Its been raining. I am happy about this because it means that my new plants and garden will be more likely to survive. Hopefully it will continue to give us a good 1-2 inches of rain a week for several months and help alleviate the drought. The other wonderful thing about the rain, everything outside the windows in my sun room looks like a luscious rain forest.
I have so much I need to get done this week. A good bit of organization, and some weeding in the garden. I also need to start my potted plants and herbs. And the hubby needs to mow the lawn. My roommate is getting volunteered for lift and carry while I’m doing gardening stuff, since I’m not allowed.
I, however, need to go take a shower and get my butt to work now that I’m done with coffee.
No? Ok, well it might be important. I’ve been following this along with the sub-prime crisis. In fact, I’ve been asking the question for years “where is all the money coming from”? Being that I and my husband work in the tech industry and that we got to ride the tail end of the dot com craze, we felt the burn when it crashed. But then we saw all these houses going up, big, expensive houses. And I kept asking the question “How are they paying for these?”.
Well, it looks like the answer was they weren’t. Not really. It was all numbers and paper pushing. Now we’re looking at food shortages. The price of staples such as wheat, rice, and corn have doubled, DOUBLED in the past couple of months alone. Riots are happening.
I spent the past week driving, and not only that, I was driving people around. Its been a very busy week, and a good bit stressful. Monday I worked, Tuesday I called in because my back decided to have a FUCK YOU day and I had completely run out of willpower to deal with it. I had to take the “knock you on your ass” pills. No driving for at least eight hours.
Tuesday night, however, I had to pack up some stuff and head down to Mom and Dad’s house so I can be there in time to get Dad to the hospital for his hip replacement surgery. Ok no problem. I get there and realize there’s NO DOORS on any of the bedrooms. Why? Well, its because of Mom’s new electric wheelchair. The doors weren’t quite wide enough otherwise. I asked Dad to go ahead and put the door on the room I’m gonna use. “Why?” he asks. Oh god, seriously? I gave him a rather exasperated look and so he muttered something and then made lots of banging noises, grunting and groaning as he puts the door on. Of course, once he was done I oooo’d and aaaa’d appreciatively. Or at least I think I did, anyway.
So I got him to the hospital, everything went very well. I was there for a total of about 4 hours maybe more. Then headed back down to stay with Mom, took a nap, and then headed back up to bring him his stuff and hang out. Thursday, I got to pick up Veronika from the airport! I was so glad to see her, as its been about three years since our last, very brief visit. Felicity wasn’t really talking yet. She was in the States from Germany for about a month. I took her to see Dad. Thursday night we went to a rather impromptu birthday party for Jennifer, and those friends of mine that have heard me talk about Veronika for years finally got to meet her in person. Amanda tried to keep her. I also got to see daecon and the kids briefly, since Mom needs someone to be with her, we are trading off days.
I should probably mention, Veronika was an exchange student my senior year and she was such a great match that she was practically adopted. Now she has a family on both sides of the ocean. :D At least, that’s how I feel.
Friday I had to work. Normally I don’t work on Fridays but I was making up for the day I switched with my co-worker. I dropped Veronika off to get her rental and we took a brief picture out in front of the baggage claim before the security guard shooed me off.
Somewhere in there I got a call about work, the nature of which added more stress to my already busy and haggard week. I think its worked out for now, though. We’ll see. Friday I worked until 10pm, went home, and got maybe TWO hours of sleep before going back to work 12 off 12, then work another 12. I have two more 8 hour days to go and then I’m going to sleep in on Wednesday. First I have to get some laundry and things sorted out and make up snacks for Simon in the coming week. In fact, I’m going to work on that now for about an hour before going to bed.
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: humming of the dryer, bubbling of the fishtank
Since I hate spelling out Renaissance Festival, it will be called Ren Fest instead.
I’ve been wanting to take the kids out to the Ren Fest for some time now. I still have many fond memories of traveling with the festival, dressing up on weekends, finding work with the craftsmen during the week. I lived in a tent for a year, and I think there’s a good portion of it I don’t remember with great clarity. Ah yes. Youth is wasted on the young.
