Briefly

It's been such a busy day! I ended up sitting with Rachel's elderly lady from 12-5 today & had to get my own chores done here first. Just got home and need to leave again to go to book club. That caffeine is going to go over very well tonight.

So I think I've mentioned that this lady (Audra) has some dementia. And she gets very irritated when she can't tell me what she wants to tell me. Today I was aggravating her by trying to get her to get up and interact with me. Whenever she'd wake up, I'd pounce on her (figuratively, of course) and talk to her or try to get her to look at a magazine. One time I was doing that and she was closing her eyes and pushing me away. I kept doing it. She finally opened her eyes, looked at me, and told me what she always tells us when we're leaving: "See you later, alligator!" She then closed her eyes and went back to sleep, leaving me laughing out loud. Well done, Audra, well done.

Tomatoes and green beans

There really was something I wanted to say about tomatoes but, like so many things of late (like the last 7 years or so), it's slipped the surly bonds of earth and disappeared into the ether.

I will answer something that Friend Cherylyn asked me in yesterday's post. Why take off the "armpit hairs" on the tomatoes? To review, what I call armpit hairs are the side branches that sprout between two larger leaf units. I pull them off because they like to grow into their own entities. When they do that, they take away some of the life force that the tomato plant could be putting forth to make me some more tomatoes. So there.

Oh, I remember what the magic tomato comment was now. Has anyone else noticed how tomato plants have an unsettling resemblance to poison ivy, in certain parts of their incarnation? I am very unsettled by this. Poison ivy is my nemesis, my bane. It must not be a part of my life in any way whatsoever. But I know that these little guys are little tomato plants, so I leave them alone. When I catch them out of the corner of my eye, though, they make me jump.

I picked a double handful of green beans this morning, and a pocket full of assorted sugar snap peas and snow peas. Yes, I'm very excited! My half-runner beans are going great guns as far as twining prettily up their trellises but the bush beans are the ones putting out the goods for me. I think I'll plant some more and also some lettuce, if I can ever get out there without being eaten alive by the mosquitoes.

The assorted green stuff is going to go in tonight's supper, which is entitled "Oxtail Scrounge Soup". When I don't want to cook and we're going to have leftovers, the children refer to them as "Scrounge", as in, "We're going to have Scrounge for supper because we have so many leftovers." The oxtail in question is, itself, a scrounge item as I took it out of the freezer for another batch of soup which it didn't get to go into. So I've pan-roasted and boiled the oxtails, peeled and cut up some carrots that were really close to being compost material, and I'm scrounging around for more to put into my soup. The finishing touch will be my fresh green beans and snow peas/sugar snap peas. Crescent Dragonwagon, in one of her wonderful cookbooks, stated that fresh green beans in her soup were miraculous, or something like that. I guess we'll see. Hopefully the Oxtail Scrounge Soup won't be a total loss. It would be nice if I could turn odds and ends into something good to eat.

Until tomorrow!

Tomatoes and mosquitoes

I finally got out in my garden this evening. My general rule about gardening is that I don't do any of it between 12 & 3. Just too stinking hot. And I didn't get out there this morning for one reason and another. But I wanted to go check on my seedlings after last night's storm. And it just now occurs to me that I did not do that. Because I was entranced by tomatoes and pummeled by mosquitoes.

I generally plant more tomatoes than anything else in my garden. I really really love fresh tomatoes. I mean REALLY love them. So does Friend Husband, although he's more partial to the little grape ones. So I plant between 20 & 30 plants a summer and also have "volunteers" come up. The volunteers are almost always the little grape ones. I don't know why I bother buying grape tomato plants because I could have my pick of volunteer grape tomatoes. Well, yes I do know. I don't want to take the chance that Friend Husband won't have the tomatoes he so loves. But we end up with half a million grape tomato plants which yield likewise many many grape tomatoes, so many that I don't get them all picked. Which lends itself to more volunteer tomatoes coming next year.

But I digress. As usual.

I was out there picking off the "suckers" (I call them "armpit hairs" because they grow between two branches and was amazed at how quickly everything is growing. I was just out there on Saturday, tying up plants and picking off the armpit hairs and here I was, needing to do it again. Oh, and I've got green beans and some peas out there to pick, which I forgot about. That's two things I should really do tonight, rats. I really don't want to go back out there. Because of the mosquitoes.

