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 |  "Clean cup! Move down!" ~~the Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney cartoon |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Sometimes in life, you have to pick up and move down the table. A regroup, a fresh start. A clean slate. |
I'm back in school for the fall. Again. I feel like I've been in school for a lifetime. I'm taking some interesting classes this fall, though. Soils, Yellowstone, Human Geography and Weather & Climate. The Soils class will be the most labor intensive, I think, with the Yellowstone running a close second. The Weather and Climate class looks like it will be useful for down the road, but the labs are a little math intensive for my liking. I'm having to draw quite a bit on my Trig and my Physics for them. The Soils class just requires writing a paper every week. About dirt. I don't like dirt so much that I want to be writing weekly papers about it.  The Yellowstone class is cool in that we get to go on at least two possibly three field trips into the park. Two of which will be winter trips. Woot! The only thing is that a quarter of the grade in the class will be based on a group project/paper and presentation that will take place over the course of the semester. Probably it's more like half of the grade because most of the labs from the class have to do with this project. I kinda hate group projects. I wouldn't mind so much if I could just do the damn thing myself, but I hate trying to coordinate with someone else every week and make sure I don't wind up doing all the work anyway and someone else gets my grade. Or worse...fucks shit up and I get their crappy grade. I have a good partner, though, I hope. She's a Brit and my age. So, like me, she's in school for a reason, not just because Mommy and Daddy are paying for it. I've been canning more and today is corn. The good folk at the Presto! Pressure Canner and Cooker company were good enough to enclose a booklet that explains that my corn should be processed for 55 minutes at twelve pounds of pressure. What those rat bastards don't mention is that it takes over an hour and 1/2 to get it up to twelve pounds of pressure. So....my day has consisted of writing soils papers, picking and shucking corn, cutting corn off of the cob and waiting for water to boil. Aren't you jealous?  |
| The other day I was contemplating several things in my life that I realized were for different reasons quite magical. Some subtly magical, some downright scarily magical. And I thought I would take the time to share them with you guys. Perhaps you have magical things in your lives you may not be aware of or which you take for granted. In no particular order.....  Coca-Cola. Stay with me here. Because of all of my medical allergies, I can't take many things for simple remedies, so I've had to come up with ways to fix the little stuff on my own with no pharmaceutical intervention and Coca-Cola is a magical elixir. When I have a tummy ache, it soothes it. When I have a migraine or even a simple headache, it sorts me out. Yesterday I was having sneezing fits and running eyes and nose from the smoke in the air on top of the headache it was giving me and magically after my Coke....the nose and eyes were all better. Plus no more sneezing. See? Magic Coca-Cola!! But, you can't have more than one, two tops, magic Cokes in a day or it turns on you in a horrible way! (Too much caffeine!  )The Carwash. I'm not talking about the carwash where you have to hold that dang giant wand thingy, either. I'm talking about the tunnel one you drive through with the big blue octopus sponges that come down and wash your car for you. And the pretty rainbow wax that sprays on the car and smells fruity even though you don't have the vents on in the car. It's just such a magical process. You drive in, put the car in neutral, the little conveyor belt rollers grab your tires and off you go into the tunnel! It's kind of Zen because while you are in there you can't really do anything. You can't talk on the phone because its so loud. You don't really have time to read or do anything else because it only takes about two or three minutes. You just sit and watch the rainbow foam and be one with the moment. You aren't in control. You are behind the wheel, but you are a passenger. I like to meditate and imagine that whatever stress or bad juju I might be carrying is washed away with the soap and water and as the car gets clean, my day is instantly better. See? Magic.Netflix. When I was a kid, VCR's had just been invented. Ergo...movie rental places were then invented. But when you wanted to rent a movie it was this GIANT production. You all had to agree on it (and with four kids and two adults that almost NEVER happened), it only happened on a Friday or Saturday night or for a special occasion. You had to wait sometimes YEARS for movies to come to video. It was just a big pain in the butt. Now, two or three months after a movie has been in the theater, I can usually get it on Netflix. I order it online and if I can't watch it immediately on my PS3, then I get it next day in the mail. I never even leave my house. It's magic!You guys probably have magical things in your life, too. You may not have realized they were magical until I pointed it out, though.  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.~~ Arthur C. Clarke |
