Weekend in Review...

Looong weekend here at the casa.

DD had a slumber party / birthday party Friday night into Saturday. It was for her BFF but things didn't go so well. Ah, the drama of childhood friendships...

You see, BFF had invited lots of people and there were 5 or 6 for the slumber party, one of whom was BFF's cousin. Well, BFF and cousin have known each other a long time (yanno, like their whole lives) and so ended up spending a lot of time talking and leaving DD alone with people she barely knew.

THEN the next day, when everyone showed up for the party, only one boy showed (several had RSVP'd) and he felt awkward, so BFF spent a lot of time trying to make him feel better. And the weather was deemed "too cold" to play outside, so many of the planned activities were canceled. Boredom ensued. As did much fussing and crying by BFF.

Drama, drama, drama.

Saturday night, DD sat with me for a bit talking and then said: when you spend a lot of time with someone, do they stop liking you?

And I responded: There's a saying "familiarity breeds contempt" which basically means that when you've been around someone for a long time, eventually you take them for granted. You figure they've been around for this long, they'll always be around, and lots of time you stop making the effort to keep the relationship strong.

It's true. And it's sad. Because you never know when that person won't be around anymore...

She'll recover and go on to have more heartache ... but it's hard to watch your kidlets get hurt.

Saturday afternoon, DH decided he HAD to take down pretty much the biggest tree at SIL's house. He did this on his own, because the time he decided to go was the time I had to stay to wait for DD to get home. No, I wasn't happy about it, but he's bigger than me, so I couldn't make him stay.

Sunday morning, DD and I got to spend helping DH haul all that wood out of the yard. Not only was the tree HUGE but it was way the heck back -- 200 yards maybe. So we'd pick up a piece, walk 200 yards, drop it, walk back and get another piece. Repeat 800 million times.

Then we got to load the truck, drive to our house, unload the truck and stack the wood.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

We started around 8:30 a.m. and finished around 1 p.m. at which time I decided that I needed to rake the leaves out of my flower gardens out front. The little garden that bisects my yard and my neighbor's is about two feet wide by 60 feet long. I didn't think there would be THAT many leaves. Boy was I wrong.

I raked his side first and got a pile about four feet around and two feet high. Had to rake that to the end of the sixty feet and into the woods. Then I did my side, which was wider and had about three times as many leaves. Un-freaking-believable.

Worse, we HAVE a leaf blower but it needs a new carbeurator. Had needed one for two years. DH won't buy a new blower because the part is only about $20 -- but I don't care how much it costs. It doesn't do me ANY good broken. If he doesn't fix it by spring, I'm going out and getting a new one myself. Because raking THAT many leaves that far is absurd.

I have blisters on my hands, and blisters on my feet. I couldn't sleep last night because everything on my body hurt and there was no such thing as a comfortable position.

And now that I've moaned and groaned, I feel like I wimp.

Today, I'm cooking a turkey for Dakota's food (yanno, I only make her food once every three weeks, and this is the second year in a row it's fallen the week of Thanksgiving. I need to work on that) and preparing to have DD and DH home again most of the week.

November is officially my least favorite month.

How was your weekend?

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You Are a Siamese Cat

You are a very communicative creature. You're eager to express yourself - and do so often. You are very dependent and love attention. You will complain if you are not getting enough affection. Even though you are very loving, you can seem aloof, unpredictable, and stubborn in relationships. A relationship with you takes a lot of patience.

What Breed of Cat Are You?

50/50 ...

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Tree Dragging and Other Fun Weekend Games

So ... we finished splitting and stacking the wood for burning this year. Of course, the spot out back where we pile the green wood to season was empty, so DH had the urge to fill it. He took down three trees this weekend. He has his eye on two more in our backyard, and my SIL has three or four she wants taken down at her house.

I try to remind him that, although HE may have time off on the weekends, I don't. So, my days were filled with humping wood and branches, my evenings and morning with computer work.

