Day Two of the Seventh Month. Smack in the middle of summer. Hot, humid, and strangely enough I already have the urge to delve into the fall/Halloween stuff. ::P
I can't wait for the Fourth. ::D I love fireworks! Can't get to any of the big events, but we've got our own stash just waiting to be used. Just need it to stay dry long enough so the ground isn't a party pooper. Hopefully I'll be able to get some decent pics of them too, though I'm usually the one lighting and running, so we'll see.
There will be food. ::) I've been adding to my Fourth of July pin boards for a couple weeks now and while a lot of great ideas are just not what I'm prepared to dive into yet (like most of my pin boards) I have more then enough recipes to attempt in another adventure for my mediocre cooking skills.
I really do need to treat any holiday or theme like it has a huge run up time like Christmas or Halloween. Choosing just a few recipes to try is like trying to buy just a few strands of beads - damn near impossible! So often I wind up pulling a Griswold. You know, high unreasonable expectations leading to inevitably falling short. It only gets worse when I leave it till the last three or four days and try to cram it all in in a marathon cooking fest. Little more pressure, little less fun once the kitchen is hot enough to bake outside the oven.
Not to mention that it means any posts about it all are late, since I'm too busy cramcooking to actually post. ::P
For now, though, I thought I'd do a kind of massive round up of all the little random things I had jotted down over time to include in a post while I was off...er, not posting, so I can organize the bigger ideas without all the clutter. Sooner or later I'll get this thing rolling in an organized fashion, and then we'll have some real fun. ::P I'll prove that there actually is more to my life and activities then chickens!
~*~
It's been a week since my self induced misery, and thankfully it's been uneventful. No relapses, which often happen after a bad attack, and only one real day of queasy all-food-is-evil fall out afterward, so all in all I'm back to normal. Cutting back on the portions hasn't given me as much trouble as it usually does, even when confronted with lemon linguine - one of my favorite recipes, SO GOOD! Pats on the back for that is kinda like getting a participation award, though. It's still only the absolute minimum I need to do.
Without getting as much exercise as I used to, just from working and getting from here to there, I need to cut back kinda drastically on carbs and such so my sugar actually goes down where it needs to be. Which is where the hard part really comes in. Cutting the carbs is so hard! ::/ I love carbs, carbs are awesome.
I'm working on the exercise though. No gym access, and we don't live on a road where it's safe to go running or walking, but I do have a Wii Fit. Just need to replace the balance board that was one of the many things lost/left behind in our last move. Not the most sophisticated exercise plan, but it's something. Even the most basic exercise builds up eventually. I don't have the space for storing much equipment, so it'll work.
It's also surprisingly difficult to remember to drink water. I dislike water just by itself, but I can drink it if I'm hot enough, or if it has flavoring like sugar free Kool Aid, tea, fruit infusions, something. I just don't think to drink steadily, then I get monstrously thirsty and gulp down a couple jars at a time. I'm pretty sure various levels of mild dehydration is part of my problem.
And of course the food diary. I've been noting down what and how much I've been eating, but I still have to write it up in a useful fashion. Kind of the import part that I haven't done yet. ::P
Gardening and chickenry have pretty much taken over all our lives. Pretty much everything has taken a back seat. I'll admit that procrastination plays its part, what with the weather switching into full on steam broil and triggering that 'Guh! Too hot and muggy, don't want to do anything!' reaction far too often. But really, watering three times daily, harvesting, planting, weeding, battling bugs, and all the chicken stuff. It's no wonder people back in the day needed large families to keep the farm running smoothly.
I didn't get around to doing anything for St. Patrick's Day or Easter. Had ideas, but didn't get rolling soon enough and then lost motivation, so I let it go.
I desperately need to get back up to speed with the crafting. I've got stuff to list for Etsy, I need to make some new displays, and there are lots of things I should at least be poking at experimentally. I need to give my creativity work outs too.
~*~
Are you ever amused by your pets personal routines? I am. ::) It's funny how I'll go from hardly seeing Dusty for weeks, to her practically being attached to me all the time. I'm pretty sure she's driven just by the weather/temperature.
In our old house I had a bunk style bed/couch set up, and during the summer she'd always lay on the top bunk, while I usually just slept on the couch in front of the computer. Irritatingly, it turned out that the top bunk made me nervous. Then during the winter she'd spend most of her time either laying on top of me (hips and ribs were her favorite) or under my heater blanket. Or both if she could manage it. ::P
Here she seems to be equally attuned to the temperature, but also maybe boredom. When it was cold she got me into participating quickly. Every morning when I got up I'd separate my blankets so the heater one was exposed, and she'd come over and lay up against my leg and snuggle while I was on the computer. She wouldn't jump up unless I pulled back the top blanket. Once summer hit and we began turning the air conditioners on more regularly, she started spending most of her time in TMUs bedroom or closet. Hers is a smaller room, so the A/C cools it down better then mine, which has three rooms and a hallway to deal with. Then this last couple of weeks she's been hanging out with me again, even though my room isn't any cooler then it has been. She's talking a lot more too. ::) She's always been a talker, I've always loved that about her, but lately she seems to either want something, or just want to chat.
