Raining furiously off and on today. Good day for sleeping in and then staying home and doing housework. I got up, started the coffee, straightened the living room, turned on the computer…finished the first cup of coffee and walked into the kitchen for another, when I noticed a veritable bloodbath on the floor around the food bowl. I mean big dime sized droplets of blood, and then blood spatter in several places around the hardwood floors. Blood on the carpet, blood on the sofa cover. Blood on the throw pillows. My god…it looked like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre!
Neither of the white dogs had any signs of crimson, so moving on to the black lab, I find she has a tiny little tear at the tip of her ear. Teeny tiny little tear. Right on the vein, apparently. Sheesh. I cleaned it up and put some neosporin on it. Then I had to mop all the floors. Take the cover off the sofa and put it in the laundry. Wash the dog food bowl, becasue she has dripped and wiped blood all over the top edges of it. I guess tomorrow I will shampoo the carpet and see if I can get the blood out of it. It’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow too though…maybe I’ll just take some hydrogen peroxide to the bloodstains themselves, and wait a bit on the shampooing…. there’s never a dull moment at Annie’s Ark. lol
I rearranged some furniture this morning and gave the living space a little bit of a different look. Not sure if I like it or not, but I’ll give it a day or two.
Tonight was our little womens meeting. Good stuff.
There are flash flood warnings everywhere around these parts. Even worse now, because there’s been so much rain this month and the ground is saturated and the water has nowhere to go. Creeks are swollen, roads are flooded. Crops are still in the fields that should probably have been out by now. Warmer though-still 63 degrees at 11 o’clock at night.
I have just about decided to do NaNoWriMo again this year. I really should….I just have so little discipline. Maybe this is how I could learn some though. Last year I started, but my computer blew up and I didn’t have the money to get it fixed. maybe this year I could even finish it. Hey—-it could happen…
Detour Road in all it’s autumnal glory…looks like the long road home, doesn’t it?
Tomorrow we will go to a friends house who does a big driveway Halloween event every year. She’s invited us for chili and goodies. The city she lives in has their Halloween parade on the 31st, so all trick or Treating is done on the 30th. It will be fun.
I seem to have lost my cursor on the page….how weird. I cannot see where I’m typing until
the words begin to appear.
Uh-oh…this looks like trouble….better figure some things out…..
Namaste.
This is a photo I took this afternoon in the back yard. The colors are muted, due to the heavy rains of the past few days, but still rich. I walked around taking pictures for about 20 minutes. I like photographing my environment. It connects my past and present to my future. I keep wanting to do more, but never do. It’s an old story. My little digital camera is okay for snapping shots , but I’d like a 35 mm digital. With lenses. And mega-ZOOM. lol I’m actually quite a passable photographer…
It was grey and/or rainy all day. I spent most of the day in town, meeting with various and sundry sponslings and fielding phone calls. Went to a noon meeting and then to a pleasant lunch at my favorite Chinese place with 2 very nice women. Sat around a bit with one of the women when it was over and went over some first step questions and readings. Came home, took some pictures and was off to pick himself up from work. Tired, and grateful that tomorrow I am staying home all day. Nesting. Regrouping. I will be chairing the womens meeting in the evening, but the rest of the day will be all mine.
On 3 separate occasions today, I got to look in depth at step 1. What a blessing that is for me. To be able to offer perspectives that were unknown, to offer ideas for changing attitudes and negative emotions, to be able to offer that precious commodity Hope. To get to reminisce about what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now. To remember how full of fer I was in those early days, and to know that there is a way through all this stuff that scares us so much. To know and be able to promise, that we can get better.
I remember seeing a Tshirt years ago, from an NA convention, and on the back it said…”The lie is dead…we DO recover!!!!!” Somedays I want to shout it from the rooftops. We do!!! We CAN !!!
LOL
I think I’ll roast a chicken tomorrow. I have a couple of gorgeous huge birds in the freezer that I can use (only one, of course!) and will either rotisserie roast them, or drag out my big roaster. I really like the little tabletop rotisserie my sister-in-law gave me…I use it often. Now that I think about it, I have 2 Cornish game hens in the freezer that are older than the roasting hens, maybe I should use those. I keep those bad boys on hand as they make a delightfully elegant dinner for guests at a delightfully low price. I have been thinking about raising them, but I don’t know if I can butcher them…I am such a MARK….sigh….I really need to pull up my big girl panties and learn how to do that. Raising and freezing my own poultry would be a very good idea, both from a flavor and a financial perspective. I’m still thinking about it..
Okay…I’m outta here. Happy days all…
Namaste.
