Good News and Bad News

The good news is that it is raining. The bad news is that it is raining.

So, my husband was off for the week, and he said something about there being work in some other district, but no one had offered it to him. And I said something like we should get ready to go in case they call and offer a trip someplace interesting. And he told me where he thought it might be if someone did call, and that didn't seem very interesting, and I couldn't leave the plants that long anyway. But I looked at the weather reports, hoping that it was going to rain or something so that I could go if they did call. Only about ten percent chance of rain, with no little clouds or lightening icons or anything like that.

I pretty much forgot about doing anything that would have allowed me to go on a trip, cause even if there was a trip I wouldn't go cause of the plants. I went back to slowly digging this hole that will be the future home of a fruit tree. Not a bad hole now, even if it did take a really long time for me to get this far. The kitchen is a total mess and the rest of the house is mostly just as bad, but I have a mostly dug out hole.

So Monday we were out doing something, and my husband said he needed to stop at Home Depot. And as long as we were at Home Depot, I thought that we might as well get four more of those blocks, and so I picked four that didn't look too bad and put them in the cart before we went off to look for screws and whatever else my husband was going to look at. And then one of the workers said something to us, like did we need help or whatever, and then there was the short conversation that you'd expect to have with someone at Home Depot when you don't need any help (or don't want to admit needing any help), and it somehow ending with him saying something like "Yes, but it's going to rain."

And I thought that was a weird thing to say, cause I knew that it wasn't going to rain, cause I had looked at the reports. Okay, I hadn't looked that day and maybe I hadn't seriously looked the day before, but I had really looked maybe the day before that and there was nothing really about rain, and it didn't look like rain outside when we were out. Outside was the awful heat that is usual around here, with maybe some clouds but not yet thick enough to be useful, much less really looking like rain.

So we went on with our business, but I made a mental note to look at the weather again, cause maybe it was supposed to rain later.

Anyway, while we were still in the Home Depot, it did start raining. By the time we found all of the right screws and such and looked at whatever else my husband needed to look at, it wasn't just raining it was really pouring. And he said something about not wanting to take my stuff out to the car in the rain, but I wasn't having that, cause there's this covered part where you can load stuff without getting wet, you just have to wait your turn.

So he ran out to get the car and I waited with the stuff, and he lined up with the other cars. But somehow that didn't seem to go in an orderly fashion, with the only way you moved up the line is if the person in front of you gave up and left. So my husband finally sees and opening and pulls up, but on the outside lane, where you still get wet on one side, and that was the side where there was space cleared for the blocks. And rather than push stuff over to the other side, he just got wet loading the blocks. And he seemed a bit mad about it, but he's the one who couldn't be bothered to move the stuff to the other side, so, whatever. But he didn't stay mad, and we went home.

So of course there's this serious downpour in the next town over where the Home Depot was, but not at home. At home it was quite dry. So we get all wet but our house doesn't get any rain, which means that my plants didn't get any rain. So that was a bit disappointing. Then I remembered having left the shovel and such outside, so I went to collect those, and then we checked our phone messages.

We'd missed a call from his work. They had a job for him, but there were no details. He called, but they'd already found someone else. I don't know if it was a week away someplace cool or just a day around here. Maybe we are better off not knowing anyway.

So that night it did rain here, which is good for the plants, but not good for me trying to finish digging that hole. I can dig after a light rain, but I can't dig in the mud after a lot of rain.

The next day, we got more rain. Anyway, we've had rain off and on, so the temperature has been mid-eighties instead of high nineties, so that's good, and once we even took advantage of the nice weather and went back to the arboretum, where we learned that you have to leave the park at five, not just that they stop letting people in at five. Oh, well. We still had a nice half hour walk.

So it's a bit sad that when I was thinking about it I didn't get ready for a trip and we weren't here to get that message, just in case, cause there has now been enough rain that I could have left for the week if I had wanted to. And that probably won't happen again for a long time.

During a break in the rain, a neighbor had a new driveway poured. I don't like her much, but I hope that the rain doesn't mess up the concrete.

Anyway, the rain is all good for the plants and everything, I just wish that it had waited till I'd finished digging out the hole. Some of it will have to be done over again now, and I'll have to wait til sometime next week before it is dry enough to do that.

One of my readers was saying how she wished she could see my garden. But there is nothing to look at. We did this video last year, and I'm afraid this is pretty much what the garden still looks like. It is more in the planning stage, still. And what work I was doing got interrupted by stupid stuff like being ordered to cut down my honeysuckle. So it looks even worse, cause there are no vines to obstruct a person's view, and no flowers to speak of. It is almost all vegetable plants, and I'm not getting much veggies now. Most of the popcorn plants look good, but I won't be getting the popcorn for a long time yet. For some reason, the squash just didn't work out. It is too hot for the tomatoes, but maybe I'll get a few later. I have a few peppers, but not as much as I'd like. The sweet potatoes look nice, but you don't eat them until they finish growing in fall or late summer. And there are no beans yet. The main thing that I'm getting now is the cucumbers. And I like cucumbers, but I just can't do that much with them when that's all I've got. I'm just trying to keep everything alive until the fall when I can collect the rest of the stuff.

Double Coke

So we bought a membership to the Dallas Arboretum, cause I told myself that we were going to go and walk around and get some exercise and such. We haven't. We have been one time since the day we bought the thing. It is just too hot. It isn't near my house, so we tend to stay a long time if we bother to drive over there, and then we come home really tired and don't go back for a while.

Of course, any health benefits we get from walking around are now negated by the other recent purchase of the unlimited refills at Racetrac (til the middle of September anyway). So every time we go anywhere we stop for a free soda or Slurpee (called Numb Skull at this company), and then on the way back we might stop and get another one.

I have found that you can get Coke flavored frozen drink, and then you can pour regular Coke over that instead of over ice cubes. Double Coke. Cool.

Endless free sugar water. Lots of calories. But I'm not really thinking about that now. And it's not like I've done anything about my plans to eat better, so why not have a few more Slurpees. It's hot here. Sometimes it is really hot here.

The bedroom has not improved. The dishes have not been done. And I have not even looked at the rest of the house.

However, I did do a bit of work on two garden projects. I've bought more cinder blocks for the pathway that will keep my feet out of the water if ever I have to go out in the rain to deal with the pump. It doesn't look particularly nice right now, but I have enough of it done that I could walk over the main part of the problem if I had to. The other thing I've been doing outside is digging a big hole where someday there will be a fruit tree (probably fig). I had earlier abandoned the project for the season because of the heat and because without rain the clay just is too difficult to work with. But after getting just a bit of rain I decided to try it again, and having gotten started on it I would like to finish it. It is slow, shovel a bit, then go back in the house and have a drink and rest, then go back out and shovel a bit more. I have a large hole now. Not large enough or deep enough to bury a person, but almost big enough to make a tree really happy. Not quite finished yet, and then after it is dug there will be the work of working with the soil and putting it back in the hole, but I will not do as much work with that part as I do with the vegetable beds. I don't think that trees need as much of that as annual plants do, and I don't think that this particular tree will need any sand.

Anyway, it rained again last night, which is nice, but it might have rained too much for me to work on the hole today. I'll look at it later.

And, while I would like to stay home mostly (except when we are going to a park or getting a Slurpee), we are seriously making the rounds at thrift stores. Today we are even going to go and look for one we've never been to before. My husband has some project, and he's looking for stuff to aid his photography. I'm not sure that his plan will work, but we will see. And while we are out, I find things, and he finds other things, etc....

Yesterday, I found another piece of black costume that I had to have. Not that I will be able to wear it if I keep drinking the Slurpees, but I have it now anyway for sometime in the future. I recently bought three or four things of yarn, but that's a lot less yarn than I found. I ended up not buying most of it.

We found most of another Aerogarden, but I didn't buy it cause I still haven't found replacement parts for the other one. This one had one bulb (they use two), but the light didn't come on, so I don't know if that means it doesn't work or if it just means that the bulb needs to be replaced. Anyway, I didn't get it. And I didn't get the Makin' Bacon still in the box (not that I need another one right now, just that I thought they are so great I should get it in case someone else needs it), and I did not get the GT Xpress 101 (little cooking appliance that makes chicken and omelets and such), but I did find one of those up-side-down tomato things fore about half-price (don't think that they really do anything great but I can find out now), and I bought that and yet another kitchen appliance that will probably not get used very much.

The thing was six bucks, and it makes soy milk. And then, in theory, you take the soy milk and make tofu. And then, in theory, you eat stuff that is good for you.

