I Haz a Sleepie

How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night-light. ~ Dorothy Parker



I'm so full of tired, I never quite feel rested. I made myself stay in bed today until 6:30 (even though I was pretty much awake at 5:00) trying to replenish my energy stores. It's frustrating.

In any case, it looks like today might be pretty darn nice. It's COLD but there isn't any wind (like yesterday...brrrr) and the sun is shining. DD really, REALLY wants to go back to the fair, but I just don't think my knee is up to it. Breaks my heart. I'd really like to take her. Wish there was someone else here who could (and would).

We have a HUGE pile o' wood to split as well, and I need to be able to help my DH with that as much as possible, both splitting (yes, I can use a maul) and stacking. THEN, we have more trees to take down for next year's wood at my SIL's house, which is MORE cutting and stacking. I have to be as physically sound as possible for that.

We got a very light frost last night, so I need to decide TODAY whether I'm going to take in all the little tomato plants around my house (I found a pile more over by my chimney ... it's cracking me up. Poor chipmunk is going to wonder what happened to all his winter stores). I'll need to buy a grow light if I do, and then remember to pollinate them, but it would be VERY nice to have homegrown tomatoes through the winter. In fact, maybe I'll grow a few other things like spinach and chard...

And, yes... I'm terribly behind on blog visits. I feel awful -- but I've been buried in LASR/WC/Goddess Fish work that all has a due date of yesterday. I've managed to come by to a few blogs, and will try to get to a few more today. My Google Reader numbers are downright scary, though. Oy.

Hope everyone has a fabulous Sunday!

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You Are Fiery

You are an animated person, and you love to talk. You are naturally outgoing. You are drawn to drama and intensity. Life can be incredibly poignant for you. You are a thrilling person to know. You like to take a walk on the wild side, and you convince your friends to join you. You are quick to act and sometimes quick tempered. You can be quite stormy at times.

The Changing Leaves Test

That's about 75% right (HEY... I'm half Portuguese -- we're loud and animated).

Rushed

Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. ~Denis Waitely

Today's post will be quick -- I might have some time to work on my story (still brainstorming, but if the spirit leads I'll write some, too -- for an update about what the heck I'm talking about, go to this post on the JaNoWriMo blog here).

Had to go way the heck away to get a prescription for my poor old kitty yesterday. Her arthritis is getting so bad! She's begun to limp and the doc found a pain med that shouldn't affect her kidneys much, but it's specially compounded and there aren't that many compounding pharmacies around. So it was off to Concord yesterday to get it. I used my GPS for real for the first time. It worked pretty darn well!

We found a bead shop right across the street from the pharmacy and it was amazing! A HUGE selection of really top notch stuff at reasonable prices. I wanted to buy almost everything -- lots of natural stones, etc. Be still my heart. In any case, we bought some stuff and will be back. Now to make the new jewelry.

When we got home, DH advised me that we were taking down trees at his sister's house, so it was off again. I reminded DH that just because HE is on vacation does not mean that DD and I are. She missed half her school yesterday. URGH.

Our neighbor got a deer out hunting yesterday. However, he and his family are gone away on vacation from today through the weekend, and asked if we could process the meat. So, tomorrow we'll be spending the day butchering the deer and packaging the meat. We're getting half as payment, so it's worth it. But, another day I lose for working.

So, that's my life. How are you? I will be by to visit soon -- it's just insane, and I'm barely able to keep up with writing (HA -- haven't done a word in six days) and working on the LASR/WC site. Bear with me. November is a sucky month all around.

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Tired...

Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats. ~Woody Allen

Okay... yesterday really did me in. I spent the late morning outside whacking down all my dead plants (bye bye clematis, see ya later hosta, au revoir ageratum...) and then planting my bulbs (I bought too many, and had to get creative with planting!). Then, immediately following lunch, DH announced we were going to start work on cutting up the trees our neighbor took down over the summer.

There are eight of them.

I decided I much prefer working with newly felled trees, because everytime I tried to pull on a branch, it broke. DD and I worked on clearing all of the branches so DH could see the logs. She and I are covered in bumps and scrapes from the stupid things. Then it was time to go around and pick up all the smallish logs DH cut and move them into a pile closer to where we could haul them out. The area where the trees were felled was uneven and damp so made for some interesting times. We only worked for about three hours, but I was pooped.

This morning I'm pretty certain there isn't a muscle on me that doesn't hurt. And we're nowhere near done. There's more to be cut and more to be moved and then we still have to haul it over to our house and stack it out back to season.

Anyone want to come help? We pay in pizza...

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I was going to start writing this blog earlier, but I got sidetracked by one of those links at the top of my gmail account. It was from Discovery and was about "Great Science Hoaxes". Then, once I finished reading that, I saw "Barking Dogs Explained" which wasn't anything new and then "Why Does Soda Taste Good?" and had to read it. Next, this caught my eye, "Hurricane History Recorded in Earth's Noise" ... And... why does Discovery have to be so dang interesting??

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You Are Archive

You are competent, organized, and careful. You know how to stay on task and focus on the most important thing. You like to have everything in its place. Messes and chaos completely stress you out. You have a system for almost everything in your life, and you don't like to deviate from it. Calendars, routines, and having things in a certain order keeps you calm. You don't like to shake things up too much.

What Email Function Are You?

LOL... yep that's about right! *G*

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Just Rambling...

