8 posts tagged “summer”

Huh!  While making my smoothie this morning, I noticed my blender has a "Chop Ice" button.  It's right there, top and center, just above the "On" button.  I've only been using this blender for about two years now, and abusing the regular "Chop" button when trying to crush ice.  There are only nine buttons on the thing.  Sometimes the obvious escapes me for such a very long time, ...it's really beyond disturbing and moving into the realm of mental wonder.  Someone should study my brain.  ...I owe my blender an apology.

I've had my air conditioner set to 74degF and on "energy saver" since I got up this morning.  It hasn't cycled off once yet.  Dog days of summer, indeed!  I hope we get some rain.

Speaking of rain, I'm paying for neglecting my garden this year.  My squash and cucumbers have decided they're done.  I've got blossom end rot on my tomatoes.  My lettuces have all gone to seed.  Craig says I should've been watering every day.  *L*  I'm such a bad gardener.  This is just further evidence that I shouldn't have kids.  Next year I WILL get a few rain barrels and I'll be better about watering.  ...Or I'll just get that CSA share I'm wait-listed for.  :D

While the things I planted have been dying of thirst, the detritus from last Halloween has been loving life in my compost pile.  I already have one very orange pumpkin that's larger than a basketball, a couple of smaller dark green ones, close to a dozen pale green tennis-ball sized pumpkins just starting, and a couple vines worth of those smaller, decorative gourds.  :)

I spent a couple of hours(!) yesterday packing up books to mail today.  All of those books we cleaned out of our collection a couple of weeks ago have been claimed via half.com and bookmooch.com.  I went through almost all of my packing supplies yesterday, and spent $50 at the post office this morning mailing them all out this morning!  Oof!  But, my books went to good homes, and the next time someone lists an out-of-print/expensive text I want, it'll all balance out.  :)  Still, from now on, I think I'll limit how many books I'm offering at one time.  :)

I thought I had something more to say, but that seems to be it.  There's stuff to do today, and I need to get back to it.

Drinking green tea, trying to wake my brain.  I realize I haven't blogged in a while, ...well, it's been a while for me anyhow.  I've thought about it a few times, but I haven't really had any complete thoughts worth writing down.  Now my head is filled with lots of thought fragments and I just need to empty it and start over.

• The "summer months" (June-August) are more than half over, and we've only used our air conditioner for maybe two weeks total.  I hope the mild temps keep up.  I wouldn't hate summer quite as much if it was always like this.
• We've done the 4th, the Chicken Fest, and the BSAF kite games.  The last summer tradition is the Fulton County Fair, and we already have our season passes and our derby tickets!  So looking forward to it!  *squee!*
  
• Redid my old budget spreadsheet recently and realized how close we are to being debt-free.  Very exciting!  I've been dying for some retail therapy recently, but it's so hard to give in to even small indulgences with that goal so close.  I can't find anything I want bad enough these days, not with "debt-free" dangling like a carrot almost within my reach.  This is *very good*, and yet mildly irritating too.  I need to find a new method of "therapy".  heh.
  
• I do need to spend a bit on an exhaust fan for my glass studio.  I've been promising myself that for a year now, but procrastinating at the thought of having to wire it up and for fear of not getting it right.  Time to review all my research and put *something* together.  I will be buying the fan before the week is over.

That does lead me to one larger, more complete thought I've had rattling around my head this past week.  As a kid, I was very uptight and nervous.  Rules were important to me.  Perfection was something worth striving for.  A place for everything and everything in it's place.  I've spent most of my life trying to untie those knots at my core.  I've learned to loosen up, to roll with changes (mostly), and to accept that good enough is often just that.  I've recently realized that I've likely taken things too far the other way.  It's occurred to me that I've forgotten how to even want excellence.  I've gone from "I won't settle for anything but perfection," to "I can't achieve perfection so why try at all?"  I have to find the part of me that had the crazy ambitions, and rather than letting her take charge again, I need to introduce her to my inner engineer who knows that a lot of things are indeed impossible, but that "you can still get close enough for all practical purposes."

Bleh.  A lot of this noise would be better suited for morning pages.  I should get back to writing those again.

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.

I just heard my first cicada of the season while I was outside hanging up the wash.  I love that noise.

It's a gorgeous day!  The humidity is still noticeably high, but the temperature is pleasant, the sky is blue and there's a nice breeze blowing.  All things considered, I can't complain.

And, I have my mojo back.

Life is good.

Miserable.  I'm sweating just sitting here, and I have a headache from the steamy humidity.

I fed the bunnies an extra snack of cold greens today.  I put ice in their water too, but they're not moving, not even lifting their chins to drink, so I figured the cool, moist greens were called for.  At least the old girls were happy to eat.  They look absolutely miserable otherwise.

Craig already put the bedroom AC in, and tonight when he gets home, the livingroom AC is going in.

This is the earliest we've ever put in the ACs.