That's the theory. In practice, I'm not sure that I'll ever want to eat that much tofu, and he won't want to eat any at all. But it was only six bucks, and when will I ever find one of those again? In theory, someday, I might have a group of friends and we might all want to eat health food together, and then they will really appreciate the gizmo that makes soy milk.

They will also appreciate the gizmo that makes peanut butter, and the other gizmo that grinds flour, neither of which I have even tried yet. We did use the pasta machine (which I'm guessing would be too difficult to clean even if I remembered where it was now), and my husband used to really enjoy the juicer. We had both of those a long time, maybe he even had them before we got married. But most of this other stuff didn't get used much, it was just too weird to pass up when we find stuff at such low prices.

Who knows what we will come home with today.

And I suspect that there is going to be a stop at Double Dave's Pizza for lunch, as it is something that we hardly ever do, and it is in the general direction of the thrift store that we've never been to before. And it's a bit of a drive, so we can stop and get a Slurpee first.

Besides rearranging the boxes

The boxes are still there, but I haven't really looked at them since Friday. Saturday I went and hung out with my friends for a bit, and ended up staying out past one in the morning and not getting to bed until about two. In my usual routine I try to go to sleep at about ten and usually don't make and end up falling asleep watching TV around nine or even eight. So two in the morning is really late for me.

It was a very busy Saturday. First, there was the usual stuff. Then there was the first round of discussion about the Halloween Party. Then there were people showing off their steampunk stuff, and even a demonstration on how to make steampunk stuff.

I have no steampunk stuff. Everyone assures me that with my closet full of stuff I must have most of something steampunk already, and that I just need to add goggles or a hat or something. But I don't think so. Even if I go for an all black look and just have to get a hat (which I don't think is true) getting a hat is probably going to cost some money. Hats are not something I tend to find at Goodwill. And I'm trying to cut down on the Goodwill stuff anyway.

So I'm debating on whether or not I should try to make anything steampunk, just cause that is what everyone is doing at the moment.

Anyway, after the steampunk stuff there was a bit of just hanging out and wondering what to do til seven, when we were heading out to swim and have hamburgers and someone's house. Miss Allergies wanted to go shopping a bit and then go to a restaurant, cause she didn't want a hamburger. There was so much time spent discussing this, and there wasn't much time to kill to do one of those things, much less both. And I'm thinking that going to a restaurant on the way to dinner sounds a bit dumb. It's a waste of time, and it's a waste of money, even if I only buy and overpriced soda and tip the waitress. I don't want to do that.

And why can't Miss Allergies eat a hamburger. I know that she eats steak, so what is the big deal about eating a hamburger. I know that she isn't allergic to beef.

And even though I meant not to go home, I realize that I've forgotten my phone, and I want to go back for it. And I do have an errand to run, so I tell them I'll see them later, maybe at this restaurant, and maybe not.

So after going home and running an errand and doing one more little thing, I only have about twenty minutes to kill anyway. Going to the restaurant seemed silly to begin with, and going to a restaurant for twenty minutes sounds outright stupid. So I find something else to do and skip the restaurant.

I head out and miss the place that I'm supposed to turn. I aways seem to miss the place that I'm supposed to turn, even in the daylight, and end up having to make a u-turn and drive in a big circle to get back where I was. So I end up being a tiny bit later than I meant to be, even without going to a restaurant or going shopping or any of that other stuff.

Well, I meant to eat first and then rest a bit before jumping in the pool, but nobody else seemed ready to eat, so I was soon in the pool in my somewhat tight figure-correcting swimsuit. I don't look too bad in it, and I got compliments and such. And then somehow the discussion of modest swimwear came up, and I said that I would wear one if I knew where to buy one at a good price. And I don't want to go to an athletic store and buy one there, cause while those are more modest they are for serious swimmers and they cost a serious amount of money. Then someone is saying how swimsuits cost that much money anyway, unless you go to Walmart or something.

Now, I think that what the price is at Walmart is what the item actual costs (and I often pay even less getting things on clearance or on sale), and the price paid at other places is not for the thing itself but for the label or the fancy store, not for the thing itself. So I don't know what this person has against Walmart or Target, but I would certainly buy the thing there if they had it, I'm just pretty sure that they don't.

Anyway, after looking online I think that something close to what I want is on sale for fifty dollars, and that is still too much, especially since it doesn't cover the knees, and I hate my knees. So I'm probably not going to get one, since I don't look too bad in the one I got on sale last year for eight dollars.

After that, the atheist who went on a rant New Year's Eve went on another rant. And it wasn't like a back and forth discussion or anything, it was just her going on about it, and people mostly agreeing with her except for minor points, and I can't get a word in anyway, and even when I do she just keeps going. I'm getting tired of it. I realize that most people do not hold up to my moral standards, but I look the other way if people don't rub it in my face.

Except for that, I really had a good time, but stuff like that reminds me that I should get some new friends.

Swim, eat, and then swim again. Okay, not really swimming, just being in the pool. Then I went home and tried to get out of the swimsuit. Well, it was tight enough to start with. After it gets wet it is outright difficult to get in and out of. Then I went to bed about two.

Unfortunately, I still wake up at the usual time. So I don't feel well until a couple of hours after lunch. For lunch we went to a nice place, even though it was Father's Day and both our fathers are dead. But we had this gift card from Christmas that we still hadn't spent, and the buffet that we used to like so much is only served now on holidays, so if we really wanted it that was the day it had to be. So we went. It wasn't quite as great as I remembered, but it was nice. We ran a few errands, and then I spent most of the rest of the day in bed watching DVDs.

Monday I tried to do something in the garden involving cinder blocks. Okay, it isn't the garden itself, it is the damned "please don't flood my house" pump, which usually works now, but on rare occasions it gets tangled up and you have to go and deal with it during the actual flood. And since the pump in the area that is low anyway, if you walk to it during the rain you have to wade through a puddle. So I am clearing away the area right up against the wall and trying to make a pathway of these cinder blocks. It is more work than I had in my head. In fact, just getting the things home from the store is harder than I pictured, so that is getting done four at a time, not all at once, and not even six at a time like a planned.

So I did about a third of the first part of the work Monday, followed again by several hours of being in bed watching DVDs. And then something had to be dropped off in Arlington, and what was supposed to be just that and a trip to Home Depot turned into a whole afternoon thing ending in the all you can eat buffet at Pancho's, which isn't even my favorite thing anymore. And I really must stop going to buffets, cause I feel bad about it later.

I'm about to go and add three more blocks to the path.

Until ten this morning, there's free breakfast sandwiches at Whataburger, so we'll be doing that soon. And then either today or tomorrow we will probably be going to a garden in Dallas, cause we bought a season pass or a membership or whatever. This should encourage us to go for long walks. Walking is pretty much my only exercise, as I really hate participating in any sports, and I don't really swim, even when there is a pool, which usually there is not.

And the boxes still need to be rearranged again.

Rearranging boxes

A fellow blogger asked us if we had any rituals. I asked if pretending to clean stuff and get organized, only to put everything back the way it was and start the whole process again the next day counted. This is really starting to annoy me. I don't feel like I've been hit by a truck, I'm now back to what now passes as physically okay, but I just don't seem to be getting anywhere. I empty a box, look at the stuff, possibly move it to a different box. The next day I'll probably move everything back to the first box.

This isn't entirely true. I've gotten rid of a few things, just not enough, and I can't even see that I have any extra space where I got rid of things. Like, I got rid of a box of jeans that are too small for me. (This box and some other boxes are small, so really it should only count as half a box.) Okay, so I got rid of half of a box of jeans. And I got rid of half a box of things that don't make me happy any more. And I moved half a box of things. And I got rid of some records. And today I got rid of another half a box of clothing, which was stuff that I liked but had some defect, and so I was putting it aside thinking that someday I was going to make something else out of this stuff. Today I decided that stuff could go. So adding up the half a box here and there, I should have either two empty boxes or empty shelves or something, but I need to do more than that, and right now I can't even tell that I've done that much. I know that I have done at least that much, cause I see the bag of stuff that will go out with the trash tomorrow and the other bag of stuff that will go to Goodwill, but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent empty space in the room that I'm trying to get organized.

I've now found about eighteen bags and boxes of things like cough drops, and about a dozen boxes of different size plastic bags. The bags were not in the kitchen because while they do have a use in the kitchen, they are also used to separate craft stuff and to help when packing for a trip (cause you should put your shampoo and such in a couple of plastic bags before packing, just in case they start leaking into the suitcase).

