COME ON, BRAIN! WAKE UP! If we do what needs to be done today, we'll be sitting pretty for tomorrow's meeting. *SLAP* WAKE UP!!!
Twitter is vexing me. I still don't know what I have to say that would be worth twittering, and with only two tweets out there, I'm collecting more camera whores, skanks and spammers than I have real friends following me. I'm not sure if it's even worth the trouble to keep blocking these people, but I HATE that they're there. I wish that when you blocked someone, they'd drop from your list of followers. I've heard it said that with twitter, like with almost everything in life, you get out of it what you put into it. Fair enough. I just don't know what to put into it. I'm not a talker. Blogging is one thing: I see it mostly as talking to myself. Tweeting feels more like shouting at the world, ...and I got nothin'. I am enjoying following Eddie Izzard, Wil Wheaton, Nathan Fillion and Neil Gaiman, but even then, catching up on tweets when I've been away for a few hours feels like such a timesuck. I'm thinking this is one service that's just not for me, but I'm going to ride it out a while. Maybe something will eventually click.
It's cold this morning. I have on socks, pants, and a sweatshirt, and I've gone back to hot coffee. It's weird for July. My brain knows it's July, but I keep slipping into September.
Still no rain. I hope we get some. My garden isn't terribly dry, but I'm sure it would still like some rain.
Speaking of my garden, I have flowers on my peas and tomatoes, the zucchini is ready to flower, and I've seen one huge bloom on one of the pumpkin vines growing beside the compost pile. The lettuce is growing like crazy. I pull some every day, and the lettuce bed still looks packed solid.
I'm excited for the long weekend. I've so much I want to do, and I'm really looking forward to the fireworks. That's one of my favorite events of the year, one of our favorite traditions.
Ok, so I'm starting to feel some enthusiasm for *something*. I must be waking up finally. Time to get some work done.
My ear and the left side of my head still hurt like crazy. Now I'm getting those jolts of stabbing pain too. Fun. Stupid allergies!
Well, I know it's still way too early in the day to call it, but things have let up a ton already, and I'm thinking positive about the rest of the day.
Craig reminded me that he has Thursday off and we can take the car to the mechanics then. That would be preferable since he's the one who saw where the leak is. My errand can wait til Thursday too.
As for Jasmine, she nom'd the hell out of her special hot cereal, ate a nice sized salad from the garden, easily took all her meds, had a grape for dessert, and then started chewing up the towel to let me know she wanted down. She seems not just fine, but really good. She must've just got caught up on the hard floor over night and been sore and frazzled from sliding around. I'll have to block that off a little better.
Back to work.
Craig woke me early this morning to let me know that after *MANY* hours of labor, Anne had a baby girl. My heart is overflowing with joy for her! I haven't heard her name or any stats yet, but it's good just to know all are well, especailly after a long labor! Hopefully Anne is getting a little rest after all that effort!
I couldn't get back to sleep thanks to an ear infection. I felt it coming on yesterday, and it's hurting pretty bad today, from mid neck all the way up to my temple.
It's just as well I get an early start to my day. I'm going to try to make my brain do a double shift today, since Craig has Thursday, Friday and Monday off. I get paid hourly, so if I want to take those days off, I either take a chunk out of my next paycheck, or I make up the time elsewhere.
I'm worried about Jasmine. Craig found her in a corner of the back room this morning. That's usually a sign that the end is nigh, but in Jasmine's case, it could also mean she stumbled onto the slippery floor, lost her footing, and after much sliding around, wound up in a far corner. I'm nervous, but when I fed them, she chowed down, and in my experience, when an animal is ready to go, they don't want to eat. Her balance is a little off, but she still managed her way to the water bowl after eating too, so the lost-her-footing scenario seems more likely. Still worried though, and painfully aware of the inevitable.
Some time today I should run one quick errand, and then drop my car off at the mechanics. I'm losing brake fluid. I really need to run an errand, but I'm nervous about driving it too, so I'm thinking I may just find some way to do without the errand, and head straight for the mechanics. Fortunately, they're just down the street, so I can drop the car off and walk home. I should've done that last week, but it was way too blasted hot and I was painfully sunburned.
