More problems, not just the plants

I am still waiting on that package of live plants. It is an eBay purchase. When I started bidding on them several weeks ago, it seemed like a good idea. It is really too late in the season to plant such things around here, but the seller is from Michigan, and there the trees I ordered were supposedly still dormant, so I thought that would be okay. And at the time we were having unusually cool weather here too. It sounded like a good idea at the time.

The package was supposed to arrive between the twenty-fifth of last month and the first of this month. They all say stuff like that, but my experience before this has been really good, and the sellers usually either send the stuff the next day after payment, or at the latest maybe Monday of the following week.

Anyway, the first has now past, and I don't have my package. It was supposedly sent on the twenty-eighth. Well, there's a tracking number for the twenty-eighth, but there's no info after the tracking number. It doesn't even say that the package has been picked up yet, much less that it's been moving through the system anywhere.

Anyway, I'm about to miss another short trip, and this one I would have liked to go. I usually go to this place. Not that we do anything really special anymore, but I like the motel where we stay, and we sit in the hot tub and such. And I would have left this morning and got back Sunday. Four days is a bit long to leave the plants already in the ground, but I might have given everything a good soak and tried it anyway. At this point I'm not having trouble with anything already in the ground, just worrying about plants still in transit.

There's another reason that I won't be going out of town this weekend.

It is that time of year again for electing our board of directors. Eight people are running for three seats. The election is Saturday, and Saturday only. We used to have nearly a week to vote, but now it's just the one day. And yesterday I learned that there is no absentee voting.

I suspected as much, but I went and asked for an absentee ballot yesterday. Just in case the package came last night or early this morning, I wanted to be ready to go. No luck either way.

Anyway, I have three votes, and I'm not quite sure who they should go to.

The term is for three years, so my buddy B who was elected last year is not running this year, he's still on the board for another two years. Also, I am starting to wonder if that wasn't a mistake voting for him last time anyway. He is maybe getting too friendly with the dreadful M, and S, and I'm not liking S much now either. S is threatening people who don't paint their sheds white. There's no rule that they should paint their sheds a particular color, just that the sheds be painted and kept up. There is, however, a rule that sheds only be made of wood or metal, and that the size of the shed be limited. I haven't gone to look, but I hear that S has a shed that is too large. So S with her over-sized shed is threatening people who have sheds she doesn't like or that according to her are not the right color.

S is running for re-election. Not that she was ever elected to start with, she was appointed after someone else had to quit. Anyway, S has got to go. I don't quite know who to vote for, just that I don't want S to win.

A is running this year. A is already on the board, and my brother likes him, so I'll vote for him. A has sent out flyers and such. I rarely vote for anyone who does not send out flyers. If they don't care enough to send out a flyer, why should I think that they care enough to show up for meetings or do anything else they are supposed to do as board members.

Other than A, R has also sent me a flyer and gone around shaking hands and such last weekend. So probably R will get my vote.

It is the third vote that I still don't know about.

It might go to J. I think that J has been on the board before. He ran last year, but did not win. Last year he sent out flyers, but I have not received one this year.

Also, someone's son is running for the board this year. I don't know him. Everyone knows his dad, but I don't know him. He hasn't sent me a flyer, yet. I can't vote for someone just because everyone knows his dad. He has to get out and do the work himself, send out flyers and such.

S has sent out flyers, but again I'm not voting for her.

The only other person who has sent me a flyer was T. I am not voting for T. When she moved in across the street, I heard that she went door to door introducing herself as a bitch. Well, we will take her at her word and not vote for her. There is more to that story, but it is too long to get into right now. Just without a damned good reason I'll not be voting for T.

Okay, so that's yes for A, probably for R, and maybes for J and the other guy's son, and no for S and T. That leaves another R and D who I don't know, haven't heard anything about, and haven't sent me a flyer.

I guess that they've got two more days to get my vote.

Anyway, a bit sad that I won't be going anywhere this weekend, but it's probably for the best.

Should I go on a little trip?

Well, I should know by now to always have a bag packed and be ready to go, just in case. But usually, I'm not. Usually when the opportunity comes I either have a lot of work to do, or a lot of thinking to do, or both. Then there is a lot of rushing around to get packed and ready to go.

Okay, so I've never been to Colorado. My husband is going to work in middle of nowhere Colorado, for one day. It will take two days of driving to get there, there doesn't appear to be anything in town that is particularly interesting, and then that will be followed by another day of driving to get to the next place that he works, which is in New Mexico. I have been to that place before, but I don't think that we've been there very often, and we haven't gotten to see much while we were there.

Not that we'd get to see much this time either. My husband would have to work for three days, and then so far as I know we'd be driving back, either a day and a half trip or else a very long day, so that he could work in Dallas the next Tuesday.

On the one hand, this isn't a good time to go. And it isn't just that I don't have a bag packed. I'm busy. Really, I am busy. I am painting the floor. I couldn't take that last little bit of carpet anymore, and I've ripped it off of the floor. That took a lot of work. Then I removed all of the old tiles that were under the carpet. And then there was all of this dirt. I cleared away almost a third of the floor moving a few things into the kitchen and the back room and the hallway, and then pushed everything else to the other side of the room. The empty space on the floor has been scrubbed three times, then two coats of bonding stuff added, and then the little holes left in the floor where the carpet was nailed down had to be filled in. I took a few days to rest before I did all of that, and then I painted the first coat of paint, followed the directions and waited a whole day before painting the second coat, and now I'm waiting three days before moving the furniture back to where it should be on the one wall, and then I will have to move a lot of other stuff in front of that furniture so that I can scrub more of the floor as step one of preparing to paint.

So what I had planned for Saturday was to move the furniture, and then create a path through the living room and the kitchen so that my husband could remove something very heavy from the backroom to the front of the house, where it will sit for a while while I maybe try to get someone to take it away by mentioning it on Craigslist.

Getting all of that done is more important that going on a trip. However, I'm not sure that it will get done by my staying. I can't do much of anything until Saturday, Friday night at the earliest. The paint is supposed to dry a whole three days before I move the furniture and such. The item in the back room cannot be moved until everything else is moved. I cannot move the item myself, even after everything else is moved. So the item must be moved on Saturday night or Sunday morning, and it must be moved before I do anything else to the floor.

If the item does not get moved by Sunday morning, I can not continue with painting the floor next week, and the whole plan will probably have to wait until it is possible for everything to be moved out of the way and for my husband to have the time to actually move the thing.

It is very inconvenient to have all of these things in odd places and shoved against a wall where they cannot be used. Also, it is difficult to do things like laundry, as the pathway to the dryer isn't what it was.

The rest of the house is quite the mess, as I gave up trying to deal with it. There is just dirt on the floor everywhere, especially the kitchen, as we track it in from the area of the living room that has not been prepared yet. And while I'm not doing anything right now (as I have to wait three days for the paint to dry), I'm afraid when I was doing a lot of work on the floor I got a bit behind on the dishes and the other stuff. I could probably get caught up in a few days, but I still don't know about leaving the rest of the stuff. Everything takes longer than you expect it to, but I thought that most of it was going to get done next week when I had the place to myself and my husband was going to be in Lubbock.

Anyway, I've never been to Colorado and I want to go. On the other hand, I'd really like to get this painting stuff over with. If I don't go, I'll probably regret not going. If I do go, I'll be behind schedule on everything else, and I probably won't get to do that much anyway. I'm trying to decide if it is worth the effort to go one day to middle of nowhere Colorado.

We would have to drive two days to get there, so even if there's anything to do in middle of nowhere Colorado, I don't see when we could do it. There's just too much driving the first two days, and he actually has to work from about 11am to after 10pm on Tuesday. He doesn't have to work Wednesday, but then there's that five hour drive to New Mexico. So Colorado is going to be a few hours in the evening Monday, breakfast and hopefully cable in the motel room Tuesday, and a few hours before driving away on Wednesday.

I think that the only thing we'll be doing in Colorado is looking at stuff in the middle of nowhere as we drive by.

As for New Mexico, there's probably more to do, but again there's not much time to do it. Maybe a few hours Wednesday night, breakfast Thursday morning, whatever we might do before 1pm on Friday, and maybe a couple of hours Saturday night. And then it's drive back to Dallas.

Our we might leave right after work on Saturday night and have more time to maybe do something on Monday, but traveling on a Saturday night is not the best idea. You have to plan ahead, know exactly when you're going to need to stop and get a reservation before you leave, and that usually costs more money (and that money would come out of our pocket, since the company isn't paying for us to leave early).

And, if I go, I'll miss C's party. It was scheduled for a few weeks ago, but they changed the date because of the ice and snow. So now it's going to be next Friday, and if I go I'll miss it.

I suppose that isn't a great tragedy. I really don't even have anything special to wear.

I guess the work on the floor can wait. I was just looking forward to having it all done. The end was in sight. At least for the living room floor.

Work. Work. Work.

Other things going on now

The bug guy is coming a week from Wednesday, which means that I have major amounts of cleaning to do. So far, most of it isn't getting done. The whole diet thing seems to get in the way. There's always more dishes to wash, and there's all these groceries and I have no idea where to put them, so there are just all these bags of stuff on the floor.