And there's just no place to put all that cough suppressant stuff or all of those plastic bags, and there's no place for the other odd things that go from one box to another.

Today I've decided that I can part with three or four more books, and a few magazines that I'd kept for the pictures, and some things that I had printed out for art classes. That doesn't even add up to half a box, and it took about four hours to convince myself to part with those few things.

I guess this is as far as I get with it, and I just never really noticed before. I get to the point where I put everything in boxes, and I'm just happy that there's not stuff falling off of the desk and such and on the floor. And I think that when I have time I'll go through those boxes and get rid of more stuff. It's just that this past week I haven't done much else except look at things in the boxes, so now is that time I've thought that I would get rid of stuff, but I can't seem to figure out what to get rid off.

I had to read some books just to get this far with it.

Those books are a little odd to me, but they deserve their own post.

Anyway, I'm going to go back in the other room and look at the stuff again while I watch some DVDs of movies I saw last year.

I feel like I've been hit by a truck

Okay, not really that bad. But I'm probably not going to get anything done today. I'd rather skip the cleaning and the gardening, get covered in muscle rub or some such thing, and just go back to bed.

It is very frustrating to be in such pain over things that other people take for granted. And while I know that if I dig a big hole in the ground I'm going to hurt later and probably the next day, and that should be expected if I'm going to do that much work, but going for long walks and other things should not make me feel bad. Other things make other people feel better.

This makes me think that I should give up on life entirely and spend most of my days in bed either watching TV or reading large print books. No more trying to get even tiny amounts of exercise, no more trying to have relationships with other people, no more garden, no more watching what I eat, no more trying to make anything better, etc....

Someone I know has lost twenty-nine pounds in about ten weeks. I do not have the money to do what he is doing, but I think that I could do something similar if I put some thought into what I eat and plan out what I'm going to do a day or so ahead of time. But instead I am sitting here drinking a Coke and eating animal crackers.

And the bedroom still isn't clean. Forget cleaning the rest of the house, just getting this one room in order seems totally beyond my abilities, unless maybe I just throw everything into one of the other rooms and make the mess there worse.

Of the cleaning that I did get done, I've found all of these bottles of vitamins and over the counter medications. I buy something, it falls off of the shelf or something, I can't find it when I need it the next time and I buy another one. So yesterday I threw away a lot of stuff like expired aspirin. There's still a lot left that isn't expired, but I don't know where to put it. It doesn't all fit where it is supposed to go. Medicines don't all fit in the medicine cabinet, even if that is all that you keep there, which usually isn't the case. I guess it's just that medicine cabinets aren't very big, because people used to have fewer medicines and cosmetics and such.

I have fifteen bags or boxes of things like cough drops. Most of them are just things from the dollar store that I lost and then bought more of and then lost again. About six of them are stronger stuff that I stocked up on for the flu season, but then I lost them too. So now I have fifteen, about half of them are opened.

So I need to figure out what to do with all of this stuff, but it isn't going to get done today, cause I feel so awful. And I didn't dig any holes or cut any branches or move any furniture. Just did a little bit of exercise that other people take for granted, that is supposed to make you feel better, and all I feel like doing is going back to bed.

More stuff

After already having complained about the cleaning not going well, I'll tell you about the last couple of days, and you'll see one of the reasons why I have so much stuff.

We like going to Goodwills, other thrift stores, estate sales, and garage sales. This is not something that I did at all growing up, unless the garage sale just happened to be on my street. I did not go to Goodwill or anything like that. Mostly, the idea of buying someone else's used stuff totally baffled me. If someone else didn't want it anymore, why would I want it?

On the other hand, for my husband's family, going to Goodwill and estate sales was like a full-time thing. One of my in-laws got really good and finding "the good stuff" and is now an antique dealer. After we were married for about a year, my husband talked me into doing this side business of going to sales and buying stuff to sell at flea markets, on the condition that if I didn't want to do it after a few months we would stop. It wasn't so bad as I had imagined, I did give it a chance, but after a while (at least six months) I decided that I'd had enough of spending most of our weekends at the flea market, most of our other free time at thrift stores, and most of our house being filled up with junk (junk that wasn't even "our junk" that we intended to keep), and that we were making some money but most of the time not that much, and if we really needed the money we should do something more traditional like me going back to work or him asking for more hours. He said that he didn't remember telling me that we would stop whenever I wanted to, and that he wasn't going to stop, and he just made me feel bad if I didn't keep helping him with it. So we continued to do this thing that I didn't want to do anymore for another eight years, and mostly stopped because we had to move into an apartment and didn't have the room for all kinds of junk. At that point he decided that focusing on used books would be a good idea, as you could get a lot of books in a box compared to say, a lot of dishes, and the books probably wouldn't chip and such. So the apartment started to fill up with books (mostly book that weren't even "our books" that we intended to keep), and eventually this lead to him selling books on amazon and a few other odd items on eBay, and he had to rent a storage unit to put all of the stuff in, as it really was a small apartment and we didn't have the room. This mostly ended about four years ago (and not because he really thought it was a good idea to stop or because he was being nice to me, just he got distracted with other things and the business just sort of stopped after that). But there's still the odd thing around the house that he means to sell, and we still go to these thrift shops and such to look for things that we want.

After all this time buying things to try to make me feel better, I've decided that most of it doesn't make me feel better, and that I shouldn't buy so much. But even as I am saying that, even after the disappointing week of trying to get rid of junk and mostly not succeeding, in the last two days we have managed to go to at least three thrift shops while we were out running errands.

I have tried to be more particular about what I buy. I bought a skirt that I am going to make something out of. I bought two large containers that I am going to store leftover cement in. I bought four skeins of yarn. It seems like I bought something else, but I can't remember what. And my husband found for me most of an AeroGarden.

Okay, at some point I really wanted one of these, but I can't see paying a hundred dollars or more for one. So we found part of one in the lamp section, but it didn't have any light bulbs in it. I'm thinking that it's going to cost another twenty dollars or so to get the light bulbs to see if it works. And the bowl or whatever is missing, and at the time that didn't seem important, but now I'm not sure.

So, anyway, if you stop going to thrift stores and such, you don't find part of an AeroGarden for five bucks. And it's fun finding an AeroGarden for five bucks.

The cleaning isn't going well

I know, I say that all the time, but somehow it seems a bit more frustrating this week.

A week or so ago I got a bag of clothes together for donation. It is gone. Great. And I was going to get another bag together this week. Going to try on all those pants and get rid of those that are too small and most of those that are too big. You need some stuff that is too big and too small unless you have some weight gain or loss, but just some, not this much stuff. So, I was going through all of the old jeans, and there wasn't so much as I had imagined. Maybe I got rid of them last year and forgot. Anyway, most of them still fit, and I put most of them back, except that I decided one pair was too frayed and then I made cut-offs of two other pair. There's only really three or four pair that I wear on a regular basis, but I will eventually have to retire the gardening clothes.

The rest of the sorting is hard. I imagine that I want to get rid of a lot of stuff, only my reaction instead is more like--oh, I've been looking for that. I'm sure that I'll be looking for it again, as it still isn't stored in a good place.

And then I found more jeans. Okay, so I hadn't gotten rid of them, I'd just put them aside in case I needed them. I decided that I didn't need them. I had to try them on just to make sure, but now I am sure, and out they go. So I will have another bag of clothes for Goodwill, but it still doesn't seem to have made much of a dent.

It isn't that this is actually more physical work than gardening, it's just less rewarding. If you do a lot of hard work and dig a new garden bed, you end up with a new garden bed and all sorts of possibilities as you think about what you might grow in it. Sorting clothes is different. You start out with a big pile of clothes that maybe doesn't look so good on you, and you sort through the clothes and wash the clothes and try on the clothes, and then you end up with a slightly smaller pile of clothes that probably still doesn't look so good on you.

Okay, I have emptied two boxes. One contained things that will now go back in their proper places (such as the kitchen), and one contained things that reminded me of something that used to make me happy. I've had them in a box for four years, thinking that they might make me happy again and I would feel terrible if I threw them away, but no, they still do not make me happy. Time for them to go. I guess I just need to figure out where they need to go, as it still seems a waste to actually through them away, but I'm going to get upset if I see them somewhere like at the Goodwill.

