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.