Summer sucks.  ...and it's not even technically summer yet.

Looks like there's a tornado watch creeping my way.

Can it be October now?

I am as filled with hate right now as I can be.  I've been trying so hard to stay calm and not focus on all the (type-delete, type-delete, seethe, count to ten) negatives because I know you get more of whatever you're focused on, but I'm so ...(deep breath) so very filled with hate.

The first thing are the mosquitoes.  It's (expletives deleted) ridiculous to have to douse yourself in mosquito repellent just to walk out to your car mid-morning, and to STILL have to swat those little (...) off you!!!  Bug repellents not only aggravate my asthma, but the smell makes me nauseous, and I'm still itching from head to toe despite the damn spray!  From walking between my house and car.  I don't live in a swamp or a damp forest.  I don't live near a pond.  I don't have stagnant water on my property or even near it as far as I can tell from my neighbors' yards.  I don't even live in a damn flood plane!  WHY are there so many %$#! mosquitoes right now?  It's literally the stuff of my nightmares.  We're supposed to go back to the fair tonight for the demolition derby, which I only look forward to ALL YEAR, and I truly do not want to leave my house... at all... for anything, let along to go sit around outside and just lay myself out for days of torturous itching.  I really do not want to go tonight.  At all.

So there's that.  As annoying as mosquitoes are, they are things of nature, so there's really nothing I can do about it.

But Medical Mutual of Ohio, them and all the other useless businesses like them, they are the most evil work of humanity, purely evil, and I hate them like I've never hated anything.  I can't even find words for it.  It makes me literally sick to think about all the money they're taking from us, and not giving a fucking cent back at this point!  They won't pay for my doctor appointments since they took her out of the "network", a doctor I've been seeing for a whole lot of years.  They won't pay for any of it.  I think I'm supposed to feel like they're doing something useful for me where it says on the statement, "Your doctor participates in the traditional fee program and has agreed to accept our allowed amount as payment in full..."  Under the column for "benefits paid" is a big fat $0.  I paid the $20 office fee when I went, and now I owe another $51.  They're helping me with zilch.  I know they get FAR MORE than $51 out of each of my husband's paychecks, and I need to see a doctor once a year usually, sometimes *gasp* twice.  I'm not asking for some expesive treatments.  We're apparently just throwing that money away!

Oh, but it gets better.  I have a new (*explodes*) inhaler prescription.  Now, I love this planet and go out of my way to be a good steward of the resources provided, but when it comes to being able to breathe, is it really that big of a deal that the propellant in my LIFE-SAVING "rescue" inhaler be environmentally friendly???  Seriously?  Because this new one the government has mandated I must have, since the old one is "bad for the ozone", DOESN'T WORK FOR SHIT!  YAY!  Save the planet.  What's best for the many and all that.  Guess I can risk being a casualty so long as that teeny tiny canister of life-saving propellant and medicine isn't adding any damage to the ozone BEING WRECKED BY FAR MORE IRRESPONSIBLE PEOPLE AND INDUSTRIES FOR FAR FAR LESS IMPORTANT REASONS!

Bitter?  You bet!  Mad as hell?  That too.  But there's one last thing.  The price for this new inhaler that the government/FDA?, my pharmacy, my doctor and my "HMO" each sent me letters telling me I'd absolutely have to switch to, it's more expensive than the one I used to use THAT FUCKING WORKED!  And guess how much my insurance helps me out with the cost of it?  Yep.  Not one tiny cent.  I'm so mad right now ...  ARGH!!!!!!!

So we spend a ton of money on health care that ISN'T DOING A FUCKING THING FOR US!!!  We have quite a few other important things it would be nice to have that money for, rather than throwing at some cold, evil industry.  I've always tried to calm myself before by reminding myself that should we have some sort of health crisis, that coverage would turn out to be worth it, but you know, in this day and age I really don't think it would.  I bet they'd deny us coverage for one reason or another.  They'd find their out.  Do these companies pay for ANYTHING any more???  Seems to me they just stockpile money.  I don't want ... I don't ... ARGH!!!  I mean they just have to help my husband and me, we don't have kids, my very healthy husband almost never sees a doctor, and aside from the rlatively easily managed nuisance of my asthma neither of us has any on-going health issues, so you'd think out of the thousands of dollars we pay for coverage they could spare $51 for a 15 minute office visit, after I already put $20 down at the office that day and they apparently talked the doctor into reducing the charge!  $51 once or twice a year!!!  How about $32 for a much needed inhaler every three months?  Help me out a little here?  I used to pay $10 for the one that BLOODY WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It makes me sick.  "Explanation of Benefits"!  HA!  THERE AREN'T ANY!!!  I think the whole lot of all those damn companies need to do some serious prison time for theft and extortion.  I honestly do.

I itch, I need to go wash this nauseating chemical film off of my skin, and I think my head is about to explode in impossibly frustrated screams and tears, so I'm done here.