I have finally convinced myself to part with some of my records. I've kept my LPs all this time. In the back room, I have a record player that probably still works, and I probably know how to fix it's main problem if it does not work. But I so rarely get it out and use it. I'm not sure that I've used it since we moved to this house. And, after one of the floods, the album covers were ruined. So I've now convinced myself that most of the records should go (probably straight into the trash since most of the covers are ruined, and I think that might be a major reason that a person would still want an LP is to look at the album cover), and that I will keep mostly the soundtracks and a few others that would be hard to find. The rest are just songs, and if I get to a point when I want to hear songs again I'll buy CDs or download them or whatever people do at the time. But I've not wanted to hear songs for about four years now. They all remind me of something.

So, a bag of clothes gone (in addition to the one I got rid of a couple of weeks ago), two boxes gone, and about half a shelf of records gone. And still, it just doesn't make that much difference. There is still all this stuff to deal with. I'm making a big mess trying to do something constructive, and I don't even know why, since I think that I have done a lot of this recently and shouldn't be doing it again so soon.

But there is still a room full of stuff, so I guess that it does need to be done.

A week to myself

Sometimes I like being alone for a bit, and sometimes I don't. I suppose this time it is a bit of both.

I should know by now to have a bag packed and ready to go at all times, but I don't. It isn't so much that I don't have a bag mostly packed with clean underwear and makeup and such, cause I do have that. But I don't have other things all packed and ready to go. Like, if I'm going away for more than a day or two, I want to take knitting with me and probably a book, or else I'd just go crazy sitting in the motel room, even if there is good stuff on cable, which often there is not. And then there's the plants, which I cannot leave for more than a day or two, unless it is going to be raining a lot while I am away. I would have to arrange for someone to come and water them, and there is really no one that I trust to come to my house that has a clue about plants. So if I'm not going to hire someone, and I don't have money to do that, I worry that my plants will mostly die while I am away.

There has been some rain, but probably not enough that I would have felt good about going away for a week.

I didn't get a lot of work done yet, but some. I have removed all but the last bit of honeysuckle vine at the corner. I hope that we will get a new manager and new rules and that the honeysuckle will grow back. The backyard really looks sad without it. And with the vine covering most of the fence I felt like I had some privacy, and now I don't. It is sort of like that dream where you go to school and find out you're naked. I don't like it.

I was going to take pictures of how after I removed the honeysuckle there were all of these weed trees on the other side of the fence, but my neighbor decided to come out and cut those. He was actually going to go out and cut them with a hand saw, but when I saw him trying to do that I loaned him my new toy instead. So he got all of his work done in the one afternoon. On the other hand, I am still clearing away pieces of dead vine. But that should be done by Saturday.

I can't believe that I have done all this work on making the place look ugly, and that has left me with so little energy to do the work that really needed to be done. But I suppose that will have to wait. It is just to late in the year and too hot to do much about it now.

My husband called Monday to tell me that he had arrived safely (and has neglected to call back since then), and that something that I wanted to do is only a twenty minute drive from where he is staying. So if I had been able to go with him, that would have been nice.

But I couldn't have gone with all this stuff going on. The temporary manager is just an outright bully. My neighbor told me that someone a couple of streets over was told to remove the saplings within 48 hours. In my opinion, even the simplest of violation warning should be given at least a week, even if it is just cutting the grass. Other things take more work, and more time. The guy who received this warning about the saplings learned English as a second language always mows the grass and such, and was totally baffled that he was getting a warning about the yard, and he didn't even know what a sapling was.

The temporary manager supposedly doesn't even want the job, but he sure does a lot of extra work in the job that he doesn't even want.

I'm now taking a break from the depressing yard work to try and deal with the bedroom. I'm trying to convince myself to part with clothes that I don't wear much anymore. My goal is to get it down to three extra boxes, not counting costumes and such. I think right now I still have five or six boxes.

It is Thursday. I got a lot of work done Monday (mostly helping my neighbor with removing the plants), but not so much since then. Everything always takes longer than I imagine. Throwing away junk takes a very long time. Clothing has to be washed and then tried on, even if it is eventually to be discarded. How would I know that I don't want it anymore if I don't try it on? So, I am still at it.

Between washing clothes and such, I am watching Something Is Out There, Nowhere Man, and The First Wave. I mostly missed The First Wave when that was on, and I didn't know it had lasted three seasons. Something Is Out There is okay, but somehow it doesn't quite live up to my memories of it. The mini-series was good, but somehow the series itself didn't do it for me. Maybe I don't like that in the mini-series I was left with the idea that they would become a couple, and then in the series they both date other people. And most of the shows don't have anything to do with aliens, so they aren't that great anyway. I'd forgotten how great Nowhere Man was. This was one of those FOX shows that they tried to pair with the X-files. At least they gave this one a whole season. It is The Fugitive, with maybe bits of The Prisoner. And it has been long enough that I don't remember what happened, so I'm really enjoying it.

So, that's about it. Enjoying the old TV shows while not so much enjoying the work.

A new toy and a new board member

Yesterday I bought myself an electric saw from Sears. It is a Craftsman reciprocating saw, pretty much the cheapest one that they sell, and the sale price was thirty dollars, about half of the regular price. I have no idea if this is better or worse than the clearance one I thought of buying two months ago, but I have a saw now and I guess that is all that really matters.

It does not make life perfect. Work is still work. It does not cut through branches like butter or anything like that. And you have to rest just from holding the thing. But the situation is much improved over just having to do the work with an axe.

It will take some getting used to. And when I finally decide to cut down the two small trees, I will probably need something else to do the main trunk. But maybe this will make the trunk smaller, and it doesn't scare me near as much as getting a chain saw.

So I will see about clearing away most of the stuff already on the ground today, though I can't actually have it left for trash pickup until Wednesday. Still, it will be good to get everything cut closer to the recommended three foot sections. Last time I did this the branches were way bigger than that, and I worried that they wouldn't be hauled away.

Our little community elections are over for the year. I worry that I didn't do the right thing. I changed my mind about a few things at the last minute. I am afraid that my buddy B mislead me on a few things, but I voted for him anyway. He is now on the board. The lady that was almost evicted was short by about nine votes. The guy that B liked who was already on the board was re-elected. At the last minute I decided that one of my votes should go to the guy who said he wasn't on a side, but he only got about two-thirds of the votes that he needed.

The main guy from the other side got the third seat. A second guy from the other side only lost by three votes.

My buddy B will tell himself that he won because the majority of the people wanted him to win, but really he won because a certain other person split the votes of the opposition. 32 votes were wasted on some guy who isn't even going to be here a few months from now. If just six of those votes had gone to the main guy from the other side and the second guy from the other side, B wouldn't have won, and we'd probably be having a recount or something.

Since that second guy only lost by three votes, we might have a recount anyway.

As near as I can figure out, 183 people voted this year, which is more than I have ever heard of voting since I have lived here. The numbers do not quite add up. I think that maybe one person decided to only use two of the three votes (or two people decided to only use one of their three votes). I have done that myself (not this year), so it isn't impossible. Just sometimes after all the arguing, you decide that no one deserves your vote. Anyway, I added up all of the votes, divided by three, and came up with 182.666.... Last year we had 145 voters, almost half of the possible voters, and that was a big turnout. 183 (or 184, or whatever) is just huge.

And while I am happy for B (and hope that he hasn't seriously mislead me), I do feel for the other people, because I don't think that the majority of the people got what they wanted. 32 people were distracted by this guy who doesn't even want to live here anymore.

Of course what I and the majority of the people really want is for us to be rid of the "temporary" manager, but there was no way to directly vote for that.

It is over for now, and I hope for the best.

Weeds and other ugly things

Okay, I am actually having to cut down all of my honeysuckle on my fence. This really sucks. This is a lot of work. I'm doing a lot of work to make something look ugly. I don't really enjoy doing this much work to make things pretty, and here I am being ordered to do something to make things ugly.

After pointing out that there was no such rule saying that we could not grow vines on our fences, I was told that it wasn't in the rule book but instead in the contract itself. There's a paragraph about cutting the grass and such, and it says not to allow trees to grow in the fence and not to have tall grass around the fence and not to allow vines to grow on or in the fence. So that looks to me I promised not to have weeds on the fence, not that I promised not to grow flowers. I don't think that anyone has ever claimed that it was meant to keep people from having honeysuckle and roses and such. If that was meant, people either stopped reading it that way, or a general exception to the rule was made for certain plants, or specific exceptions to the rule were made for certain people. Anyway, the honeysuckle was there on the fence when I paid to move in, and that was one of the reasons (small reason, but without the plants I liked I might not have taken the place) we picked this place over others. And the honeysuckle was there for decades before I had the place, and it has been there for more than five years since I've lived here, and suddenly now I'm being told that it has to go. Other people are not being told to remove their honeysuckle. Just some of us.