Last week I felt good about the cleaning, having finally gone ahead and scrubbed off whatever sticky stuff was on the kitchen floor. Not that you can tell that now. We had some interesting weather and a couple of times we had to dash outside and deal with the pump, and afterwards we just tracked more dirt into the house. So the floor will have to be cleaned again, though I doubt that it will be as difficult this time, with just the dirt and not so much whatever the sticky stuff was.

Anyway, I haven't much made a dent in the backroom, the living, the bedroom, the bathroom. Except for the sticky stuff on the floor, the kitchen and dining area are worse than before I started. And of course my husband has done little or nothing in this room or the bedroom. It just seems to require mental energy that we don't have to spare after the whole dieting thing. It isn't like you can work until you get hungry and then go take and break and eat pizza. No, you can't start anything, especially in the kitchen, that might interfere with whatever you are supposed to be eating the next meal.

Sometimes I can eat something from his diet (or maybe half of something from his diet), and once he ate something from my diet. But most of the time he's eating something that I'm not, and then we both have to take turns in the kitchen, there's just not room for us both at the same time. And then there's a mess that has to be somewhat cleared away before one of us can cook the next thing.

And of course when we are cooking in the small kitchen we have to make use of the space on top of the washing machine, which means that until the cooking and cleaning is done we can't do the laundry.

But I must get on with it anyway, cause the bug guy is coming whether or not the place is clean and/or the diet is going as planned.

The other thing that is taking up my mental energy is deciding about social things and possible travel plans. I've never done much of either while I was trying to lose weight. So I'm trying to decide what to do about Saturday, and whether or not I should go on a trip next week.

Of course at this point I can't seriously think about the trip next week, because the house has to be clean before that Wednesday, and I would have to leave that Monday, so not only would I not be here to see the bug guy (and I don't suppose that is actually necessary, but it does make me feel better to be here and see that it is done with for another three months) but I would have to have the cleaning all done by Sunday, and I'm already feeling rushed to get it done before Wednesday.

Anyway, if I go on a trip, if I want to lose weight I'll have to keep it up even on the trip, which means that I won't be doing things that I would normally do on a trip. No restaurants. No sodas. No snacks (or at least, not the usual ones). No Starbucks type high calorie drinks. And then I'd have to cook food ahead of time and take it with me, as he will also have to do, and then we'll try and stuff everything into a tiny motel frig, and we won't even be eating the same food so I'm not sure that there would be room for my stuff anyway. We'll probably have to pack the electric cooler, which means that there won't be much room for my knitting, and without the knitting to keep me busy it is usually a really boring trip.

So that probably isn't going to happen anyway, but I haven't totally made up my mind.

But I do have to decide about Saturday, and then I have to decide about every other third Saturday, and a party next month, and maybe a family dinner (date unknown at this point). Saturday we are going to two restaurants. The first restaurant I had already decided did not have good enough food for me to waste my money on, and I now that I'm counting calories I have another reason to not want the food. But I do usually buy and drink a lot of soda while I'm there. So now I have to decide should I go there and not buy anything, not even a soda, which seems a bit rude. Or, should I buy a regular soda and just attempt not to drink much of it. I could drink diet soda, if I brought something to put in it, but I'm wondering if that might be messy. Or I could even attempt to drink diet soda as is, but I would probably give up and end up replacing it with regular soda.

The second restaurant as not my favorite either, but sitting there and not ordering anything seems even more rude, as we do not have a private room for me to hide in there. And the food is even more expensive. I had found something to my liking that didn't cost too much, but it wouldn't fit in with the whole dieting thing. I could spend more money to buy something that I like less, eat half of it, and take half of it home. Or, I could spend even more money to buy something that I like a bit better, and again eat half of it and take half of it home. Or I could buy this weird tuna thing, which sometimes is pleasant and other times almost makes me ill. Not that the food is sometimes prepared different, just sometimes I feel different about eating it, and I never know until I actually try some of it. Getting something that I know I'd like either is expensive and/or very high calorie.

Maybe just once or twice a month I should say the hell with it and not think about the calories. But even if I was going to do that, I'd rather save that for something I'm really dying to have (like cookies), instead of whatever looks good at this particular restaurant (which we have to go to because of Miss Allergies).

Next month there is a party, and I don't dance, and right now I'm not doing much in the way of dressing up, so that leaves eating weird food being the main thing that I would normally do at the party, and there's no way of figuring out the calories there. My main healthy option there would be to bring several things I know are safe and only eat those. But that sounds boring, and it would cost more money than I had planned to spend.

I'll have to decide this stuff at least once or twice a month, sometimes more. Should I be good, or should I just say the hell with it and have a good time?

So far the lack of regular sodas hasn't gotten to me, and I haven't eaten any cookies, and I don't think I've even had any chocolate, and the just plain being hungry bits haven't been that bad. So in some ways, the diet is going better than I expected. It just sometimes isn't as easy to deal with as I had imagined, and I wonder if the social stuff will turn out to be the main problem.

My mother isn't happy with me

Big surprise. But it's just the reason for her being unhappy.

Okay, she's been telling me that something is going to happen in October. She told me months ago that something is going to happen in October. She repeats this several times. Okay, got it, something is happening in October. The something isn't happening to me, and it isn't happening to her, it's happening to someone else in the family. It doesn't really have anything to do with me, it is going to happen regardless of what is going on with me at the time, I don't need to be there, etc....

Okay, so now apparently, the thing is not going to happen in October, it is going to happen later this month, and I'm going on a trip, and then another trip, and for all I know after that week I'll go on another trip. I have no way of knowing that stuff very far in advance. My husband's schedule gets posted on Wednesdays, so that you know what you are doing that week and the next week, but you don't know what you are doing the week after next until the schedule is posted on Wednesday, and even then there are changes which sometimes happens at the last minute. So I might know where I am headed for the next day, I know where I plan to spend that week. Right now I know where we plan to spend the rest of this week and the next week and we would have to think about coming home probably a week from Sunday. And now it is Thursday, so I've seen the schedule, but at the time I talked to my mother I hadn't seen it yet, and there was a possibility that schedule posted on Wednesday would have meant another week in the same area or a week that is someplace closer to where we are now, and then there would have been no point in going home.

Anyway, I'm planning to be gone for about two weeks. That is the plan. Plans change. I have no way of knowing.

Before I left and I talked to my mother (and she was already not very happy with me), the plan was that I would only be gone this time for one week. See? Plans change. The plan at the time was to leave on Sunday and come back a week from either Sunday or Monday. But now he's working on that Monday, and we'll be doing tourist stuff on that Sunday, cause there just isn't any reason to come home for half a day and then turn around and head back the same way.

So I'm telling her the plans (at least, the plans as I know them at the time), and she's asking aren't I going to be home for the thing? And I'm like, I don't know, and anyway, the thing is in October. No, it is in September. Well, I don't know, maybe. Why? Cause we might need you to help out. Other people aren't going to be here.

Okay.

Well, I can't help that other people aren't going to be here. Last time anything like this was going on, I offered to help, though I couldn't really think of anything I could do. And there wasn't anything for me to do, and everyone was like thanks anyway. So I hadn't really thought about offering to help this time, cause I know from last time there really isn't anything for me to do except hang around and say, I'm here if you need me. But it was obvious that I was just in the way, and when I wasn't given something to do, I left.

So now my mother is upset with me cause I'm not promising to come home to hang around and say that I'm here if someone needs me. Someone does not really need me, just my mother wants someone to be here just in case, and other people have travel plans and aren't going to be here.

The other people who have travel plans are people with money who can travel any time that they want to. They picked now. I don't know why they picked now, but they did. I don't get to pick my travel time. Travel is offered, and it is rarely any place that I want to go, and I either go when it is offered or I don't. I can't turn it down and then expect it to be offered again at a more convenient time.

Not that later would be a convenient time for me. October is too late for some of the stuff that I want to do, and besides that I am usually a very busy person in October.

Oh, speaking of being busy in October, everyone seems to think that I'm co-hosting a children's Halloween party. I'm not, but that was announced. I just said that I was donating some stuff to the party, which I did, and I thought that was the end of it. I can't even say for sure that I'd be in town during the week of the children's party. At this point I'm not even that sure about helping out with the adult party, and I can't even say that I'm that excited about going to the adult party, which is something I look forward to all year. I'm just not having any good ideas this year, and it's all starting to seem boring on the one hand (if I don't do much) or a lot of work (if I end up doing a lot in spite of not having any good ideas or maybe having a good idea at the last minute). In fact, if there was really something interesting offered to me, I might go out of town instead of the party, which is something I would never do. But my husband was briefly talking about Orlando, but that wouldn't have been work travel and we would have had to pay for that all ourselves. But work travel is different (it doesn't cost near as much), and if something really interesting were offered right now I think that I'd do that instead.

Back to my mother's problem. I am supposed to give up my travel plans to hang around just in case someone needs me, even though I know from the last time that no one will need me and if someone did need something it would probably be something that I can't do and so they would still not need me, and the main reason for my giving up my travel plans is that someone else has made other travel plans and won't be here.

I don't think so.

So I'm sure that everyone thinks I'm a heartless bitch or something. But I don't see that I should give up something that I want to do just to be here for moral support. It is unlikely that I would actually be doing anything useful. And the person that might be needing the help didn't ask for help, just my mother is upset that I'm not going to be around to offer help. And the other person with travel plans apparently is not a heartless bitch for making travel plans and spending a lot of money to go out of town even when she knew that she had made the plans during this time that was not convenient, but apparently no one expects her to change her plans, maybe because she spent all this money.