I digress.
So a co-worker of mine agreed to switch days with me (thank you). I packed a picnic lunch, drinks, and we headed out. Hell, we even made it out of the house on time, a feat unto itself. The festival is about an hour drive south of us, and we were meeting friends there.
Of course, even with the food in the car, as soon as we got there Felicity wanted a muffin at the cafe just inside the gate. It being still early in the day, the young man that was acting as host was busy juggling instead. This is part of what got our attention. And while I didn’t get a picture of the juggler, I did get a picture of Simon with a mouth full of muffin staring at the juggler off camera.
From there we wondered along, saying hi to some people I know and looking at the various shops. Its odd being here from this angle, as I’ve never spent money on rides, or face painting, or any of the other things that the kids want to do. Its definitely where they make their money (the fair itself, not the artisans). We did run into an old high-school buddy of my husband’s. I’m sure its going to be interesting at the next class reunion, considering the changes he’s gone through. My kids weren’t sure what to make of him either.
ICK! That’s his name. The Troll, that is. He also informed us of his new line of “Troll House Cookies” that we should invest in. Anybody? ANYBODY?
Next we got on the big ship swings. Simon started crying out “YAHR! Avast ye landlubbers!” then he said “I’m the Captain! You are my Minions! Sail this ship!”. The two kids running the ride were cracking up. I got a cute picture of Felicity.
At this point we decided it was time to sit, and chose The Joust as the venue. We got there about 20 minutes before the show, which means we got to sit up front. The children could not sit still, they had to run around and climb on things. During the show I noticed that one of the jousters was having trouble keeping their horse under control, which had me concerned. I commented on this to Josh, and he had noticed too. We were a bit more vigilant on the kids after this, but all was good.
Shortly after this the rest of our party arrived, and we started up the hill toward the Peacock Tearoom. Here we ran into one of the guys my husband plays D&D with currently. We were talking about getting food with a show going on distracted us. The guy’s name is Dexter and he does… dangerous comedy? He does things like juggle chainsaws and knives while standing on a six foot ladder. His last stunt require almost the ENTIRE audience, and fire and safety gear. It involved duct tape, fireworks, and water balloons. He used the duct tape to strap the fireworks to his chest and gave the water balloons to the audience to throw at him afterwards to “put him out”. Don’t ask, just watch the video below.
This is what happens when you don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs.
Afterward we met up with the D&D people we ran into at the Tea room and had a nice afternoon tea. Not much to report after that, but there was a group photo.
Yes, I’m writing about the pollen again. It permeates everything this time of year. Getting things ready for grocery shopping I had opened the car door and then slammed it shut. I got a face full of the fine yellow dust and it caused me to go into a fit of coughing and made my eyes water. ACK!
One of the things I had to do today was take Simon’s recycling to the scrap metal place. I’m always amused when I go there because the demographic of people you see there is so amazingly varied. Also, its almost all immigrant workers there, mostly spanish speaking. For the longest time I really had a problem with people from the Latin/South American culture because they STARE. I found out later on that this is acceptable in their culture, its considered a compliment to stare at attractive women (a certain friend of mine is probably shaking his head at me right now, but its ok, I’ll make up for it later ;) ). I digress though. I LOVE going to the recycling place, its such an ego boost. They stare and try to chat me up, smile, and are otherwise so very helpful.
So , Renaissance Festival is tomorrow. Its a two-for-one weekend, so I’ve organized several people to go with us. I’m taking my camera and possibly even my video camera (if i can find all the attachments). Hopefully I’ll have lost of pictures to share.
The veggies are planted! Hooray! Simon and Felicity both managed to step on everything we planted. Not sure how, but they did. I guess it was exuberance.
