SILVER STRINGS

I noticed last weekend on our trip back from New York that there were about a gazillion silver SUVs on the road.  And there were so many Toyotas. (I notice that because I drive one.)  At one point PD noticed that there were three ahead of us and one behind us.

We noticed that Exit 58 on I90W would take you to Silver Creek near Irving, NY.  Judging by the billboards there seemed to be a lot of cool stuff there.  We decided that maybe sometime we would check that out on our way home.  But that is doubtful since we are usually in a hurry to get home because it’s so hard to leave when we’re visiting the JuJu’s.

I saw a cool license plate too.  It said NO FOAM.

Ok, that’s all I have time for.  Carry on with your Friday and make it a good one.

I have to work tomorrow so it doesn’t hold it’s usual allure for me. :-(

One more thing.  The Moon has been particularly awesome lately.

TUESDAY FUNNY

Before I get on to the funny stuff, I need to tell y’all that on Sunday the neighbor used the word “echo”  in a conversation we were having (which I forget, but I was looking at a pile of river rocks when she said it.  Ok, maybe I wasn’t really paying attention.  My bad.)  And then last night Michael, the son, was sitting here and we were talking about movies and he said “echo.”  Maybe the lapse is over and the echoes have started to reverberate once again.  That was a triple redundant sentence, did you catch it catch it catch it?

So the other night after I went to bed,  there was an awesome Moon.  PD knows how much I love awesome Moons and he took some pictures so that I could see it.  He told me they didn’t come out well.  Just a little while ago I was clearing off some random papers from the dining room table when I came across a photograph depicting four shots of what I thought were pictures of the Moon that PD had taken.

Turned out to be pictures of my kidney stone.  (I made it small because they’re gross.)

LITTLE MR. BUNNY (and the rainbows)

This little guy has taken up residence under our back porch.  Twice now I’ve attempted to photograph him nibbling on the blossoms on my Bleeding Heart bush.  Both times he’s gotten spooked and took refuge under the porch.  I’ll keep trying because it’s so cute… the way he sits up on his hind feet and latches on to a blossom and yanks his head back and forth until he pulls it free from the bush.  I hope it’s ok for him to eat them.

This morning I woke up to Mr. Moon blatantly glaring through the window into my bedroom.  It was so bright, at first I thought it was the sun and I’d overslept.  Was kinda nice waking up bathed in moonlight like that.

It’s a beautiful day here.  A little cool but the sun is shining bright and the sky is blue dotted with fluffy white clouds.

I hung a couple of crystals on a plant hanger on my back porch.  This time of day the sun is behind the house and shines on the crystals.  Sometimes they shine through the windows and there are miniature rainbows dancing on my dining room walls.  It’s so cool, I wish you could see it.  Oh wait, you can.  One of them, anyway.  It’s the only one I could catch that wasn’t moving.  The picture doesn’t do the colors justice, they are very vivid and bright.  So use your imagination.

REMEMBER AGOSTINO?

Starlight (Muse) – piano version

His birthday is today, April 22.  He’s got a website now and I feel honored to have been invited to join there.  It’s a pretty fun place.  Consider becoming a member.

Happy Birthday, Ago!

PS I forgot to remind you to look at the Moon and Venus this morning. I hope you remembered!

STAIRWAY TO THE STARS

Came across this interesting bit of information tonight while surfing the web.  I’m so glad I found it because normally I would find out after the fact and find it necessary to get quite pissy about it.

Assuming it’s not raining or snowing or cloudy, I’ll be able to share this awesome sight with my awesome husband.  Normally I do not see him that time of day because he is sound asleep.  But this week his butt he will be up with me.  And hopefully each day he will feel well enough to drive me to work.  Normally I can drive my own butt to work.  But this morning around 3am I came downstairs to get a drink of water (or something.)  Normally this is not a problem due to the nifty night lights we have at the top, on the landing and at the bottom of our stairs.  They are motion-sensitive and when they see me coming they jump up and down and sing You Light up my Life get brighter. Bad thing tho’, is that the one at the bottom casts a shadow on the bottom step due to the newel post being between the light and the actual stairs.  I always have to be careful to make sure I’m actually on the last step.  Normally I slow down when I get near the bottom to make sure I know where the floor is.  Normally, I said.