Ah, Monday. Starting the week full-force this time, right from the get-go, eh? I'd better get some breakfast and jump in the game, before I get run over and left behind.
Craig participated in Field Day this year. He was at the campsite most of yesterday, came back to get me for the potluck dinner and the evening hours, and he's gone back this afternoon to hang a bit longer with his club and help with tear down. I was skeptical, not being a talker and thus having weird feelings about amateur radio, but the people in the Fulton County Amateur Radio Club (FCARC) are all so awesome, I had a great time!
I sat with Craig for a few minutes now and then while he tried to collect contacts, but the chaos of all those voices on the radio was really frazzling my nerves. It was exciting, but also extremely overwhelming. I hate to even have the tv on quietly when Craig fires up a youtube video, the radio noise was ... just wow.
I had a great time talking with the club members and their family though. FCARC Field Day is a family camping event, and it felt every bit so. So many good people in that club! I'm glad Craig got into radio and we got to meet this group.
Later in the evening, I had an especially interesting conversation with a brilliant engineer who used to serve in the military as a "key-turner" in the nuclear missile silos, and an equally brilliant farmer who's worked as a commercial pilot, is a registered nurse (so is his wife) and now runs a business dealing in herbs and natural medicine. We talked about everything from cyberpunk novels to telescopes and satellites to life beyond our planet, reincarnation, alternate history and the strange and fascinating phenomenon of optical tunnels, with brief mentions of quantum mechanics, string theory and the great timeline of the universe. It was seriously one of the most enjoyable conversations I've had in a long time!
We're definitely participating in Field Day next year, and we're definitely bringing our tent and camping out with these people, even though it's only fifteen minutes from home. They have late night dessert, *AFTER* dinner dessert! And late, late-night/early-morning dessert too! My kind of people!.
First, my OCD has been crazy this week, related to that work anxiety I blogged about earlier, I'm pretty sure. It's the personal challenges that I've been struggling with. Damn near turned my ankle trying to be on the stairs before the chorus of a song could start, and almost shut my fingers in the front door trying to get it shut and locked before the next car could drive by. For no damn reason. The stupid thoughts pop up in my head so fast, and there's not time to be rational about them. My only thought is "OH GOD, HURRY!" I really need to exercise some chill and come back to reality a little before I do get hurt. These crazy adrenaline rushes for *ABSOLUTELY **NO** REASON* are not fun.
And second, I've seen a lot of people arguing Facebook needs a "Don't Like"
companion to the "Like" option. Gods how I hope FB doesn't go that
route. If they do, you might as well call it what it really is, "Piss
on This Parade". I guess it would make it easier to identify the
self-important wankers though. If you disagree with someone on
something important enough that you feel you need to tell them so, it's
also important enough to take the time to do so with some explanation.
If you just want to make it known that you don't like whatever they're
geeked about, you're just being a jerk. Been there, done that, grew up
I had a HUGE crush on Michael Jackson back in his Thriller days. As someone who *LOVES* dance and all kinds of music, I found him so innovative and magical. He never stood a chance at a normal life, what with his family life and the greedy yes-men around him telling him time and time again how awesome he was. That's not an environment conducive to growing up or maturing or doing anything but festering in your own ego and always hungering for something real that you can't quite identify. His fortune and fame weren't worth that price, and through all the crazy stories and accusations and possibly even crimes, I always felt bad for him and wondered how different he'd be if he'd had to live in the real world. He was gifted though, and the world seems a whole lot less glamorous and magical without him. -My blog, my feelings.
I've been dreaming *A LOT* about loved ones in the past week or so, both people I've lost touch with, and people lost to this world. It's been nice visiting with everyone ion my head, even people I don't think I'd actually get along with should we run into each other again. ...I have to admit, it has me rethinking that. Who really is the same person they were years ago, or even last week? I know I'm sure as hell not. We all live and learn and adapt. It's been good food for thought.
I'm procrastinating starting my day. Yesterday was a complete loss. I'm at the end stage of a project, and tying up loose ends gives me a hell of a lot of anxiety. My performance anxiety has nothing to do with crowds of people or approval, but EVERYTHING to do with the integrity of my work - knots must be tied impossibly tightly, ts crossed, every last scrap of data accounted for, ... I get so nervous when I see the finish line, it sometimes makes me physically sick. I'm trying so hard to change my thinking. My daily affirmations this week have been all about trying to rewire my brain into having faith in my own work. It's not working yet, but I'm not giving up until it does.