We have approximately 30 billion mosquitoes in our back yard right now. During the dry parts of the year, I collect rain water to water my gardens. We've been alternating dry and wet (seems to be really good for the tomatoes and beans!) and I've got mosquito egg-laden water sitting around. And all those mama mosquitoes are also hanging around. Boo! I would just dump out the infested water and forget about watering with rain water OR I would add bleach to the water to kill the mosquito larvae except for one thing. I think we also have frog larvae in there.

Or tadpoles. Or whatever. They look a lot bigger, fatter, and blacker than the "wigglers". I will confess to being very tickled. For one thing, a place is ecologically pretty safe if frogs are found there. Aside from that, it appeals to my geeky side to think that we've got a tadpole habitat right here, ready for study.

True confessions time: I'm so very tired of homeschooling my kids. It seems like such a chore. And no, I don't want to talk about it. It will continue, I'm just trying to find some joy in it. And this might just be the joy of the moment! Because I am already doing research and geeking out about doing a frog study with the twins, if these little guys turn out to be tadpoles.

My main concern at this point is that they are some sort of super-mutant mosquito larvae which will suck me dry as soon as they turn into adults.

Independence Day

Happy 235th birthday, America! Hope you make it to 236!

We still have not had the celebratory reading of the Declaration of Independence. We've been a bit messed up on our schedule today. Rachel had to work at 8, so I dragged her out of bed to do that and drove her out there, leaving her with my phone as the place where she works has no land line. I then went to the home of our friends to check on their dog, who had run off yesterday while they were out of town.

When I made it home, one of the cars was missing. I was informed by the children that Dad had left to go get Rachel "because she was sick." I knew she'd lost her voice but I didn't think she was really sick, just voiceless. Turns out that the lady she works for didn't want Rachel around her mom (who is 94-years-old) because she was worried that her mom would get an even worse case of what Rachel has.

I called the lady and asked if she wanted me to come over and take over for Rachel. It was raining cats and dogs here and the lady's business is running a gardening school so I didn't know if she'd take the day off or not. Turns out she was going to go to work anyway so I came over to clean house, do laundry, and watch her mom.

Her mom is a remarkable woman, especially for her age. She gets around very well with a walker and has the sweetest disposition. Usually. Today she was not at all pleased with me. I couldn't understand what she wanted so she finally got out of her chair and dragged me down the hallway to turn on the light in the bathroom. After which she said, "24/7!" and sat down again.

Audra suffered a stroke 25 years ago. You can see it somewhat in how she holds her right hand and sometimes in her right foot and the right side of her face when she's really tired. She has trouble remembering things and communicating some things. Looking back, I realize that she had flipped the chair side lamp on and off a few times, probably in a futile attempt to get this dummy to turn the bathroom light on as she wanted it. But because she could not tell me in words that I could understand, I didn't do what she wanted.

Independence. Audra has a certain amount of independence. She wanders around the house and does what she wants to do, most of the time. She's not immured in a nursing home. She sees her family every day. But she's still somewhat dependent on other people and when those people fail to understand her needs, it must be exceptionally frustrating. I felt so badly for making her suffer that this morning. I think I did as much as I could do but it still wasn't enough.

Don't really know where to go with this so I'll close. How's that for independence?

Bullet Blog

See, here's where it gets hard. I don't have anything interesting to say and I don't have a lot of time in which to recount my randomness. But then there's that whole discipline thing. Yeah. Ok, here goes:

• It's hot. Not hot like it is in OK, but hot enough for here. I spend a lot of time cowering in the house.
• It needs to rain. See above.
• Tomorrow is Independence Day! It is my most favorite holiday of the year! And last year I was too sick to do more than go, "Huh, it's July 4th and I'm missing everything."
• Garden seems to be doing ok. I've put a lot of work into it this year. It had better do ok!
• I would really like a Reuben sandwich for supper. I'll probably have a salad.
• I wonder how a salad with sauerkraut would taste?
• I'm very sad that my sister still isn't in contact with me (her choice, not mine). Can't do anything about it and, no it doesn't wreck my whole life but it aches.
• We had visitors at church. Sort of visitors. They used to live here and worship with us but they live in MO now. Whitney was the angel of mercy who watched the twins for me when they were young so I didn't go completely out of my mind. Now the twins are almost as big as she is. Check it!
• 
• My muse is tired.
• I spend way too much time online. Good night for now!