Still, it was a gorgeous weekend. I did fit a little time off in -- went to the dog park both Saturday and Sunday. One of my favorite pastimes is watching dogs interact with one another. It's incredible how the bad energy from one dog affects an entire group.

We were there alone with Dakota at first, then a lady came with two big dogs: a red boxer mix and what looked like a boxer/mastiff or boxer/pit bull in tan. The second, tan dog was a foster-to-potential-adopt they'd only had for a week, so they weren't sure how he'd behave, though they'd had no trouble with his interaction with other dogs up to this time.

The first dog was clearly alpha. He wasn't mean, just dominant. He made sure Dakota understood (she did!) then went around on his merry way. The second, tan dog was still young (just under a year) and only wanted to play, play, play. He had a great energy and he and Dakota had a blast.

Then came a lady with a black lab mix who was VERY submissive, but also nervous. Still, all four were getting along fine once the lab realized no one was going to eat her.

Then came trouble. An English Sheepdog who was still young (just a year) and felt as though he should be alpha dog. He came in excited, barking and basically telling everyone how it was. The first thing he did was find the little, nervous lab and start barking at it non-stop, constantly in its face. The lab tried to go away, tried hiding under the table, behind people's legs, whatever, but the dog wouldn't leave it alone. When it started showing teeth, though, it was time to intercede (and yeah, I kinda get involved in other people's dogs).

The first red boxer, though, had had enough. And when the sheepdog decided to assert himself to the tan dog (in the red dog's "pack") the real fun began. No real fight, but some very aggressive posturing. Over and over. The owners of the boxer put him on-leash (as they should have), but it took having the sheepdog leave before things settled.

I suspect this happens in groups of people, too, only we don't have the uninhibited responses that dogs do. We understand we can't just get in a person's face and say "I don't like you." and follow them around, shoving them until they understand their place.

I prefer dogs.

And now, I'm out of time already. Hope you all had great weekends! Tomorrow, a NaNoWriMo discussion.

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You Are Reflective

You are very analytical, and you rarely panic. You know that nothing is as big of a crisis as it first seems. You like all of your stuff to be in its place. It drives you crazy to be disorganized. Sometimes your strong sense of responsibility leads to frustration. You take too much on. You are very introverted, and you prefer to blend in whenever possible.

The Card Test

HAHAHAHA... yeah, mostly. Not a big "blender" but othewise, right on.

The Weekend in Review

We had an absolutely gorgeous weekend -- sunny, warm, beautiful. Hard to believe it's October in New Hampshire! We're having a late 'leaf peeping' season, though, because it hasn't been cold enough to turn the leaves until this past week. The color is starting, finally, and it's breathtaking. I'm consistently surprised at the vivid reds and florescent oranges that the maple leaves turn.

I didn't pull up my garden yet. Friday was busy with errands. Saturday, my friend from Massachusetts, Michele, came up to spend the day (YAY! Sadly, the last time I'll see her until late spring) and Sunday was filled with wood-stacking fun.

Unfortunately, by late last night, one of my wood piles fell over. Wood stacking: so much fun, you'll want to do it TWICE!

Today, I promised DD some fun, so we'll be seeing a movie (complete with popcorn) and a few other things. She also needs (wants) a few more school supplies (including a three hole punch she can keep in her binder).

My plans this week include trying to conquer Word Press (it can't be that hard, even if my brain doesn't want to wrap itself around the instructions) and cutting down my dead perennials so they can sleep the winter away. If I'm feeling really ambitious, I may put in some bulbs or a mum. I have some frog's tongue seedum that I hate and want to dig up, too.

Next year, I WILL find the time to enjoy my garden.

Anyone do anything fun this weekend?

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You Are Handy

You are a generalist who does everything well. You find every subject and skill to be interesting. You are practical and productive. You continually figure out a way to get things done. You take on huge projects and see them through. You lead the way when it comes to success. You like to have a little excitement in your life, but you don't go overboard. You stay grounded.

The Wood Test

Pretty much right.

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Let It Snow!

Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect. ~Oren Arnold

We finally had a little snow yesterday -- flurries, really, and it didn't leave much on the ground, but my DD is thrilled. Having grown up in California, I don't really require snow for Christmas, but my DD is born and raised here in New Hampshire, and the two go hand-in-hand. It's supposed to snow again today, so she should be in hog heaven.

Because we were expecting snow, I had to spend yesterday pulling all the cut wood out of the woods behind us and get it stacked. I moved 1 1/2 oak trees yesterday that were cut into 16" logs... one log at a time. They were about 100 yards down a hill, so I'd get one log, carry it uphill 100 yards, stack it and head back. There are too many other trees, bushes, stumps and rocks to drive anything down there to help haul, but I suppose the exercise was good for me. I walked slowly and carefully to avoid messing up my knee (any more than it already is), and got the job done in about two hours.

I complain about the work, but I sure do love the warmth during the winter.

Yesterday, Dru Ann asked: How difficult is it to remove the old one (wood stove) and hook up the new one?

Except for the fact that they weigh a TON (okay ... the old one weighs about 250 pounds, the new one weighs in at 450 pounds), it's not so hard. We have a regular fireplace that's been converted to use a wood stove, so it's a matter of putting on the adapter piece on the back of the new stove so that the pipe goes in the right direction, and popping it in. It'll take two or three nice, strong guys to lift it, but the actual install is pretty simple.

Today my big plan is to bake cookies. I'm making cherry, white chocolate chip, oatmeal cookies and sugar cookies (thankfully, I won't be tempted at all to eat them as I don't like either kind, lol -- there is a method to my madness). I wasn't going to make sugar cookies, but my DH asked for them very nicely Sunday.

I had two tiny gifts to mail out yesterday -- they were in little bitty padded envelopes and didn't weigh 10 ounces. I went to the post office and it was packed!! There must have been fifty people in line (WHY do so many people wait until the last minute?) and there was no way I was going to stand there for an hour. I love my relatives, but it just wasn't THAT important that these gifts went out. However, I remembered last year and went to the UPS Store. Sure enough, only THREE people were in line and they had two people working, so it took me about five minutes to get it done (the UPS Store mails regular mail, too).

So, YAY me!

Is your shopping done yet?

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You Are Dumplings

You are cute, polite, and considerate. You are well known for your generosity, and you truly love to share. You have a real style and presence about you. You know how to take the simplest thing and make it look chic. You tend to order carefully and conservatively off the menu of life. Simplicity is your motto, and you don't like to take on too much at once. You are the type of person who does one thing at a time, really immersing yourself in the moment. You detest multitasking.

What Kind of Chinese Food Are You?

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

HAHAHAHAHA.... this is so far wrong I nearly fell out of my chair: You detest multitasking.

Multitasking is my LIFE.

*snort*

As an aside, I'm not a big fan of dumplings, either... just saying.

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Stacking Wood

There aren't enough days in the weekend. ~Rod Schmidt

I'm flat out exhausted. Yesterday we spent just over four hours moving and stacking wood. We took down trees at SILs last year and stacked the logs in our back yard. Now, DH is hand-splitting them with a maul, and I load them in the mower's trailer then haul them to our driveway, dump and stack (with DD's help). Lather, rinse, repeat. We got about 1/4 of the wood done yesterday and DH would like to do as much today.

BUT....

Today is a junior handler competition. I don't know if we're eligible (the form asks for a member ID) and DD waffled back and forth on whether she wanted to compete. She decided LAST NIGHT that she'd like to, so if I have the energy, and I'm ready in a couple hours, we're going to drive there and see if we can sign up.

So ... I suppose I'll have a pile of wood to move later today instead.

And somewhere in there I have to build the LASR/WC/Aurora website for next week.

Um. Okay.

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You Are Peanut Butter Patties / Tagalongs

You are creative and artistic. When you think, you tend to think big. You go for the drama. You love excitement and passion... even if it gets you in trouble. You are intense and a little self centered. You can be quite full of yourself (but not without reason). You tend to be very indulgent. If you feel like having something, you go ahead and treat yourself.