I have wireless again! Slowly I’m reclaiming my laptop for what i wanted to use it for. While working for GOOOOOGLE I had installed linux on here. Really, it was too much work. I may work in the computer industry for a living… well that’s not EXACTLY true. I work in the ISP industry. I like dealing with networking and large systems monitoring. When I come home, I just want it to WORK. I get highly annoyed otherwise. I set aside time for studying, I study at work. The rest of the time I have other, more interesting things to do.
Now that my garden is basically done I can start on the potted plants. I need to get the herbs going and plant some more flowers out front. I also need to replace the bird feeder the tree destroyed. It was the one for the woodpeckers and other large birds. I think I will do humming bird feeders again as well.
I am also going to be on a search for patio furniture. And the garage needs to be cleaned out so I can make it a more usable space. A bunch of this is going to be made up into lists of things for the boys to do. Use your males wisely!
Well, that’s all for now, I must get some laundry done and the pot pie in the oven.
I’ve been putting vegetables in the ground. Well, not veggies themselves but plants that spring forth edibles at some point in the future. Hopefully they will grow and we will feast of fresh things.
I got distracted from planting however. My back told me “NO MORE” and when it talks, I pretty much have to listen. So we went out front to water the flowers. WE being myself and Felicity. She spotted a butterfly again. Again, I found myself crawling through leaves, sticks, and braving bugs to get pictures.
The first ones are from this morning, obviously still sluggish from the cool night.
Then after the planting there were flowers and little girls.
There’s a saying here that goes something like “If you have allergies before you move to the south, the pollen here might kill you”. I took a picture, I’m going to attempt more later. This is me writing on my black car.
Its not exactly been a happy couple of weeks as far as objects behaving accordingly. First the hard drive on my laptop dies. Took it out, damn thing rattles. Got a new, it works now, but my wireless card is still not functioning. Then my washing machine breaks and while I thought it was the same thing as last time it wasn’t. Another chunk of money, so its working when the guy leaves. I put my first true load in and it breaks WHILE STILL FULL. I’m just… so… angry.
Then today I was asking myself why it is that anytime I meet people that are cool and that I feel that I have lots in common with they split? Especially the women. I’ve lost Erin, and Mae, and I’ve met some other really cool people and they live so far away. Not only that, its the friends with kids that split on me. So as soon as my kids make a friend, that friend leaves. Now what?
I try to be friendly with my neighbors, but there’s a serious culture clash. We only seem normal superficially.
This heart of mine, it aches for simpler times. A world in which there is time enough to love those that deserve loving, and to take care of all those things that need my attention. I find myself standing, closing my eyes and the wash of emotion tears through me and I want to scream and cry and tell the world that its gone horribly wrong. There’s been too much tragedy and too much pain. Make it go away, make it stop, make me stop feeling.
Why do you tease me Universe? Why? You wave a few crumbs of joy under my nose and then you take so much else away from me.
Life is Suffering
Life is Pain
Life is Struggle
In the end, we all die alone. I only hope that I’ve loved enough that I’ll be remembered in the end.
“Little girls and butterflies need no excuses.” - Robert H. Heinlein
Felicity has just learned to ride her bicycle, without training wheels. This being the case she has been riding her bike as often as possible. She was out front this morning riding around and discovered a butterfly on the neighbors car. I had been talking to Mom and Dad on my cell when she came running up with one wing in her hand, although very carefully. It sort of flew out of her hand and I told her to not touch the wings this time, so she picked it up very carefully and brought it to the mailbox.
I decided I wanted a picture of this butterfly and had her run inside and get my camera. All this while still talking to my Mom. Then I handed the phone over to Felicity and proceeded to take pictures. I was on hands and elbows in the grass trying to get a good picture. Later on I realized this must have been quite a site for the neighbors, this crazy lady in the grass with her ass in the air taking pictures of a butterfly. But really, I don’t care.
(LJ people may need to click the link to my site to see the pictures)
And some bulbs I planted last year came up this year. I thought they had failed completely so this made me very happy.
contemplative
exhausted
excited
energetic
working
embarrassed
blank
annoyed