Wearing of the Green

Ok, so it's July. And I did not blog in June. I did look at the entry page in June but for some reason it was beyond me to be able to do anything with it. So here I am.

And here I am trying to post a picture of what I did today. Or part of what I did part of this day. I've been doing very well to get out into the garden in the mornings and weed and take care of the plants that are supposed to be there. For about the last two weeks, I've been thinking that I needed to harvest & hang the mint, catnip, and lemon balm I've got coming out my ears (well, not really out my ears, but you know what I mean). This morning I did the mint.

We have a lovely desk/bookshelf which used to be in my husband's room when he was a boy. I'm sure that my late, great mil did not envision its being used as a drying rack for herbs when she purchased it, but there it is. In fact, I wish you could see this photo because it says a lot about me. Wanna guess what it says?

Oh, and seeing as Xanga doesn't appear to want to link my picture, if you want to see it and you know me on Facebook, go look at it over there. It's today's random pic of the day.

Bummer

I realized today that I missed posting Sunday and thus blew my NaBloPoMo. I was a little unhappy but not terribly. I think I'll go write a letter (since I'm even with NaNo words for the day!)

Silver

Our locale has a very neat online auction business. Although I spend most of my time on it just perusing what people are getting rid of, I have bid on and actually won some lots. One of these was a silver-plated tea set. This morning I finally got around to polishing the set and took pictures. And then I put them down on a table and came downstairs to battle through a few more hundred words. I don't know why this process is so difficult, but it is! Much easier it is to blog, believe me. And that is why, while I am not succeeding exactly with my NaNo novel, my NaBlo posting has been taken care of.


Unpolished


Polished

Can you even see a difference? I can, but I don't think it photographed adequately.

NaNo goes slowly

Well, it usually does anyway, but this year it has been excruciating. Each and every time I sit down and have any time or inclination to write, the twins or Abby or Rachel are on top of me. I am already thousands of words behind. But I do currently have a story idea marinating in my brain, if I can ever get near the computer again!

Busted

Am I the only one who gets totally buzzed out by getting pulled over by police? I attribute it to being a pretty much law-abiding citizen and being freaked out to realize that you are being lumped in as a criminal. Which is sort of what happened just a bit ago.

I should just say that I hate Wednesdays. They are the most draining day of my week. On top of everything else that happened today, my son managed to push his seat back which caused my sewing machine to eject from the back of the car. Aside from breaking the posts that hold the thread on, I don't know what else was damaged. Kind of afraid to find out. I don't remember what else happened. But I am exhausted. I probably should have just stayed home from church and that stuff might not have happened. And I certainly wouldn't have been pulled over by a state trooper.

Apparently I was going over the lines in a non-cool way. Or something like that. So I got stopped and questioned about my state of being. I guess it became clear that I was just a tired woman on her way home. Or he decided to give me a break. Whatever, I was blessed to not receive anything more than a verbal warning. Thank you, God! (And yes, I have, even for something so non-earth-shattering.)

Now I'm going to attempt to crank out some novel words, as I am at least two days behind. And hope for a better day tomorrow.

Done got myself in trouble

I truly have wanted to blog of late. I even started a post, to realize that, when I left it up on the computer, one of my children closed it down. What a waste of time! What I was going to blog about was Sarah's senior pictures. Instead, what I will blog about today is how I got myself into trouble by joining both NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo this year. Yay!

I don't really have a concrete idea of what I will write my NaNo novel about this year. Probably a continuation of the one I started last year. If I can ever get the NaNo site to come up and check that that is within the parameters.

Meanwhile, I will be getting gussied up for the OVQG meeting tonight, where I will be honored as a past president of the quilter's guild. I'll have a lot of progress to report to my therapist next time I see her! Yay me!