What Girl Scout Cookie Are You?

LOVE Tagalongs... but the answers are only about 50/50...

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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).

Bloghopping and Dog Torture

Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum. ~Graycie Harmon

Once again, I'm writing this the night before so that I can use the morning to write in the NaNoWriMo challenge (my word counts can be found at the JaNoWriMo blog).

So, it occurs to me that I'm going to get some weird keyword searches with "Dog Torture" in my blog. Let's get that out of the way first...HERE is our version of dog torture:



Yes, DD made Dakota her own witch's hat. As you can clearly see from the dog's expression, she was underwhelmed by the gesture.

Okay -- I took the time to do a little more blog hopping, per your suggestions. It's so fun to find new blogs to read! Here's what I found:

Dru suggested Cozy Chicks ... so I hopped over and saw a rant about the panic regarding H1N1. I so totally agreed with what she said, I HAD to comment and then kept reading. I think what I like most is that there are several people writing posts, so it's always different, and they are writing about diverse topics, so I'm not bored. I'll definitely be back to this one. Thanks, Dru!

Brandy sent me to the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee -- and for sheer cuteness, this one wins. The blog author fosters kittens for a local shelter and takes pix of all her babies. Is ANYTHING cuter than a kitten (well, except maybe a puppy *G*)?? If you want to get all warm and fuzzy, you should check them out. Awwwwwwwwww....

Tori reminded me how much I love, Love, LOVE Chickens in the Road. I started reading this blog a couple years ago when I read a book of Suzanne McMinn's and I loved it. At first, she still talked about her writing, to a certain extent, but she was just starting to build her house and the blog didn't have the focus it does now. NOW she talks about cooking from scratch (she has the BEST EVER recipes for just about anything -- including one for making yogurt in a crock pot that I'm going to be trying soon), raising goats and chickens and ducks and dogs and cats, gardening, and .... just about everything you can imagine when you read a blog written by a woman living on a farm. I can't recommend this blog enough if you're into that kind of thing. Plus, she has lots and lots of fun pictures. I visit almost daily, and always find something interesting and something to smile about (well...except when two of her goats died, and one of her chickens was gotten by a raccoon -- but, sadly, that's life on a farm).

That was it for my time to blog hop today -- but HEY... gotta a blog you love? Leave me the link in the comments. Very, very soon (like after the first of the year) I will probably replace my author interviews with a post about a blog I found and enjoy. We'll see how that goes!

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Today, I went to the dentist and had my teeth cleaned. It was uneventful. :-)

Got home and found a note from my DH telling me he was taking down trees at my SIL's house. So, yes, I did do more brush dragging and log hauling and wood stacking again. And, about the toe -- it's not broken, thankfully, and I think the *snap crackle pop* was related to whatever has made it hurt for the last decade or so. It felt mostly better today, right up until I reinjured it moving wood -- in nearly the exact same way I did the first time. You'd think I'd learn. So, yeah, it hurts again. It's swollen again.

And tomorrow? MORE fun with logs. We're heading to the neighbors to start pulling out all the stuff DH cut a couple weeks back.

Bet you wished you were me. Right?

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What Time Is It?

“Every novel should have a beginning, a muddle, and an end.” - Peter De Vries

Why do we even HAVE Daylight Savings Time anymore? I mean, it served its purpose years ago, but now? What a pain.

I woke up at 3:27 a.m. -- the cat thought it was 4:27 of course (no one told her it was DST) and wanted to eat, and I was pretty much wide awake anyway. I'll be in bed at 7 pm tonight though... sheesh.

In any case, I sat down and wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

A lot of it is probably crap that I'll edit out, and I ended up changing where the heroine lives (she DID live in Absarokee, MT but there's still snow on the ground in late spring there, and it's too close to California for my purposes so I moved her to Olathe, KS instead), and had to look up car rental agencies and driving directions, so it slowed my forward progress down a little. But, even so, by the time I was done I had 1726 words. I "only" need 1657 a day to meet the NaNo goal, but I want to be well ahead if possible. I realize that less than 100 words isn't "well ahead", but it's a start!