I don't get it.

Now I feel guilty

Okay, so I had a week with mostly valid reasons for being lazy, followed by another week of mostly being lazy with no real excuse for it. Saturday I cut the grass and did the laundry and washed dishes. I even started painting the kitchen.

But the rest of the house was a mess. I debated about going on this trip. It wasn't anything really special, just that my husband was saying how if I went with him we would go to this restaurant or go do this and that, but without me he didn't much bother with such things. So I could have stayed home another week. We have bigger plans for next week's trip, but this week was no big deal.

But I really wanted to get out of the house, and sometimes there are last minute changes to the schedule. Sometimes he doesn't go where was planned, sometimes a job is cancelled and he works near home instead, or sometimes he just doesn't have any work. And if that had happened, I'd have been kicking myself that I gave up my last chance to get out of town for the summer.

But that isn't what happened.

The only thing that I cleaned Saturday was the kitchen, and then that got messy again with the painting. The rest of the house was still a mess, and then it was an even bigger mess once I actually started packing, as it had been a while and I tossed things around while looking for missing items I wanted to take with me.

But I was thinking that I would clean that up later, not the next week, but the week after, when I got home from the second trip.

Well now the second trip has been extended to two weeks. And of course, I have no idea what is planned after that. For all I know there will be a third week, or another trip to someplace even more interesting.

It is my fault entirely for being lazy last week. Not that I would have had a spotless house, but I could have cleaned the bathroom before I left, or gotten an earlier start on the painting and cleaned up afterward, or straightened the backroom a bit more, or a number of other things. But no, I didn't start the painting earlier, cause I didn't want to make yet a third trip to the store to return the paint, unless it was on a day that I was going to be right near there anyway, which didn't happen until Friday, so I didn't paint anything until Saturday.

Not that any of this guilt makes me reconsider next week's trip. I haven't been to that place in like four years. I'm really looking forward to it. Just not so looking forward to being away from home so much all at once.

I guess this will be yet another year when I don't fully decorate for Halloween because I'm too busy to get out the rest of the decorations.

Thinking about traveling

I would like to find a Woodrow Wilson dime, buy a train ticket for something leaving from the third level, and end up in some alternate dimension where I spend some of my time here but live most of the summer in Pennsylvania. Not actually in Pittsburgh, but near there, so that I can visit Kennywood and Idlewild whenever I feel like going.

I don't know how this would have come about, with me spending summers in Pennsylvania. I can see other paths that I might have taken and ended up with a certain career or married to someone else, but I can't quite picture the path that leads to me being a snow bird. Other than a winning lottery ticket, I see no way of it happening now either.

Maybe there was a winning lottery ticket in the alternate dimension, I don't know.

Anyway, I do tend to spend a lot of time wishing I could get away somewhere. And because of my husband's job, there are often little opportunities to go someplace, just usually not anyplace that great, and even then I usually end up not going because of something going on here. And then of course in the summer I have to stay home and water the plants anyway.

And so I have wasted a lot of time here when I could have been someplace else, though not anyplace as far away as Pennsylvania. And I would not have done anything grand, not visited Kennywood or anything like that anyway. Mostly I would have stayed in a motel room watching cable and maybe knitting. So far the only things I have missed out on were swimming pools (and sometimes a hot tub), having lunch at a famous restaurant, visiting the Cadillac ranch, and a few odd small town museums. And I've had to miss those things, because I wanted to do something else here, or I wanted to watch while the termites were taken care of, or make sure that repairs were done, or I had some work to do.

I always have some work to do, it just doesn't always get done.

So my husband is going someplace for the third time in two months, and I haven't gone, because of this stuff and because I have to water the plants. Only now I've about given up on most of the plants, they either aren't doing what they are supposed to do, or they have been doing what they are supposed to do and are about to die now. The main things not done or dying are the pepper plants, and the luffa, and the sweet potatoes. All of those things are in containers. The sweet potatoes and the luffa are in very large containers, but the peppers could be moved, and I'm wondering if I moved the pepper plants to the fence if my neighbor might water them for me.

There's even the possibility that the other plants might be okay on their own next week, cause it is supposed to rain some of the time, though not as much as I would like.

So I could go out of town next week, though it is not to anyplace special, it would just be nice to get out of the house.

And then the week after that I would really like to go away. There's one place I've never been, to take a silly tour, and another place that I used to go to often but now I haven't been there in four or five years. Or at least, I can't remember being there for a while.

Unfortunately, the time we would get to go there would be a holiday weekend, and we try to avoid such places on holiday weekends. But right now we are thinking that we will go anyway, even with the crowds and the extra expenses. Cause that isn't very far away, but it is not in my husband's usual area, and they probably won't assign him to work there again soon. And it is very near a beach, and I haven't been to a beach in a long time.

So that is it. Nothing really interesting, just the possibility of going away for a bit. And I am thinking that I will go.

Rain lilies

I found a rain lily in my backyard. I didn't know that they bloomed in July. But this one did, probably because it has been raining off and on since Monday of last week. I don't have that many rain lilies myself, but when they start blooming there are usually quite a few in the field, so I'll have to go and take a look.

Other wildflower developments are not as good. Even before it started raining, I noticed a few sprouts, and they turned out to be bluebonnets. Bluebonnets are not supposed to sprout in June. I had bought a few bluebonnet transplants in the spring, not enough to make a nice display, but I thought that they would make seeds and that next spring bluebonnets would magically appear in the places I wanted them to be. To be on the safe side, I collected some of the seeds, and I planted some of the seeds, thinking that they would not be able to sprout until much later. But there they are.

So after looking on the web, I see that this does happen sometimes. Unfortunately, the early sprouted seeds don't usually produce plants that survive the summer. From what I have read, this is usually not a big deal, as there are usually plenty of seeds left to sprout later at the appropriate time. But I don't think so. I think that most of the seeds I planted sprouted, and I don't know if the ones I left to nature where planted or eaten or blown away. Of the sprouts I saw, there are three tiny plants remaining. They will get terribly hot once this rain stops.

Aside from the wonderful free water, I have the usual complaints about the garden. The rain cools things down a bit, so I could work in the mornings, except that I can't work in the actual mud like I have now. And it is going to rain for a bit more, and by the time it stops raining and the ground dries out enough for me to do any work, it will probably be a hundred degrees again and too hot to get much of anything done. In the middle of summer, there are no tomatoes or peppers to speak of, you just try and keep the plants alive and hope that you get some in the fall. The squash still have not produced a damned thing. There are bean plants, but no beans on them yet. The soybeans just refuse to sprout, and the bugs tend to get more of the other bean plants than I do. The popcorn is doing well, but it will still be months before I can harvest any of it. The sweet potatoes look okay, but again that is something that gets left alone until fall. There are pumpkin sprouts, but I think that I waited too long on those. I have two luffa plants, but one is still very small, while the other is just now starting to really take over the thing it was meant to grow on.

So, that leaves me cucumbers and herbs. To be honest, I don't really cook with the herbs much, I just like the way that they smell and the way that they look, and I like that many of them are perennial plants.

I might be going to Oklahoma for two or three days next week. I don't know. There's nothing really good to do there, and we aren't going to be close enough to Tulsa to stay at my favorite place, it would just be an excuse to get out of the house. I won't be able to go, because of the plants, unless it is still raining, and I can't really believe that it will go on that long. And of course, there's always something more useful that I should be doing. Not that I'll actually get it done, just that I should be doing it.

I might not be writing for a bit

Not that I have been writing a lot. I might go out of town today. Or I might not. I can never decide.

It's only for a day or two anyway. I couldn't leave for longer than that without making arrangements for my plants to be watered and such.

Anyway, I've been planning to go for about a week, and now I'm starting to panic. I tend to panic now every time I leave the house, but it turns out fine.

Okay, I've decided that I will leave or not leave depending on whether or not we have time to go and get one of those bug foggers before we leave. It is about time to do that again, and I was sure that we had already bought something for that purpose, but I can't find them now, so we will have to buy some more. Anyway, if we can do that I will go, so we can get rid of these damned bugs and not have to be here until a full day after it is over, and it won't smell so bad when we get back. If we don't have time to go and do that, I'll just stay here and wash dishes or something. He can go without me.

The bug fogger idea also gives me an excuse for not having finished washing the dishes and such, as I would wash them again afterwards anyway.

Okay, I have about an hour left. We'll see what happens.

Maybe we will just call that a practice piece

Okay, so my husband is gone for the week, and I have dreams of getting the house cleaned while getting this knitting done. The piece on the machine is for a friend, and it needs to be done before the 19th.

If R and J are reading, they can either stop reading or keep their mouths shut.

Okay, so I imagined that on Monday I would at least knit 36 rows and get some cleaning done. And I got to work on the knitting right away, as soon as he left the house. And I would get some of it done, realize that I had made a mistake, and then have to unravel the piece back to row 9. I tried again, knitted a few more rows, decided that I didn't like the way it looked, and again unraveled the piece back to row 9.

At this point I decided that diagonals were the problem. I made a new design with rectangles and started again with that on Tuesday.

So that looked better, and by Tuesday night I was at about row 50. I hadn't do anything but knit and watch a little TV while I was eating or just resting. The knitting hurts my back, so my back is killing me. The knitting machine works better if I am standing up, but to see what I am doing I have to sit down. So it is stand up, sit down, bend over and look at something, stand up again, etc....