This is ordered by a board member who is currently acting manager. Unfortunately, this is one of the guys that I voted for last year. If the guy running against him had just sent out flyers, we might not have to deal with this guy. But that isn't what happened.

Another guy that we elected also turned out to be a mistake. He was actively trying to get a woman evicted. This woman has lived here more than twenty years, but she was asked to leave for reasons that make no sense to me. Apparently, the real reason that someone wanted her gone was so that her house would be vacant for friends of board members. But, you can't evict someone for that, you have to have something else going on, like not paying rent, and that wasn't it. She was "violating regulations." Everyone violates a regulation now and then, but you don't usually evict people for that.

Apparently, one of the violations was that she had someone living with her who wasn't immediate family. I've always thought that part of the rules was about not renting the house out for profit, not that you couldn't have roommates or have people stay at your house rather than leave it vacant for long periods of time. But technically, this is what I agreed to. Hopefully, the rule will change after we elect the almost evicted woman to the board.

So, I will vote for this woman, and my buddy B, and on his advice I also plan to vote for D, who added to the board several months ago after someone else resigned. There six other people running, at least one of them is a current board member, and at least one other is a former board member. But I don't know much about the others.

Anyway, the elections will be Saturday. In the past we have been able to vote on two or three days, so I am wondering about the change, and I hope that we don't lose people because of it being on a weekend. But at least there will not be this argument about whether or not the ballot box was put in the safe on nights between voting days.

Okay, it has been a few days since I started writing this, and a lot has happened. I got a letter warning me not to vote for my buddy B or either of the other two he advised me to vote for. Everyone in the place got one of these letters, including my buddy B and the other people we are warned about in the letter. In the letter, several people are lumped together as being bad guys conspiring against the rest of us, and while I'll agree with some of it, I find it hard to believe that most of the people mentioned in this letter even get along with each other, much less that they have banded together to do evil to the rest of us. Like, I don't think that the woman who was nearly evicted is planning anything with the guy who spoke to the judge about getting her evicted. And I don't think that my buddy B could be in on anything with the woman who requested that we all spy on each other and report people who have violated regulations, since my buddy B is the one who told me about that in the first place.

But I don't know, maybe my buddy B is just telling me what I want to hear and says something totally different to other people.

What I really want to know is how to get rid of M. I thought my buddy B was the one to do that (or at least make him tone it down a bit), but after hearing other people speak there are others running for the board who want him gone even more than I do. Now it sounds like the main person who wants M gone is someone who my buddy is always butting heads with.

Now, I am going to vote for three people, so I suppose that I could vote for this guy and my buddy and a third person, rather than cast all three votes for one side or the other.

There are still three other people running. One person used to be on the board, but I heard that he bought another house and will soon be leaving anyway. So I don't see why that person is running if he isn't going to be around for more than a couple of meetings. Of course, he could have bought a house that he doesn't actually plan to move to and could stay here, but I don't think so. So I think that a vote for that guy would be a totally wasted vote anyway. Another person running probably isn't really running anymore, as I've seen a sign in her yard telling people to vote for someone else. I don't like her. I wouldn't vote for her anyway. The third other person running is someone that I don't know at all. I just got a flyer from him yesterday that said he wasn't on either side, and that is a major reason that we should vote for him, that he would consider each issue on it's own and not just vote with one group or the other.

So I could vote for this guy who isn't on a side and my buddy and the guy that my buddy doesn't like. But somehow that doesn't seem like a good idea either.

Now I really don't know what to do. But I can't not vote, and I can't see not voting for my buddy. I'm just not sure now what to do about the other two votes.

Trip to Tulsa and The Oklahoma Renaissance Festival

We went to the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival on Saturday. I was a bit worried about spending the money and where we were going to stay and all that. This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time, but after being a bit disappointed by The Four Winds in Tyler, I wasn't sure that I should do this. Besides the money for the tickets, we would need money for food and for tipping the people on stage and for a motel room Saturday night. Friday night's motel room in Tulsa was already paid for, or we wouldn't be doing this at all. And then I was worried about getting a room at all on a Saturday night. It is a bit of a hassle sometimes, if you don't already have a reservation (or better yet, have already checked into a room), and we didn't have either of those cause we weren't really sure if we wanted to stay in Muskogee or try to get part of the way home and maybe stay in McAlester.

And then there is my usual apprehension I have now if I go anywhere. If I leave the house overnight for any reason, I worry. The house wasn't as much of a mess as when I left last time, but still, it does make me nervous. But now I suppose it would make me nervous even if the house was perfect. There's always something that might go wrong while I'm away. Someone might break in or the plants might die or something. I just never feel comfortable anymore.

So, Thursday at about noon we left for Tulsa. We hadn't had lunch yet, and it started to rain about half an hour later. That's good for the plants (although I'd already tried to give them a good soak before I left), and there hadn't already been so much rain that I'd worry about flooding. We stopped for lunch when we had almost cleared the DFW area. We ate at Genghis Grill, which we had never tried before, though I've been to other Mongolian grills. I think that I might like this one a bit better than most, but on the other hand, it costs a bit more than I'm used to.

We were a bit worried that we weren't going to stay at our favorite place. We almost always stay there, because there's almost always a coupon. But we didn't see one right away. In fact, I started to panic that I didn't even remember the name of the place or which exit it was on. Without the instructions on the coupon, how were we going to find the place. But after stopping at the tourist info place we found more coupons books, and one had the place that we wanted for about fifty-five dollars (or about five dollars more than the company will pay, but the extra five bucks is well spent there). And we asked for coupons for the ren fest, and the lady all but laughed in our faces, cause she said that they didn't give out coupons for things that a lot of people will go to without coupons. I thought that was a stupid thing to say. Other ren faires have coupons and Six Flags has coupons, and it seems to me that even Disneyland sometimes has coupons. Anyway, we picked up a few things and left.

After we drove away, I noticed that one of the booklets did contain a $2 off coupon, but since I didn't notice that at the info center, I only had the one. I looked at other places for another coupon but did not find one. Still, two dollars off is better than no dollars off.

We got our room at the discounted rate for Thursday and Friday night. As it turns out, the jets on the hot tub weren't working, but I spent some time in the tub anyway. And they still have bacon or sausage and eggs for breakfast. This was a minor disappointment for what was mostly a good trip.

Friday he went to work, and I mostly stayed in bed and read a book. After packing all that yarn, I didn't knit anything. I was just too tired and aching, for no real reason that I could think of, as the drive was not that bad until maybe the last hour or so. Maybe it was the late start (not my fault, just necessary because of my husband's work schedule), or maybe it was the fact that I tried to get real work done in the six hours or so before we left. But I felt really bad and worried that it would continue and that I wouldn't even feel up to going to the faire.

After sitting in the hot tub twice on Friday and using some muscle rub, I felt much better on Saturday morning. Still, not quite a wake, I went down to breakfast and managed to burn a waffle. So I had half of a waffle and then spent some time cleaning the machine so that other people could have waffles. I thought I was awake, but it was early, and I forgot to spray the top of the waffle maker.

A couple of hours later, all was well, and we had the car packed and were on our way to Muskogee. We tried a few more times to get a second coupon, but we didn't find any. We got to the place at just the right time, got the best parking space you can have without paying an extra five bucks, and went to buy our tickets. Without even asking, the lady let us use the one coupon for both tickets. So four dollars off of about thirty. Thank you. And then there was a bit of a wait, and various people tried to entertain us. There's even a stage, but unless you are right in front of the stage, you can't hear whatever is going on there. But just other people walking through the crowd are funny. Some of them work there. Others are just funny people.

There's usually this opening bit about the royal family that I don't care much about. The king or the queen or somebody welcomes everyone to the faire and then they open the gates. After we went in we wandered around for a bit and debated about buying tickets to the Queen's Tea. By the time we'd made up our minds it was too late and they were sold out. If you really want to do that sort of thing you need to buy advance tickets online.