| Yesterday was hot but fun. I spent the day Little Red Henning. Ok, not really. Hubby did all the heavy lifting. You all know the children's tale of The Little Red Hen, right? "Fine, I'll do it myself." Hubby takes care of the gardens. Usually I help plant and so forth, but this year with my surgery, he wound up doing that with me just standing around being foreman. He does all the watering and weeding, too. He's a good egg, Hubby is. My job is to harvest things and preserve them. So that's what I did yesterday with the green beans. Here's the thing....we've never planted green beans. So, I've never canned green beans. Turns out you need a pressure canner, not the hot water bath canner I already own. If you don't bring them up to ten pounds pressure and 240 degrees (F) in a pressure canner, you get botulism. That seems a bad way to go, done in by your own green beans. Pressure canners are not only expensive, they are also sold out this late in the season. Ace Hardware is the only place in town who is still carrying them in August, but they are on backorder and won't be in until Monday. No problem, I'm nothing if not adaptable. I quick hunted through all three of my canning cookbooks (one of which is Canning & Preserving For Dummies  That's me! ) and found that I could pickle my already-picked-and-now-must-be-processed-lest-they-go-bad six pounds of fresh green beans. I found a recipe that called for ingredients I had on hand and I was off and running. After an extremely steamy and long afternoon, I now have 16 half-pints of Spicy Pickled Beans. I pulled it off with no large incidents and only one broken canning jar which wasn't my fault....it came that way from WalMart. All of my lids popped so we they should be safe. I even remembered to buy labels for the jars, so I can remember what the dang things are six moths from now. I also baked more of the Banana Honey Wheat bread. That was a huge hit with Hubby. It's a great bread to make when I have a couple of extra overripe bananas. I've made some loaves and given them away just to use up bananas. I like recipes like that, that use up otherwise wasted ingredients. And, as Hubby and I have eaten up all of the 7-Grain Oat bread, I'll be making another loaf of that today. It's a great bread for grilled cheeses and toasts up nicely. Once I get a pressure canner, I'll be able to can the rest of the green beans still out in my garden waiting to be picked. Also the rows and rows of sweet corn. Although, after the pickling experiment yesterday, I think I may make some corn relish out of at least some of my corn. For varieties' sake. How tasty will spicy corn relish be come January? That sweet picked taste of sun and summer. Mmmmmm. Perhaps I'll roast it a little before canning it. I must research! To the internet! |
| Other places. For months the rain has come to the valley then shifted slightly north or south. But finally! Finally! Tonight, we are getting rain. Gentle, gentle rain. ~sigh~ Last night we had an awful thunderstorm. I worried the lightning would start more wildfires. Last I saw a count, Montana had fifteen wildfires burning in the state. We've had awful air quality. On Thursday, the smog and smoke was so bad that you couldn't even seen the sun. It was just an ugly red smear in the sky. The sunset wasn't even pretty, it just looked like blood staining the horizon. The smoke and underlying humidity have been awful, too. The grit sticks to your skin until you feel dirty just walking outside. But, today, we have rain and cooler temperatures. I wish it would rain for days and days, washing the air and putting out all the fires. I baked some bread yesterday. Seven-grain oat bread. Mmmmm. I also baked scones this morning. I've just been in a baking mood. Unfortunately with the heat, it's too hot to fire up the oven very often. I'm ready for the cool autumn weather to get here so I can start my Christmas baking. (Sorry, Scarlett! Didn't mean to mention the Humbug word!) |
I have a migraine and the neighbors are jackhammering up their front stoop.  Seriously? Today? ~sigh~I know it's not personal. But when I don't feel good, it FEELS personal. It doesn't help that this migraine could have totally been avoided. I take meds because I'm bipolar. I've taken basically the same meds for over a decade. Two years ago, my main med went generic. Yay, right? Less money. Actually no. In the tablet form, I have problems with the generic pill. Everyone but my doctor argued with me. They are the same thing. The pills are identical. You are imagining things. Uh....really? I don't think so. Turns out what I have a problem with are the generic binders and fillers. So, no generic tablets. We get to pay full price (several hundred dollars a month) for brand name pills. Insurance will only pay $10 for them because there's a generic. I should be using it. They don't care if I can't tolerate it. Not their problem. A few months ago, a capsule form of my med came on the market. Yay! No binders or fillers. Just the active ingredients in a gel capsule. So last month I tried the new kind. Walmart is my pharmacy. Has been for almost a decade. When I went to get my new prescription filled, so sorry, we don't have that, but we will call around and find someone who does. Next month we will have that for you. Check. Over to the CVS and I get my new pills. Last Monday, I call Walmart. I'm running low on pills, can you please transfer the script back from CVS, I have one week worth of pills left. No problem. They call me back. Problem. No refills on the script. OK, I say. So call the doctor and get it refilled. No problem, they say. Wednesday comes, no refill yet. I call Walmart. They say they are waiting on the doctor, could I call? Sure. I call. And I call. And I call. And I call. Now it's Friday and I don't have enough pills to last through Sunday night. (I take 3 of them a day. I only have 2 left for Sunday. Then I'm out.) Normally Walmart would just give me enough pills to get me by (they have in the past and then taken it out of the refill), but this is a "new" prescription. They can't do that this time. I'm just screwed. So I took my two pills last night and today I get to suffer a migraine because my body is freaking out that I don't have enough of this medication in my system. This morning I call the doctor's office again. Oh, they say...we called that prescription in last Monday!  Seriously? WTF?! Then why the hell couldn't you figure out that something was wrong when I was leaving you two and three messages a day all last week that Walmart DIDN'T have that prescription. For WHATEVER reason. You screwed up, Walmart screwed up. I don't care. Honestly, I don't. Assign blame some other time. Right now, get me my prescription! It makes me physically ill to go without a dose. Vomiting, migraines, delusions, trembling hands, nightmares, blurred vision. Even if there comes a day when I go off of this med, I will have to do a step down dosage in order to get off of it. Cold turkey is bad. Very, very, bad.Not to mention it makes me ramble incoherently in my blog! And that damn jackhammer is still at it. ~sigh~ |