This morning I did not slow down at the bottom.  I thought I was on the floor when my left foot was on the last stair.  So when my right foot came down, my heel caught on the stair and my foot did this weird twisty collapsing thing which explains the fairly loud cracking noise that triggered the nausea button in my tummy.

Long story short, a trip to the ER for X-rays which showed the broken bone and resulting in my nervous breakdown. having to wear an Ace bandage and one of those sexy-as-hell navy blue clod-hopper boot things with the come-hither Velcro straps.  All the more alluring with the addition of crutches.

It’s all cool though.  I got Percocet to keep my mind off the fact that my life, which couldn’t possibly have gotten any more sucky, indeed has.

IT’S COMING

I plan to post the second in a series of rants over the weekend.  If you need a password or lost yours, let me know before then.  If you fall into one of the categories, sorry.  Don’t ask.

As for the subject matter, *sigh* …it’s alive and well.

OMG, did you see that Moon this morning?

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PM: I sent you a pw to your gmail addy and it came back, “no such addy.”

WHAT AM I DOING?

Good question.  Besides working on finding my way around the new WordPress digs, you mean?  Well.  I’m sitting at the diningroom table in front of this machine but I’m looking around at an undecorated house, over at a huge mound of shopping bags, up at the clock and realizing that before I can go to bed and rest my weary, mall-abused bones, I’m going to have to haul the just-dried sheets out of the dryer and put them back on the bed.  After I ask dear PD to help me flip the mattress.  I can’t put that off any longer.  So I guess you could say I’m all over the place, figuratively speaking.  Need.  To.  Focus.   There is only so much one can cram into 24 hours.  You would think I would learn never to shop for Christmas without a list.  Not when you have a family the size of  mine.  If you know me at all you know that I’m as easily distracted as I am overwhelmed.  I better tend to those sheets.  Give me a few minutes, I’ll be back.

Okay.  Check a few more chores off that never-ending list. Focus. Harder.

Did I mention that we were in danger of not having a Christmas tree?  I should say a tree that fits in our living room.  You see, we have this beautiful tree that’s about eight feet tall and looks amazingly real.  It has graced our home and helped us celebrate Christmas since we bought our house in 1997.  And I just assumed that it always would.  Then, right before Easter we bought our new sectional furniture and monster chair.  And coffee table that rivals, in size, a twin bed.  I exaggerate, but only moderately.  Our beloved Christmas tree would never fit in our living room. So, to make a very long story (no, make that a 3-week-long saga) short, we searched and found and…finally today, purchased a smaller tree.  I don’t really want to go into the whole deal with the department store and how they screwed us like four times until PD finally black-mailed convinced the store manager to contact another store and tracked down the tree we wanted and actually sell it to us at the original sale price that we were promised 3 weeks ago.  (Not only was that a run-on sentence, I’m not even sure it’s a complete one but at this point, we don’t really care, do we?)  There is so very much more to the story but it’s not only unbelievable, it’s also boring. No, the store wasn’t Walmart.  And no, the tree doesn’t have a Martha Stewart tag on it.

So the tree is undecorated, but it’s up.  So there are no sheets on my bed, but the mattress is turned. I also noticed that I have a Holiday themed header up there but nowhere does it say that this is One Wink at a Time.

I gotta go focus.  Did you see the Moon tonight?