I wish I spoke Cat so I could figure out what she wants. Being Dr. Doolittle would be nifty. Maybe she's bored. She won't play with her toys - admittedly the catnip is old - but she keeps going to the food whenever she gets up from laying on me or the bed. I need to get her some new stuff at some point.
Speaking of cat routine quirks, below are pictures of what was Dustys favorite box.
(Pretend there are cute cat pictures here. They actually will be here when the site lets me add them)
It was one that was going to be used for our Etsy shipments, but she decided it was better suited to her then some stranger online. ::P She spent weeks snuggled in that thing, then all of a sudden abandoned it. Before that it was her plush cat bed in my closet beneath my clothes. I wonder where she's going to end up next?
~*~
I remember thinking last spring: "I keep forgetting how much I like being outside." It's a silly thought, but not. I always have led a more indoor lifestyle then I probably should. Always was the one without too many friends, generally happy with hanging out on my own or with family whenever we went somewhere together. Just running errands was good enough to count a lot of times. Which is probably a sad commentary on my life. ::P But still, after winter, when it's just turning warm enough to hang outside, and the birds are starting to show up, and all the chickens are racing for the first blades of grass to crop down, I always think: "I really need to spend more time outside."
There's always plenty of excuses to stay inside. Chores, cooking, projects, work. A lot of it can't go outside, and even what can always seems to be discouraged by winds just strong enough to be a hassle, or rain. It's still a goal.
And then of course we get into summer and most of the time the last place I want to be is outside in the heat. ::P It's hot, muggy, there's no breeze at all unless a storm is coming, and THE BUGS! AUGH! I do what I got to do and rush back inside, no lingering necessary.
All we really need is to set up the yard properly and eventually it will be nice to spend time outside, even in the summer. Just have to work ourselves out of the mindset of "if we're still here down the road..." and just start working on stuff.
~*~
Do ever have weird dreams? I'm sort of notorious for mine. At least I like to think of myself that way. ::P TMU always seems to think I'm touched in the head, at any rate. Can't really blame her, either. I mean, really, the shit my brain spews out? Really is freaking weird sometimes.
I've had dreams where I'm being chased by levitating scissors and don't quite make it out unscathed. Dreams where I've killed things, been other things, and once literally had a whole original movie, with a plot and everything, play from almost the beginning to end. That one wasn't really weird, but it was EPIC. ::D Considering the kind of stuff I like to watch (horror, shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files and Supernatural among various others) and how much I like to read (murder mysteries and paranormal romance nearest the top of the list out of the fiction section, true crime out of non-fiction) the dream content isn't really surprising.
Sometimes I remember my dreams, and if I write it all down immediately I can catch a lot of details, but often I don't remember as much as I'd like to. I've always wished that I could hook my brain up to a VCR or something and record what I see in my head to rewatch later. The last one I can remember having isn't as weird as some I've had, but it certainly had TMU laughing.
I dreamt I lived in a dorm or some other similar type of communal building, and for whatever reason we all did our laundry the old fashioned way, except we didn't have the old machines so we did them by hand in the tub. Not because it was set in a bygone age or a post apocalyptic world, it was just how it was done, a normal part of life. Anyway, slowly it starts going around that peoples clothes are being stolen while soaking in the tub. Through the drain. I don't remember if we knew that because someone saw it happen, or it was just the way dreams work where you just know the crucial plot points. At one point it happens to me. I remember shouting obscenities down the drain at whoever stole my clothes. Later, which I think was weird because no one else ever got theirs back. Maybe. Some of them are somehow tossed back up, and when I notice this, I shout down something about not liking my style.
Here's another one, though it's even more convoluted since apparently I didn't write it down all that well. I should really stop trusting my memory to remember all the details of something just from shorthand notes I jot down in a hurry.
I'm at some kind of important event, I don't know what. Maybe some sort of party, it doesn't feel casual. I'm wearing a black suit with my hair down. I had been talking to someone, but I left to go to the bathroom. I passed lots of people on the way, including Kurt from Glee. Who probably only turned up because my outfit was part of the plot. The bathroom is full, there's a line, so I'm waiting. For whatever reason, from whatever catalyst, I realize that while I had thought I'd looked pretty good, and was proud of that, I've actually been looking like an idiot the whole night. Someone hassles me about it, I insult them back - I hope it was a good one, I have no idea what I said. More waiting, and then I see the same persons (I think it's the same person, anyway) eyes turn black. Demons eyes. I reach for holy water (from where I had stashed it in my outfit?) dared them to treat me like a normal person (am I supposed to be a hunter in this?) and start exorcising. But instead of them going to hell they turned into a dog, ran into the bathroom, under the stalls, then all of a sudden I'm in someones apartment chasing it.
And that's all I remember. ::P Told you, weird. This one apparently was hatched during the crossover period when I started watching SPN (probably have some posts on that later) and still cared about Glee.
~*~
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