| I have a migraine and the neighbors are jackhammering up their front stoop. Seriously? Today? ~sigh~ I know it's not personal. But when I don't feel good, it FEELS personal. It doesn't help that this migraine could have totally been avoided. I take meds because I'm bipolar. I've taken basically the same meds for over a decade. Two years ago, my main med went generic. Yay, right? Less money. Actually no. In the tablet form, I have problems with the generic pill. Everyone but my doctor argued with me. They are the same thing. The pills are identical. You are imagining things. Uh....really? I don't think so. Turns out what I have a problem with are the generic binders and fillers. So, no generic tablets. We get to pay full price (several hundred dollars a month) for brand name pills. Insurance will only pay $10 for them because there's a generic. I should be using it. They don't care if I can't tolerate it. Not their problem. A few months ago, a capsule form of my med came on the market. Yay! No binders or fillers. Just the active ingredients in a gel capsule. So last month I tried the new kind. Walmart is my pharmacy. Has been for almost a decade. When I went to get my new prescription filled, so sorry, we don't have that, but we will call around and find someone who does. Next month we will have that for you. Check. Over to the CVS and I get my new pills. Last Monday, I call Walmart. I'm running low on pills, can you please transfer the script back from CVS, I have one week worth of pills left. No problem. They call me back. Problem. No refills on the script. OK, I say. So call the doctor and get it refilled. No problem, they say. Wednesday comes, no refill yet. I call Walmart. They say they are waiting on the doctor, could I call? Sure. I call. And I call. And I call. And I call. Now it's Friday and I don't have enough pills to last through Sunday night. (I take 3 of them a day. I only have 2 left for Sunday. Then I'm out.) Normally Walmart would just give me enough pills to get me by (they have in the past and then taken it out of the refill), but this is a "new" prescription. They can't do that this time. I'm just screwed. So I took my two pills last night and today I get to suffer a migraine because my body is freaking out that I don't have enough of this medication in my system. This morning I call the doctor's office again. Oh, they say...we called that prescription in last Monday! Seriously? WTF?! Then why the hell couldn't you figure out that something was wrong when I was leaving you two and three messages a day all last week that Walmart DIDN'T have that prescription. For WHATEVER reason. You screwed up, Walmart screwed up. I don't care. Honestly, I don't. Assign blame some other time. Right now, get me my prescription! It makes me physically ill to go without a dose. Vomiting, migraines, delusions, trembling hands, nightmares, blurred vision. Even if there comes a day when I go off of this med, I will have to do a step down dosage in order to get off of it. Cold turkey is bad. Very, very, bad.Not to mention it makes me ramble incoherently in my blog! And that damn jackhammer is still at it. ~sigh~ |
| Summertime means a dearth of quality programming on television. I usually spend it watching cooking shows and random programs on the SYFY channel. I've picked up two or three programs to watch regularly, but otherwise, I've started to watch tons of programs and movies on Netflix. One thing I really like to watch is documentaries. Right now I'm watching H.H. Homes: America's First Serial Killer. He was pretty messed up. Yikes!! I hadn't heard of him before a few weeks ago. Interestingly he was committing his crimes at the same time as Jack the Ripper. He was convicted of murdering his business partner Pitezel and Pitezel's three older children. After his conviction he confessed to twenty-seven murders, but in reality it is believed he killed as many as 100 people, all before he turned 35. He was a complete sociopath. As one of the first modern serial killers, they didn't even have a term for it. The newspapers called him a "multi-murderer." He wasn't just a killer, though. He was a conman. Unusual among serial killers, he held his stuff together long enough to not only complete college, but to complete medical school. He was an actual doctor. They believe that he held things together for years because he was allowed to dissect cadavers in medical school. After that, things fell apart for him and he began killing. He would kill people and then sell their cleaned and re-articulated skeletons to medical schools. He not only killed them, he managed to make a profit on it! He had a house built that he personally designed filled with crazy murder rooms and torture chambers that once it was discovered, was called the Murder Castle. I am also baking more bread. Hubby has instituted a rule that I am not allowed to bake a new loaf of bread until the old one has been consumed. I got him to expand the rule to include one regular loaf and one "sweet" loaf. So, even though I baked a multi-grain loaf Saturday, I am baking a poppy seed honey wheat banana yeast bread right now. I think it will be good with honey or with peanut butter especially for breakfast. |