I make a mistake, and then I have to unravel a few rows.

I do nothing but knit, watch TV, and eat. I haven't had time to clean anything yet. I haven't done the laundry. I haven't even done the dishes. This is very bad. And my back is killing me.

Wednesday morning, I decide that the design is still a bit too complicated, and the glow in the dark part just isn't working. And I see a major flaw at row 9. I take the whole thing off of the machine and start over.

After spending most of Wednesday knitting, I am now at about row 70. I will have to add the glow in the dark stuff later. My friend might be getting an IOU for Christmas.

My back is killing me. I need a break. Today I will probably not knit anything before lunch. I really must at least wash the dishes. I plan to run some errands and watch a movie at the dollar place.

Okay, so I'm at row 70. By now I expected to have twice that done, plus have a lot of cleaning done. It is Thursday. I have to have a lot of cleaning done by Saturday or I cannot go out of town on Sunday, and I will be gone at least until Wednesday, so I can't work on that particular knitting project until probably next Thursday. That was why it was so important to do most of it this week, and I am only on row 70 of a project that has about 470 rows. Plus there is more work to do on it after I take it off of the machine.

I will be doing more knitting when I go out of town. I would usually take the knitting machine with me, but not this time. This piece is too complicated for me to move it. I will work on other projects. I will take almost finished pieces with me and add the fringe. And hopefully I will get the round knitting machines to work and make a new scarf (hopefully two) that I can put in the gift exchange that is on the 13th.

I am not getting enough sleep. And my back is killing me.

I had the strangest dream last night. My husband shot someone, and I was pretty sure that he was going to shoot me too. And then we were hiding somewhere. I had lied about the shooting, but then the evidence just didn't match up with what I had said, but by that time we were gone. I try to help him, but he just becomes this crazy homeless person. I go home and tell everyone that I lied because I was afraid of him. It takes me a while to get that I really was afraid of him. I have to get a divorce, and deal with all the hassles of that, and find out that there additional problems when trying to divorce a crazy homeless person who is wanted by the police.

So that was a pleasant way to start the morning. I sort of feel sick.

So, it is Thursday, and so far no one has called me about Grandma. I expected to hear something about her on Monday or Tuesday. I wonder if the plans were postponed, or if my mom just finally decided to leave me out of it. I should call her and find out what is going on, but I really don't want to. I think that I will have one more day of peace and not call her til tomorrow. I should at least tell her that I'm planning to go out of town on Sunday.

Okay, enough of this. Time to wash some dishes.

Trying to make plans

Well, my husband will be gone for a week, and I have stuff that I need to do, and I had better do it. So I should not waste time on the computer and such. I have knitting to do and cleaning to do, and there are deadlines. One Christmas get-together on the 13th, and another on the 19th, and probably stuff to do with my family on the 24th, and maybe someplace to be on the 22nd or the 23rd, and something else to do on the 12th if I have the time. I need to finish Miss Allergies scarf and get started on the pilot's gift and get something for G and finish up with the gifts for R and K. I need to put fringe on scarves that I have already made and probably try to squeeze in two more scarves before the 13th.

And most of that stuff needs to be done this week, because there are plans for next week. I am planning to go out of town Sunday, and I plan to be gone til that Wednesday, if not longer. And that won't leave a lot of time for knitting or cleaning or anything else if I have to get stuff done before the 13th, and other stuff done before the 19th.

And then I still don't know what gifts I will need before the 24th, so I will probably still have stuff to do even after the 19th.

Anyway, on Sunday I hope to be out of the house for a few days. As usual, most of the time will be spent in a motel room watching cable, but there are other plans. We will be going to a place that used to be special to us, but we have been there so many times that after a while going there is no big deal. We have done most of the stuff there is to do and seen what there is to see. If it costs money we probably don't bother with it anymore. I have a couple of friends there that I don't even visit, cause I just don't want to have to explain what has happened, and I really don't know how to have the catching up conversation without getting into it. So there is this place that used to be very special, and then was sort of special, and then was sort of old hat.

But it was still an excuse to get out of the house for a while.

And while I was debating on whether or not I should go this trip, my husband really started to get into the idea of making this a nice trip. While we have already been to all the places in the area that we would really care about, I don't think that we have been in the area much around Christmas, and there are several places that we have not been at night, and so that would really be nice to see.

Of course that is next week, and this week Grandma is coming home, though I don't know what day. I had planned to help out some, even if I don't take the "job", and now I am planing to go out of town on the 6th.

So I'm sure that my mother isn't going to be happy about that.

This is one of the reasons that I don't want the "job", though it certainly isn't the main reason. But if I had a regular job and I needed the day off or if I wanted to go away for a few days, there would be a way for me to do that. I might not aways get the day off that I wanted, and I might not be able to go out of town during a particular week or month, but there would be a way to get someone else to cover for me for short periods of time, and there would be someone else who could do the work on my day off, if there was even anything that needed to be done on my day off. My mother has so far not even been able to tell me what hours I would have this "job", or what would be my day off, or what would happen on a day that I get sick, or what would happen if there is ice on the road and I can't drive, or if someone else could take over for a few days if I just needed a break.

I am afraid that my mother is going to try to talk me out of going out of town Sunday. And then the "job" will probably not work out, and after a week or two they will have to make other arrangements, and I'll have missed out on the trip for nothing.

And of course if I am going to go on this trip I need to get the house cleaned before Sunday anyway. In addition to the knitting and the usual stuff that needs to be done.

I am tired just thinking about it. I would like to go back to bed now.

Black Friday and Grandma

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it. I have sort of been busy. You would think that I have been busy knitting, and I should be. More like, I'm getting ready to knit, but I'm not really doing that much actual knitting at the moment, though I am still working on the scarf for Miss Allergies. I am getting ready to knit something for the pilot, but I not quite certain about it, and I haven't gotten started on it yet because I'm afraid that I will make a mistake and have to start all over again. And I really cannot make a mistake and start over, cause I don't have enough supplies. I must be certain of what I am doing before I get started.

Anyway, I did finally clean that bathroom that I haven't done anything about since I hurt my knee. And then after my knee felt better, I put off the cleaning for another week or two, as after I have put off a chore for a while the chore gets worse and worse, and it is almost like I become afraid of it. Anyway, now I also have to tackle cleaning the frig, which is also difficult to do with an injured knee, and I have to wash a very large pile of dishes.

I have no excuse for the large pile of dishes. My ability to wash dishes doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not my knee hurts. But after I don't do them for a few days, they reach a certain mass, and then it is just really difficult to deal with. So I will have to do that soon, whether I feel up to it or not.

I have had a lot to eat. Not like you might think. In spite of spending all that money on groceries so that we wouldn't be tempted to go out, we still managed to go out to eat twice, and have ice cream twice in addition to that. But mostly we have stayed in, except that I went out once with my mom (mostly without problems), and he has been cooking a bit, and we went to Thanksgiving dinner at Uncles G's place.

At Thanksgiving dinner I expected to have all sorts of things to eat that I would really like, but most of it wasn't quite what I wanted. Now, there were plenty of pies. We joked that there were enough pies for each person to eat a whole pie, and I did eat pie and I did take home half of a pie. But the other stuff wasn't quite what I expected, except for the turkey and the ham. But this year mom only made pies, so the rest of the stuff just wasn't as good as mom's.

I had been worried about what to bring, and that my stuff wouldn't be as good as everyone else's. After seeing all the Google searches for Rudy's creamed corn that lead people here by mistake, I decided to try that one myself. I found a recipe for two pounds of frozen corn, a tablespoon of sugar, eight ounces of cream cheese, a quarter cup of cream, and half a stick of butter. So I made that, except that I didn't find two pounds of frozen corn and used three twelve ounces packages instead. And when I got the idea, that seemed like plenty, but it wasn't. But it turned out to be enough as one of the families had something come up and didn't make it to Uncle G's place.

I have a turkey. I like turkey, so I buy one when it is on sale, even though we rarely make it for other people. So the turkey is thawed now, and I should cook it today or tomorrow.

So after Thanksgiving comes...Black Friday.

Now, I tend to go shopping on Black Friday, but as I am usually more organized than this, I usually shop mainly for myself on that day. Except that I usually also get a few more things, like I usually go get a few more things at Bath and Body Works. I didn't go there this year, cause I just didn't have the money, which is sad because they had the most excellent deal "while supplies last" and if you spent forty dollars you could buy this other hundred dollar thing for fifteen. And I really kept trying to reason out how I could do that, but I really couldn't, and I decided to be on the safe side that I should avoid the area.

This year the shopping was entirely for me. I bought two pair of jeans that I can wear now, and one to grow on. Or rather, one to shrink into, just in case. And I bought a mixer and a chopper.

Before you tell me how selfish I am for shopping for myself instead of Christmas presents, well, I can't do Christmas shopping for other people or do anything else for other people if I am naked. I really did need those jeans, and I have put off buying them till now, cause I was hoping that they would be about half price at Walmart like last year. And they were. And I got a free t-shirt with each one. I think having the bundle with the free t-shirt cut down on the confusion on which jeans were the sale price. Last year I finally figured out that the ones on sale had the bar code in a different place. This year you just had to find the ones with the t-shirt attached. This year's jeans were nine dollars, while last years were eight dollars, but I still think that it worked out better. I haven't tried on the t-shirts yet, so I'm guessing that they won't look good, but I'm pretty happy about the jeans. As happy as I'm going to be the way I look now.