MISS CRABBYPANTS

Just wanted to put up a quick post and let y’all know I’m thinking of you and missing our time here.  These work hours are taking their toll on me and cutting into all facets of my life including recreation.  I’m not at all happy about it.  I’m not just tired physically, it’s mentally draining as well.  If you’ve gotten an actual personal email from me in the last couple of weeks, consider yourself part of a small, elite smattering.  (I bet no one ever called you that before.)  I actually had the pleasure of a couple of IM conversations in the last couple of days which helped me to feel almost normal again.  I’ve only had one telephone conversation with JuJu this week and that hurts more than anything.

I’m not complaining because I have a job.  I realize that I’m fortunate and that there are plenty of un- and under-employed folks out there.  What irritates me is that our company could have been building up their stock all summer long instead of farming production workers outdoors to plant flowers and shit when the orders were coming in slow.  Now we’re barely keeping up and there is no end in sight. I hope they learn from this next summer when all the girls are whining because they would rather be outside getting a freakin’ tan.

Ok, I’m getting irritated and this is counter-productive.  We can’t have that.  It would be against the memos that are going around work encouraging us to have a more positive attitude.  You know what?

I’m going to bed now.

Please keep checking in, probly on the weekend I’ll have something nice to say.  On the up side, did you see that awesome Moon tonight?  Wooooo-eee!   :-)  I think I’ll sleep with the blinds open and hope I soak up some of that wonderful moonlight.  I want to look pretty to celebrate Friday.

How’s your week going?

NOTE TO SELF*

*Don’t think out loud on your blog.

Hehe. Turns out there are plenty of salt substitutes out there. And on the shelf in my kitchen. PD does the cooking and he’s the one who’s under doctor’s orders to restrict sodium intake. Today I found a big old box of Morton’s Lite and a bag of some kind of Sea Salt. So now you know that I’m not even aware of the cooking supplies and condiments in my own house. My only involvement, in reality, is that I don’t use the stuff unless my body craves it. And I have not a lot of control over where my mind wanders and what it wonders. Let this be a lesson to me. “Stick to what you know, chick.”

The rest of this, I’m warning you now, is nothing but a rant peppered with a few WTFs which I’ll let you insert anwhere you see fit. Putting it at the end of every sentence seemed redundant to me so I just left them out. This has been coming on for awhile and I wasn’t in the mood to let it out. That may have been evident to those of you who noticed that I’ve not been posting as regularly as is normal for me. I didn’t intend for it to go on this long, just didn’t really have much control over it. If you’re not one to get into someone else’s yucky, intimate stuff, you might as well click on over to your next daily read.

Last chance. “Go to the Light!”

You’re still here. You fool.

Alright, you asked for it.

Out of control is a good way to describe where I’ve been lately. I don’t have a grasp on too much of anything anymore. And I’m too tired to fight to get it back. I don’t know exactly where it went or what I was doing when I lost it. I’m not even totally sure if I ever had it at all. My days are not my own. My nights are just quick little naps frought with fitful tossing and turning interrupted now and then with some sweating and chills, and finally with the blare of one or two of three alarm clocks that I rely upon to rescue me from anything resembling a deep restful sleep. Not sure why I even bother. What I wouldn’t give some days to just go to sleep for about a week.

I realize that I’m really going out on a limb here, opening up here like this. I decided definitely not to until I realized that looking around at people lately and seeing vacant stares and even some of those deer-in-the-headlight expressions, I’m convinced that I’m not the only person feeling like this. And if maybe you’re feeling a little like this, you won’t feel like it’s just you.

The world is showing some serious signs of total insanity these days. We all deal with it differently. Rather than going outwardly berserk, I find myself turning inward for comfort and solace. Am I finding it? No, but it’s less scary in here. I feel like everything I believed in, everything I trusted is slowly turning to a big pile of ash and pretty soon a big old wind is going to come blustering by and carry what’s left of my ashes far, far away.