| First, the fireworks. Most of the state of Montana is under red flag fire warnings. That means Smokey the Bear stands around with his shovel asking YOU to prevent forest fires. But every asshat in my neighborhood is setting off bottle rockets like it's monsoon season. Asshats. I have one set of some especially asshatty neighbors. I've talked about Lawn Nazi in my previous blog before. Well, apparently at some point in the last year, Lawn Nazi got into drugs and his wife kicked him out. So he's gone, but his asshatty teenage sons still live there. I think they bought a thousand packages of Black Cats. They keep setting them off in strings in the street. Now the bread. Last month I was talking in the office with my coworkers (two other women) and we were discussing how good homemade bread is but what a pain it is to make. I mentioned how I've always wanted a bread machine, but since they cost a couple hundred I've never shelled out for one. So last week one of my coworkers texts me at home and says her aunt (a serial yard saler) found not one but two bread machines would I be interested in one. Uh...yeah I would! Especially for the rockbottom price of $10 bucks!! Woot!!!! So....in about 15 minutes my maiden loaf of bread from my spiffy new bread machine will be ready. I've been searching recipes online all week and found an oatmeal wheat recipe that I adapted. It called for wheat germ which I didn't have, so I substituted flax meal. Most of the rest of the recipes I found call for dry milk, so I'm going to have to buy some. I used to keep dry milk in my house, just in case, but I got out of the habit and just never replaced after I used the last of my last box. While I've been baking my bread, I've been watching Supernatural. I wasn't going to watch it, but Gypsy talks about it all the time. About how fabulous it is. So I'm on episode 13 or 14. And she's right. Well, I gotta go check on my bread. My yummy, yummy oatmeal wheat flax bread. Mmmmmmm, I'll bake you all loaves and mail them.  |
| On Wednesday I went back to my part time job doing data entry. Yay! No more cabin fever!! It was only for two hours, but it was wonderful. What was even nicer is that the other women in the office have been mostly keeping up with my job so I didn't come back to total chaos. It helped that before I left I was 100% caught up, nothing in my in box. (It's one of those jobs. Stuff comes in I enter it, I pass it along.) But since I was so caught up, they've been able to just split my job up among them and keep me mostly caught up. I just had a handful of things to do on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Enough for a couple hours of work each day which was just about my limit each day. Friday was a bad day for me, though. The itching that I associated with the incisions healing? Not so much. By Friday I was miserable from it. I was up at 4:45am and sat impatiently waiting for 8:30 for the doctor's office to open so I could call and ask about the awful redness around the incision sites. (And the itching!) They worried it was infection so they had me come in. Back story......I am a walking disaster medically speaking. I have a host of allergies and problems. So many allergies to medications, etc, in fact, that when they put the nifty yellow band for allergies around my wrist for the surgery there wasn't room for all of my allergies on just one band. I had to have two FULL little bright yellow bands around my wrist about medical allergies. One of my allergies is adhesive tape. They always have to use paper tape. When I had my C-section they taped me all up with adhesive surgical tape and after two days I made them take it off me because it hurt so bad. I looked like I had second degree burns. The taped places took longer to heal than the C-section. So, one of the allergies listed on my spiffy yellow caution bracelets was ADHESIVES. Back to Friday. All unknowing, I had left the steri-strips in place on my incisions because all the take home literature they give you says to. Also I was sent home with cheap ass hospital brand bandaids over my steri-strips. (That's all that was on the incisions. Steri-strips and cheap bandaids.) I left them in place as long as it said to. Friday morning when I called in, the nurse asked about the incisions and I mentioned I couldn't see the actual incisions because they were covered with steri-strips but that I'd replaced the bandaids. She gets all twisted panties and asks me to have a shower and remove the steri-strips. Fine. I do that. It's a struggle and they barely come off. In the office later, she and the other nurse look me over and what's wrong with me is severe allergic reaction to the adhesive in the steri-strips and the cheap ass bandaids. Hunh. It's like I told them I was allergic to adhesive or something. So now I have some damned prescription cream to put on the adhesive burns because I can't just use hydrocortizone on fresh incisions. It's working great but it's causing me to have a funny metallic taste in my mouth.  Also, on a bizzare side note. I think I developed an allergy to Advil. I was taking a lot of it (not overdose amounts just cumulatively a lot during all of this craziness) so I wasn't taking so much Vicodin and so now I've got hives. I've switched over to Tylenol, but I can't take a lot of Tylenol because it's hard on your liver and I already take meds that are hard on your liver. I need my liver. My kidneys were taking the hit on the Advil. ~sigh~ My house is a pit. It's starting to drive me just a little bit nuts. I can clean the kitchen, but we live in a split-level so I can't do things like take the laundry down to be washed or up to be put away. I can't vacuum. The vacuuming is vital because I'm allergic to our pets and the long haired cat Bonnie is neurotic and sometimes just sits and pulls her hair out in little clumps. But in the meantime, I'm leveling WoW characters like mad. I have a friend who plays video games, too. When I was bitching to him about Hubby not letting me do housework and having to just sit around playing WoW he got quiet and said. "Wait, you are complaining because your husband is going to do the housework and is making you sit around and play video games. Can I marry Hubby?" I know....bitch, bitch, bitch. I should just enjoy the vacation. |
