and Testament yesterday in the mail. Ouch. His grandma's shrine to his half-sister and complete absense of any pictures of him and Alex, her only greatgrandchild, should have been a clue... still...ouch. Oh, the irony.

And speaking of enabling...the Jerry Springer show has relocated to my parents' property. They are just a few rolls of barbed wire away from being on Dateline. I think my 59 year old brother is getting ready to run away from home. He lasted much longer than I thought he would. I'd give myself a week. Tops.

The husband has the day off tomorrow so he's going to play golf with his mom. I think I'll be laying tile in the bathroom. And doing laundry. Today I have to go get a wax ring for the toilet, some fencing for the garden, and return the tile that the husband nixed. I also have to get prescriptions refilled, pick up something for dinner tonight since it's a soccer night, and do the grocery shopping. Dd has to be picked up at the school this afternoon since she went to Jamestown today and won't be back in time to catch the bus. Oh...and do the taxes.

We went around the block picking up trash for Earth Day. Apparently someone else had the same idea earlier in the day but only picked up the big chunks. We were still able to fill two plastic grocery bags. What adds character to your home? Mowing over the trash in your front yard, shredding it into millions of bits and belching it out into the ditch. Good times. Eh, could be worse. My parents get all the little bits but also old appliances, furniture, deer carcasses, tires, bottles, cans, and the occasional live animal dumped at their place. Nice.

I hear my neighbour mowing his lawn. Again. Ah, life in suburbia...

Wow. Since when did my blog start airing commercials? What a bite. It may be time to move it elsewhere. Or delete it.
Too much going on to write about in one sitting. Isn't that always the way with journals? We write when nothing is going on because we have nothing but time and when something finally does happen we don't have time to write about it.

A few things in a nutshell:
Picked up the tile and backerboard for my bathroom floor today. Will probably throw it down next week.
Got four new chickens from Mom and Dad. They love it here and have destroyed the mulch pile already.
Took a trek down to Danville for a few days to visit the fam. Wow.
Have had a headache for 3 days now.
Went hiking out on the James River rocks yesterday. Was like hiking in a landfill. Had planned on going to the observation deck at the Richmond city hall but it was shut for Good Friday.
Garden moving right along.
Novel writing has completely ceased.
Visited Marcella's grave.
Took Blondie to the vet. She's negative on heartworms!
Lilac is blooming. It smells wonderful!
Still haven't finished my painting.

That's enough for now. Have been struggling with some personal issues lately but that will require a different post and some thought. Giving serious thought to leaving the net for awhile.
Will post again soon.

I'm still very disturbed about the events that happened yesterday surrounding that little scrawny cat. I just got off the phone with animal control and they said they would send someone out to check on her. I had wanted to avoid any shelter involvement for obvious reasons. The cat has a far better chance of survival outside of the shelter and better living conditions even if it is cold and wet outside. The Chesterfield County Animal Shelter is pretty abysmal. Calling the pound is like having the cat terminated just because.

I think animal abandonment ought to be considered abuse. It doesn't matter if the cat was an indoor pet or outside. If it's your pet then you take care of it! If you have to move away then make arrangements for the pet to be fed daily...not just have the food thrown down and hope that strays don't get to it before your pet does. Holy crap. There's no doubt that the cat had been cared for in the past since it is very friendly and hangs around the house waiting but it's not being cared for properly now. The owner has a moral responsibility to that animal!

For the past few days I've been feeding a poor starving cat. It's not a stray. The owners put their house on the market and moved, leaving the cat behind. She's a friendly little thing but she's not doing too well. She's dirty, one of her ears has been badly bitten, and you can feel every vertebra. When I fed her on the first day you could tell she hadn't eaten in awhile.

Today my nine year old daughter and I rode our bikes to this house to feed the cat. She was there waiting for us since this was our "usual" time. Just like the other times the cat hogged right in. We were getting ready to leave when a car pulled up. It was the owners' daughter. She was there to get the mail but saw our bikes at the top of the drive and came down to see what we were doing. I told her I was feeding the cat since it looked like it was in bad shape. She said she fed the cat every morning and that she couldn't help it if other strays came and ate her food. She was very rude. I told her we wouldn't be back and we left.

My daughter was very upset and couldn't understand why we couldn't feed the cat anymore. We were almost a block away when the woman drove up behind us and pulled to the curb. My daughter was afraid but I figured maybe the woman was going to ask us if we wanted the cat since it apparently was a chore for her so we stopped. We should have kept going. She said her mother wanted to talk to me and handed me her phone. As soon as I said hello the woman started tearing into me...how dare I tell her daughter that she was deliberately starving the cat (which I didn't), she's had the cat for 12 years, she's a county public school teacher (yikes on that!), blah blah blah. She kept going so I just handed the phone back to her daughter. I told her I did not accuse anyone of anything, that I was just trying to feed the cat and I showed her the baggie of food. The lady gets off the phone and starts yapping at me about her mother's house and she didn't appreciate me being there. I told her that my husband and I were interested in the house (it's got twice as much land as ours and a pond) and that we were just checking it out. She said we had no right. I told her she better move the realtor's FOR SALE sign if they didn't want people looking and good luck selling it with that attitude. Then we left. She didn't follow us this time.

I was so upset by the encounter I was shaking. Since the cat was an alleged family pet for 12 years you'd think the woman would be grateful that someone was looking after it. Holy smokes! It wouldn't have shocked me one bit had the woman started lobbing rocks at us. So now my daughter has sufficient reason to be afraid of people and I've personally had it as well. I don't know what I'm doing wrong!

Yesterday was absolutely beautiful. I hung laundry out on the line to dry. I worked in the garden for hours. Dh and I took a little bike ride.

We ran across a house in our sub that was for sale. I generally don't poke around when a house is empty but yesterday I felt compelled to walk to the back of the house. It was a masonite ranch with full daylight basement that sat on 2.25 acres at the edge of a pond. No landscaping whatsoever. Ugly house on the outside. Roof not in the greatest shape. Mud splashed up on the harsh red and black brick foundation. The windows were tiny and mismatched. Except for the big picture window that looked out over the pond, they served little purpose. No charm at all. The sound of the peepers in the pond was wonderful though.

