MARCHING MONDAY

[lucylee]

* whew * I'm BACK!!! -- for the time being, anyway!
My computer is not long for this world, but we're back in business for the moment.

Happy birthday to the twins!

[DeeClutter]

SKIPPABLE: Oh yes, Harmony, gd was in 'rare' form. She 'marched' in here with a friend. WE had dgs7 under our wing and she was trying all manipulations to get him to go with her. The mouth was going. I went to town and I guess dd AND dh both let her have it! Did it do any good? Probably not. Only 6 days and she goes to camp -if DD can last that long. DDIL was trying to put some space between her (gd) and dgs7 so she came looking for him. A good "Monday" word for her would be 'MANIPULATION'. Unfortunately all her playmates end up younger than her so she can boss them.

DH got his first disability check today. Not great but better than a stone. Going to suggest we put it away for our rent here. We're up to nearly $1,900/6months. Plus electric ($.16/kwh) and septic ($.14/gal) so every drop of water counts. Of course with the 2 cold ends of the year quite a bit is spent on propane for the furnace.

DD has gone to exchange her propane tank so she can use it for her grill. Gave her our older small grill, but the propane has the old connector on it. She found out propane company will pro-rate what she has in her tank.

DS-R & DDil have left with dgs 7 to do some work at their house and then go to his soccer game

[DeeClutter]

Anyone have some good potluck vegetable recipes?

[ellyphant]

Lucylee--You've been missed!

I thought of MamaP the other day. I was following along here when she moved to Utah to her son's house and remember how much she put into playing music at her church.

I vacuumed. It pays to clean under the couch. I am 8 cents richer!

Removed an old birds nest from garage. We have sealed the doors so that won't happen again. Pulled some beautiful weeds. Who decides which plants are weeds, anyway?

[Sadie]

Hello Dear Ladies,

It Hot here, but not as bad as before and not like Harriet's corner of the world. I think it is somewhere in the upper 90's which actually feels cooler than the 100+ temps.

Dealing with Monday house here. Got the dishwasher going non-stop today. Washer is going too. Today's priority is laundry.

Trip is 24 days away!

Happy Birthday to the Twins!

Twin's Mom, there are some people like your DH that get so upset when people re-sell items for a price that they were given or for a higher price than what they gave the original seller. Dson-22 was buying items from people and selling them to another group of people. The original seller was happy with what Dson gave them until they found out that Dson had sold the items for more and made a profit. Then the person is angry and wants more money. There was a good story from Rabbi Lapin about a peddler who did this and everyone was happy.
Back to the laundry pile for me.

[Twins' Mom]

Ya know, I'm kicking myself for just packing up a great big box of photos. Life would be easier down the road if I did some purging but I don't want to make those decisions. If I've already scrapbooked an event, is it okay to destroy the remaining photos that I didn't use? What about MIL's photos of SIL's children, who are grown - I should pack those up and send them to SIL's kids but that takes more energy. How did I let myself accumulated all this stuff?

Taking ibuprofen for my back and heading back upstairs.

[OKay]

Dee - I'm thinking about trying this low carb version of loaded "potatoes". It has several good reviews.

I used to listen to Rabbi Lapin on TV all the time. Since we gave up satellite TV I stopped listening to him. Hum......wonder if I can find him in podcast??

Another non-kiddo friendly task done while LO is gone. I mowed the yard outside of the fences and also mowed inside the pasture fence (about 30' width) to make mini fire break. We have 91 head of cattle, 3 horses and 1 donkey eating the front pasture down by the house, but the grass is still too high and getting dried out. Fire danger is rising daily.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Twins I look around at my life and all the blessings I have, including the blessing of excess which feels like a curse sometimes. Then I look at hard working people who are, simply put, not as blessed as I am, not because they aren't as good a person as I am but for some reason beyond understanding (bad luck? being part of a 7 x 7 generation cursed?) When I can give a hand up to anyone like that, I count it as another blessing. So I would have been thrilled to be 'blessed' by my cleaning lady taking all that stuff off my hands. If nothing else, would it not count as a mitzvah?

