It Has Been Awhile

Tell me where time goes. Like the old Timex commercial ~ it keeps on ticking, no matter what. I didn't realize that it has been a week since I posted last until I checked just now. Busy? Yes, at least some days were busy. Tired? A definite YES on that one! I have basically been either busy or too tired for my brain to think about writing much of anything. The lack of posts both here and in my groups are proof of that. Even now I am having a hard time getting motivated to motate. I sit here looking out my window and watching a small rabbit feeding on the neighbor's lawn, and about 5 robins searching for their mid-morning feasts, as well as one blackbird. And now, so quickly, the birds have left and the rabbit went scurrying further to the east and onto the next neighbor's yard. Come back, my feathered and furry friends! I love watching you!

I have been thinking about posting here on several occasions. Honestly I have. I have something I was going to work on for Faith Friday -- this past Friday. But was unable to get to it. It will be coming yet, and hopefully in time for this Friday. Today, what I am writing is unplanned. I am just writing whatever comes to my mind.

A little bit about the past week. Last Thursday I drove to a town 35 miles away to meet some of my high school girlfriends for lunch. We just started doing this since the first of this year, after celebrating our 50th class reunion last summer, and we try to get together once every two months. All the gals that live within driving distance try to come. This time there were four of us. Another had planned to come but she was not feeling well, and another had to cancel at the last minute as her son and family decided to come early for the weekend. These are such fun as we each remember different things that happened during our school years and it is really hard to break away to get back to our 'other life' of today.

Once I was home again, I knew that I could not delay mowing my yard, so changed clothes and started. Naturally this day got a bit warm and the humidity had really come up, so it was hard for me to push that mower, but there was just no getting out of it. I did manage to get half of it done, and decided the rest would just have to wait until tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning came. I had a few things to do inside before I headed out to finish mowing. I was just about ready to get my mowing shoes on when a lady from church drove in. My thought was, "My house is such a mess! I don't need company right now." But she just stopped to drop off a bag of rhubarb for me. We had just talked about that in church that Sunday, and she had gone out to get some for herself, and cut more just for me. I thank God for the little gifts He brings me! I have since made a rhubarb crumble dessert and still have plenty left for other goodies, which I will have to make very soon. This friend had not shut off her car when she stopped so I knew she was not planning to come in (another gift since my house was such a mess from being gone, etc).

I was finally able to get out and start mowing just before 11 am. It took me almost an hour to get the last of the yard done. I had a piece about 4x5' left and I ran out of gas. Literally. My body was also out of gas and I wanted to go sit and be done, but the mower also started to sputter. A good thing that I was fairly close to the garage and the gas can so didn't have to walk too far to get it. And then I was done! Hallelujah! Now can you guess? I looked at the lawn yesterday morning and thought, "That grass needs to be mowed already!" Monday. Just 3 days since I mowed it. How can that be?? Well, we have had lots of rain in the last while and that grass is now making up time for being so dry earlier this spring. I am holding off on mowing though. I refuse! I am going to make it wait until tomorrow.

So, all that mowing two days in a row took its toll on my body and I needed at least a couple of days to recoup. That also means I did not do much cleaning either. I did manage to get that rhubarb crumble made and a bunch of dishes washed, but all the carpeting needs to have a really good vacuuming. I am beginning to see wads of cat hair showing up all over. I guess Felix is shedding his winter coat. I also believe he is losing more hair than usual for spring and I think it may be the cheaper cat food I had been feeding him. So recently I got a bag of a little higher quality and hope that helps in the future. But for now, I really must get to vacuuming.

Another reason for my being so tired are a couple of very short nights. We have had a few nights when severe thunderstorms were predicted to happen in the middle of the night. And they did roll through, though most of the worst storms went around us. We did still get some rain and a little wind, but no twisters or hail here in town. Saturday night was one of those nights. I woke up shortly before 2 am for a bathroom call, and all was quiet. No storms had been through here yet. So thought I would turn on the tv and see what was on radar, and found out the weather service had just issued a severe thunderstorm warning for right here! The front line was approacing a main highway that is just 2 miles west of town so it was as good as here. Well, no going back to bed now! They were talking 60 mph winds, heavy rain and 1/2 dollar size hail! It turned out not to bad quite that bad, and no hail again in town. Not sure if there was any reported outside of town either. No wind damage that I know of either, but some heavy rain for a brief period. By then, though, I was so wide awake and ended up watching last week's shows that I had taped until 7:30! Then I was finally sleepy enough that I thought I might be able to sleep for awhile, and went to bed. And I slept until almost 9, which is the time I normally leave for church. Needless to say I didn't even try to make it there. I was afraid if I did I might fall asleep during the service, and that would not be a good thing! I don't like to miss the services but in this case it just seemed best.

Yesterday, when I finally was able to sit down at the computer I discovered I had no internet service. Now what is wrong? Computer was working fine, but could not connect to the internet. So I couldn't read my email, post anything to my blog, do my daily puzzles on the internet, or any of the other things I normally check daily. The next thing is to call the company. No phone service either! I checked all the connections and they all looked fine. They all worked just before I went to bed the night before, and we had no storms during the night, nor was anything touched or changed. This is when having a cell phone really comes in handy. I asked the girl at the company if they had any other calls from town about a phone outage, and she said I was the only one. Talked to the techie and he could see I was offline but couldn't fix it, so had to write up a repair order and said someone would be out later. I never did see the repair truck come around so they must have been able to fix it at another location. I called them at 10:30 and it was finally back on between 2 pm and 3:30 pm, as that is when I noticed it was working again. I am so glad it was fixed again as that evening a long time friend called, who I had not talked to in  several months. We had a nice long chat of about 75 minutes, catching up with each other and each of our kids and grandkids, and our common friends.

I think I have procrastinated with that vacuuming long enough. The morning will soon be gone and I have yet to get dressed. So no more delays. I am off! I may not be running, since I can't do that anymore, but I can get moving. Until next time. . . . .