The pond itself was nothing to get into a froth about. There was a tiny island in the middle covered in brush and a couple dozen little orange flags...the kind used by comcast to mark a cable line. Really trashy looking. A pair of Mallards skimmed across the top. (I love ducks and geese.) Except for the eight foot easement around the pond, the "backyard" was covered in white gravel. It was a very sterile lot. I was about to leave when dh called me over to show me the parts of a water treatment tank laying on the ground. Apparently they had the same problem with their water as we do. I peeked around the edge of the house and that's when I saw the cat.

A skinny beat up little white cat. The hair around his neck was greasy and dirty. One of his ears had been badly mauled. His backbone was like a string of pearls. And yet he was friendly. He walked over to his food dish and gave it a sniff. The bowl had been run over by a car...probably the realtor's. There was no food in sight. I looked at dh and he immediately said 'NO'. He knows me too well. I told the cat I'd be back. He watched us go.

We biked back to the house. I quickly filled a baggie with catfood and headed back out. The cat was there waiting for me. He was starving and hogged into the food. I can only surmise that the cat had been the owners' pet and when they moved they left the cat behind to fend for itself. It was not doing well. So, I'll be heading back to that house this afternoon with another baggie of food and we'll see if we can't get that little cat's strength back to where it has a fighting chance. Poor thing must have been miserable last week with the temp in the teens, six inches of snow, and no food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism:

In the yin-yang symbol there is a dot of yin in yang and a dot of yang in
yin. This symbolizes the inter-connectedness of the opposite forces as different
aspects of Tao, the First Principle. Contrast is needed to create a
distinguishable reality, without which we would experience nothingness.
Therefore, the independent principles of yin and yang are actually dependent
on one another for each other's distinguishable existence.

Duality. Ok, I can't even pretend to know what this means. You must have a negative force if there is a positive force otherwise neither would exist? So, opposites do attract because they have to?

What about the argument that like attracts like? Positive thoughts produce positive results. Negativity breeds negativity. How can a negative aspect change without affecting the positive if they are interconnected?

11:11 What is with that number? I made a blog entry about this awhile ago. I just noticed the entry was made on 11/11/2007. heh.

So, the other day I was surfing. I was supposed to be writing but surfing is much easier. Maybe I should start from the beginning....

I'm a member of a board called Morning Coach. It's a personal development/motivation-type forum. I like the daily 15 minute podcasts by JB. Somedays I feel like it's just so much sunshine being blown up my skirt but sometimes the topic is spot on. I guess it all depends on my mood. Anyway, I guess one of the podcasts was on social networking sites like facebook and twitter. I decided to give it a shot and signed up for an account.

From Facebook I was reconnected with a friend from highschool, lo, those many, many years ago. She happened to have just had a poem published on an online magazine. The site was all about Synchronicity or coincidence. I checked out the site and watched a segment of a presentation made about synchronicity and destiny. The subject of numbers came up...11:11, 2:22, numbers which occurred repetitively and were believed to hold a message, like an omen I suppose. I remembered writing a blog entry about that very subject. It always seemed a bit weird to me that I would see so many coincidental groupings of these numbers. My interest was piqued.

I decided to google the numbers and see what came up. On the first page of results was a heading "11:11". I followed the link to a blog. The word "synchronicity" leapt from the page. What the hell? I glanced at the banner at the top of the page. It was a personal development blog by Steve Pavlina. That name sounded really familiar to me. Then it occurred to me...I heard his name mentioned in one of JB's podcasts. I'm almost positive! This was all beginning to seem a little bit bizarre to me.

I went to Morning Coach to confirm. I logged on to the forums, typed Pavlina into the search box and a handful of results popped up. Damn! I scrolled down. One reference was posted on 11/11/2008. It was about one's life purpose....something I had been struggling with lately. I read the entry and followed the link within the post to another personal development site which in turn linked back to Steve Pavlina's blog. That entry was entitled, How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes.

Huh. So here I sit in front of my computer at 11:55 pm on 2/22/09 scratching my head over this perfect string of coincidences that led me to my ultimate question: What is my purpose? Strange doesn't begin to describe it.

I took two antihistamines on top of half an ambien last night and slept a solid six hours last night. Went back to sleep after getting a drink and slept another four with minimal interruption. My head is clearer, my body aches have nearly subsided, my teeth aren't nearly as painful but I still have the lead weight behind my nose. A good ground shaking sneeze would take care of that.

It looks like the husband has it now. He probably won't take off work tomorrow either. This is his busy time. The change of assessment notices went out and he's getting a lot of calls from property owners. Lots of values dropped but people are still complaining. If comparable houses in your community consistently sell above assessed value then logic dictates that your house is just as valuable and therefore is not assessed at market value and needs to be raised per state law. I sure am glad I'm not working in that field anymore. As an assessment clerk I would always take the brunt of the ire becasue I was their initial contact. I hated that job.

Now my job is to make sure that my family is comfortable. It's not glamorous but it has its perks. ;o) I was hoping that I'd be able to sell some advertising banners to some locals on Square Peg to add a little something to the family income but that's not going to happen. Not unless, by some miracle, some people migrate to the board and actually start posting. No content = no interest. All the marketing tips and tricks in the world won't do a thing if there's nothing to market.

Looks like I threw out my resistance to germs during the "big chuck". Woke up this morning feeling slightly sniffly and now, just a few hours later, I'm in a full-blown cold & flu stupor. My head aches, my teeth hurt, my nose is runny, I have a 13 pound piece of lead lodged in my sinuses....feels like it...and if I sneeze, which would probably feel great, I think my face would tear apart like a popped paper bag.

