Old Fuddy Duddy

I feel like a prisoner in my own home while waiting on a call for an interview I am assured will come. I don't know if they'll leave a message if I am not home to answer or if they'll try my cell phone number. The job hunt is driving me insane.

This week I have been going over to help my daughter of an evening after 5:00 pm when I know the potential employer's office is closed. She's getting her sale items prepared for a Just Between Friends event this weekend. It beats a garage sale or ebay, but she's just like her dear old mom in the procrastination department in that she has waited until the last minute to get it all done. I've been helping her tag and have been amazed at how many of the baby's things never got worn and still have the original tags on them. Most of them were gifts that he grew out of before the season for which they were appropriate came around.

I am glad I was a young mother and therefore a young grandma. I am equally as glad that the responsibility of full time parenting is past. It's wonderful to get to enjoy all the cute stuff and pass him back to his mama when the fuss starts. I tried to get the little one to sleep last night and he wasn't having any of it. He wanted his mom and not a substitute. What a production!

Oldest grandson's football team lost to their arch rival last Saturday. I think my coach son in law took it harder than my grandson. It's only a game, it's only a game.

Here's something with which I am having some difficulty. My 10, soon to be 11, year old grandson has a girlfriend. I know it happens. I was 10 soon to be 11 once, but when I was that age it was still something to be giggled over with friends and teased about by parents and siblings, there was no actual interaction between crushes, except for maybe a hang up phone call, and there sure as heck wouldn't have been any planning to attend the high school homecoming game with all the accoutrement's of a "date" including a homecoming mum, etc. Okay, it's cute, but it's too soon to be encouraged. Sorry, daughter, it's effing ridiculous. There, my opinion will be ignored, but it's out there.

The squirrels are back and tormenting my dog again. Yesterday she broke her leash trying to get hold of one of the little barstids. During the heat of the summer they must have found a more comfortable playground, but now that it's cooled off, they're gathering the nuts from the live oaks and scampering over fence and roof and provoking my dog to froth at the mouth with visions of squirrel tartar.

hay baling fun

How you doin'?

Talked, or tried to talk, to someone (you know who you are) on the phone last night, but there were gremlins in the line and we kept getting cut off. Weird.

Got my hair cut on Tuesday, maybe rather dramatically depending on who you talk to. It's a shortish bob. Daughter says I look like a different person. I hope that's good.

I killed the wasps. I think. I soaked the nests good with spray but there were some stragglers buzzing around afterward. I still need to knock the nests down. I don't enjoy killing things even if they may be a danger. Those nests must have been there all summer long as big as they were and I never knew. But the thought of mowing underneath them after knowing they were there....yikes.

The white morning glories have finally bloomed. They're gorgeous, huge blooms tinged pale, pale blue with darker blue star centers. I think the Heavenly Blue has sent forth only one bloom, but what a gorgeous shade of blue! Unbeknownst to me,.
morning glory must have been planted along the whole fence line of the property at some time in the past, because they have sprung up volunteer everywhere. I can now see why my farmer grandfather thought of morning glories as weeds

My youngest grandson became ill with gastrointestinal problems starting last Thursday. He wasn't getting better so Daughter called his pediatrician yesterday morning and was told to curtail the formula and start him on the B.R.A.T. diet for a day or two and see if his symptoms lessened. Then, last night she heard about a recall for Similac formula, which is the formula he was on. It seems that they found out that one particular manufacturing plant inadvertently added a secret ingredient, chopped up beetle parts. Guess what the side effects for ingesting chopped up beetles are? Did you say GI problems? Guess when Daughter started him on a new can of formula? Yep, last Thursday when the vomiting and diarrhea started. Both of the numbers on the cans of formula in their house, the opened one and a new one, matched the recall numbers! My little grand baby was eating bugs and those bugs made one sick little baby.
Now even though I don't like to think about it, I am sure we all get our share of insect parts in the foods we eat, but it makes me furious that quality control on something that infants and toddlers eat isn't highly stringent. The company found out about the bug problem a week ago according to their own spokesperson and are just now instigating a recall?! Last night my son in law went to Walmart (where the cans of tainted formula had been purchased) to replace the Similac with a different brand. Similac was still on the shelf. Daughter says Baby J is back to being more like himself today. Thank goodness.

All the compliments and interest in my painting really encourages me to keep painting. I would have done so anyway because I love doing it, but it's nice to hear good things. Thank you thank you thank you!

It's getting there

I'm sort of sick of looking at it. I don't like the greenery or some of the flowers.

Insectacidal Tendencies

How have I missed these all summer long? And what do I do about them now that I know they're there? I bought a can of wasp spray but I need a strategy for using it. Do I just point and shoot, then run like hell? Are they going to swarm and chase me or are they going to drop and die? I'm askeered. Look how big those suckers are, especially the one under the awning! Do you think the property management people will do it? Am I crazy for not wanting to kill them? I hate killing things. If I find a spider in the house, 9 times out of 10 I catch him and put him outside, but these guys scare the bejeebus out of me.