And the mixer, well, I don't think that I have one, and I need one, especially if I might be expected to exchange baked goods with someone, or bake something for a party. So now I have a mixer for such an occasion.

Okay, for Christmas with my friends I need something for G (not Uncle G, and not S, different G), I have already wrapped something for J, I need to make final touches on stuff for R and K, and I am working on stuff for Miss Allergies and the pilot.

Christmas with my family still has not been discussed, though I can now cross my fingers and hope for a baked goods exchange or some really cheap gift exchange. That was half of what we did last year, and I actually thought that part was more fun. Less stress and all of that.

But now there is Christmas with my extended family, which I did not expect, and that is going to be in about two weeks. I am thinking about knitting a scarf for that, if I have the time. I haven't made scarfs for any of them, so they might actually want one. And it is one of those things where you "steal" gifts from other people, so hopefully someone who actually wants the gift actually ends up with it. I'm just not sure if I'll have enough time, but I'll try using the other knitting machine now that I have seen the YouTube video on how to fix dropped stitches.

So that should be fun.

My husband is going out of town for a week, so that should leave me plenty of time to knit. I just have to make myself do it, and all the other stuff that I will have to do that week. The next week he is going out of town for a few days, and he wants me to go with him. And, the way the schedule is now, he isn't supposed to work that weekend, so I could go with him and not miss anything that I have planned. However, if the schedule changes while we are out of town, I'm screwed. So I will have to give it some more thought. And of course, it will depend on how much knitting I get done, and how much cleaning I get done, etc....

And then, there is Grandma.

Now, those of you who have really been paying attention know that my mother has been trying to get me to help her take care of Grandma for the last four or five years. This has lead to serious problems between us, almost to the point where I have thought that the next time she mentions this I will totally cut mom out of my life. My mother claims that I haven't made myself clear on the subject, that I have said that I would rather not, that I haven't ever said absolutely not and do not mention this again.

So now I have said that, and that should be the end of it, right?

Anyway, Grandma had to go to the hospital for something, and when she got out they put her in a nursing home. Not the nice assisted living place that she used to be in, but a nursing home. So I thought that was the end of that.

But everyone seems to think that she is better now, except that the doctors do not think that she is well enough to live by herself, and if she is going home she will need someone with her 24/7.

Grandma wants to go home and does not think that she needs anyone 24/7. Her plan is that we take her home, and that she has someone there for the first few days, and then we just lie to the doctors and do whatever we want to do, not what they say.

So my mom calls, and she says right up front that she knows I don't want to do it, she's just mentioning it cause one of my uncles said I should have first refusal. So I think that she isn't really asking me to do this again, just that she's telling me what they are going to do, and that they are going to hire someone to help Grandma, just that the someone isn't going to be me.

And then as she goes on and on about it, I realize that she still is asking me, she just doesn't think that it counts because she's asking on behalf of one of the uncles instead of herself.

The odd thing is that I am actually considering it, if I can get a straight answer from someone, maybe one of my uncles.

Anyway, I would help on those first few days for free, cause I figure that we are all going to help out a bit for those first few days. And depending on how that goes, I would think about it. I do need the money, and at this point they are willing to pay me as much as they would have to pay an agency, which is a minimum of fifteen an hour for a minimum four hours.

I just can't quite understand what I would be doing for those four hours, would it be more than four hours, what time would those four hours be, etc...?

Sometimes my mother talks like I would just be running errands. But I don't really think that is it, because I have offered to run errands before (even for free) and I rarely get called to do that. And we would still have to talk about the important stuff, like what if I have an accident while I have this "job", and what if I get sick, and what if I just need a day off, etc.... When you get a real job, someone knows the answers to this stuff. My mother just seems to think I'm making stuff up.

So I am thinking that I will help out for a few days and see what happens.

I still don't have a flu shot. Grandma won't like that. Maybe mom will pay to get me one. Maybe this will get us all on the list for the h1n1 shot. That would be good.

I still don't think that I want to do it, but I'm thinking that if I did it for a few days and it didn't work out that would finally be the end off it.

Anyway, I have knitting to do.

Might be gone for a few days

I say might be gone because I sometimes back out at the last minute. I have become one of those people who frets about things like "Did I remember to turn off the stove?" to the point where sometimes I don't enjoy the beginning of the trip that much. And this isn't that great of a trip to begin with. And it is only till Thursday, so by the time I stop worry about things like "Did I remember to turn off the heater?" I will be home anyway.

I tend to feel even worse when I don't clean the house first. I had plans of straightening the back room Friday and Saturday. I don't remember what happened Friday, but Saturday I didn't do much because I didn't want to get tired before the Halloween party. Sunday I wasn't doing very well with the lack of sleep and such. Monday I was just lazy. I washed the dishes and did some laundry, but the rest of it is still a mess. Having not straightened the backroom I didn't straighten the living room either, having no space in the back room to move things to while I cleaned anything else.

And any time I have to wear a costume there is more than the usual mess, after I have tossed things about looking for something. So the other rooms are a mess too. There isn't a room left that is even remotely in order.

So this bothers me even more. I tend to think that when the house looks the worst is when there will be some emergency that requires someone to let themselves into my house. I will probably worry the whole three days that something will happen to the hot water heater, that the house will be robbed, etc.... Then someone from the office will have to go into the house, see what a mess everything is, and start looking for a reason to have us evicted.

There are fewer and fewer business trips, and I manage to actually go on very few of them now.

But, after the confusion of where was when and such, I did plan to go to middle of nowhere west of here, and now another day has been added to a slightly larger town a bit down the road from that, and as of right now I am still planning to go.

I have already turned off the heater, so at least I won't have that to worry about.

I am not sure what if any Internet access I will have, so I might be out of communication range for a while.

Assuming I still manage to put my bags in the car and actually leave the house.

Later

Yesterday

It looks like R and/or J stopped by again. Really guys, if you're going to read, stop and say hello or something.

Looks like I also have a new reader in Germany. That one makes no sense.

Yesterday my husband went out of town to middle of nowhere Texas. Only I had some confusion over when was where and which town had what name and so forth. So middle of nowhere that is west of here is next week, not yesterday like I thought. So I might end up going there anyway, I'll have to give that some thought.

So, my husband went someplace just east of here, near one of his siblings, so he would have gone to visit sibling if he had the time. Only it was just the one day schedule, so he probably wouldn't have any time. It probably wouldn't even be enough time to squeeze in lunch together.

And then, after he got and paid for a motel room, he went to work, only to find out there was no work.

This gets a little bit weird.

We used to work for other companies and sometimes the schedule would get screwed up. It rarely got screwed up to the point where we got the day off, and by that time half of the day was gone anyway. But sometimes at other companies, the company doesn't have anything to do with finding the location where my husband's job is actually done. At this company, someone in the company calls a bunch of different groups of people until they find a group that wants to hire them. And then it is up to that group of people to find a place for my husband and his coworkers to work that day. And then someone else in the company calls potential customers and schedules when they come in.

Weird problems sometimes happen. For one thing, the person that the company pays to find the groups who want to hire the company, he gets paid just for finding a group that the company will work for that day. And the people who schedule appointments get paid for just doing that. Neither of them actually care if the company makes money. It doesn't amount to anything on their paychecks. The first guy probably doesn't even care if there are any customers.

On the other hand, my husband and the sales people he works with only get paid a small amount (usually less than minimum wage) for showing up and doing the work, and the rest of their pay is commission. So, if there aren't any customers, or, if the customers don't buy very much, they really don't get paid enough to work that day. Only, they don't have the option of not working that day, if someone has found a place to work, even if it is obvious that no one is going to make any money (other than the guy who made the arrangements in the first place).

So one of these guys (one that my husband had never heard of before) arranged to have some people work east of here last week. Only, after the schedule was made, somehow my husband's boss and the salespeople's boss didn't get the message, and no one from the company was sent to that location. So the customers all showed up at the location, but no one from the company was there, and they all went home mad.

That was odd.

Then, a makeup day was scheduled for Monday, and my husband and some salespeople were sent to the location. Only, the people at the location didn't think that they were doing any business that day. They thought that they were just supposed to meet with someone from the company to discuss when they might reschedule, if they even want to reschedule. So there were some people at the location, just sort of waiting for someone to come and apologize, not actual customers and the usual volunteers and such that are usually at a location.

So last week there were customers and volunteers, but no one from the company to do any work. And yesterday there were three people from the company to do some work, but no customers and no volunteers.

So my husband didn't do any work yesterday. I'm not sure if he'll get paid anything. He's supposed to get some minimum amount even if there are no customers, but I'm not sure what happens when you're actually turned away from the location.

And he'd already paid for the motel room and couldn't get that money back. So he called to ask if he should just come home.

Well, probably not. The room is already paid for, and he's a little closer to where he would work Tuesday, but not by much.

He was, however, real close to the sibling, and now they could have lunch or dinner or whatever.

So I guess that is what happened, but I don't know as I missed his call this morning.

But that was weird. With other companies, we used to have this sort of problem a lot, cause they didn't even call to confirm that we were allowed to use the location for work that day. But I hadn't heard of anything this bad happening with this company. Work gets cancelled or added at the last minute, but I don't remember ever being told that there was a job on a day when there were no customers scheduled at all.