My old standby, Alka Seltzer Plus, isn't doing its job this time. I usually take it at the first hint of a symptom and it knocks it out right away. Whenever I get that "chlorinated pool" feeling...ugh. My head from my eyebrows to my upper lip feels like it's in a vise. I guess my body was spending too much of its resources fighting the infection in my wound that it didn't have anything left over for a cold. I better get dinner cooked early so the fam can reheat to eat. I know I'm not going to want to cook later. All I want to do is take a hot shower, put on my snuggies, and sit by the fire for a bit. Maybe watch a Bruce Willis movie and take a snooze in the lazyboy.

Grendal just climbed up on my lap. He's such a sweetie.

It's cold again. I mean really cold. I finally had to break down and do some laundry. I was waiting for a warm sunny day so I could hang it out on the clothesline but dd has run out of clean clothes. The dryer works....half-assed.
Damn, no wonder it's cold in here. I forgot I turned off the heat to this room. To keep the house cold during the day I only heat the office. The baseboard in the sunroom is on Low just to keep my plants from freezing. I turn the hallway baseboard on and that keeps the heat pump from kicking on and heating the entire house.

I went on a cleaning binge yesterday. Got rid of the insulating blanket of dust on everything. That's probably why it's so cold in here! Some days I'd like to back the truck up to the front door and just load everything into the back of it. Start over from scratch. Dh would love it. This house is too small for all the crap that's in it. I have crap in the garage, too. Old crap. Some shabby chic furniture, exercise equipment, books, aquariums....stuff I won't use, stuff I won't fix, stuff I won't read. Why do I keep it??? Certainly not sentimental value. I guess I'm just a packrat like my parents. I really need to change that.

I have clothes from well over ten years ago. I haven't been able to wear them since I had dd. My hips will NEVER let me wear them again. But you know, some day....riiiiiight. They need to go. That pretty little pair of linen shorts that I bought back in the day. Did I ever wear them? I don't think so. Will I ever wear them? Doubtful even if they still fit. Why do I keep them? Why did I buy them in the first place? They are so not me and yet I've had them for over ten years. It doesn't make sense.

Ok, that settles it. I'm going on a grand slam purge. Watch out! If it's not nailed down, it's history!

I don't think I'd know how to handle a good day if one were to land on my doorstep by accident.

Without going into great detail...the incision on my back is infected.

The incision on my neck is iffy...swollen but no suppuration. It itches like crazy. The irritation from the bandage adhesive is nearly gone though...thank goodness!

I failed to mention that the shower had been completed, the trim installed and a new shower head put on. The first night Iused it there seemed to be quite a difference in water pressure from the other shower. We went to Lowes and got a different shower head, one that had two settings....water saver and one that added pressure. Dh switched it out and there was no difference between the settings but there seemed to be better pressure than the night before.

I sent dh under the house to make sure that the shower liner I installed wasn't leaking anywhere. It was fine. However, the hot water pipe that the plumber installed was leaking like a sieve. Go figure. I'm so tired of contractors. Dh called the guy and he's coming out sometime on Monday. So now we're going to have to cut into the wall in the master bath to fix the leak and I'll have to patch drywall, prime and repaint the bathroom wall. It's going to be very very tough trying to match the paint since the wall is colourwashed. There's no way in hell this guy is taking down my tiled wall. No freaking way. The tile is discontinued and I don't have any left. NO WAY!

The brakes are starting to go on the car. Another expense we don't need right now. GAH!

Nothing but bad cess.

I've got a gargantuan bandage on the side of my neck and it itches like crazy! Ditto for the one on my back. Yesterday was quite interesting.

I went to see a cosmetic dentist. I have two teeth that are badly stained. While I said I wanted nothing invasive, that's where the money is apparently. They even wanted to put a crown on a perfectly good white tooth just to match the other crowns they were going to put on. Uhh....no. I swear, if I wanted crowns I would have gone to my regular dentist. He's $500 cheaper per tooth. Their first big sell was a device called a http://www.snaponsmile.com/. Kinda cool but kinda creepy. My first thought was Halloween vampire teeth. And the price quoted was $2,500 just for the uppers. We finally got down to the bottom rung of their price ladder. Bonding. $600 per tooth. They didn't really put a hard sell on that.

They never mentioned bleaching. Go figure. By the time I got out of there they had me feeling like a troll. The kind that lives under the bridge. Here I was thinking that those two dark teeth were my only problem.

Next stop was James River Surgical. I had a couple cysts removed. It took a long time to dig out the one on my back. The surgeon said it went much deeper than she had initially thought. It hurts now. I asked her if she saw any teeth or hair in it....being my evil twin. I guess you have to be a Stephen King fan for something like that. We joked around through most of the procedure. At one point she had to administer more -caine and that hurt like a bitch but other than that it was ok. It felt weird....the tugging and final removal. It felt like she pulled a golf ball out of my back. The one in my neck wasn't so bad. The needles for numbing were the worst part. So far. I imagine the removal of the bandage is going to be a real treat. Like waxing...on steroids.

It's hell getting old.

I don't think the clonazepam is working. For the past few nights I've woken up with excruciating leg cramps. Sometimes I feel like someone has beaten the bottom of my feet with a broomstick. I wish I knew what the hell was going on. The soap in a sock doesn't seem to be working its magic either.

Today the dh and I took a walk around the block to pick up trash. I ran out of room in the bag at about halfway round. I was grossed out by these people. I mean, who the hell leaves garbage laying in their front yard for three freaking weeks? At least I didn't run across any used condoms this time. Although, the guy has been rather nice about putting them in a ziplock baggie before jettisoning them out on the street the past couple times. So, there's something positive about the experience. I just wish these people would get a clue. There's no reason for our neighbourhood to look like that.

There's one spot in particular where a lot of crap is strewn....right before the stop sign where people turn left to go into the new sub with the bigger and more expensive houses. I guess they know that old adage...you don't shit where you eat.

Maybe so, but is it really that frugal to eat Ramen noodles when you have to eat something else right after just to get the taste out of your mouth?