| I'm not saying that I recommend invasive surgery as a weight loss strategy. But, as it turns out, I've lost 15 pounds through this little ordeal. It seems to be the only plus I've got, so I'm gonna take it. All things being equal? I think I would have rather kept the ability to eat french fries. I'm on the mend. Slowly but surely. Hubby keeps telling me, "Wait. Slow down. Be patient." Meanwhile I'm starting to go stark raving bonkers from being cooped up in the house. I take little walks in the yard every day and I sit out on my back patio in the sun (touch of jaundice, you know. ) But somehow none of that is the same as being able to hop in the car and take myself any damn where I please when I want. I'm something of a control freak and not being in absolute control of my situation drives me nuts.I understand Hubby's caution. If I take it easy now and not overdo things then I can prevent creating a complication that will cause me to have to take even MORE time off work and away from my business and also keep me under longer house arrest. That doesn't keep me from being grumpy about it.I've read all I can usefully read. (I know, I know....when I'm read out, holy cow, what is the world coming to! Speaking of which I need to update my list up top.) I've played WoW til my wrist hurts. I'm tired of TV. ~sigh~ I want out. I had friends come visit me yesterday and bring me lunch and it was nice, but when they left I was tired and in pain. I know.....that means I'm probably not up to going to work and sitting and stretching and dealing nicely with people. But..........I'm SOOOOO tired of me, Sofie, Bonnie and Midnight. (Bonnie and Midnight are the cats.) Also I'm sick of the new dietary restrictions. There is ZERO learning curve for figuring out the new diet. If you get it wrong you know immediately. It makes you instantly sick. And even things that are ok sometimes make you queasy or rumbly in the tummy. Unlike a diet diet there aren't any cheat days. I know it's like the chocolate thing. I know that eventually I'll just adjust and things like french fries won't even sound appetizing, but right now I'm.....ok, right now I'm sulking. I'm pissy. I'm tired of adjusting. I want to be a normal person who does normal things. I know, I know, there is no normal and normal people are just people you haven't gotten to know very well but....still. I know that I'm running dangerously low on harvestable internal organs while I'm still alive. That's got me a little grumpy. I've had a full hysterectomy and while they were chopping out all my lady parts, since they were in the neighborhood, they took my appendix. Now I don't have a gallbladder. I suppose I could spare a spleen, an extra kidney and lung. But after that, I'm kinda out of extra organs If I wanna keep ticking. I think the rest are ones I need. I'm also grumpy because my incisions are itchy. I know, I know. That means they are healing. I don't care WHY the damn things itch. They just itch and it bugs me. I look like an old bear walking around rubbing my tummy because I can't scratch the damn things.Ok. Ranting bitch session over. Buck up little camper. You have your health, you have a nice home, a loving husband, a daughter who loves you, you have good things in your life. This too shall pass. There. I finished with a pep talk for myself. |
| Since I've having the surgery next Tuesday, I'm trying to spend this weekend cleaning up the house really well so that we aren't living in our own filth while I'm out of commission. It's not that the house is dirty, I'm just trying to totally clean things....bathrooms, vacuuming, totally clean kitchen, laundry, even clean sheets (cause who wants to be laid up in less than fresh sheets?). I usually do these things on a sort of rotating schedule so I don't have to devote entire days to nothing but house cleaning and now, doing it under less than ideal conditions, is taking a lot out of me. Have I mentioned I'm in pain? Not horrible I-can't-carry-on-the-frowny-face-has-tears-it's-a-10 type pain, but more a grinding sort of smaller-frowny-face-maybe-a-4 type pain. (Have you guys ever seen the little chart they show you at the ER for pain? ) They helpfully *sarcasm* gave me Vicodin for the pain but I'm trying not to use it even though I couldn't convince them to give me something different, like Torridol. (Torridol is like super Tylenol but not as liver destroying.) I can't take ibuprofen before the surgery, something about bleeding and bruising. Maybe Torridol is like ibuprofen, I don't know. I'm not a doctor. But I don't like to take Vicodin because I have been addicted to it in the past. I have right there in the chart...DON'T GIVE THIS WOMAN NARCOTICS. But it's like they can't read. So now I get to fall off the Vicodin wagon just to stop the pain. Although I guess they are as stumped as I am. What do you give someone for 8 and 9 type pain if it's not narcotics? Because, I kid you not, when I have a flare up.....it's 8 and 9 sized pain. There are definitely tears on my frowny face.It's like a puzzle with no answer. I'm off to Reiki myself because that helps keep my pain manageable with Tylenol, then I'm going to vacuum. Oh and the ten second tidy? It was a game my daughter and I used to play. When she was little she watched some silly show called Big Comfy Couch where they would clean up every day with the ten second tidy. |
| Today's title is just a frowny face because 2012 is continuing to be somewhat sucky. Next Tuesday I get to go in and have gallbladder surgery. Right now it's super owie. That means at least two weeks of being out of commission if not more. (It depends on how the surgery goes.) I'm kind of pissy about the whole thing and I'm tired of only having crummy things to talk about in my blog. Because of that I'm going to talk about something boring but not sucky just to close on a positive note. We put the garden in last weekend and my flowers are blooming. Yay! That is all. |