Been very much in the mood for singing cowboys lately. I do love a deep warbly voice. "The Highway" on Sirius radio is pretty decent, but not quite hitting the mark. I wish I could tune in the local country station.
Ok. That's enough. I had more thoughts I wanted to jot down, but they don't seem as pressing right now. Time to give Jasmine her meds and get some work done.
I'm twittering. That is to say, I've created an account. I'm currently thinking I'll only be following at the website, since my phone is off 99% of the time and I like it that way, but I may some day opt to tweet *shudder* from my phone or my kindle.
I gave in because of Caitlin Kiernan first. She held out against twitter with all the confusion and contempt that I had for it. And then recently she opened an account seemingly out of the blue and started twittering her newest book, one sentence a day. I have the book on pre-order, but I still wanted those sentences ASAP!
So I was thinking that maybe I should give in too. Not only was I wanting to follow one of my favorite authors, but one of my nearest and dearest is about to have a baby, and I'm way too many miles away from her. She twitters, and I'd long ago considered that I might sign up when her due date got closer so I could get the baby info ASAP.
Still, I procrastinated. And then Algernon admitted to twitting this morning, and I thought, "Everyone really is doing it."
I'm really starting to feel like I'm missing out on a modern phenomenon. I held out against LJ at first too, and MySpace. ...I was right about MySpace though. I'll be deleting that soon here.
So there I am now. Will I use it? Probably. Often? Maybe. *shrug* Like I said, I don't keep my cell phone on, but then again, since I don't use my phone, I have a ton of time banked up on it that I could use. I probably won't be following too many people because I don't need another major distraction, but again, who knows? I'm currently planning on using it first as a micro-blog, for big thoughts and things that can be shared in few words, and secondly to extend outing invitations to local friends and hopefully get more quality time with my peeps while still being able to make spontaneous plans.
So, yeah. Twitter. Seriously. I'm still skeptical, but we'll see how this goes.
When I was creating my account, it told me my name was too long. My *legal name*. HA! I KNOW!!! :)
AGirlofGlass
Don't feel obligated, seriously, but there it is if you wanted to know.
It's annoying enough to find yourself stirring to a bright sky and a cacophony of birds at 6am, but it's most aggravating when it wakes you in the middle of dreams where you're visiting with loved ones you only ever get to visit in dreams any more. Though they say we only remember the dreams we are woken from, so I guess without all this early morning bright and busyness I wouldn't remember these visits I've been enjoying for the past several days. But then, I wouldn't be starting each day with this bittersweet melancholy if I couldn't remember these dreams either. I've heard it suggested that visitors in the dreaming usually have a preferred time for visiting, and now I'm wondering if I woke up every day at 6am how many similar dreams I'd remember.
I managed to get back to sleep yesterday, and actually got a couple of hours of sound sleep after a night of tossing and turning. That meant a late start to the day though, which meant yard work later in the morning than I'd planned, ...which meant more intense sunlight beating down on my shoulders. I was an idiot and didn't put on sunscreen. I only meant to be out for about fifteen minutes, and that turned into about thirty. And then I spent some time in the sun hanging laundry on the line yesterday too. By the end of the day, my shoulders were a pretty good pink. You'd think, with my fine Irish skin, I would learn to always sunscreen-up before going out, especially this close to the summer solstice. But even now I'm thinking if I go out early enough, I won't have to put that goop all over my skin. *sigh* I will put it on though. I hate it, but I know I need it. Mean, mean sun.
So I finally got my old flower bed cleared of waist-high wild growth and filled back up with compost on Sunday. Earlier in the season I'd planned on laying out a perennial bed and planting according to plan. It's been so damn humid though, and it's so very unpleasant to be outside in it, once the bed was ready for planting, I just randomly sprinkled all of my flower seeds in there. All of them. I put in the packets I bought new this year and anything I had left from previous years, including some large packets of wildflower mixes. It's my mystery garden now. Tiny green bits are already peeking up. I've very curious to see what grows. I'm going to have to weed it *VERY* carefully as things start growing. Fortunately, I'm quite familiar with all the weeds I just finished pulling out of the ground there, so I should be able to identify and evict those.