Marcella's funeral was on Wednesday. Catholic, Latin, Communion, the whole nine yards. It was cold and rainy and totally fitting for a funeral. I wore a dark suit with some vintage pantyhose from my working days and as expected they gave out at the graveside service. I wore low heels but even then, combined with the cold and the damp, my legs began screaming in pain. That night I could barely sleep.

Thursday was my birthday. Uneventful for me. However, my friend, Jen, had surgery to remove her gallbladder since she had stones that were morphing to monstrous proportions. She's home now and popping vicodin like Greg House. ;o)

Jim, the husband, took Friday off (as his flex day I assume). He had a 4:15 appt to have his stitches removed. He also chose to trounce all over my feelings. My legs were still very painful. I'd had heat on them for hours but thought that if they were rubbed it may help. So I asked him to rub one leg. The calf. Just for a little bit. He said he didn't want to. huh. It didn't stop him from asking me to put ointment on his scar or to help him get the bandage residue off his neck. I declined.

Saturday morning, in what I assume was an attempt to get back on my good side, Jim grabbed my leg and thought he'd give me a little massage. He started squeezing my calf like it was a roll of playdoh. The pain was excrutiating. It was not a good day.

Sunday was brilliant. I worked in the garden for a bit. Got a lovely dose of vitamin D. Sat outside in the sunshine, drank my tea and read a book. Grendal crawled up on my lap and had a snooze. Very pleasant. And then the kidlet brought the neighbour kid over and all hell broke loose. She chased the chickens and tore through my landscaped planting beds like a bull moose. Blondie wouldn't stop barking at her.

And today is Monday. Blessed quiet Monday. The kid is at school. The husband is at work. The cats are asleep. The dogs are snoozing in their solarium. The house is so quiet! My legs are feeling much better. The day has infinite possibilities!

My husband just took off to his grandmother's viewing in Richmond. He had on a suit and tie. I haven't seen him dressed like that in quite some time. I have to say he was absolutely smoking hot.

His latest incision is healing well. He had skin cancer on the back of his neck and instead of using the Mohs surgery, they just took a big chunk out of his neck. Evil black stitches about an inch and a half long. It's lumpy and crooked and promises to be a nice scar. I call it his zipper. I just got a call from his doctor to confirm his appt on Friday. They'll be taking out his stitches. I sure hope this is the end of it.

Marcella, my husband's grandmother, died this morning in her sleep. Her health had been declining ever since her son had a stroke. She developed alzheimers and seemed "stuck" in the time immediately following his stroke. She was under a great deal of stress with what seemed like the same day unfolding again and again. She had to sell her house and move into an assisted living residence. Even though she had friends who lived in the same building she rarely spent time with them since everything revolved around her stricken son. Later she was moved to a different community and hated every day of it. Everytime we visited she thought she had just moved there and that her son had had the stroke only a month or so before when in fact it had been years. Jim and Alex saw her at Christmas and she didn't know who they were. It must have been pure hell to be trapped in time like that. I hope she is at peace now.

Damn. I'm exhausted. I'm cranky. I'm paranoid. I feel like people are avoiding me. I can't take these pills anymore. I'd rather be lucid and in pain than bumping into the walls. I went out today. I wanted to go to the library to pick up a book I had on order. I had to pull over halfway there to make sure I was in the right gear. Seriously. I had to pull the manual out of the glove box and check. I've only been driving that truck for nine years or so. Then I nearly fell asleep on the way and got rather nauseated in the library. I can barely keep my eyes open now but I wanted to address my feelings. I don't know if I've said things to drive anyone away. I hope I didn't.

So, here I sit in front of my semi-trustworthy laptop with the space heater happily churning out blessed warmth around my ankles which are about the colour of toasted marshmallows right before they burst into flames. My tea is somewhat palatable for having been reheated in the microwave about three times already. And I've got a bar of soap tucked into my left sock.

WTF? you say. For real...tea isn't bad from the microwave. Not like coffee which tends to get a bit chewy after awhile. Or, maybe you meant the soap. My doctor mumbled something about it in passing the other day while pressing another prescription into my palm for symptoms relating to Restless Leg Syndrome. She also said Lupus several times but I'll go with the soap. I like the sound of it better. At first I was thinking "what a frikken wingnut" but then I decided to google it. I've heard of more bizarre old wives' tales and this one seemed pretty benign. The thing is to slip a bar of soap between your fitted sheet and mattress at the foot of your bed to quiet the urge to move your legs during sleep or while attempting to sleep. There were quite a few testimonials on it's efficacy.

The clonazepam that the doctor prescribed hasn't dulled the pain in my legs yet but it certainly has dulled my senses. I'm a drooling shadow of my former self. But now with the word IVORY imprinted on my calf...in mirror image of course. But hey. It's worth a shot. What's the worst that can happen? That I have a clean spot on my leg? That my husband makes fun of me for the rest of my life? If it stops the pain I'll Laugh aloud with him.

I am so disappointed in myself. Two years ago I started a project. I knew I could do it and I convinced my husband I could do it. And for the most part I did do it. But I ran out of steam and began to doubt my abilities.

The shower in the master bedroom was leaking when we bought the house. We did a quick "bandaid" type fix until I felt sufficiently well read on the subject. Demolition uncovered some questionable framing. I had to rebuild it from the subfloor on up....from scratch. I poured and presloped the concrete base. Installed the liner. Framed and built the curb, poured the floor, hung the concrete backerboard, taped and tiled the three walls within three courses of the ceiling, and tiled the shower floor. My measurements were precise and few cuts had to be made. I had three tiles that I wasn't able to cut myself since I only have a snap cutter. I started to tile the curb and that's when the doubt hit me. I was almost home! Three more courses of tile to the ceiling and completion of the curb. Cake and Pie. But what if I did it wrong? The impasse was huge! It loomed the height of the shower itself. It wasn't perfect. I couldn't go forward through the fear and doubt so the shower sat unfinished. No better than the previous shower since neither could be used.