Another rainy and cold day…47 degrees at 10 AM. I have been out already this morning, buying dog food at the Rural King (sale!!) and then to a local market celebrating their anniversary and having a grand sale on pork roasts and country ribs and pork steaks So I bought about forty dollars worth to stock the freezer…and put one of the pork roasts in the crock pot to cook while I am out meeting with a newcomer later this morning. The roast is simmering away with lots of onion and bay leaf, garlic and carrots and the fingerling potatoes will go in right before I leave, so they cook just right. They’re in the sink soaking off the dirt right now. lol
Haven’t been blogging or reading. I miss it, but have been either busy or disinterested in things- not sure which. Seems like lots has been going on, so it must be the busy part. lol
This past weekend we attended a reunion/public information event at a town on the Illinois River called Kampsville. It is one of those small towns that eternally pop up on rivers …nondescript, houses along the main drag, several churches and a bar or two. The main difference with this particular town lies in one building on Main Street that used to be a storefront and now houses the Museum of Archeology, the Center for Advancement of Archeology (CAA). We found it curious the first time we visited this little town that sits in the middle of the county known for its peach and apple orchards that there would be a museum like this here in the middle of nowhere. Further investigation revealed some startling facts: this area of the lower Illinois River Basin is one of the richest artifact sites in the nation. There are something like 4000 sites that have been mapped (not all excavated yet though). The largest of which was the reason for the reunion of archeologists…all come together 40 years after they participated in one of the largest oldest finds in North America. It’s called the Koster Site…named for the family farm it was found on back in 1969. Apparently the crek that ran through this farm was constantly turning up arrowheads and pottery shards, but no one thought there was anything out of the ordinary (for that area) to investigate. Finally after begging a guy named Streuver to come do a core sample at least, he relented. This site made him famous. The dug down 30 feet and discovered at least 14 Horizons…dating back almost 10,000 years. They found the oldest known skeletons of dogs ever found in North America, as well as the first signs of ritualized burial of dogs. They found human remains and everything under the sun. It was quite remarkable and people from all over the world came by the thousands to visit this site between 1969-1974. The burial mounds at Cahokia are only about a thousand years old, and til this time, had been one of the more remarkable finds. Since then , in this area, they have uncovered a mammoth about 35 miles from this site. Lots of interesting facts I am learning about this area I grew up in !!
Today I am regaining a sense of place….and trying to reinhabit the world I live in. Next week is the final class of the Deep Ecology series and we’ll have a potluck per usual. Autumn is here and winter is around the corner.
Life is full, and I am especially blessed to be part of the whole thing….
Namaste.
Today is the 37th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. Such a simple and vital necessity…clean water. What kind of world is there that they have to enact legislation to make it so?
I have been on the phone already this morning with 2 women…one long time sober and one new. Not much different, really. Women still have trials and tribulations, we still wake up and have a feeling and ride it all the way to the rodeo. Forgetting that we have choices about how to feel and act, forgetting to not believe everything we think. I only know this because I have the same malady from time to time. But today, I scuffled through the beautiful falling leaves of orange and gold and red over to feed the neighbors dogs, and they greeted me with such loving enthusiasm that I didn’t have a chance to feel bad. It was a frosty cold morning here, but the mercury is rising and it’s 44 already. It is supposed to hit the mid-60’s tomorrow. The sun is shining fiercely and the birds are busy trying to find the last of the bugs and worms. We have been warned: the cold weather is coming. The fuzzy fat caterpillars are lolling around, the mice are building nests for the winter. Out in my studio, in a drawer I opened last evening, I found a perfect little nest in the process of being built. They are fastidious about the building and not so much once they move in…but that’s the nature of the rodents.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my life lately. Is it the lot of the middle-aged to consider so many things in retrospect? I live in the past a lot..I never think this is true, but it is. Daydreaming and remembering. (I have a fair amount of time on my hands). In the studio, I have covered the walls with things that I have collected over the years, photographs of family and friends and places I have known. I think that triggers some of this too. A reverie, sometimes melancholy but mostly just interested in my perspective on it all. It is certainly the luxury of the old to gain insight on things long past….
I will leave you with this…by Albert Camus
“Poverty was not a calamity for me. It was always balanced by the richness of light…circumstances helped me. To correct a natural indifference I was placed halfway between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.”
Namaste.
It’s another one of THOSE mornings suddenly. Awake relatively early, all was well until I got online and looked at some of the pictures on my sisters FB page. lol….all that FL sunshine, in their boat on the gulf, all her family…smiling happy wealthy….and I was seized by a grab of jealousy and fear and godknowswhatelse. This morning it’s 43 degrees, it’s raining, it’s grey and gloomy….AGAIN. I feel like a whiner. I feel depressed. I feel like everything is shit.
