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.