You would think that someone would notice that before.

Well, I said that I wasn't going to do any knitting yesterday, but I did some anyway. Not much, just a little. A lot of the stuff that I was going to do yesterday I couldn't do. I found out that I didn't have the supplies that I thought I had, so I will see about getting some at Walmart today. I didn't want to make a special trip to get anything yesterday. Yesterday was the only day that I could stay home all day, so that is what I did, I stayed home. Today there will be going to the library and going to get pills and possibly going to Walmart and having lunch at Boston Market. Yesterday, I looked for a certain file on the computer, which when I found it I couldn't open it cause Word Perfect had been deleted from the computer.

I wonder who would do that?

After that I just sort of went back to doing nothing. I got out stuff for the weird food, but then it is really to early to do anything but practice, which I think would be better to do on Thursday or even Friday. If I do it now, and it goes well, I'll just have to clean everything and put it away til Friday or Saturday. If I wait til Thursday, I can clean it but just leave everything out where I can use it again the next day. And having just practiced the day before would probably be better anyway. If the practice one doesn't go well, it doesn't matter when it gets done, cause I won't be doing it again. So either way I shouldn't do anything else til at least Thursday.

I don't know. Yesterday was just sort of a rainy depressing day. I should have done something more useful with it, like cleaning the bathtub.

The day did finally end with an episode of Heroes and some amusing emails.

I guess I will go put on my face and charge my phone and such so I can leave.

And it still doesn't seem like October even now

Here it is, the last week of the month. Halloween is Saturday, and I'm just not feeling it.

Maybe I'm turning into my mother.

I have done nothing. I haven't made the jewelry to go with my costume. I haven't fixed the witch hat that I should take just in case I can't go through with the whole acting like a certain character on a cable tv show. I haven't made any props. I haven't checked into the planned weird food or made any interesting containers for that.

Less than a week left to do that stuff, and I haven't done any of it.

Yesterday, I did dye my hair. So now I sort of itch. You are supposed to do this allergy test before you dye your hair, but I never bother with it. And it isn't like I break out or anything, it's just the smell tends to bother me for a few days. But, since the color only last so many shampoos, I don't want to waste one just yet. Besides, having a shampoo less than twenty-four hours later is probably not recommended.

Yesterday, I also went to Judgement house. The hell scene is probably the closest I will get to a haunted house this year. There was a different Satan this year. I'm not saying that he is a bad actor, just that he isn't as into it. He tends to stand up straight and smile at people. Not that the real Satan doesn't do that. But, I think I liked the other guy better.

I wonder about the audition process. It must be really hard to decide who gets to be Satan and who gets to be Jesus.

A couple of the angels looked like they were ready for a nap, but the rest of them did pretty good.

I must remember for next time that no matter how I early I go, thinking that I will get in sooner, I will probably still have an hour to wait. There was no need to eat before buying a ticket. I can get my ticket, find out how long it will be, and probably have time to go to Sonic. In fact, I would probably have time to get in my car and go to another restaurant or even to go home for a bit. And if I don't have time to go do any of that, great, I can go eat afterwards.

Looks like I won't be going out of town tomorrow. It wasn't anyplace special, just middle of nowhere Texas in between Abilene and Midland. There were no plans, other than just getting out of the house for a bit and watching cable and doing some knitting. Maybe there would be leaves to look at on the way. We don't usually drive that direction, maybe there would be something to look at on the way, but probably we wouldn't have much time for that anyway. But I was thinking of going, but Waco has been added to the schedule, and have plans the rest of the week and cannot go to Waco.

Not that I really was dying to go to Waco either, though we might have gone to the zoo in the morning if we got there in time. And depending on where the motel was in relation to a certain haunted house, I might have thought about trying to go. But I really shouldn't go anywhere Tuesday, and I pretty much have plans for the rest of the week too. So I guess that I'm not going now.

My sister is going to Thrillvania. I have been once, though I didn't feel like I had time to see everything. And of course they have since added a few things that I haven't seen at all. I want to go. My sister isn't interested, but her friends are going to drag her out of the house to do something, and right now that something is a planned trip to Terrell.

My friends will not be dragging me anywhere. The week before the party, we are all too busy with party stuff. And a couple of them aren't well anyway. At least it isn't that damned flu. Or at least, not yet. I still didn't get a seasonal flu shot, and there isn't enough of the other shot to go around yet.

There is good news on the knitting. I have found one of my missing latch hook tools, and, I have bought some replacement "needles" on eBay, and they are already here. Now if I could just get some multi-pronged transfer tools and some glow in the dark yarn, I'd be all set. For now I am just happy that I can get back to work on the current project with a proper size latch hook tool.

Seems like I had something else to say, but I can't remember what it was. Anyway, I had better go and look for some of my stuff today, or I can't go and do what I had planned for the week even if I do stay home. And I had better make that jewelry and some props. And I should work on that hat, etc....

I am not in Shreveport

Yesterday, I was getting ready to go to Shreveport for two days. Not that there is anything special in Shreveport that I would have money for, but I thought that it would be nice to get out of the house, maybe take a swim if the weather was nice, watch cable, get some knitting done, etc....

And then his boss called and changed his schedule all around so that he worked five days in Oklahoma instead of two days in Shreveport.

And while it is usually better to work a whole week instead of just a couple of days, this is another one of those times when he doesn't have enough money to pay for the trip. But, again, he didn't say that, he just agreed to the schedule change.

Usually, when going somewhere this far away, he would leave the day before and come home the day after. So, that would be six days in a motel room. I didn't go with him because a.) I didn't want to be gone that long, b.) I have plans on Saturday, and c.) he doesn't have enough money to be away for six days. In fact, with only about two hundred dollars, I don't think that he has enough money to go on this trip at all, but I didn't argue with him this time. If he wants to go and get stranded in Oklahoma, that's his business.

Anyway, I did not go with him, so he won't have to have a motel room Saturday night. And he left early this morning instead of yesterday, so that's another night's room that he didn't need (though it will make for a very long day today and another long day on Saturday). We sent him off with a lot of food, so if he can keep it from spoiling he shouldn't spend much money on that. So, he should have just enough to get by, if he doesn't have to buy gas.

Of course, he is driving to Oklahoma, so of course he will need to buy gas.

Whatever.

Maybe a check will clear by Thursday, and maybe it won't.

Anyway, I'm staying here and maybe cleaning this place up a bit, or maybe doing another video, or maybe doing some knitting. It isn't even lunch time yet, so I should still have time to get something done today, not to mention the rest of the week.

On a more positive note, I have found someplace to watch The Big Bang Theory.

Also, yesterday I sold two boxes of books, which is good because a.) I needed to get rid of two boxes of books, and b.) I got fourteen dollars to spend on yarn. I didn't find the speciality yarn I was looking for, so a settled for buying some on sale yarn for a different project. So that is one of my goals for the week, to get started on that project, right after I clear enough space to set up for that. It was disappointing that I didn't find my speciality yarn, but since I hadn't seen it in any of the ads, I knew it was a long shot before I went out.

Okay, shopping trip taken care of, so I shouldn't need to go out again til my plans for Saturday, except that I have to go to the library to tell them they've made a mistake and didn't check in last weeks videos. That happens a lot now that they've switched to the teenage volunteers. And I have a lot of food, so I shouldn't have to do much in the way of cooking for a few days.

I have four days to alternate cleaning and watching TV and doing artistic things. While it isn't sitting by the pool or watching cable, it isn't that bad.

I am getting confused

The days go by, and I can't keep them all straight. I forget what day of the week it is. I forget the date. I see the day and the date when I am blogging, but when I am away from the computer I can't remember what it was. I am vaguely aware of what month it is, but again it doesn't seem to mean much.

It is September. I should be in a mild panic that Halloween is less than two months away, and Christmas is less than two month after that, but most of the time I am not. Unfortunately, this is not due to me being all prepared. I am not prepared for anything, I just can't seem to focus on what I should be doing to get ready for things.

So today is Friday the 11th of September. Next Thursday will be the 17th. The 17th of September is the end of the video contest, so if I am going to do anymore videos they need to get done before then, and I haven't even started on them. And I haven't done anything about the Halloween decorations, or the Christmas presents. Well, I've maybe done one thing about one of the Christmas presents, but that is all. I have bought something that might work for a Halloween costume, but I haven't done any work on it. There's a box somewhere that has my Halloween shirts in it, and I should be wearing them by now, but I haven't gotten the box out yet.

There was something that I wanted to do on the 12th, but it has been cancelled, or maybe postponed until the 26th. There is something else I wanted to do on the 19th, but I might not go. There is a possible trip to Oklahoma that would include the 19th, and there is a possible trip to Louisiana that would include the 26th. I've had nothing to do for months, and now I can't do everything. I want to go, and I want to stay.

My husband has to go to one of those meetings on Sunday. The meetings are hard enough, with someone who doesn't do the job anymore (or someone who has never done the job at all) coming to tell you that you aren't doing what you are supposed to do, and that you need to do better, etc.... On their part, those people aren't doing anything better for anyone. The company would supposedly go out of business if they gave anyone a raise or increased the expense money, etc.... So while the employees already wish that they had somewhere else to go so that they could quit (and a few quit even when they don't have anyplace else to go), they have to go to this meeting that they will probably not get paid for to hear how the company does not really value them or the work that they do, and if they don't do better soon they will be replaced.