I really try not to write blogs like this. I hate wallowing in self pity as much as anything. I hate looking at my life through someone else’s bank account and I hate feeling like a major fuckup. And somehow, in the course of a few short moments, this is exactly how I am feeling….
Maybe it’s because I had to write the (late) property tax payment that is going to cause me to have to live on even less of a shoestring than I already do for the next month. And the month after that. Maybe it’s because hubby is heading north without me this weekend, and I haven’t been out of this godforsaken town for over a year. Maybe it’s because I need to be on medication. lol
I need Maureen to be alive to tell me that “Feelings ain’t facts, baby”. Something I tell my sponslings all the time. I need to go to a meeting where someone can say…This too shall pass. I need to get out of myself and into some service I have planned for today…starting with a good hot shower.
So–here i goes….
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: inquiring minds, relocation, witness protection
I am considering putting this blog to bed. As much as I love wordpress blogs, I am having a hard time keeping up with 2 and this one gets almost no traffic or comments.
I haven’t completely decided yet…but the thought is there.
My other blog, http://www.elegantblessings.blogspot.com/ is easier to write and my only complaint is the way all blogspot photos have to go at the top of the post and you cannot pepper them through, like you can here at wordpress. That annoys me, because I want what I want the way I want it. lol
Whaddaya think?? Stay or go???
Inquiring minds want to know…
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: All Creatures Great and Small, Blood feathers, Omelets
I slept in today…
– didn’t hit the sheets until almost 4 Am and then slept until 10:30. I have missed a chunk of the day, but made up for it by watching the almost full moon in the early sky. I’m not sure why I wasn’t sleepy. It always feels strange to mess up the normal sleep pattern. It’s noon now and I am hungry and thinking what to eat. I have eggs and cheese and odds and ends…so maybe an omelet is in order, with a thick slice of toasted homemade bread. That might be just the ticket.
My AWOL big grey cat has come home. The small grey one is still out and about. I thought surely she would come home in the storms this morning, but I don’t see her yet. Of course, she could be in the garage. Rainy days like this cause kittens to sleep alot and dogs to meander in and out, staying in long enough to dry themselves nicely on my furniture before going out to get drenched again. I have some lilac and lavender candles burning, and some incense too, to try to offset the temporary wet dog smell. Tuesdays are my stay at home day and I rarely go anywhere. Last nights class (Deep Ecology) was a good discussion about Native American Wisdom and the relationship and practices that they incorporate in their philosophies. There were articles by Winona Laduke, Sun Bear and Hyemeyohsts Storm. Interestingly enough, I have the latters book, Seven Arrows , on my bookshelf for about 20 years now. It was a great discussion and curious to hear whjat the others had to say about what they read. Our little group this time consists of : a classical ballet teacher, a nun, a prison psychologist, a science teacher, a graphics web designer, and husbandman and myself and a retired teacher who works for the Catholic Oblate Initiative. So we have some pretty diverse discussions, as you can imagine.
The rain is soaking the straw mulch the water department guys put down yesterday. They must watch the weather predictions closely, as they have an uncanny knack for doing the right stuff at the right time. They made a bit of mess with that mulcher/blower…lol. And the dogs were covered with tiny bits of straw too. The dogs have pretty much stopped getting excited about these guys coming into the yard.
Yesterday we had an incident with Birdboy getting out of his cage while I was cleaning it. He headed straight for the front door and I was flying over to close it. He stopped and landed on the floor, where one of the kittens pinned him and pulled out some feathers. It was a little scary for a minute, but I got him out from under the cat and back into his cage. I think he lost a blood feather or two, as there was blood on my hand where I was holding him, but nothing dripping or anything. And checking him out, I couldn’t see anything…no blood on the perches or in the cage when I checked on him a little later. His little heart was pounding though, and I was worried. Today he is fine and back in rare form…whistle calling the dogs and jabbering at the cats. Sigh…there is never a dull moment at Annie’s Ark….
Alright. My rumbling tummy is calling out for food. Miss Molly McGee is calling out for attention. I’d best be getting off this machine and into the kitchen.
Life is good…if you don’t weaken. lol
Namaste.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Minneapolis, One Day At Time, Silence of the bunnies
Awakened by the sounds of a dog keening as though it had lost its mate…I jumped from bed and grabbed my eyeglasses and ran outside, afraid of what I would find. The last time I heard that sound, it was Molly standing over the body of our little cat Augie, who had been killed by a speeding car at the end of our driveway. In the backyard I found the pup Caylee, in the wet grass, with a baby rabbit between her paws. It was the bunny screaming, not the dog. The dog was amazed by the giant sounds coming out of the little thing, I think. She sat staring at it with her head cocked to one side. It wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t eating it or anything, just watching it and not letting it go. I gently took it from her and set it free. It bounded off into the woods and she looked at me like I’d betrayed her. The she followed me into the kitchen for a cookie.