Finally, in shame, I agreed to let my husband hire a professional tiler to finish the job. He's late again this morning...the fourth day of a two-day job which promises to stretch into next week as well. Not because my work was bad. It wasn't. You can tell where I stopped tiling and he started. He wasn't as careful with his lines as I was. He failed to check the surface plane as well. My bad. I should have done those last three courses. It would have taken no time at all. It was just hard work since it was way over my head and really put a strain on my back. The same with the curb. There were no fancy cuts there. I had already presloped the curb so the only thing left was to lay the tile.

The only thing left to do is to grout it and seal it. So, here I sit waiting for a contractor when I have the knowledge and ability to do it myself but lacked the confidence and therefore the motivation to finish it myself.

I'm so disappointed.

*That was written a couple of days ago. The job was finished today. There are a few places I need to touch up on the grout but otherwise it is done. All that is left is for me to spackle the ceiling, prime it and paint it, attach the fixtures in the shower stall, and add some trim around the outside course of tile to hide the cut edges. After that I'll need to tile the floor, tile the countertop, and paint the walls. I promise you it will not take two flipping years!
A photo will be added later.

Today is a perfect day for perusing cook books and heating the kitchen from the warmth of the oven. It's cold out. Freezing. I mixed up two batches of cookie dough yesterday and they have chilled sufficiantly. The first batch is pfeffernuesse made with Brer Rabbit real-honest-to-goodness blackstrap molasses and freshly ground black pepper. I imagine they'll turn out to be real gobstoppers but they'll be tasty.

The other batch is lemon-poppy seed melts except I used orange zest instead of lemon. I tend to use orange zest in just about everything I bake. I even use it in the soap that I make. What can I say? I like oranges. I have a pan bubbling away on the back burner right now with dried orange and tangerine peels, a crushed cinnamon stick, and a pinch of nutmeg. I keep adding water to it throughout the day and the aroma permeates the house. It smells absolutely wonderful. Makes me think of Christmas year round. *sigh*

Tomorrow is my dd's birthday. She'll be all of nine years old but is so much wiser than her years (cough cough). We already had an over-frosted birthday cake at the party at Brunetti's on Sunday so I'm going to make her some super sticky cinnamon rolls. I made them once before when she was about four years old and she still remembers them. So, of course, I was making my way through my cookbooks trying to find the recipe and got lost in thought. You know how it is. You pause to read a recipe and think "Oooo, that sounds good!" French Baguettes, Pane Casereccio, Pizza Quattro Formaggi. Mmmmmm.... All except the Pizza Quattro Stagioni. Nuh. I had that in Florence. Not good. Definitely not a fan of the artichoke. I'm the same with seed catalogues....so easily distracted.

The cinnamon orange concoction on the stove has me incredibly hungry. The cookbooks added to that as well. There's only one thing to do. Bake!

How did that happen? What a serendipitous series of events! The neighbour decided not to take his grandchild to the store so my kid is over there playing with her and won't be home until dark. Dh just left for a football party at his friend's house and won't be home until late. I won't need to cook supper tonight. It'll just be me and the kidlet and the wonderful leftovers from last night's stirfry.

I've got cookie dough all chilled and ready to slice and bake. I've got a nice pot of tea brewing. The cats are asleep and not fighting. The washing machine is winding down on the spin cycle. Now all I hear is the hum of the space heater at my feet. Pinch me! This can't be Saturday! I won't have to listen to sports on the tv all night. I won't have a ton of dishes to wash. Maybe when my hellion daughter gets home we'll build her gingerbread house. Or have some hot chocolate and watch The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A girls' night in. She'll love it.

After she goes to bed I can curl up in front of the fireplace and read some of Kathy Reichs' novel, Deadly Decisions. I had planned on doing more laundry but serenity like this must not be squandered. Who knows when I'll have this kind of quiet bliss again? Tomorrow I will be hip deep in dh's family. His mom got everyone in the family tickets for a play at Barksdale Theater to be followed by dinner at Brunetti's. A little voice in the back of my brain is screaming INTERVENTION for some bizarre reason. I can feel myself tensing up already. By tomorrow noon I'll be a full body white knuckle. But tonight, ahhh tonight....

While waiting for the schoolbus this morning, my daughter and I spied a couple of squirrels in a tree. One ran down a limb and deftly jumped to the other tree, snagging a tiny twig, and continuing on as though it hadn't risked it's life in that leap.

I nudged my daughter and said, "Here comes the other one". The other squirrel hopped along the limb gracefully but stopped to break off a twig. It then turned around and carried the twig back up the tree to a crook in the trunk. It tried to weave the twig into the chaotic mass that was already there but only succeeded in causing a handful to rain down to the ground. Half of it's work was now in a heap at the base of the tree. The squirrel hopped off a few feet, paused to scratch the back of it's arm, and then began worrying another twig.

I wondered if the squirrel felt any frustration when the nest collapsed. It certainly didn't wallow in it's failure. It simply got back to work. I waved to my daughter as her bus pulled out of sight down the block and walked back home thinking about the squirrel. Why couldn't I just let the twigs fall and get back to work? Why does everything need to be perfect and why do I take it so personally when I fail? A simple tile job takes two years because I'm afraid I may have made a mistake? My paintings remain unfinished because I'm afraid I'll ruin them? My website is a hopeless jumble of links that don't work, mismatched colours, and dreary content...

I just need to sit back, scratch a bit, and then get on with it. Let the twigs fall where they may!

Nothing spectacular. Certainly nothing that would cause me to break my blogger silence specifically. Not really noteworthy at all since it's already snowed here a couple of times this season. The cats don't like it, that's for sure. I'm sure my dd is excited by it. She's having a sleepover at her grandmommy's house. She would be more excited if a couple of feet of the stuff got dumped on us.

Quick update since August? Cancer gone. Mammo good. Uncle Nibble gone missing. Back on D Therapy. Dd loves her new school but has a 50 minute bus ride twice a day. I feel like I'm at death's door. I feel like the next step I take one of my leg bones is going to snap in two and the splintered end will rip through my skin. How's that for a visual? Beating my fists against my thighs used to help alleviate the pain but it doesn't anymore. I remember back in the 80s when I was tending bar or cocktail waitressing, the pain would be so intense at the end of a 10 hour shift. My boyfriend would massage my legs with a rapid karate chop motion that would drop the pain back to tolerable. 20 some years later and I still don't know what's causing it. My new doctors aren't likely to find the cause either. They couldn't even find my file the other day.