Okay, so when we were first trying to decide whether or not to go to the faire, we were wondering if the stage acts were any good and such, and then we noticed that The Jolly Rogers were going to be there. So that settled that, we were going. So first stop, the pirate stage, where we watched Cut, Thrust, And Run. Seems like they also shared the stage with The Jolly Rogers in Kansas City. This is an act with four guys pretending to sword fight. It isn't our favorite act, not that it is a bad act, just that we like Don Juan and Miguel better. (Don Juan and Miguel were not there, they were at Scarborough.) So after Cut, Thrust, And Run left the stage, most of the audience left with them. We thought that was odd, though a lot of people will leave at the end of a show and not watch the next one, in Kansas City it is usually the other way around, with most of the audience leaving when The Jolly Rogers stop singing and not stay to watch Cut, Thrust, And Run. Additional people came to watch, though not near as many as had been there for the earlier act, and that seemed to hinder their performance a bit. We were glad to see them, but it was all a bit quiet for them. At the end of everyone's show there is this bit of trying to ask for money and not have it be totally awkward. The Jolly Rogers solve that problem by singing this song about "pay me, you owe me, pay me my money now." This is usually a very loud song, but Saturday it was not, and one of the guys is just sort of leaning against the stage and didn't try to collect any money at all.

Weird.

Okay, time for lunch, since we did not get tickets for the Queen's Tea. For future reference, the fish and chips weren't that great (more cornmeal breaded southern type fish than English style fish and chips) and I did not care for the hummus either. And I don't remember either place having plastic forks, so when you run out of bread you can't finish your hummus unless you brought your own fork (or unless you like hummus so much that you'll lick the plate).

Then we went to see Bob the Juggler or Bob the Incredible Juggler, or something like that. We thought that might be one of the acts from Kansas City, either the bald guy with the bowling balls, or the skinny guy with the ladder. It was the skinny guy with the ladder, and he had also been one of the guys entertaining us at the front gate. Bob's a nice guy. We love you Bob.

The act following Bob's was an escape artist. We like him too.

There was a costume contest, but we just missed it. We would usually go and see the show with the birds of prey, but somehow we missed that too. And we didn't watch a joust either. I usually don't bother with that. The first joust I watched was great, not because of the show itself, but because of our section's cheer leader. You're supposed to say stuff like God save the king and God save the queen, which we did, but then this guy also had us saying stuff like the bishop is a ninny. Without that guy (or someone very much like him), I've mostly don't care for the jousts, so I rarely watch them anymore.

Next, we looked for someone else we had seen before the opening ceremony, and we found her. She one of Willie's Wenches. (Sometimes I'm a bit slow, and it didn't occur to me who Willie was until the next day.) So she directed us to the correct stage, and then we got lost because we went off to buy a drink (possibly at Bud's Root Beer, where you at first buy an expensive bottle and then get refills all day for a dollar or two), and then we somehow still managed to end up back at the right stage in time to see the show. And then after the show we stayed to watch Captain Thom Bedlam, who we had seen at The Four Winds in Tyler.

So after the show, I asked Thom if he was the same guy from Tyler, cause I suppose that I might not remember correctly, and that maybe one drunk pirate pretty much looks like another. But it was the guy from Tyler, and we said something like he was the best act at The Four Winds, and he encouraged us to say that louder, so that someone with him might hear us. At that point we insult this guy, who turns out to be the new part owner of The Four Winds, and he's sorry that we didn't enjoy our time there and gives us free tickets if we want to try it again next year.

For the record, I was mistaken when I said that I did not enjoy The Four Winds last year, cause it was 2008 when we were there, and probably that guy we were talking to wasn't involved that year. I am debating on sending the guy an email explaining why we didn't care for The Four Winds, which for us got off to a bad start when they didn't take credit cards.

Okay, so that was about the last show of the day, and we can't do much else but get more root beer and look at the shops. Not that I buy a lot from the shops, even when I have money. But there are a few things that I will always buy if I can find them, and there's the odd impulse buy here and there, and we always buy a few small things like incense and scented oil. And we hadn't bought anything yet (other than food and soda), and we found some incense and bought that, and then I had to look at Dragon Pets one more time. I think that I'd stopped to look three times. I wanted something that was twenty dollars, which I decided was too much, and there were even really cool glow-in-the dark dragons for thirty dollars, but I just could not see spending more than ten or fifteen dollars for a toy that I would just have on a shelf most of the year and only actually carry around with me maybe at another ren fest. But I took one last look, decided that the twenty and thirty dollar options were definitely out, but maybe the ten dollar ones were not so bad. There was a glitter blue one for ten, and a purple for fifteen. I bought the blue one.

On the way out I find the scented oil place. But I've just spent ten dollars on a dragon and I decide I don't really need to spend more money. Besides, selecting an oil takes time, unless you already know exactly what you want and are just buying a refill. So I skip the oil.

On the way out, a bunch of people sing to us. That was nice. I had already filled out a survey (and was given a ticket for one of the Halloween things in October). I doubt that I'll be there in October to use it, but just in case, we stopped to fill out another survey so that we would have two tickets.

Then we had to find a motel. That can be a hassle on a weekend, especially during a special event. I was all for driving down the road a bit, but I wasn't the one driving. He was tired. We stopped at a place he had stayed before and asked if they would take coupons (when we already assumed that they would not but you cannot get a discount if you don't ask for one). We were told no discounts, and that there was only one room left, and it was a whirlpool room, which made it $56. With the whirlpool (and the driver being very tired and not wanting to look elsewhere) that seemed reasonable and we took the room. Then we walked a few stores down the street and ate at the steakhouse, even though we mostly do not care for steak and ended up eating the chicken. And then it was back to the room to use the tub. This time, the jets were working.

On the drive home Sunday, we stopped and bought some peaches and some really tall pepper seedlings.

I think that there is one weekend left of Scarborough, but I don't think that I'll go. I am quite tired from the trip.

Size 8 Jeans

Okay, so I'm in Oklahoma in a motel with a hot tub and a nice breakfast. It is a short trip, but I usually go here if I can, mostly cause of the hot tub and the nice breakfast. I was debating whether or not to go, cause it is a bit of a drive just to use the hot tub for the one day, but then we realized that we'd be able to go to the ren fest if we added an extra day.

So, I am here.

Anyway, we tend to stop at a certain Walmart, because it is a good place to stop, and we usually need something anyway. I misplaced my belt and my black yarn, so I knew that we needed something. And while we were there, I decided that I'd about had it with the jeans, so I tried on some new ones. And I bought them. They are a bit snug, but they look much better, and I suspect that except during long drives they will usually feel better. So I'm hoping to break them in and be comfortable wearing them tomorrow.

Size 8 jeans. It just isn't right. In regular jeans I shouldn't wear size 8 until I got down to 120 pounds or so. And here I am close to 160 pounds wearing size 8 jeans. That's just wrong.

I'm a bit concerned about where we will spend the night after the ren fest tomorrow. Looking for a motel room on a Saturday night usually isn't a lot of fun. But we have decided not to come back here. It is in the wrong direction, and the hot tub jets aren't working anyway.

Mystery Meat

So, my husband is going here there and everywhere, but no place particularly interesting is scheduled, just middle-of-nowhere Texas and Oklahoma. I have been to middle-of-nowhere Texas and Oklahoma many, many times. While I maybe have not gone to some of these particular places before, there doesn't seem to be anything in them that I need to see, and we don't have tons of money to make it into anything really fun anyway.

And there's still tons of stuff to do here, and I usually get more done while he's away, so, I should stay here and try to get something done. And I couldn't leave for very long anyway, unless I make arrangements for someone else to water the plants, and most times the someone else doesn't do a good job with that anyway. But, depending on the weather, I can sometimes leave for a day or two without anything bad happening, and I did think that just one night away might do some good. And the schedule was written just so that he was going away for one night and then coming back for one night before heading out again for a couple more nights.

And this particular place that he was going for the one night was not that exciting and not that far away, but it did have a motel with a hot tub that we like, so one night there would probably be a nice thing, as I could really use a hot tub right about now.

Still, whenever we get ready to go anywhere, I start to get nervous, and I sometimes get so nervous that I even change my mind and stay home, or else I stay nervous during the whole trip and might as well have stayed home. So I was starting to get nervous and wanting to stay home, cause the whole getting nervous thing is worse when the house is really messy, which it was, and I have this fear of people coming in the house when it is like that. Not that I have any real reason to believe that someone would come in the house, as the stuff that needs to be repaired has been neglected for about two years now, and I don't think that they will suddenly decide to fix it anytime soon. But still, I worry about it so much that I cancel trips and stay home and do nothing.

Okay, so I decided that I needed to go out, even if it was just for one day, even if the house did look like a tornado hit it, because we needed to do the whole bug fogger thing. And I know that we had bought stuff to do that, just in case an opportunity like this presented itself, only the night before we are ready to go I cannot find the things. So, I decided that I would go if we either found the things or had time in the morning to go out and buy some more, or else if we didn't I would just stay home.

So we didn't find the things, but we did get up in time to buy more. So we put stuff in the car and began the process of fogging the house, and then I have no choice but to get in the car, cause no matter what you think you might have forgotten, you can't go back into the house.