| Sorry for these, they are what I seem to have time for nowadays. I try to get on and read, but time constraints don't allow for both blogging and reading, so I usually have to choose. Since there isn't much new in my life, I choose to read y'all's stuff. 1) Hubby and I are doing well. We have sad days, but are slowly getting back to our old selves. The nicer weather is helping, although in Montana, nicer is a relative term. This past weekend, we both spent time outside getting some sun, working in the gardens and whatnot (not planting...it's not time to plant yet) weeding, getting them ready to till, etc. Hubby even got a nice little bit of a burn. I smartly wore my new SPF 100. (That's not a joke...I actually found some SPF 100. Perfect for a redhead!!) This week has been all rain and even a bit of snow. Tonight's low is supposed to be in the mid 30s (F) and tomorrow may not climb out of the 40s (F). 2) Which brings me to--this next weekend I'm set to go camping with some friends over in Billings. I belong to a group called the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms). They have a website...you can look them up if you are interested, but essentially what they/we do is reenact the middle ages. Jousting, sword fighting, dressing up, etc. But with modern plumbing and medicine. I mostly got involved because my business partner is heavily into it and for cheap (say $15ish for an entire weekend fee) we can merchant at some of the summer events. But the thing is you have to camp for these gigs. Camping in Montana this early in the season is a chancy affair. Hubby tried to foist our small 3 man pup tent off on me but I was having none of it. The dresses for these things are huge. Each of my dresses (and mine are basic) have 5 yards of fabric each in them and they are tight fitting with full skirts. And they involve under-dresses with a full five MORE yards of fabric. Think about that for a minute. When I'm fully dressed, I'm wearing 10 freaking yards of linen and muslin. And he wanted me to get dressed in these things all hunched over in a three man pup tent. No thanks, buddy. I made him haul out our full size 10 man mongo-tent. I'll be in it alone, but I can stand fully in it since it's got 7 feet of height in the highest part. There is a little ante-room for me to use for all my shenanigans for when I have to wiggle into these dresses and under-dresses. (No buttons or zippers...they all just go over your head.) At least I'll be warm this weekend. 3) Sofie is doing better than we expected since Bear died, except we've decided that she is having some sort of identity/species crisis. The other night we were laying in bed watching TV and Sofie was in her little bed that is between our legs at the foot of our bed. While we watched her she started grooming herself like a cat. It was bizarre. She licked her back flank then licked a paw and washed her face. She's a dachshund, not a cat, I promise. We asked her what she was doing and told her to quit, but she just looked at us and kept it up. Then Bonnie, the dumb kitty, jumped up on the bed and Sofie started grooming her! 4) I've been having more and more problems with my computer so I took it in to our computer guy yesterday. (His name is Wally. He's hysterical. We love him.) I tell him what's happening and he says he'll take a look, it could be a couple of things. This morning he calls me up and asks me to come in to look at it with him. Ominous, right? So in I go and we look things over and sure enough, no problems. Turns out my problem is with my home internet connection. When CenturyLink took over from Qwest in our area, they implemented new plans. What that means apparently is that they dropped our connection speed down to shite and now want to charge us an arm and a leg to bring it back up to where it was. Bastards. I used to have no problems streaming videos or playing WoW, now my WoW characters look like they are having seizures and it takes me two hours to watch a 45 minute show. Hubby is checking into new internet options for us this weekend while I'm gone. 5) Dang...no 5 again. Oh, wait. Related to my #5 from last time. Hubby took me to our second fav place to eat (a place called the Mint in Belgrade...yummy, yummy food.) The waitress read us the specials and one of them was special mashed potatoes to have with your steak: potatoes with horseradish and sour cream. Yum, right? Did you know.......horseradish can be fatal in large quantities? Turns out I'm sensitive to smaller amounts of horseradish. I had an AWFUL reaction and was sick all weekend. Migraine, fainting episodes, gastric difficulties, whole nine yards. Hubby felt really bad, wanted to take me to the emergency room. But since I knew what it was, I just sucked it up. Who needs the headache of a hospital bill? I've had horseradish before and was ill to a lesser degree, but I've apparently never had this much at a go. And when I had it before, I never linked my illness to the horseradish. I wouldn't have figured it out this time, but a few months ago I randomly watched a program about strange food allergies and a woman had all the same symptoms from a (much) larger dose of horseradish. Mystery solved. No more horseradish for me! |
| I'm going to take a page from Party and Gypsy and do a shotgun entry: 1) Thank you all for your kind words and well wishes during our rough time this past weekend. Bear is gone now and we are coping. (Sort of.) 2) My final final is tomorrow morning and then it's another semester in the bag. I'm relieved. This has been an especially trying semester for some reason. I'm exhausted mentally from it. I know most of that is personal life stuff not school life stuff, but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with. Most of the time the school work is just the straw that feels like it's breaking this particular ill-used camel's back. 3) A few years ago Hubby lost quite a bit of weight (over 100 lbs.) and he attributed it to getting up each morning and going walking with Bear. So, a chubby little Sofie and I have been getting up and going walking in the mornings. (When it's not precipitating on us. I'm a wimp, I don't walk in precipitation.) It's good for us both because not only do we both need to lose a few pounds, we both need the mental stimulation as well. We were afraid after we put Bear down that we would lose Sofie, too. I'm hoping if we can keep her engaged and stimulated she won't pine away. 4) The business is really picking up. Really moving and grooving. We are getting both new clients and "old" clients who come to us during the summer at the Farmer's Market are finding us as well, so that's nice, too. It seems like every month we double our sales. If this keeps up we'll be in a larger space and really heading in the long term direction we want for the business sooner than we think. 5) Hmmm...I don't really have a 5, but I know Scarlett likes lists of 5. Wait. Hubby is taking me out on Saturday night for dinner. I'm excited. I really like the place we are going. It's one of my favorite restaurants. If any of you come visit me IRL and stay the night, count on us going there. (It's only open in the evenings. It's a supper club WAY the heck out in Logan, MT.) It's about a twenty minute drive up the interstate. But worth the drive!! They do a steak and fresh crab leg dinner that is to die for! It's called Land of Magic. They have a twice baked potato that is heavenly. Mmmmm. Cheesy potato goodness. Dang. Now I'm hungry. Well, I'm off to scrounge up dinner for tonight since I don't get surf and turf til Saturday. |
