An "I'm doin' something wrong here!" moment, at it's best.

I am not here.

I am not here.

How I wish I was here!

But alas... I am here.

Here in the aftermath of making

space in the closet to put the air conditioner away.

It's also why I'm going to take a nap now.

In my recliner for obvious reasons.

Dental visits and fruit flies.

For argument's sake... this is a fruit fly. Don't ask.

Well, I was wrong about the dentist... the procedure was relatively painless, but being fitted for a crown, which means removing all the yukky stuff first, did indeed amount to pain. Except that it was after... all that cranking around made my head feel like it had been nearly yanked off!.

Then there was the whole, "It's best with this temporary crown to keep your teeth clenched for at least 20 minutes, 30 if you can stand it." Do you have any idea how long 20 minutes is? Do you have any idea how much pain you get in your temple and jaws in that amount of time?

I'm no stranger to pain, and I'm pretty tolerant, but gees o' Pete's... my head felt like it was in a vice for about six hours after the fact! I came home and actually took a Tylenol 3 (with codeine!) and tried to sleep the worst of it away. I sure am glad that putting the permanent one on will not require the "clamping" ordeal!

So... fruit flies. Have you ever wondered where fruit flies come from? I do. Especially when the only fruit I have is apples, which are in the fridge and canned fruit. (Also in the fridge...)

I started noticing the little buggers here and there and thought, "Oh yeah, I had that banana peel in the garbage. Except then I took that bag out. Then there were even more.

Hmmm.... "Oh gees," I thought to myself, "Maybe they're aphids or some other houseplant type flying pest." So I started checking all my plants. Nothing. I begin to notice there are more. I also notice they appear to be getting a tad larger. I'm thinking... this isn't good.

Now I know my house has been extremely unkempt as of late. (Depression... what a lovely excu... I mean disease... yeah, disease.) But I had washed my dishes, took my garbage out to the curb for pick up. So I thought "Hmm... maybe soda cans?" Checked those, nope, no bugs.

Long story short, I was going bugnuts trying to figure out why I had these beastie bugs that, judging the noticeably size differentials obviously had bugnuts... (Hence the documentation of offspring.) I was starting to get very annoyed.

I can't even begin to tell you how crazy this was getting for me! I'm beginning to think that I have obviously gone over the edge. I don't ever remember being this frustrated over something so inane.

Now it's time to take a step back... I took all the cash I had and went to the grocery store a couple of weeks ago to buy what I needed for my "winter supplies" Meat, pasta, stewed tomatoes, sauces etc. everything I needed to make chili, bbq, meatloaf, stir-fry chicken. You name it? I bought it. I planned making the stuff and freezing single portion servings. So all I need to is heat and eat, healthy food, rather than processed type stuff.

I had 4 bags of canned goods and left them on the floor by the cupboard, as it didn't really make sense to try and fit it all in my cupboards, and I'd be making the stuff soon enough anyway.

Yesterday I took out the first five pound pack of meat for bbq and meat sauce. I go to the bags and I'm getting what I need when I slide another bag over to look for the spicy mustard.

The cloud, yes... cloud of fruit flies from the bag literally rocked me back onto my butt staring in amazement. Seems the young man packing my groceries that day decided to put a container of fresh strawberries in with the canned goods!

Every other perishable item had been bagged together and in my advancing years, I had failed to notice the strawberries were missing! Yuk! So I run the whole bag outside, then rip through my basement looking for bug spray, the closest I came was stuff for ants, but poison's poison right?

So back upstairs I go... spraying as I go and watching most of them do an imitation of a crashing plane. I make sure I move anything that could be harmful if sprayed and once again sprayed the hell out of my kitchen.

So far, so good but there are still plenty left to kill, in fact there is one about to meet his untimely demise as he's resting on my computer screen. Sayanara sucker! Sadly, I'm sure it's going to end up as a real battle for the next few weeks. I feel like I'm fighting a war with flies the size of chickens. Oh ewww... I squished it... that was gross!

Cripes.

So... it was the final straw to get off my dead, depressed butt and get something accomplished. So I did put the other cans away, I did make some of my food, cool it and freeze it and last but not least... did my cooking dishes.

Now I'm going to bed and hopefully when I awake tomorrow, I will find hundreds of little fly corpses that I can suck up with the vacuum, along with my hair clumps (can you believe I'm still sucking up Ludie hair? Cripes!!) food crumbs and remnants of dirt, leaves and pine needles.

Who knows? At this rate I may even get the kitchen clean enough to open the blinds! That may be asking a bit much though... I think I'll be satisfied if I can by Wednesday!

So I got some new glasses....

... and fell up my basement stairs.

Life is indeed, good.

Cripes.

I am mostly happy because at least I didn't fall down my basement stairs! It all happened because I had no choice but to get new frames (there wasn't any chance of using the same pair again, like I did the last two times) New frames meant different sized lenses.

This meant different size areas of my regular prescription and more importantly... where my bifocal line is on said lens. So I start up the steps, catch the new edge of the bifocal line as I looked down and wham! I misstep and fell up my stairs.

In a perfect world I would keep this to myself. Of course we don't live in a perfect world so therefore, I admit my embarrassing moment for the amusement of my friends. It's good to feel so loved.Yeah... keep laughing.

Alaskan chickens.

(You figure it out...)

Today Mother Nature messed with us again... it got up to 67 degrees. It's raining with some rumbling of thunder still a ways out. We're supposed to get thunderstorms throughout the night.