That's about it for the update. I donated to Locks of Love again a couple of weeks ago. Easy come, easy go. I'll be ready to donate again next year around this time. My hair grows incredibly fast. Which is not really that great when you consider that it grows incredibly fast everywhere.

So, there you go. Mundane, depressing, and way too graphic. Will try to be more upbeat next time. ;o)

Dh got his call from the doctor this morning. One of the three biopsies came back positive for basal cell carcinoma. His appointment is August 20th. I remember when my mom had a skin cancer removed from her face. It took a long time to heal. I guess I'm lucky I inherited my olive skin tone from my dad. Although he also had a skin cancer removed years ago. I really feel for dh. I know he's worried but he's being very cavalier about it.

I haven't heard from the imaging center about my mammogram so.... I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that.

I've got a mammogram scheduled for this afternoon. I'm not looking forward to it. Not the pain, nor the intense scrutiny. Last time I went they "found something". I explained what a mammogram was to dd and couldn't help elaborating a bit. I told her they would squish my boobs until they were like fruit rollups. Her eyes got so big. Oh, the things she has to look forward to.

And if the mammogram won't be painful enough I'm taking dd to get her hair cut short today. The kid looks like she got dreds the hard way. Impossible to comb.

Dh left me a grocery list a mile long with instructions to fill the gas tank AFTER I get them so we'll get the full discount. We finally got our $50 gas card from expedia and it'll expire in August.

Mom called yesterday. Apparently my brother pulled another fast one on her. He told his step-son it would be alright for him to live there on their property without consulting them at all. The guy just showed up and moved in. Mom and Dad had never met the guy. He came up from Florida with no money, no job. A total stranger. Nice. Meanwhile, the other brother turned the greenhouse into a lab and he's playing with hydrogen molecules. "Look Ma, I can blow shit up!" They're one step away from being "film at 11:00".

For the past few days I've become nauseated everytime I've eaten something. Dinner was lovely tonight. We had fried zucchini, sauteed noodle beans, jasmine rice and lemon/dill tuna. Now I feel like I'm going to spew. Yesterday we had fried yellow squash with onions and angel hair pasta with sausage and red wine sauce. I had to force down a few ginger snaps after a couple hours of breathing shallow and clenching my teeth. I hate to barf. It finally did the trick. I don't know what the hell my problem is. It would be nice if it resulted in some loss of poundage.

I made a couple loaves of banana bread the other day. They turned out great. I didn't have any applesauce so they had the full compliment of oil and seemed a bit on the heavy side but still tasty. I exchange one cup of flour (in a double recipe) with 1/2 cup wheat bran and 1/2 cup raw wheat germ. I exchange 1/2 of the oil with unsweetened applesauce. Great for breakfast. I usually cut the sugar by 1/2 cup as well. The secret is to let the bananas get absolutely black....almost liquid. I used to buy the freckled bananas just for making bread but now the store won't sell them to me. The guy at Kroger said it was against the law. I think he's full of shit. Maybe if I took him a loaf of my high fiber banana bread....

We finally painted the walls in the hallway. We've only applied one coat and I know I'll have to throw on another. I'm considering a colourwash with another colour but haven't convinced myself that the walls are "too" chrome yellow yet. I like yellow. I wanted a butter yellow but got margarine yellow instead. It still looks infinitely better than it did before.

Did a lot of work in the garden this morning. I planted a big block of mesclun and lettuce and put one of the chicken runs over it so the girls wouldn't destroy the bed. They were practically salivaing, if a chicken can salivate, over the fine tilth of the soil. Got up this morning and saw the ass end of the dog sticking out from under one of my hosta plants. He can have the bamboo bed. He can't destroy that. The craters in there are huge already. But no. He wants everywhere else, too.

More later. Gotta go figure out what to do with the squash tonight...

I'm still peeling from the sunburn I got on my chest while in Williamsburg last week. I've gone from a D cup to a B cup. Pretty soon I'll be down to my shoulder blades.

That was Monday. Dh had his doctor's appt and came home bleeding copiously from one of the biopsy sites. He is afraid of needles. Afraid of razors. Probably just plain afraid of pain. Not a good day for dh.

The doctor originally said they would do the pathology labs there in the office and would call him the next day. Dh called and was told that they decided to ship them off to a different lab and they'd get the results back in two weeks. Not a good day for dh.

Yesterday the water heater thermostat started to fail. Hot water was practically boiling at the tap. Let's just say that dh doesn't handle stress very well. He was rude to a telemarketer who had the misfortune to call while he was contemplating the cost of a new heater. He's never rude to telemarketers. Won't even hang up on them. He definitely snapped at her. It was surreal. Not a good day for dh.

I went to Lowes today for the lower thermostat replacement. Picked up the upper one as well. Picked up a can of paint while there, too. There were two cans of unmarked mistints. I took them to the counter where 3 clerks were milling around. I just needed the tops popped off but I had left my opener at home. They took the lady with the two kids and the "if Martha can do it so can I" look in her eyes first. She wanted 3 cans of paint mixed but wasn't quite sure on the 3rd colour. I figured one of the other clerks could pop the cans for me. Uh...no. It takes two people to mix a can of paint apparently. The big guy, who wouldn't have looked any stranger if he had an axe wedged into his frontal lobe, was there to provide the muscle. I guess.

The 3rd clerk was some chick with black fingernail polish. She opened the lids just enough to get some paint to dab on the lid. She practically huddled over it so I couldn't see the contents. The first can was "cookie crumb". I figured it would be tan, or taupy or butterscotch. Something cookie-ish. It was white. Some mistint.