Whenever I pay anyone for a job I could do myself, I remember that I'm blessed with the money to do so, and so should be happy to create employment opportunities for someone else, rather than miserly and hold onto my dollars and do work myself. We have snow tires on rims so to swap them is as simple as changing a tire and could be done in 90 minutes, spring and fall, but we choose to pay a local garage to do the work, not the least because they provide jobs for high school kids who are thinking of becoming a mechanic. That's the way economies are supposed to work.

I'd still pay to have my house cleaned but we were away so much, I couldn't claim a regular slot from a cleaning lady without costing her money.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Busy morning, getting a mini-load of laundry done (to last us until we get home) and then getting dd and dsil off to the airport. I cried hard after leaving her because I don't know when I'll see her again.

She isn't pregnant at this moment and realized she can't be pregnant because of the school program she signed up for. It would require her putting her own baby in day care in order to do her placement for the course. She honestly hadn't figured that out for herself and was a bit tiffed with me because I said I knew she wasn't pregnant because I knew she wouldn't take the course if she was. She won't give up the course or stop it even if she has a hard time with the placement (if she gets pregnant when she restarts trying, she'll be 8 months pregnant when finishing the placement.) She is so messed up with this now she is acting irrationally. I really can't say anything because I can't talk with her regularly so each word I say has more weight and staying power than casual conversation and working things through would.

She's actually wondering if I'll provide daycare for the (non-existent) baby during placement if she's living in Ottawa at the time and hinted that she thought I was too busy because we have all these other other plans. Dh assured her that if there is a baby in Ottawa, I'll be anchored there!

After dropping at the airport, we headed out to a naturist beach for dh. I had my light lunch (salad, cheese & crackers) while on the beach in the hot sun and then went rock scrambling which was cooler because I was not down in the cove. I had my heart rate monitor on and my HR is as high scrambling as it is when I'm walking fast so the fact that I'm using much more of my body to scramble must come into play because I'm not going fast at all over the rock. I also wondered if fear of falling played into the increased HR. At one point I was doing actual climbing (using cracks as hand-holds and pulling myself up) because a more experienced climber came along a path and I ended following her up onto a set of rocks (I had just abandoned getting up there on my own when she came out from the path. I said "good, the path will give me a way back since I can't get over these rocks." and she told me to follow her and talked me through hand and foot placement.)

As well, it was a 3/4 mile hike in from the parking lot so I got another 30 minutes of hiking in.

I was to meet dh on the path at the end of the beach (I was coming up over some rocks to the path so I didn't have to go through the sand again and empty my sandals) but got chatting with someone when I finally scaled my way back up to the top. So dh thought he'd missed me and ended up at the car 20 minutes ahead of me. I was worried he'd be worried but there was no cell service along the path until I was almost back to the parking lot. There was a thunder storm in the distance and I wanted him to know I was on my way. I called him as soon as I could so he'd stop worrying. He was actually worried that I'd be mad at him for not waiting so was glad I called. He had called me but I had no service so didn't get the call.

The storm hit as we arrived back into the city and did a good job cleaning off the bug smears from the windshield. The rain stopped by the time we got back to the hotel, which is good since I had to get out of the car to swipe us into the garage. We finished cleaning the windshield and wiping the worst of the dust off the car so it is clean enough for the drive tomorrow.

Now it is time to head to my uncle's and take him out for dinner. Roast chicken tonight so my diet is going well today. I've had tons of salad and veggies so far today as I work on eating up the food in the mini-fridge. Our hotel tomorrow night doesn't have a fridge.

[Twins' Mom]

Kathryn, thank you - She is pleased to have the stuff she can sell at the yard sale here in August and I am blessed not to have to store it, carry it off or call someone to pick it up. I do consider it a mitzvah; I don't get dh sometimes but am remembering that I have a stake in decision making and I chose to do this.