My husband has enough trouble keeping his mouth shut during these meetings, but yesterday he was scolded for something that happened weeks ago and he doesn't remember. He doesn't even know that they are talking about, so he can't tell his side of the story. So far as he remembers, on the days they actually had him on the schedule, he did his job. He can't address a customer's complaint if no customers complained to him and/or he doesn't remember the customer. Tell somebody that day or the day after that there's been a complaint. A week later, no one remembers anything.

So my husband and all his co-workers in the area have to go to a meeting to hear that none of their concerns are going to be addressed (other than to tell everyone that they aren't getting raises or more expense money or whatever they had asked for), but if they don't do better for the company they are going to be replaced. This so soon after my husband has been told two more strikes and you're out, is not a good plan.

Today is Friday, and that should probably mean something, only I can't remember what it is.

We have no money again, but I spent what we did have on food. So I don't have to worry on that account, but I have to worry about everything else. It rather sucks having no money.

Today is Friday the 11th of September, right?

Today is Friday, and that means that all three libraries in town are closed because of the recession, instead of just one of them being closed before the recession. So I won't be going to the library here, and I don't really have any reason to go anywhere else. And I can't go shopping, even just for food, cause I'm out of money again.

Today is Friday.

Today is Friday, and...and...and what?

We actually went to the movie yesterday

Yes, we spent about fourteen of the hundred dollars we have left going to a movie and eating dinner. What were we thinking?

Let me back up a bit.

About a week ago, my husband asks me if I want to go out of town with him for a few days. He says he is scheduled to work in Amarillo. (Sorry to have been unclear about that earlier, but I don't like blogging about where we are going. I like blogging about where we have been once we get back, but I know that there are weirdos out there, so it doesn't seem like a good idea to tell the whole world where and when I will be. Maybe that will land me right in the weirdo's backyard, and he will make plans to meet me. See?) Anyway, I haven't been to Amarillo in a long time, and I don't think that I have been there as a destination since I was very young. We have been there a couple of times on our way to New Mexico, Arizona, or California and have stopped there to eat lunch or something, but I don't think that we have ever stayed the night there. So that would have been interesting, and I was sorry that we didn't have time or money to go there a few extra days to look at stuff.

But as it turns out he was not scheduled to work in Amarillo, he was scheduled to work in Abilene. He claims that is what he told me, but I know that isn't what he said. We have this joke about Abilene, and if he had said Abilene I would have immediately started with the jokes. I am quite sure that he did not say Abilene.

Anyway, Abilene is not as far away, and probably not as interesting either. On the other hand, it would not be this long drive, and there weren't as many things to do, so maybe there would have been less temptation to spend money. And as it turns out Abilene has some cheap things to do and even a free museum, so going to Abilene might turn out to be a good thing.

So I was starting to look forward to going to Abilene, until I realized that we probably wouldn't have enough money left to make the trip. We thought that we would have two hundred dollars, and it turns out that we had about half of that, which probably wouldn't be enough for gas and the minimum two nights at a motel. So he called to say that he couldn't work out of town unless they could advance him some money, which he already knew that they wouldn't. His boss said that the Abilene schedule looked light, and could he work it if it was cut back to just one day? It is hardly worth the effort of all that driving and all that work for just one day, but yes, he could work just one day. We waited for them to call back and say either which one day it was, or that they were leaving it two days and got someone else to do it.

While all of this is going on, he needs new equipment and yet another computer doesn't work. They will have to send him another one and more equipment.

So now the entire idea of going out of town has been scrapped, and they have found him something to do in Dallas. This particular job probably became available because there is little money to be made and no one else wants the job. But fine, he'll take it, as long as he doesn't need going out of town expense money and he doesn't have to work on Saturday, he'll do it.

He kind of forgets that he has stuff to do on Friday too, and now he has to work Friday.

But, the schedule is done. He works Tuesday through Friday in Dallas. End of story. If they can get him a working computer and some other equipment today.

So, yesterday morning, he asks if I want to go see Julie & Julia.

Now, at this point I should yell at him. What are you thinking? But then I see what he is thinking. He's thinking that we now have a hundred dollars that we took out of the bank, and we don't have to spend it on going out of town Wednesday and Thursday. If we really want to, we can spend seven dollars going to see a movie.

Fine. I remind him that he should cut the grass first, which he does. So I'm looking to see where we might watch this movie he wants to see. And the movie isn't at our cheap theater, and to get the next cheapest price we have to go to a ten thirty showing, which we aren't going to be ready for. So I suggest waiting til Monday, but then I find a place not far away that has a one o'clock show that costs just under five dollars. So we do that.

The movie was okay. Not just wonderful, but okay. My husband has read the book and looked at the blog. The movie is half about Julia Child fifty years ago, and half about the blogger who made all five hundred and something recipes in 2002. So the movie isn't really based on the book Julie& Julia, but half based on that and half based on Julia Child's own book. My husband didn't like that, while I haven't read either book and was maybe more interested in the Julia Child parts.

Maybe I should blog my way through a cookbook. But it should probably be a diet cookbook. Or the way things are now, a budget cookbook.

Anyway, so after the movie, when he usually waits for me outside on a bench, we weren't at our regular theater and there was no bench. And I couldn't find him. And I guess that he was waiting out in the car, except that I couldn't remember where we had parked, and unlike our cheap theater, this place had a parking lot full of cars. So I am just wandering around this big parking lot, looking for my husband. And I don't find him, and I go back inside. It's hot. I go back out and find him.

I am too hot and tired to get into it. And so much for my resolve to not spend money on anything, especially dumb stuff like sodas. It is hot, and I don't even have any water in the car. And we need to buy gas anyway, so we decide to get sodas when we get gas. Only we nearly hit someone at the first place trying to get to the only empty pump. We go to a second place and circle around, but leave there too. Why the long lines? Is it some holiday I've forgotten about?

The third place is totally empty, and I am suspicious. Maybe the pumps don't work? But they do, and we get some gas. I go in to pay and to get sodas. The sodas are almost one fifty. Maybe I don't want sodas for that much. Maybe that is why the other two places were crowded, cause they had cheap sodas or Slurpee's. The sodas are going to cost three dollars. For four dollars we could go to Burger King and get dinner off of the dollar menu.

We don't find a Burger King, but we do see a McDonald's. We eat there instead.

Okay, no more spending money til Saturday.

Except for lotto tickets. I will lose my mind if I don't buy the damned lotto tickets.

I spend the rest of the day watching the X-files, and cooking beans in the crockpot while doing a dance around the dirty laundry on the kitchen floor. The laundry has piled up, and we ran out of soap. I've gone to the dollar store and now have soap, but I haven't quite decided it is time to try the soap yet. I'll probably do that today, or maybe tomorrow.

So that was all that we did this weekend, except that I have tried to get a little work done in the garden in the morning before it gets too hot. It is time to start on the wildflower bed, cause I will need that to be finished next month, even if it is too hot to do a good job of it. And then I will finish the pathway between the wildflower bed and the bulb bed. Unfortunately, the fire ants have decided to work in the same area. I will have to find out where they are coming from and kill them.

So I am off to dig in the dirt.

This really is going to be a long week.

Stuff must all be done by Tuesday

Today we will have to go and see about paying the car insurance, and then we will have to withdraw whatever is left in the account and pay cash for everything. My husband has canceled the overdraw protection on the account. I am thinking that is a mistake, but he did it anyway.

This could get ugly.

So he will take cash with him on this trip (if there is even enough money left for going on the trip), and I am still not sure if I am going with him. The originally planned three night stay is now only a two night stay, cause there just isn't enough money left to drive up there the day before. It is unpleasant to have to make a long drive before having to put in a full day of work, but he has done it before. The reasons for me going with him are now down to possibly having a swim (if we can get a motel with a pool), going to a free museum, and looking at a historical building Thursday morning before lunch, which he might not feel up to anyway after all the work and the driving on Wednesday. The motel without the pool is ten dollars less, so we would probably not bother with the pool anyway.

Maybe I will just stay here. I don't know.

I have now had a look at the scheduled week after next, and it involves two days in Oklahoma, but not two consecutive days. This usually means that we would just stay in the motel for the extra day and find something fun to do. But with the way things are now, we might just have to drive all the way home and then drive back the next day, cause we might not have the extra money for the extra motel stay.

In fact, if the business thing does not work out, I'm not sure we will have any money at all. I know that we don't have anymore paychecks coming in before then, and I'm not sure that any expense money would be reimbursed by then either.

And of course one of the days he is supposed to work in Oklahoma is the day before the second thing with the new business. So that is bad anyway.

For my part, I have to clean the living room area.

Of course, I am always having to clean something and making a big deal about it, but this is different. It isn't so much that I have to make anything clean, and it certainly isn't about making anything look neat and orderly. It is about just needing some temporary floor space. When my husband goes to pick up the rented equipment, he will need to put all of that stuff in the minivan, which means that all the stuff that he normally carries around in the minivan will have to go someplace else. So I'm trying to make room for it in the living room, which means not only doing the normal cleaning and such (which needed to be done anyway), but now I'm also pushing stuff against the wall and stacking things on top of each other.

I made a start on that yesterday, so I hope to get finished with that today. If I don't finish with it by Tuesday, I will have to stay home from the trip whether or not I want to go.