Thrift is not an affair of the pocket, but an affair of character. ~S.W. Straus

I hate wasting time. Drives me nuts. Yesterday I wasted three hours looking for shoes/boots for my DH. He has weird feet, VERY high arches which make him bust through most shoes unless they are very well made.

So, I went looking for decently made boots at a reasonable price. And, I came home empty.

We've tried brands like L.L. Bean -- but the clasps that hold the laces broke in only a few days (thankfully, they'll take stuff back when that happens). We've gone cheap (KMart special) which have oddly enough lasted longer than the more expensive brands. Even so, they don't last very long.

Yesterday I tried Tractor Supply Company (a very cool store that I can putz around in for an hour, but they didn't have the kind of boot I was looking for) and finally ended up at Bob's Stores. I had a coupon (as it turns out, though, it was expired), and after much looking and poking and bending, I found a pair of boots that were a little pricey, but appeared well made. However, when I discovered my coupon was expired, it put them out of my price range and I had to leave them behind. Thankfully, Bob's typically has a coupon in the Sunday paper, so I'll grab that and go back and hope they still have a boot in his size.

We won't talk about looking for sneakers for DD. When did prices get so high? Sheesh...

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I didn't do a lot of actual writing yesterday, but I did do scene cards for the scene ideas I'd had pop into my head, and then brainstormed some more. I'll most likely continue to do that until I have a very sketchy plot outline before I start to write. And, heck, if it takes me into November, I'll use it for my version of NaNo (I'm challenging myself to write 500 words a day ... not the 1500 that NaNo requires, but I have to be realistic).

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Today? I'm building next week's pages for LASR/WC for the website and stacking wood -- the chore that won't go away. I may also finally pull up the last of my veggie garden. I can't believe we haven't had a frost yet!!

The leaves are getting gorgeous up here, and further north, they're probably at their peak for leaf-peeping. I imagine ours will be peak in another week or so. The colors are incredible.

Have a great weekend!

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Pioneer Woman

Yes, I am positive that one of the great curatives of our evils, our maladies, social, moral, and intellectual, would be a return to the soil, a rehabilitation of the work of the fields. ~Charles Wagner

Lately I've felt a bit like a pioneer woman -- with my gardening, canning and, most recently (yesterday) splitting wood, hauling it and stacking it. I told DD that we were so spoiled as a culture. So few of us actually do manual labor any more. We pay people to cut our grass, to grow our food, to split our firewood, to groom our animals.

As we where stacking the wood I said, "Isn't it incredible to think that the pioneers worked like this from sun up to sundown?"

And, IMHO, it IS amazing. No wonder their life expectancy was so low (well, on top of the fact that their medical care was pretty much non-existent).

I used to love to watch Frontier House on PBS. I wish it was still on. It was so interesting to see how folks had to struggle to survive. One man thought he was dying of something because he lost so much weight. He finally requested a medical check, and the doctor said that his weight was actually HEALTHY and that his body was simply adjusting to being physically active for the first time in a long time.

I don't glamorize how things were 100 or 200 years ago. Times were hard. People died of things we can't imagine happening today, like broken bones. Women regularly died in childbirth (I would have been one of them). Even so, I think they had their priorities right and typically had a work ethic that folks today just don't have.

And then I look at the stack of un-split, un-hauled, un-stacked wood and just sigh.

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You Are Eggs Over Easy

You have good taste and high standards. You are very detail oriented, and you know what you want in life. When everything is in its place and things are as they should be, you can finally relax. You may seem like the kind of person who has things come easy for you, but it's all an illusion. You work hard to make your life perfect, and part of this perfection is making things look effortless.

What Kind of Eggs Are You?

Blogthings: We'll Tell You The Truth... Someone Has To!

LOL... this is almost spot on. Cracked me up (cracked...eggs... ha... get it?).

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The Nip is in the Air

The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Fall is definitely here. The days have been warm and sunny, but the moment the sun goes down ... it's COLD. It gets into the 40s at night. My tomatoes are pretty much done -- the cold is causing them to split the moment they are ripe. The few cucumbers I have are growing FAT bottoms (full of seeds). The crabgrass has gone to seed (my neighbors "lawn" is a lovely shade of red).

DH is off for the next five days and this weekend will be the last one in which he takes the boat out. We have a HUGE pile of wood to split that we took down last year, and then we need to go to our across the street neighbor and chop up the trees he had taken down this summer, then haul it over here and stack it up to season for next year. I'll probably pull up my tomatoes and start to get the garden ready for winter, cut down all the perennials that are done blooming. I want to go apple picking soon, and can applesauce this year, but after typing everything else, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed!

I'm going to miss summer, especially since they're predicting near record snowfall again this year. DH is thrilled, since he loves to go snowmobiling, but me? Not so much. I'll be counting the days to April (147 days, in case you were wondering).

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You Are a Powerful Black Car

You are a strong and dominant person. You enjoy showcasing your power. You are competent and in control. There's no one more suited to be in charge. You are very competitive. You like to win, and it even feels a bit humiliating to lose. You are always up for a challenge. You are a natural daredevil, and you're always looking to conquer a new feat.

The Car Oracle

The First Rule of Blogthings Is: You Don't Talk About Blogthings

I only chose it cuz I prefer a truck, and it was the only option, lol... but all things considered, much of it is pretty close.

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