Having gone to this particular place several times before, and having gone out in the general direction many times, we have this place that we like to stop that is a bakery, and we usually get jalapeno and sausage in a roll for breakfast, and then either kolaches or cookies, and then we look for discounted focaccia or beer bread. So off we went, and we got our traditional breakfast thing, though I'm trying to be good and not load up on cookies and kolaches. And we looked for the focaccia and beer bread, but there was none on the discount rack, and I did not want to spend four dollars each getting them at regular price. And then we noticed the four dollar bags of what looked like a six-pack of the sausage and jalapeno things, and six-packs of other similar things, probably roast beef. And while these are a good discount, somehow I didn't think it was a good idea to buy something that contained meat off of the discount rack. But we decided to get just one bag, and off we went.

And then there was the problem of where to eat for lunch. It was too early by the time we reached a certain bbq place, so we went on to the motel and got our room. And I thought that we would just get something cheap at KFC, only that one didn't have either the Monday special or the value menu, so we ended up at Whataburger instead. If we were going to spend that much money on lunch, we should at least go someplace one of us really wanted to go, and that is one of his favorite places. We bought him something for lunch (half of it went to waste cause he thought he was supposed to leave half for me, and I was just planning to eat one of the jalapeno sausage things), and then he went to work, and I stayed in the room and knitted for a bit. I also tried reading a certain book, but this part of the book maybe is going over my head a bit, and while I'm getting the general idea, right at the moment it isn't a real page turner.

But of course there was the hot tub bath in the room, and you can sit in it all day if you want to. In fact, you can turn the tv just a bit so that you can watch while sitting in the tub, so that you only have to get out of the tub to eat and such. Not that I stayed in that long, but when I got out I found that I had somehow managed to burn myself, and I have these two perfect circles on my back from all the time I spent in the tub.

The burns are not that bad, and I would be back in that tub right now if we were still there. I love hot tubs.

Okay, so then I was on the computer a bit, trying to decide what we would do on the way home the next day. I am always wanting to go to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, but we never seem to be in the area at the right time of year when we have time to be tourists. So this is the right time of year (not perfect, as the bluebonnets in my yard have flowers, but those south of us are mostly at the stage of making seeds), but about an hour and a half in the wrong direction. So that would cost gas and three hours of drive time in addition to the time and money actually spent at the place, and we decided against it. In Waco there is an exhibit of a wooly mammoth, and it opened to the public a few months ago, so we thought that we might do that. Only on Tuesdays it doesn't open til eleven, which would have left us just waiting around in Waco for an extra hour or two looking for something to do (and probably spending money for it) and also that would mean that we would need to eat lunch there (and the particular place that I wanted to eat lunch was more money that we should spend right now). Anyway, we were both rather tired already, which didn't make any sense as it was early and we hadn't yet done anything to get tired, but we decided to skip the whole thing and just head home (except for stopping at that bakery again). The wooly mammoth has been there a long time, and Waco is not that far away, and we can see him another time.

So, on to the bakery, where we bought sodas and again looked for focaccia and beer bread on the discount rack, and again did not find them, but found more six-packs of meat in a bun, though they were not marked and this time we could not tell just by looking which meat was in which bag. We made a guess and bought two bags anyway, so we now have about a dozen left, and he will take most of them to have for breakfast.

Anyway, we tried some that we were guessing to be roast beef, but they turned out to be pepperoni, and I rarely turn down pepperoni, so that was good.

So that was it. I guess it was a bit of a dull trip, but it was really good to get out so that we could deal with the bugs. So I will spend much of the day dealing with dead bugs, which I am much happier to do than deal with unwanted live bugs.

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.

More drama in the neighborhood

The neighbors are after me about the plants again. Not my neighbors specifically, not those people who live next to me and are the only people who should care what is going on in my backyard, just other people who don't like that I have wildflowers and ugly vegetable plants instead of a boring grass lawn. Anyway, someone has complained, and the office left me a notice that I have violated some rule, and that the plants must be removed from the fence.

I have looked around, and about two-thirds of us have stuff grown in and around our fences. Of the people who don't have anything on the fence, about half of them don't have fences, which is another problem entirely. Two-thirds of us did not receive notices about removing the plants, just some of us, mostly those of us who aren't friends with someone at the office or on the board.

I have read the rule book, and there is no such rule against growing plants on the fence, only that tall grass growing in the fence be removed, which I don't have much problem with. There is another rule about not allowing wild trees to grow (and a great many of these appear in fences and cause problems), and I have several of those to deal with, and most of them are in the fence, and if I see one in time to cut it with the shears, I do that. I have already done my part for the year, though I did miss a couple of things last year, which is causing me problems this year, and I will probably have to borrow some power tools to deal with that. There are more of these in the fence and too close to the fence, but so far as I can see, most of them are on my neighbor's side, not mine. To be sure, I have gone around again and cut what I could.

But the notice says to remove plants, not weeds and such, just plants. The plants include honeysuckle, blackberry, iris, daylily, and something else that might be grape. I will have to go and ask if I'm being instructed to remove all of those plants.

It is already too late in the season to safely transplant anything (even if I had a place prepared for that), so if I am being told to remove all those plants, basically I'm being ordered to kill all of those plants.

I'll have to get clarification on that later today.

I had thought that maybe someone would be reasonable, and I wrote a letter pointing out that there are no such rules to be obeyed. But they are sending notices to other people regarding other rules that do not exist, ordering some people to paint their storage sheds a certain color (which is not a rule, and again they are only ordering certain people), and ordering other people to take down structures that they do not like (supposedly the entire structure has to go for not having done something a certain way, and one cannot be expected to know that is a problem after watching management construct things that same way), while directly across from them an older structure of the same sort and similar appearance was not ordered to be removed.

There was a meeting, and someone asked me to speak, and I declined, but I went to the meeting anyway. I had thought that someone else was going to speak on the subject, and I would just back up that other person, as there are rules limiting the speakers to one per subject, and I am not good at public speaking anyway. I was upset enough already. Then we were all given a paper listing the police reports in our area for the last two months, with the nature of the crime listed, the date listed, and the address listed.

Line four was about a rape. There are laws that are supposed to protect the victims identity. The laws are a bit odd. If the victim does not want her name used, it isn't allowed, and public reports will say something like Jane Doe was assaulted. However, if Jane Doe was also robbed, her real name is used to report that. So if someone really wanted to know the victim's name, you could figure it out from the report of the robbery that happened at the same time.

So if I am reading this correctly, something similar was done here. Though her name was not on the list, and the exact address was not written on that line, the line beneath that was listed as "follow up report" and the address was reported.

Most of the people I spoke to are furious. But at the meeting he was publicly thanked for providing the information. I do not know the person attacked, so I cannot say for certain that she asked for the Jane Doe bit, but it does look that way since there is no exact address for the first report, only a reference to "the block of" where the report was taken.

After the meeting, someone actually defended this man's right to distribute information that is part of public record. And it is true that this is all on public record, though it would not be arranged in such a way that it seems to point to the address of the victim.

Some days I just really hate this place. But it is home, and I don't know where else I would go.

Trying to eat what is good for me

Someone I know is going to try going on a diet. He's ordered two weeks of frozen dinners, and if he eats nothing but these dinners and some snacks that are included, he'll lose weight. I wonder how long this is going to last.

About a week ago I had the place to myself and tried to do the dollar a day thing for a bit. I usually am able to do this and have both yogurt and a small cola every day. This time a few prices went up, and I had to skip the yogurt. Not that I've been eating the yogurt for a while now anyway.

But I must start eating right, and I would like to stop spending so much money, and I would like to lose weight. The one time I did lose weight (safely), I ate a lot of spaghetti with a lot of veggies. And I ate yogurt. And I ate popcorn and drank V-8.

I've been reading a blog by someone who is trying to eat on a dollar a day for a year. She's a vegetarian. Her plan is to buy a lot of basic stuff and then after she has the rice and flour and such she would spend a certain amount every week or two on fruits and vegetables. Since she's a vegetarian (and almost vegan), she doesn't have much else to buy that needs to be bought fresh and kept refrigerated. Sometimes she might add some tofu and soymilk. Everything else is kept in the pantry and possibly bought in bulk.

I am not a vegetarian. Last week I tried writing down what I thought that I should be eating (plus a few sort of splurges that I tend to eat when I am not feeling great). I didn't write down the cost of veggies, cause those prices tend to change with the seasons, so I'd never really know what that would cost until the week of purchase. Still, there is almost always something I like on sale, so I didn't think that should add too much.