Dangling participles be damned

There's much to do but I cannot get motivated today. I hope the insomnia is not back because I didn't sleep worth a flip last night. I came home from a meeting last evening at 9:00 and read until midnight. I turned off the light, reluctantly because the book is a good one, and I don't think I closed my eyes until 3:00 a.m. It was probably caused by the caffeinated soda I drank. Anyway, it feels like I am walking under water.

I am going to complain about yard work again today. Besides the front and back yard, the house I rent comes with an adjoining lot I must take care of. I don't know what I was thinking. I cannot keep up with it. During the 100 degree weather I rejoiced in the fact that the grass in the lot had ceased growing. Then while I was back home in KS it rained. It really is amazing how fast vegetation can grow. It's a nightmare.

Tomorrow is homecoming for oldest grandson's football team. Since my daughter is team mom and her good friend is cheer coach, the chore of making decorations falls to them. We worked on them Wednesday night and we'll work on them today.
Side note to Obi: My team mom daughter is not the hellion you're having to deal with.

I recently started doing something I wish I'd done 3 years ago. I am going to a divorce care support group. If nothing else comes of it, it's nice to know that I am not alone in the feelings and emotions I've felt following my divorce, which is pretty much how I have felt. Alone in it. A good friend told me, and it really is true, people don't know how awful it is unless they've been through it. The news of your divorce is a 9-day wonder to most of your associates. They think, oh gosh, too bad so sad and forget it. It doesn't anger me, I was once one of the people who didn't know how awful it is.

It's been good for my sanity to know that it's normal to be feeling as I do, even this far down the line from the break up. Family and friends have told me to just get over it. I understand their frustration with me, I truly do, because I have been frustrated with me too. I look at the people in the group whose divorces or separations are recent and see their raw pain and know that, by golly, I HAVE made progress.

During this ordeal my whole concept of God has been challenged. I have been so angry at a God I haven't even been sure existed. Someone said something at last night's meeting which struck me. He said something to the effect of, "God did not want any of the bad things to happen to you, but he created us all with free will to choose our paths. He could not intervene when your ex husband chose a different path." I'm still processing that one. It comforts me in my beliefs in God pre-calamity but doesn't quite reconcile itself with recent thoughts regarding God. I don't know.

Another important happening in the furtherance of a healing process is reconnecting with an old friend whose life happenings have corresponded closely with my own. Love ya, K. I appreciate your friendship.

I know some people(my ex) think it's strange that one can develop friendships through the internet. It is more common these days, but when I first started blogging it was still looked upon with suspicion. I have made some good friends through this medium of communication. I've only met a couple of them in "real life" but I think when all you've got to go on is some one's words, sometimes you get to the meat of a situation, or, more importantly, the heart of the person, more quickly than you ever get to know someone whose facade you have yet to break through when you meet them face to face.

One such friend was the person I first knew by the name Barngoddess. Lori lived in rural Oklahoma with her husband, two sons and a myriad of animals including her aged, beloved horse named Scooter. She was one smart cookie. We didn't have a friendship which required constant communication, but I knew if I wrote her an email or a comment on her blog I was going to get a nearly immediate reply, and we'd been planning and waiting for an opportune time for her to visit here. We were going to sit on the patio and drink margaritas and vegetate.

I hadn't written or heard from her in a while so I went to her blog last night to check in. Her last post was dated May 22. I clicked on the comments under that post to find that her sister had been there to let us know she'd passed away unexpectedly on July 18. Scooter had to be put down shortly after her death. It's an odd comfort to know he's with her because she loved that horse so much. I'm going to miss her. She was a beautiful person inside and out. My heart goes out to her husband and boys in their loss.

Rest in peace, Lori. I cherish our friendship.

I Love My Brother's Backyard

I just returned from a trip back home to Kansas. I absolutely love my brother's backyard. I like nice houses but I could live in a shack if I could open my back door and look at this every day. He's spent a lot of time and hard work getting it to look like this, but it was worth it. He told me he comes home from work and goes straight to the patio and stays out there until bed time. I would too.

Note: I have no clue how to upload and space photos on blogger to have a caption directly beneath the photo.

PS I really should figure out how to take the date stamp off, but it's sometimes helpful, especially when taking photos of children, for remembering how old the children were at the time the photo was taken.

ACK! Here I go again.

"God gives us what we need, not always what we want!"

I find people who say things like the above statement really aren't wanting for anything, and probably never have. This is one of numerous headlines on Facebook, you know the ones in you're a FB user. You're supposed to click on them if you "like" them and then they show up on your profile. Some of them are funny and I have been known to "like" those. I suppose if you find statements like the above comforting or inspirational, more power to you. I find them trite and irritating.

I'm really hungry and want a sandwich right now. I hope God thinks I need one.

From my brain's archive

When I was still living in New Mexico this sign showed up right next to the adult video store on (if I remember right) Highway 64 between Farmington and Bloomfield.

It wasn't a coincidence. A local church was responsible for the sign. I think it showed a sense of humor on their part even though it got the point across. Although, considering the ungodly (pun intended)amount of drunk driving offenses in the state, usually multiple offenses per offender, their money might have been better spent targeting (judging?) a worthier cause.

Pic borrowed from here.