| It's time for me to update my blog. I have been consciously dragging my feet about updating my blog because there is really only one thing on my mind and I don't want to talk about it. I kind of want to pretend it's not happening. But I know that isn't very responsible or adult of me and part of me knows that some day (not now) I will want to look back and know what my head space about all this was, so I'm going to make myself talk about it now. ~sigh~ Bear has been sick since January. "Invalid Entry"  I haven't written anything about it since then, but she has gotten steadily worse and worse. We have taken her to a lady who does accupuncture for dogs, we have tried this and that, but kind of the upshot of it is....we are having her put down Saturday morning.Her quality of life has deteriorated to the point that keeping her alive is sort of torturing her. Hubby is finally in a place where he is ready to let her go. Don't get me wrong. This wasn't an easy decision. He's agonized over it since January. We've gone back and forth and wrangled over it emotionally. But, I feel that once Hubby can wrap his whole heart and mind around the decision, he will be able to find some peace with it. She's twelve and a half. She's been treated as a member of our family for literally her entire life (we got her as soon as she was weaned and she knew us even before then), not the family dog. Honestly, she shouldn't have made it to be this old. By all rights we should have lost her three years ago to lymphoma. But, she made it through chemo like a trooper and we got to have these last three years with her. The other pets know she is sick and they take turns just laying by her side. I think she knows it is her time, too. She wants to go lay in quiet corners and hide. She reminds me of those stories about elephants going to elephant graveyards when it is time for them to die. Anyway. This is why I haven't been blogging. I haven't wanted to blog about this, but I know I have needed to. Now that we have set the date, I sort of feel like I can talk about it because it's real. |
| My husband and I have been married since 1996. Together since 1995. Since that time, we have spent very few nights apart. Very few. Probably a month (maybe six weeks) total in the last sixteen and 1/2 years. That's not alot. I don't like being apart from him. When Monilad lived with us, I always had her with me when he wasn't. Or, on the rare occasion when neither of them was with me, my mom was. Once, even my mother in law. I don't spend time alone overnight. Period. I just don't. I have a thing about it. Once upon a time I lived alone. A long time ago in a place far, far away. I lived alone. For several years. I did okay with it. Now.......not so much. Now I have anxiety attacks, etc. Earlier this week our boss (not knowing any of the above), went to Hubby and asked him to go down to Colorado for a couple of days to handle some company business down there. A quick fly-in, fly-out two/three day trip, tops. Hubby and I sort of panicked (I say that. Probably only I panicked. Probably Hubby was fine. ). Who would stay with me? Monilad isn't here anymore. Our mothers live in Colorado and Texas. So.........for the first time in almost seventeen years. I spent the last two nights alone.It was weird. I didn't sleep well. BUT, on the plus side. While Hubby was gone:  I took my meds.The animals got fed morning and night.I went to class.I went to work.I went out with my friends.I went grocery shopping.In short, I was able to function as a responsible adult human being. I didn't hole up and wig out all three days, unable/unwilling to leave the house at all. Yay, me! Now I'm headed to the airport an hour early cause I'm ready for him to be home. |
| And my "give-a-shitter" is giving out on me. I SHOULD be working on a Stats assignment right now. Or barring that, going over the upcoming Spanish lesson. Or, even, possibly, researching anomalocaris of the Burgess Shale for Invertebrate Paleontology. Instead I am reading blogs and blogging about why I'm not doing those things. Blah. Yesterday was group advising. Each semester you can't register for the next semester of classes until you get a PIN from your advisor. But, the Earth Sciences dept doesn't like scheduling individual meetings with all of us, so they do this big night of group advising. They feed us pizza, break us into our areas of interest (geology, geography, snow sciences, paleo, hydrology) and then run us through like cattle as quickly as possible. It usually takes about 45 mins. (There are only about eight or ten advisors and there are eighty or a hundred students.) I was the only female geography student. The rest looked like homeless people. All they were lacking was the burn barrel to stand around. It was ridiculous. They all peered at me like I was a bug on a board the whole time I was in there. I said hello to the group and tried to engage them in conversation and you'd have thought I was speaking a foreign language. They all jumped and looked everywhere but at me. I wanted to ask if lack of personal hygiene and social skills were a requirement of the major. Man, I thought the geology and paleo kids were bad. The geography kids make the others look like America's Top Model contestants and Miss Manners graduates. Yikes! OK, really have to get started on that Stats homework now. |