This could all be stress and hormones, my two favorite scapegoats. It could be the beginning of the End. It could be something in between. My Faith has taken a serious turn for the doubt lately. I’ve been through that many times and It always came back. I’ve just never felt so hopeless and helpless. I’ve always been relatively strong and independent. I used to be sickeningly optimistic. I thought I was depressed. (Now, not then) Maybe I am. But if I am, then so is just about everybody I know. I’ll keep taking the little peach-colored pills. I might feel better in a couple weeks. I might call the doctor tomorrow and ask for something stronger. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.

I can still laugh. I know that I still care about important things. I still hurt, I’m not numb. When I think of certain people, I still fill that rush of love swell up in my chest. When I turn the news on and hear that two teenagers were beaten to death with dumbbells, I get sick to my stomach. I still take the time to throw the ball for the neighbors dog to chase when I get home from work. I still look up at the stars and the Moon at night and feel the awe. I look around at all the colored leaves and think how beautiful they are as I’m inhaling the wonderfully sweet and crisp Autumn air. But the whole time I’m clenching my teeth and my shoulders are tight from being tense. I can still relax when I go to bed, it just takes longer. I don’t enjoy the cigarettes anymore, they’re like my mortal enemy. I smoke them for some kind of twisted revenge. I couldn’t even tell you how many PD is putting in my pack each day now. I just light them and smoke them until they’re gone.

I hope I didn’t make you feel dumped on. You don’t even have to say anything. I’ve heard it all. I know what my choices are and what I should and shouldn’t do. I just needed to let this out. If you do comment, I can’t promise that I’ll respond. It’s just how I feel right now, plz don’t take it personal if I don’t. You guys all know how I feel about you and if I didn’t trust you as friends, truly, I wouldn’t have even put this here.

That’s all I have to say right now. Tomorrow is another day. I keep telling myself that.

AFTERMASH

We had a bad windstorm on Sunday night and actually saw what most of the people around considered to be a funnel cloud. If I thought I could get it uploaded before my Internet access goes down again, I would post the pictures I took. Anyway, our online service has been sporadic since and I’ve not been able to be on here for more than a few minutes at a time. I’ll try to hurry and say what I have to before I lose it again.

I surely feel for the poor people in Texas who had storms so much more severe. Had our winds been a wee bit stronger, I would have been scared pissless.

I spent almost a half an hour on Monday after work untangling wind chimes on the back porch. They looked almost like someone tried to braid them. Fun, fun. And the pretend pansies I had in a bowl on the table on the porch, they’s missin’ sumptin’ awful.

Melinda over at Melinda Zook has bestowed an award upon (bestowed upon?) me if you’re interested. It’s pretty and I’m very touched. I wanted to show you a picture of it but I’m trying to hurry and finish this before my connection goes poof. Thank you Melinda!

The garage sale if finally over. Wasn’t a total waste of time, got rid of a lot of stuff but there are still quite a few boxes that will be donated. Met some really interesting people, not including the woman who told me I was an ignorant person. I don’t have time to get into that now. But I certainly will.

Did you see the Moon last night and this morning? Freakin’ awesome.

I have one more chapter of the Epic to share with you. Yes, I know you’ll all be glad when that’s over. Too bad, I want it chronicled so I can look back here and relive it when I’m old. Er. Older. Will post it on the weekend. Consider that your warning so you can avoid it if you’re sick of it…

I read all of your blogs tonight after dinner but couldn’t leave comments. What’s up with that? I opened all 15 up in tabs, read them but couldn’t leave comments. Computers and DSL make me crazy sometimes. Also, our landline phone was dead for two days. It’s back on but all staticy. The repairman is coming Thursday and I’m hoping he can cure the DSL too. My apologies if you sent email… If I read it, I didn’t get to answer it. Of course you would know that wouldn’t you.

I’m getting a small taste of what it would be like to be blog-less and email-less, and let me tell you… Well, I know there are plenty of things in life worse to be without but I would miss you all even more than I could imagine. So just in case I haven’t said this in awhile, I love you guys and it means so much to have you around.

Goodnight :-)