I was disappointed that after I added everything up I didn't have much that could be kept in the pantry except for spaghetti, and that what I wrote down added up to more than sixty a month. That is with the new low price store that just opened. I'm surprised how much I take for granted that they didn't have. They have a great price on milk, but they don't have 1%, so if I buy the milk there I will have to mix skim and 2%. And they have a great price on eggs, but I didn't see anything like Eggbeaters. They had sodas, but no diet cola. No sugar free pudding mix. Other things were good deals, but not really great deals. My plan for one-stop shopping isn't going to work here.

Okay, so with the what I think I'm supposed to eat plan (which is not vegetarian but has one vegetarian meal everyday), I'm spending sixty dollars a month plus veggies (the thing that I'm supposed to eat the most of), and I forgot to add popcorn and V-8 (another thing that they don't seem to have at the new store), and this is before I go to the added expense of buying any special diet stuff or substituting stuff like Eggbeaters for eggs.

I think that I'm going to try this on Monday, for about a week (except that I'm going to see about getting free breakfast at Subway on Tuesday). We've already had junk food this week, and I don't think that we need more. But we'll see how it goes.

Monday morons--design a better DVD case

I have hated the DVD cases from day one. For some reason, most of them are designed so that they hold onto the disk so securely that you have to bend back either the case or the disk or both to get the disk out of the case. CD cases were not designed that way, at least I don't remember buying any like that, and CDs and DVDs are pretty much the same, so I don't see why they needed to be in differently designed cases. I assume that the DVD cases were made a bit taller so that they did not get stocked with the CDs by mistake, so that part made some sense, but there doesn't seem to be any reason for making the inside of the case different.

So now we have a number of DVD movies, and there are also many DVDs of television shows, and they will often sell a whole season of episodes together in one box. The box often contains a number of smaller individual DVD cases, or cases that hold two disks each, with one disk held on either side of the case. But lately I've encountered a design that is even more annoying, with one case attempting to hold seven disks. So this very securely holds one disk on one side of the box, and one disk on the other side of the box, and they are as difficult to remove as from any other DVD case, that is, that you almost have to bend back either the case or the disk to pry the disk loose from the case. But then over those two disks are two more disks that are quite easy to get at. The real problem then comes with the three disks that are held in place over those, or rather, not held in place over those, as they usually fall to the floor as soon as you open the case.

Last week I noticed that multiple CD cases, such as those that hold audio books, have a totally different design, and in my opinion, a much better one. The case contains a bunch of clear plastic envelopes held together, and each envelope holds one CD, or maybe it holds two CDs, one on each side. These can hold as many as twenty CDs, and the disks do not fall out as soon as you open the case, nor do they refuse to release any of the disks, and there is no confusion about which disk goes where or having to remove all of the disks to get to a certain one or any of the other problems that you get with having multiple disks in a DVD case.

Why didn't they just design DVD cases to be taller CD cases?

This is only a problem for me now with library loans and such. I've bought a travel case which holds 144 disks in clear plastic envelopes that are held in a three-ring binder, and most of my DVDs are stored there.

Sorry I have not posted

I have started a couple of posts, but then not finished them.

I have had the place to myself for a few days. I debated on going, but then decided that I could get a certain thing done better by myself, even if I did not get anything else accomplished.

You wouldn't think this would be something I would want to do by myself, but there just doesn't seem to be room for me and the junk and other people, so other people are out.

I told him that there would be a surprise for him when he got back. I didn't tell him I would be moving furniture, but that did kind of commit me to do something impressive while he was away.

It would have been better to clear away some space in the backroom first, and I did sort of try that for a bit, but I gave up on that about halfway through. Friday I needed to deal with the bedroom, thinking that I would get halfway and need the halfway point to be Friday night when I went to sleep. But I got to that point earlier than I thought, and managed to get the furniture moved Friday night.

Of course then most of Saturday was spent in bed watching TV. But I have moved furniture from one wall to the opposite wall, and also removed everything from another bookcase so that I could clean behind it and spray for bugs. And I threw away a lot of stuff. Now all I have to do is move three more pieces of furniture, clean under the other side of the bed, and throw away more stuff.

Okay, not even done with one room. But this is a big deal, that I was able to move the furniture by myself (should have just done the one piece and left the other, as the other piece had to be lifted instead of just dragged to the new spot, but I managed), and that half the room is the way it is supposed to be, and the other half should be easier (no furniture needs to be lifted, and most of the actual trash is gone).

I am about out of certain cleaning supplies, so I can tell myself I took a break because of that and get right back on it Monday.

So my husband came home to his surprise and said that is just how he would have moved things, if he weren't so lazy.

Anyway, after all the complaining about not having enough work, this week stuff has been added from another division so that he has six things scheduled. He is starting to whine a bit about stuff that might happen at the other division, but I am thinking that a total switch might be best. It might have most of the advantages of having a new job, without the stuff like losing our health insurance.

Today we will probably go out (though I'm not sure where), and then after lunch we will go to my brother's and watch Riverworld. While they are hoping that it is better than the last one, I had never read the book and thought the last one was okay. Anyway, it is a two-parter, which usually means that they have put more work into it than the usual SyFy movies. We will see.

Well, I did manage to do one thing yesterday. I made yogurt, which if I did it right should be ready to use just about when I finish writing this. I didn't do any special measuring or take temperature readings or anything. No fuss. I just decided to accept that everything done last time was correct and try doing it without the thermometer. If I'm going to do this on a regular basis, that is the way it will have to be. If I have to spend all day checking on it then it becomes a serious chore and I'll make excuses for not doing it. This way I'll have no excuse.

Also, after today, I plan to eat what I am supposed to for the rest of the week and compare that to the dollar a day thing. So we'll see how that goes.

Now back to the usual stuff, like whining about cleaning and such.

New Job?

Not for me. For him. He's actually going to talk to someone about a new job today. I just don't get why.

Things are not going well at the job, and everyone is complaining and everyone is saying how that they need to quit and find something different. That is what everyone is saying. I'm not sure if anyone actually means to find something different, or how much effort they are putting into finding a new job if that is what they want to do.

Anyway, my husband is looking, just in case, and occasionally filling out applications and such. So last week someone called to talk to him about a new job. Fine. They are going to talk more about it today.

I guess what surprised me was that they are still talking about it. The actual job that needs to be filled doesn't pay very well. Compared to what he made this year (and this was not a good year), it would be a significant decrease in pay.

I doubt that I would take this job. Not that I would be offered this job, as this is my husband's speciality, not mine. (Not that I have a speciality.) But if I were offered a job with similar pay and similar hours at someplace near this location, I wouldn't take it. Now, things are bad, so soon I will have to consider things like this (though I will not be considering driving to the other side of Dallas to do them). With this amount of pay, I would not be able to take care of myself if I were by myself. Usually, if a job pays enough that I want it, my husband needs twice that much before he's interested.

So it was really a surprise that he kept talking to this guy after he found out what the pay was. He can't pay the bills on that. It has been many, many years since the two of us were trying to live on this amount of money, and back then we weren't paying for two cars, and we were putting a lot of stuff on credit cards, and currently we do not have any credit cards to use while we wait for the pay to increase.

That seems to be why my husband is interested in this job, because the guy said that there would be more money after thirty days, and possibly he would then get moved to a different position.

I guess that I've heard that one before, and I just don't take such things seriously. That's just a carrot that they wave in front of people so that people will work this job when it isn't enough money. There's a raise after three months. This job isn't much, but we'll be needing a supervisor soon, and right now we don't have anyone who can do the job, so you might get it. So someone will take the job that doesn't pay enough and then keep it for a few months because they can't get their old job back, and then the boss tells this same story to someone else to replace the other person when he figures out that the raise is a quarter and that either there isn't a supervisor job or that everyone else has also been almost promised that same job.

So that seems to be it, that my husband doesn't care anything about this job, he's just been told that it will lead to this other job. I just don't believe that there really is this other job, or that my husband would be getting this other job soon. And my husband's idea of a raise and this employer's idea of a raise probably aren't even close.

I'm trying to stay out of it. Maybe this is really something good and my bad vibes will spoil everything.

Note to self

I just missed the plant sale at the botanical gardens. It was April 10th. Next March I need to remember to look into that.

Anyway, earlier this week we went to look at the irises and such, and that's how I knew that we had missed the sale, cause the signs for it were still up.

Not that I needed to buy any more plants. I think that I have just killed the last one that I bought, and another one is soon to follow.