I've also started digging my garden for misfit plants. I hate it when all of your seeds germinate and you have to cull the herds. I also hate pulling plants growing where they aren't supposed to, especially when I'm curious as to what's growing. So this year I'm clearing out the mess that used to be our blackberry brambles, and putting a misfit garden in. I've already transplanted some stuff there. This will be another fun experiment, seeing what survives the transplant, and what becomes of it all. I'm pretty sure I have some pumpkin growing from pumpkin guts I composted last year. I'm going to have to move some zucchini and cucumber over to the misfit garden this week too, as all of those seeds decided to try growing this year, and there's just not room in the veggie garden for them all.
As for the blackberry brambles, they've migrated into the tiger lilies by the garage, which is the perfect place for them, since the lilies are abundant and I won't have a weedy mess growing under painfully sharp brambles.
The tiger lillies by the kitchen window are back this year after being choked out by morning glory vines for a couple of years. I got tired of that damn non-flowering vine choking out my lilies last year, and asked Craig to spray the vine with a topical poison. It worked perfectly. The vine is gone, and my cheery orange friends are back and blooming this year.
Enough yammering about my yard. I'm going to go have a seat out there in my favorite spot and enjoy a bit of this morning, as long as I'm up, before it gets too hot and sticky out. Don't know if I'll do more yard work today or if I'll give my shoulders the day off to fade a bit. That would be the smart thing to do, but the siren song of progress is so hard to resist. For the moment though, iced coffee, seed for the birds, my favorite seat and a few more minutes thinking about loved ones (much loved!) I sadly don't get to see anywhere but in dreams any more.
The title says it all. Those are my feelings on summer.
It seems also appropriate that I got up at 6:30am this solstice day ...on a FRAKKING SUNDAY! The heavens should not allow the longest day of the year to ever occur on a weekend. It's just mean to turn the sky up to full-bright at such an ungodly hour on a day of the week when it's perfectly acceptable to sleep in!
Craig is to blame too. He left the house early-squirrely to get up to Monroe for a hamfest. bah! I hope he's having fun. He'll suffer my wrath when he gets home! ...Actually, we'll likely just take a nap together, which will be rather pleasant.
So, I've been up for over an hour already. I've filled the bird feeder, done the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, made myself some coffee and watched this week's episode of Top Chef Masters. (LOVE that show!)
I think I'm going to make myself a pancake and some eggs, then go dig in the garden for a bit before it gets too hot. I also need to clean the bunny room and get some laundry going, then I'm going to build my solar oven prototype, and maybe by then Craig will be home, and it will be nap time.
Don't much like summer weather, but YAY for the days getting darker again!
I got a digital scale this week. If I can weigh Jasmine at home, it saves me from having to drag her out in the summer heat just to get weighed at the vet's. I can also use it for weighing my yarn and things bound for the post office and such though, so it's definitely a good purchase. It weighs in metric or english units, up to 17.something pounds with an accuracy of 0.05oz. It has a tare feature and even a bakers' percentage function. New geek toy! :D
So, according to my new scale, Jasmine has put on another 10g since we upped her critical care food on Monday. She was .984kg when the doc first expressed concern about her weight, 1.006kg on Monday after three weeks of 40ml/day of critical care feed, and 1.016kg today after five days on 60ml/day. Personally, I think the season has as much to do with her weight loss as her age does, if not more. She usually seems slighter in the late spring when it starts to get warm. I imagine that being covered in fur, it takes some time to shed a little extra and get comfortable in the heat, during which I wouldn't want to eat much either. But, we'll do what the doc says, for she is wise in the ways of rabbits.
I *HATE* the warm season in this part of the world. HATE IT!!! I hate that the temp. is only in the mid 70s, but I'm sitting here -just sitting here!- sweating because the humidity is also in the mid 70s. YUCK! I don't know what I'm going to do today, but it's likely going to be something I can do sitting very. very still, preferably in front of an open window that's catching a breeze.