It's driving me nuts because I want to plant all my beautiful Alaskan seeds but the ground must be cool. I took it's temperature (the soil ya' smart asses!) and it is far too warm. On an environmental note, I did not use a mercury filled thermometer lest it break and contaminate the earth.

I used the one I use to check meat temps with. There's a use Pampered Chef never thought of, that's for sure!

Tomorrow is the 2 hour dental visit. I can hardly wait. It probably has a lot to do with why I'm still awake. I know it's going to be pain free but all that time in the chair messes with my chest and now, even worse my back. But I have no choice, I have to get the damn crown. And to think I paid that much damn money for my last car!

That is just ridiculous. Unfortunately, I have no choice, it's a crown or extraction because there isn't enough tooth left for anymore filling repair. It's always something isn't it?

Well, I'm going to watch some useless TV and then try again to sleep. Fair warning, tomorrow's post may be a bit "lisp-y"

HA!

Reflections...

Cripes... there's a very old joke that reads, "You know you're getting older when your back goes out more than you do."

Oh yeah... I think my back is on a three day bender.

It does indeed, suck big time. However, (With many thanks to Prince Valium!) I don't really care!

No, I do care and it bummed me out. I missed a friend's bridal shower yesterday and I felt really bad about it. But I had to be honest with myself and driving was simply out of the question.

Fall is marching along. It rained almost all night and as a result, there are hardly any leaves left on the trees. It has come to that, almost unnerving feeling as you look out at the yards and up & down the street.

Why is it so quiet? Where are the signs of life? The color has given way to bleakness and everything seems quite gray. A person wonders if even sunlight could change the mood of the season?

It's the time of year when a person's mind seems full of introspection... of contemplation... Where has this year gone? When did I last tell someone I love, that I do indeed love them? How has so much time slipped past me already?

The answers are fleeting... often there are no answers... just gentle wisps of thoughts that make you think... it wasn't such a bleak year... it was just fast.

In a way; it's comforting, in other ways, it's sad... time indeed goes by in a blink...

Tell someone you love, that you love them and you'd be lost without them....

Sure... now it's frickin' freezing! But I have a new coffee pot so I don't care! Woo-hoo!

First... I've spoken before about my loved one that lives in Alaska and races sled dogs. In March she will fulfill her dream of racing the Iditarod! As her Creative Consultant, this is my latest post on her web journal.


As a pup I felt a stirring...
a longing deep inside...
I knew someday... that calling...
would mean a very special time...

And now that pulse...
that longing...
has become so very loud...
It will take me where I'm meant to be...
on the trail of Iditarod...
...2008

Cool huh?

Okay, back to the new coffee pot... mine died, I was resorting to "coffee singles" (blech!) when my friend says, "You can have mine!" I jumped at it, because as a new coffee pot in my financial future was a couple months away.

It wasn't such a big thing when it was hot out because I don't like drinking coffee in the summer.Thennnn.... fall made an actual appearance and I was really happy to have the coffee pot!I love my friend's, "I don't drink coffee anymore so you can have it!"

Wow.

So as I sit here vibrating from my thus far, one pot of coffee this morning... I'm considering the repercussions of making a second.

Hmmm... I would like to sleep before this weekend so maybe a second pot isn't a good idea after all.

Then again I do have to go to Wally World in a bit and that might just make it okay... it's a big place and I should be able to cover a lot of ground rather quickly...

HA! This is GREAT!!!!

Now all I need to do is make room in my closet for my air conditioner. Yeah, now it's got to come out.

Cripes.

Oh well... I'll just make it a "Three-pot" day!

Who-hoo! Fall's is really here

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be happy to see windy, cold, damp, fairly icky weather, but I really am!

I guess it's just because the humidity is completely gone as is the oppressive heat.

Of course, I'm now in much more pain because of the windy, cold, damp, fairly icky weather... but I still don't care!

Ask me again tomorrow and I imagine I'll be right back to, "Cripes! This weather sucks!"

Here's to windy, cold, damp, fairly icky weather...

How in the hell did fall get here so soon!!

While lying on the ground I thought,

I gotta give squirrel's credit.

I wouldn't scamper that high!

Here it is, a week into October. We in the not-so-great-white-north are in the midst of quandary... the calender says October 7th, the temperature reads, 81 degrees!

We're kind of like turkeys wondering around the farm in the rain going, "What the hell is hitting me in the bean?" Oh, by the way... turkeys drowning from looking upwards to figure out the rain, is an old wives's tale/rural legend.

My brother's friend raises them. Usually the head for the bird barn/shelter. They're not keen on getting wet when they can help it, just like us. Who knew!

The heat wave is also chock-full of high humidity... yeah, that's always fun for those of us with compromised lungs. I'm just really happy I procrastinated taking my air conditioner out. As this has been going on for well over a week, I would have re-installed it that's for sure. They're predicting 70's until late next week! This is nuts!

Still, the trees are almost completely peaked for color and we did have a real hard rain a couple of nights ago with a lot of wind, that blew most of the fully colored trees bare.

I am anxious to have a good hard freeze so I can separate my irises and lilies etc. if I do it now, it will cause stress and I could lose a lot. It's been bad enough losing half of them during these last couple winters.

The lack of snow for insulation really did a number on them. I've got to try and save as many as I can. I'm also looking forward to planting seeds of flowers from my Alaska trip. The ground has to be cool when you plant them, and if they can survive in abundance there, they should have no problems here.

I guess I should get back to work, I finished all my dishes, am halfway through my laundry and procrastinating here on the computer. I had walked in here to get my slippers... that was an hour ago. Go figure...