The good news about the cleaning is that I did find the weedblock fabric that I had misplaced earlier. And it wasn't even under a pile of stuff, it was just leaning against the wall in a dark corner where I didn't see it. So now I can go out and finish that little piece of the garden path and see how it looks before I buy anymore gravel.

Not that I will have any money for buying more gravel anytime soon, but it would still be nice to see how it looks.

So that is what I am doing today. Anyway, I should feel a little bit better after we go and pay the car insurance. I have gotten behind on bills before, but never on the car insurance, and the idea of being without it really makes me nervous.

My husband has aphasia or something

And so does my mother, but that is another story.

But my husband says one word when he means another. It was especially bad about three years ago, so if is getting bad again, can I infer...

Never mind.

Anyway, he is saying the wrong words. So yesterday we did some stuff. First, we went to the "business meeting" with his co-worker. He had to meet the guy somewhere, like a restaurant, so that they could talk about some stuff and play with the computer for a bit. So a couple of days ago they were on the phone trying to figure out where they should meet. And I suggested Arby's, cause it was going to be on a Wednesday, and on Wednesdays you can get something free at Arby's if you buy something else. But they didn't want to try to find an Arby's that was a good place for both of them. They wanted to meet someplace in Irving, and they decided to meet where they met last time, when I didn't go with them.

So my husband hung up the phone and said that we were going to meet the guy in Irving at one at a Burger King.

Since I had to go to Irving some time this week anyway, I said that I would go too and that we would eat the cheap lunch at Burger King (which would not be quite as cheap as eating at Arby's where we would have gotten a free sandwich for buying a soda, but close enough). If we both got a hamburger and a small soda off of the dollar menu, that would cost four dollars and some change. I am really against using a place of business if you aren't a customer, so we have to buy something, and four dollars and change isn't too bad. So I made sure to put aside four dollars and some change. We spent almost four dollars Tuesday, but I knew I still had four dollars and some change left.

So yesterday head off to meet this guy, and I forgot and left my cell phone on the charger. And of course, my husband still hasn't activated his. I'm not even sure where his is. Anyway, we're in Irving, and we drive past a Burger King, and I guess that wasn't it. But there are a lot of Burger Kings in Irving. And then we drove some more, and we drove past a Whataburger. And then my husband says that he thinks he has past the place, and we turn around and drive back to the Whataburger.

And I'm like, this is a Whataburger, not a Burger King.

And he is like, whatever.

Is this where you are supposed to meet, cause you said Burger King, not Whataburger.

I think this is it. This is where we met last time.

You told me Burger King, so I put away just enough to get us lunch at Burger King. I don't think that I have enough to eat here.

My husband drives around the parking lot and doesn't see the other guy's car, so he drives away.

I totally don't get what he's doing now.

He says he wants to go to Jack in the Box and I can buy us something off the dollar menu there.

No.

What do you mean?

I mean no. Where are only spending a little money on lunch because you have to meet with this other guy there. We aren't going anywhere else for lunch. If you think that we are supposed to meet the guy at Whataburger, then go back to Whataburger. We just might not have enough money to get what you want.

Then he asks for my cell phone, and I remember that I put it back on the charger in case we had to call anyone, and I forgot and left it on the charger.

So he stops at a gas station to use the phone. I think that is a waste of fifty cents, because we should probably just go back and wait at the Whataburger. We were a bit early. But the guy answers and says that he is at the Whataburger, we just missed seeing his car.

So we drive back to the Whataburger. My husband counts out some change that he had in the car, cause he wanted some fries with lunch and he didn't want what I was going to spend the four dollars and change on at the Burger King anyway.

So he and the other guy play with the computer while I count out all the change he gave me and all the change I have. So we have almost ten dollars in cash, and that is enough to buy two of the smallest combo meals. So we had fries with lunch, which cost eight dollars, and we had two dollars left over to get a couple things we needed from the 99 cent store.

I have a bit of money on the card too, but I first have to buy pills with that. I'm not touching the card until after I have my pills. If the change hadn't been enough, he would just have to do without something.

So we all ate lunch, and my husband and the other guy play with the computer. And then the other guy leaves with our new laptop so that he can practice stuff. And I'm really worried about it, enough that I felt physically sick for a bit. This guy is going to have our new six hundred and something dollar computer, and he might drop it or forget and leave it in a motel room or I don't know what. And then not only would we not have our new computer, but this whole business thing would be for nothing.

The business thing starts a week from Saturday, so the guy will have the laptop for at least a week and a half.

Okay, so then we drive some other places in Irving, and I pick up my pills, and we get shampoo and a bag of potatoes from the 99 cent store. And then we go to the mall to see about fixing my glasses.

About a week ago I lost a nose-piece. I've just been wearing the glasses with a missing nose-piece, cause I didn't know if I would have enough money left to get them fixed. So I go to the place in the mall and ask if they do repairs. And someone asks me if I bought the glasses there, and I say no. And I tell her that I really have no money, so I might have to come back later anyway, but could she please tell me how much it would cost to fix. And I show her the problem, and she goes to ask someone else if they are still allowed to replace nose-pieces on glasses that were purchased somewhere else. And they talk for a bit, and they decide that they can fix it if I will buy some kit for seven fifty. And I don't have much money left, but I think that I can handle seven dollars and fifty cents. So I get out my card, thinking that I'm buying some little repair kit that has nose pieces and screws and such.

I sit down, and the girl replaces both nose-pieces, which is good because they were starting to look a bit green anyway. I was really impressed that new nose-pieces made the glasses look that much better. So then I give her my debit card, and she sells me a lens cleaning kit, not a little repair kit like I imagined. And both girls remind me that I can get free refills on the lens cleaner any time I bring in the bottle.

So that was great. I guess the actual repair was free as long as I was a customer, and buying the lens cleaner made me a customer.

Okay, so now we have everything on my list, and we can go home. We've had lunch (and given our new six hundred and something dollar laptop to someone else for the next week and a half), I have my pills, we have shampoo and a bag of potatoes, I have my glasses repaired, and I still even have a bit of money left on my debit card.

As we are driving home, I ask him if he's working tomorrow, which he says he is.

And do you have stuff for lunch?

He says that he can just take a peanut butter sandwich.

And do you have bread and peanut butter?

Well, we both know that he has peanut butter, but he probably doesn't know if there is much of it left. And he didn't check the bread to know if that is still edible either.

He spends all of his time on the computer. The real world just doesn't exist for him most of the time. He would probably starve if not for me.

So we stop at Kroger's, where I buy the cheap store brand bread and peanut butter, and there is cheap salami on sale too. I don't eat salami, but he does, and when he hasn't had it in a while he will even eat the cheap stuff. So I spend about four dollars on that stuff and we go home.

The other time this week when he said the wrong thing is when he was telling me that next week's schedule was changed, and did I want to go out of town with him?

Sure, that might be fun.

He told me where he was going, which is a place north of here. According to Mapquest, it is six hours away, but I'm thinking it will take closer to eight hours.

And I have the big debate with myself on whether or not I should go on this little trip, especially when we are so short on money.

Reasons for going to this place would include getting to sit around a motel room all day watching cable (and maybe getting to go for a swim if there is a pool), getting to go to the zoo, getting to visit a certain park (can't remember if it is state or national), getting to look at a certain historic building, getting to look at a certain art exhibit, and getting to eat at a certain famous steak house. Of course, since we have so little money, we couldn't afford to go a day early to visit the zoo and the park (and we might not have enough money to buy the tickets anyway), and the famous steak house would cost somewhere in the forty to fifty dollar range, which we certainly do not have. If we don't have money, if we might even end up trying to survive on nothing but peanut butter sandwiches, the reasons for going to the place are down to getting to sit around a motel room all day watching cable (and maybe getting to swim for only the second time this year if there is a pool), getting to look at a certain historic building, and getting to look at a certain art exhibit.

So I was really having a hard time deciding whether or not I should go. I would really like to go, but I was having a bad feeling about it.

Anyway, I said something about going to the tourist info place to get a map and coupons and a brochure for the place, and he said that wasn't the place. He says he's going to a different place that is west of here (according to Mapquest, about three hours away, but I'm guessing that it might be closer to four hours).

I'm sure that he did not say this place west of here, and I'm sure that he said this place north of here. But he insists that isn't what he said. And I know that isn't what he said. We have this little joke about the place west of here, so if he had said that, I would have immediately made the joke. It is just an automatic response. There is no way that he said the place west of here and I misunderstood. He said the place north of here.

Okay, whatever. Now I have to decide if I want to go to the place west of here. I'm a little less stressed out about trying to decide about that trip. It isn't as far to drive and such. I can decide this one with a coin toss if I want.

So I go online and see what there is to do in the town west of here. Reasons for going there include getting to sit around in a motel room all day watching cable (and maybe getting to go for a swim if there is a pool, but that is less likely in this town), getting to go to the zoo, getting to go to various museums, getting to see a certain historic building, and getting to eat at a not so famous steak house.

Turns out that the not so famous steak house closed two years ago, so at least I will not be tempted to spend forty to fifty dollars on lunch.

The zoo is cheap, and there is a coupon, so we could both go for four dollars if I read this right. And there a museums, some of them cheap, and I think some of them are even free. So I am starting to get interested in going to the place.

And then we learn that we won't be getting that money from unemployment. I'm starting to think that there just won't be enough money to go on this trip at all. We will have to see how much money there is tomorrow and do some math, but it doesn't look good.