I made a pot of coffee, sent husbandman off to a meeting and shooed all animals except for my bird out the door. It’s chilly , in the mid 40’s again, but it’s clear and sunny and that makes all the difference. It isn’t the cold weather I mind so much as the overcast dreary bleakness that so often accompanies it.
I’m noticing that I haven’t even turned my calendar to October yet. My desk calendar is also in need of updating. I bought one of those generic ones where you fill in all the dates for about 3 bucks and it has served me well. At least, when my desk is cleared off enough to be able to see it. lol Today is probably the day to clear it off again.
Having a moment of feeling sorry for myself this morning. in less than 2 weeks my friend will be back from the islands and I have to give back her car. Then I will be stranded again. Sigh…it has been really nice having a second car again. Not that I even go anywhere every day, but I can if I want. I had forgotten what it was like to be without wheels of my own until this last year and a half. That means that for over 38 years I have always had a car at my disposal. Wow. No wonder. I know lots of people who have not had cars all their lives and they get along just fine. It’s a little harder, living way out here in the country, but maybe it’s easier in some ways too.
I am in the middle of one of the famous (or not) cash crunches again…property taxes due and husbands parents having a 25th anniversary that he really needs to go to…I will stay home, but that still means lodging and travel expenses and time off work for him. It will put us in a bind (already are) but I don’t see how it can be avoided. He really needs to go, it’s a 10 hour trip up to near Minneapolis. I will be pet sitting that week, so I will earn a little money on the side to help offset his absence from work. I am getting better at not falling into absolute despair in these times, but I don’t like it and still struggle in the throes of it all.
At any rate, that is a few weeks away, and I will try to live in today, and enjoy the sunshine and do what I can to make life a balanced and happy event for myself and those around me. Starting with a second cup of coffee.
God is in the details.
Namaste.
A cold wintry feeling day….54 degrees today and grey. I have sweats on and big socks. Many of the critters are sleeping around the house in various places.You can always tell the change of the seasons around here by the number of animals in the house at any given time.
Husband man is out at a hike at the Pere Marquette park…some sort of guided hike, I think. I am home awaiting the arrival of a friend who’s been MIA for a year or two. It will be good to catch up. I’ve been dusting and cleaning a little, doing some laundry and cooking. I made barbeque sauce (I was out, and the Young Prince kept at me the whole time I was here, since he finished the last bottle, lol) and I have some thick country pork ribs from the local butcher simmering away for supper. By the time we eat them, they will be so tender they fall apart. Just the way I like them.
I’m thinking how funny it is that I assume everyone in my world likes the things I like the way I like them. It never occurs to me that anyone else won’t like the food I cook. LMAO!!!
I stayed in last night and will do the same tonight…no reason to go out of my warm house into the chill. I have just finished reading a book by Anita Shreve called Light on Snow…a very easy read and good book. Had me in tears in a couple of places…I am also reading a collection of animal stories by women called Through Others Eyes….it is wonderful, a gift from my dear friend Joni.
I am waiting for a visit and will probably spend a good chunk of the daylight hours with her… she is the wife of my cousin. It will be good, and I am grateful for the chance to have a visitor. Thought I would take this chance to blog a little…I think I hear the car now.
Blessed Be.
Rainy here this morning…and 53 degrees. Tonight is the chili potluck at our speaker meeting so my house is full of the aromas of cumin and onion and garlic..it’s a comforting smell in the coolness. Today I am in the process of making the white chili. The beans are simmering away and the ground turkey and onions and garlic are all browned and waiting.
One of the women just called (one of mine) and said–I have CHICKENPOX!!!!!!!!! Crikey. I was just with her on Sunday at the picnic.. She started getting sick Tuesday …hope it stays away from me. I remember living in Arcata and an epidemic of chicken pox went screaming through the college. It can be rather dangerous for adults…
Most of my babies are in the house napping. Junko the fearless has been on the lam for about 4 days, and finally showed up this morning. She hates the kittens and prefers these days staying out somewhere, in her own private hideyhole. She ate, glared and went back out. The nights have been very cool and I was concerned. I guess if she gets cold enough, she’ll come in. I always feel like she’s punishing me. lol
I wanted to wish Mary happy birthday again…because I love you.
It’s starting to thunder a lot, so I guess I should unplug the computer for a while. I may come back to this…and then again, I may not. lol Time will tell.
Namaste.