The second can was violet something or other. I decided to take it for dd's room. A $31 can of paint for $8. What the hell, right? She put it in the shaker for me. While I was waiting on this $8 mistint, the lady with the 3 cans of paint finished, a woman requesting 2 samples mixed was taken care of, an old geezer got his can of paint mixed and shaken and decided to get a couple cans of primer, too, and a guy came in with a 1x2 piece of trim and wanted a colour match. He got a little testy with her because she didn't quite understand what he wanted. The other two clerks had bugged out. Maybe they didn't like the look of his stick.

The chick went to shake someone else's paint and discovered my can of mistint in the machine. She hauled it out and said, "Sorry. I forgot about you." Lovely. "Yeah", I replied, probably about as testy as the guy with the stick. Of course, when I went thru checkout it rang up as $31 and I had to wait for a manager to come override the register.

When I got home I threw myself into one of my new lawn chairs on my work-in-progress stone patio only to discover that one of my underwires had snaked itself out from under my boob and was poking out of the top of my shirt like a cobra. You'd think I'd notice something like that. The list to the right should have given it away. Not a good day for me.

It looks like I'm back to my 5 hour nights even though I'm taking Ambien. I'm really tired. I met Kira and fam (fellow Pegger) at Rockwood park this morning and we walked the mile and quarter trail by the nature center before it got too hot to move.

I went straight home and started watering the garden....hauling buckets after buckets of water from the rain barrels to the garden. Dd pitched in unexpectedly. The plants sure were thirsty. Pulled some weeds, tried to divert the cucumbers from taking over the stringbean teepee, and harvested a handful of lemon cukes which were quite tasty at lunch.

After I couldn't haul anymore water I went inside and baked two loaves of zucchini bread. They turned out perfect! Then I went back outside to help dh set the patio stones. I decided to fill in the craters that the dog had dug around my peonies. I dug up one of the peonies as it had become entwined with a bamboo root and Tuco had pretty much dug all the dirt from the roots anyway. I doubt it'll live. It didn't bloom this year anyway. Then I mulched the filled holes and laid stone around them. And then to really seal the deal and totally piss off the dog I rolled chicken wire over the area and held it down with bricks. Tuco stayed away. However, the chickens thought it was an open invitation. Apparently. I wonder where I can get some cheap razor wire?

Then it rained. I filled every bucket I could find from the rain barrels hoping to make room for the runoff. I got soaked. Unfortunately the rain barrels didn't get filled again. Dh and I sat under the beach umbrella and discussed the patio and various other things while it rained.

I came in, took a shower, cooked dinner, helped dd with her bath, found the ICY HOT for my decrepit husband, and ironed some shirts. I watched a little tv with dh and then Toast started yelling from the other end of the house. He wanted to play. He had his pumpkin but didn't have anyone to throw it for him. He's such a cute cat. Cute, heavy, long haired, with an impeccable sense of poor timing. Good boy.

Ambien still isn't kicking in. What the hell? I need to sleep at least 10 hours solid I think. I've got way too much to do. Dh has a list for tomorrow. *sigh*

Today started out nicely enough. I woke up and just lay in the bed feeling the smooth sheets and the springy soft pad beneath. Grendal decided to join me for a cuddle. Then Smudge came in and started shifting things around. When that happens it's time to get up.

Dh & I decided to install a stone patio in the shade under the maple tree. We bought $80 worth of field and flagstone slabs. Not enough for the job but a start. Came home and proceded to take up the sod in the area. Not too difficult since it was mostly dirt and scrawny half dead grass anyway. It went pretty quickly. Chickens thought it was great. Dog thought it was "instant hole". There he is writhing in wild anticipation. We had to call it quits at this point because it was time to get ready for our "counseling" session with dh's parents. Dh begged me to go with him so I did. I will support my husband at any cost. This time it was my reputation.

We drove up to Ashland somewhere to try and reconcile our differences. FIL's accusations were really "out there".

He didn't like how dh ate his dinner in his room....20 years ago.

He said we stole a bottle of booze from him. He said he saw a liter of bourbon with a LV tax stamp on it in one of the bedrooms and just knew it was his. (We do not keep our alcohol in the bedroom nor do we drink bourbon.) But he just admitted to poking around in another part of the house when he said he was going to the bathroom. (Actually he refused to say that we stole it. Just that "someone stole it and it ended up at your house".

He said I hacked his computer and messed up his stock portfolio.

He said I stole his pennies.

He said that dh kicked him out of the stock club that the family used to run. (He probably changed his email address and didn't tell us.) He thinks that Greg, his wife's brother, was making fun of him on it.

We were at the top of the list of suspects in the theft of $10,000 that was taken from his house. The maid did it and was arrested. He says he didn't "accuse" us of that but he did think of us.

He says we took his old computer and gleaned all of his stock information off of the harddrive and that would give us access to his stock accounts online. (He gave us the monitor only.)

This is all from a man whose own family won't have anything to do with him. Dh is just his step-son. I told him I was there to support my husband and Kathy because that's what families do...they support each other. But that he wasn't family and he practically yelled "You got that right! I'm not family!"

He mentioned Dh's cousin Christie. Apparently she didn't speak to fil at the last family party. He took great offense at that. He said "Well, I was standing right there and she spent five minutes talking to her granddad!" Well Hell's Bells! How dare she talk to her actual grandfather and not blow him off to talk to....um....her aunt's husband?

He got pissed a year or so ago because one of Dottie's kids didn't speak to him either. Kathy had to go to Dottie and tell her that her husband felt disrespected by her boys (who are grown up and out of college now) and Dottie had to get the boys to speak to him. Robby, the fil, expects everyone else to make the first move. If you don't approach him and engage him in conversation he'll pout in the corner and then bitch at Kathy on the way home about what assholes there are in her family.

And in order for this to be resolved and to have us and dd back into their lives as a family, all we have to do is....

wait for it

Apologize to him! Half the accusations he flung at us today we'd never even heard about. The stock market game hasn't been running for quite a few years. But he's pissed because he was taken off of it through his own actions. The computer gift really threw me. He never gave it to us. I didn't know anything about it. That was supposedly 9 years ago I guess.