| So Spring Break has been as busy as the rest of my spring. I finally just stole this afternoon and spent it on myself. I went and got my hairs trimmed. (I briefly dated a German exchange student in high school. He never could understand why the English phrase was "getting my hair cut" his question was always, "Aren't you going to get them all cut?" Collective nouns confused him. )I also spent some time at the B & N. Ahhhh. I love books. And coffee. I love books and coffee together even more. This week I had two Reiki classes. They are fun, but when I'm teaching them in the evening, it makes for a long day. Also, a business in town is starting a new wellness program where they do webcasts of professionals doing mini-seminars or classes during lunch on Fridays; they call it "Lunch and Learn." The webcast goes out to their satellite offices statewide. Today, I gave their first "webinar." It was a lot of fun and was very well received. I had around 15 attendees (I didn't have an accurate count because some of them were actually rooms with several people on a conference call) and they were very open and interested in learning more about Reiki. I've never done a webinar so it was a good learning experience for me as well. They set aside an hour for the talk. I talked for 30 mins and change and then opened up the floor for Q & A which took another 15 mins. That gave them 15 mins to discuss amongst themselves before heading back to work. I had participants from Bozeman, Billings, Kallispell and, I think, Missoula. So, yea! I gave out info for them to reach me with further questions and to book appointments, so I hope I get some feedback that way as well. Our business is rocketing along. We officially exist. We got our EIN this week. Woot! Now we can pay taxes. Actually it's good because now we qualify for wholesale discounts a lot of the places we would be doing special ordering for our customers. We also got signed up with a place called www.square.com. If you have a small business, I highly recommend it. With this, you can take credit cards with nothing more than a smart phone from any location. It has a little adaptor, swipe-thingy I plug in my phone and I swipe the card and bada-bing, the money is automatically deposited into our business checking account. It's tiny. It's about the size of a postage stamp. I'm continually amazed at technology. Most days I feel like I've been dropped onto the set of Star Trek and I'm using tricorders and whatnot. March Madness is in full swing at our house. I know we just entered the tourneys, but I kinda just want to punch the television if I have to watch another minute of college hoops. I burn out quickly as Hubby watches 3-4 games simultaneously while the tournements are on. He rapidly switches the TV back and forth between channels, all the while I'm getting whiplash trying to keep up with who is playing whom and why, exactly, we care who wins. And if I have to watch Charles Barkley defend his bracket one more time, I may go postal, because if we aren't watching the games, we are watching highlights of the games and endless commentary on upcoming games. Most of the time I head off to read or sew or play video games just to preseve my sanity. In fact, as I type this, I can hear the annoying squeak of Air Jordans on a highly polished wood floor coming from the TV in my bedroom. Aaand, there goes the channel. Shoot me, shoot me now. ~banging head quietly on keyboard~ |
| Midterms week. Stop. Busy as a one-armed paperhanger. Stop. Business going well. Stop. Will write more during spring break next week. Stop. I promise. Stop. Love to all. Stop. |
I didn't mean to fall down the rabbit hole, but life got me. I've been on randomly to read blogs, but haven't blogged myself in what my accout assures me has been twenty days.  I'm doing well in school. I've had three tests, two in Spanish and one in Stats and I've gotten A's on both the Spanish tests and a high B on the Stats test. Yay me! I've also opened a store front for the business that I have with the partner I work with at the farmer's market in the summers. She and I decided to try having a business space to see how that went. We are calling it a metaphysical center and we are opening it to coffee meetings, classes, etc in the community in addition to what we do. So far the reception has been positive, but we are having some hiccups with licensing from the state. We've sent everything off but now we are waiting......endlessly waiting. We are hoping no news is good news. Technically we can't do any real business until we have the state thing so that we can get the city business license so that we can open a true business bank account to go with the house that Jack built. It's kind of maddening. You have to complete a million steps in order but you have to complete steps 47 and 63 before you can do step one. Oh, and don't forget about these hidden hoops to jump through that we aren't going to tell you about, but will ding you for if you don't osmotically know about them. I love red tape and bureaucracy. But enough about that. More info will follow as it becomes available. For now we wait on the mercy of the great state of Montana. One thing I've been doing is reading voraciously. I have a ton of books to add to my read section up top. I'll do that after I finish this entry. I'm reading new things, new authors, and really just exploring what I want to do with my stories. I'm in the research phase. Research meaning, "how to/ how not to write". Mostly how I want my characters to be, how I want my story to read, how I DON'T want it to read. Mistakes not to make. I'm reading these books with a notepad in one hand saying....This character comes across as erratic. I like the way the author weaves in backstory. I don't like the way the character's voice changes here--they sound like all the other characters in the book. I love the way the author uses the setting as a character. Things like that. Sort of a hands on/do it yourself workshop for writing using books from the genre I am interested in. The next phase is writing out character sketches, scenes, etc. We'll see how that goes. I'll try to check in here a little more often so you guys know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. |
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