Today, I have to restack one of our wood piles (this is getting old, really old) and then fetch the wood from the neighbors and pile that out back so we can repeat this whole saga again next year, lol. I also told DD we'd go out and get some half-price Halloween candy (because we don't celebrate, but that doesn't mean we don't get some sweet stuff!). DH is off for the next ten days, so life should be interesting... to say the least.

Okay, I'm off to stack wood. Hope you have a great day :-)

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TGIM

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. ~Robert Fulghum

Monday, how I love you! Back to routine, back to normal... all is right with the world.

*sigh*

My cat, Breeann, is being interviewed over at Mean Kitty's blog, Writer & Cat, today. As of my typing this, the interview isn't up yet, but it should be soon.

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It was a long, busy weekend -- especially yesterday. DH decreed we should have a barbecue for lunch (at 10 a.m.), so it was off to the store for DD and me. We took Dakota, who LOVES going for rides and made a stop at the pets supply store near the grocery store to get her a pressed rawhide bone.

On the way out, a woodpecker slammed into the store window and then lay on the ground, wings out, fluttering around weakly. Dakota went NUTS, so I had DD move her away and I checked out the bird. After I picked it up and folded her wings down, it stopped fluttering, but her little heart was pounding and she was gasping for air, beak wide open (and that was one impressive beak!).

I handed her to DD (because I knew she was dying to hold it) and told her to cover the bird's head to keep it calm. We'd put it into the box in the back of the Pea and, if it was recovered by the time we got home, we'd release it out back.

After a race through the store for BBQ supplies, we hurried home. The woodpecker was more than recovered, it was trying to peck a hole through the box! LOL... We carrying the box out back and released it, so glad it hadn't suffered long term problems from whacking the window.

All the rest of the day, if there was a female downy woodpecker on our suet, DD would say, "Look, our woodpecker is back!".

In between making potato salad, cooking lunch, cleaning that up and doing four loads of laundry, I helped DD stack wood.

We had the second pile done when we realized the first pile was REALLY leaning. So, we decided to pull down the top third of that pile and restack, which would have gone fine except the end collapsed when we took off the wood in the middle, causing the entire pile to fall. And then DH decided pile number two was crooked, too, and used the maul to whack at the wood and straighten it out which would have been dandy except the end fell.... and you get the idea.

DD burst into tears and proclaimed it all "her fault" because she'd helped build the ends (in reality, I had done most of the end building) and that she'd done the stacks crooked. When I couldn't calm her down, I sent her inside and then told DH he could do the ends (he was trying to give me a lesson on doing them correctly -- so I told him that, since he was so good at it, it was his job), then I cleared out some gardens to settle down ... we had a frost the night before, so most of my annuals were dead and then I went inside to deal with DD.

We had a long talk about her continual self-degradation (I'm stupid, I'm ugly, I'm fat, I'm useless, I can't remember anything, I'm no help, it's ALL MY FAULT -- is this a girl thing, or does my DD have self-confidence issues?) and I said that I wasn't going to allow that kind of talk anymore. That she was smart and worked hard and was a GOOD GIRL, but that she was also only ten y.o. and couldn't be expected to know how to do everything.

And so the three of us rebuilt the piles. We have three and a half now, and DH has to split the rest, but we're about 2/3 of the way through what we have for the winter.

We won't talk about the huge purple bruise I have on my right foot from dropping a log on it, no we won't...

How was your weekend? Tell me it was great and why, and let me live vicariously.

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You Are a Blackberry

You are one of those super hard working, cellphone to your hip types. You like gadgets that do what they're supposed to do, especially when they keep you super connected to the world. You prefer function over flash, so things like a long battery life and easy features appeal to you. You may not look as cool as all of the iPhone kids, but you're probably being more productive than all of them!

Are You An iPhone or a Blackberry?

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

Yep, that's about right...

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