He said we used his AOL account and ran up over a $1,000 in overtime charges.

He said his new ISP says someone else is using his account, too. According to him. The counselour suggested that they have a computer specialist come out to OUR HOUSE and search MY COMPUTER for any of his files. Dh agreed since we have nothing to hide. I refused. I don't like the fact that they think they can invade my home and paw thru my private files and that I'm supposed to allow it in order to defend myself for something I didn't do just to appease that asshole. No way in hell.

I left the room, picked dd up in the front room where she was quietly reading her book, and we left. We walked down to biglots. Dd wants to know what was going on but it's hard to know how to handle this. The meeting broke up at an impass and dh found me in no time. We came home and I made zucchini latkes for supper. They were pretty tasty.

And now my ambien has settled around my ears and I need to go to bed.

I guess I really am the Master of Chaos.

This little guy paid a visit to the catfood bowl on the front porch one evening. Either he was really hungry or the catfood is just that yummy because several of the cats were sitting around watching him. He wasn't too interested in me either. He ran to the edge of the woods (i.e. front yard) once but came right back.

I usually see opossum out there so this was a treat for me. He hasn't been back though. I guess that's good. We really don't need Cujo the 'coon hanging around.

Today I got a free pickup load of wood chips from a listing on Craig's List. It was a humongous pile and we barely made a dent in it. The guy told us to come back for more if we wanted it. I unloaded it and filled the walkways in the garden. It looks great! I also mulched part of the area around the fishpond (and finally planted one of the dianthus flowers there).

It was Skippy's birthday today....Friday the 13th. How appropriate. He's 37 years old. He's catching up to me. Yesterday I was 9 years older than him. Now I'm only 8. ;o) I got him a book on the history of the Tour de France from 1903-2003. He loves that stuff and can rattle off all sorts of trivial stats on it. I can remember the highlights but really only watched it because of Lance Armstrong.

Had some drama with the neighbour who accused dd of tearing up his garden. She wouldn't. I'm not one of those parents who think that their little Throckmorten can do no wrong. She's capable of doing bad things and lying. This time I think she's covering for the guy's granddaughter who is a spiteful little kindergartener.

Today was also the last day of school. Dd is officially a 3rd grader now. The husband and I were playing a joke on her about her report card, telling her she didn't pass and will be stuck in 2nd again and she burst into tears. "I was really looking forward to going to Winterpock with Ben!" she cried, tears rolling down her sweaty little dirt streaked cheeks. Geez.

I went on a tear today. Mopped the bathroom and kitchen floors. Scratched out some grout. Vacuumed the rug so much it kinda sorta melted a big patch out of it. Seriously. I've had that rug for a long long time and I love it. I can't even turn it to hide the burn. *sigh* I wiped down some of the woodwork. I rearranged the sewing room and can't understand why I didn't arrange it like that a long time ago. It looks so much better and bigger. :scratches head: I washed all the dishes. Dusted. I fried up a mess of cabbage for dinner. I answered my emails. I filled out some paperwork.

I'm really tired.

Or do you make excuses? When was the last time you picked a piece of trash off the ground that wasn't yours? I admit that I've been rather lax about trash pickup in my sub. Let's face it...some of my neighbours are pigs and it's easy to succumb to feelings of futility when I clean up the ditch in front of the same house over and over again. I mean, why bust my ass using a RAKE in order to make my carbon footprint smaller when everyone around me is filling the air with noise pollution and greasy clouds of burning oil from their leaf blowers? Why bust my ass lugging buckets of captured rain water to the garden when the neighbour is "powerwashing" the grassclippings from his front yard during a severe drought? Not a single soul in my subdivision dries their laundry on a clothesline except me. Don't they realize that solar power is free? That sunshine actually kills germs and will make their whites whiter? According to Kim McKay and Jenny Bonnin in their book True Green, an electric clothes dryer generates more than 6.5 pounds of greenhouse gases per load.

I know I'm standing on a soapbox and beating my chest but people have to start making their own micro efforts because big business sure as hell ain't gonna do it until the government forces them. And the government isn't likely to force the issues if those in power are making money while raping Mother Earth.

Please do what you can.

How about 'ugh'. Took the kidlet to a roller skating party today. It's blistering outside. It's got to be about 100. Drop dd off and go to Kohls to return a skirt I got yesterday that was too big. (Yay! I'm losing weight!) Anyway, the place is packed but nice and cool. We return the skirt and once again hit the blistering parking lot. On to Lowes. I like Lowes. I'd go there everyday if I didn't care what people would think. Dh decides to turn the a/c on in the truck. The truck drops to a crawl. Very sluggish. It feels like a shopping cart with a wonky wheel. I hop out to see if we have a flat. Everything looked ok. Dh pulled out onto the main drag and the truck kept jerking to the right. WTF? We pull off the road again and there's smoke pouring out from behind the front right wheel. It smells like burning tires. Dh drives it across the parking lot and it seems ok. We decide to try to get to the Firestone place down the road. We get out into traffic and crack! Something went south. We limped to Ukrops so we could use their phone book. We usually keep one in the car and the truck but dh must have taken it out recently.

Long story short. Our truck was broken down. Dd was still at the skating party. We needed to get the truck towed and get home to our other vehicle all in an hour. There are no cabs down here. No public transportation. The birthday boy's mom called us on the cell but we didn't hear it ringing because the towtruck guy, Jimmy, had country music blasting thru the speakers. Dh tried to call her back but couldn't get thru. Once we got the truck towed I called the skating rink and got a bunch of shit from whoever answered the phone. Finally the boy's mom got on the line and I could barely hear her. She was very nice about all of it. Jimmy was ready to take us home at that point so I told her we'd be there in a few minutes.

We got home with about 15 minutes to spare. Dh picked up the kid and called from the grocery store. There's no telling how much today is going to end up costing us. Probably about $65 for the half mile tow alone. 'ugh'