Ten things to do before the end of summer. Wait, isn’t that summer’s caboose disappearing around the corner? I think so. We’ll just have to make it ten things to do before the end of Indian summer.

1. Sit on the deck and eat a pint of coffee ice cream.
2. Hem that pair of summer-weight blue jeans so I can wear them at least once.
3. Finish my summer reading list.
4. Visit Powell Gardens.
5. Go on at least one more picnic.
6. Get a professional pedicure so I can stop turning myself into a pretzel every week.
7. Have one more BLT and a root beer float for dinner. Yum
8. Trim the hedges (cheating, I just did that this weekend).
9. Weed the mess I call a garden.
10. Make Vicki’s roasted tomato sauce before the last tomatoes leave the market.

Labor Day weekend it was. We spent it doing chores, including painting the bathroom ceiling and #8. The mornings are sweatshirt and shorts weather time again. Too warm for long pants, too cool for short sleeves. I’m rediscovering my sock drawer too. It’s a bittersweet transition period because we all know what comes at the end of it.

Go see how Carole and all the other Tenners on Tuesday plan to spend the rest of their summer.

Last night I had a whole evening  free which doesn’t seem to happen much lately. We went out for a quick dinner as soon as I got home so the whole cook-and-clean-up thing didn’t consume half the evening.

I could have spun for an hour, started a new lace project, paid bills and still had time to write a blog post or two.

Instead I forced myself to stay awake until it got dark. Then I fed the cats, kissed the hubby good night (being careful not to stand in front of the TV, football season is here) and toddled off to bed. It must have been the right thing to do because I slept through until the alarm went off this morning.

Work let out early this afternoon because of the holiday weekend so we’ll have dinner early again and tonight I’ll try to stay up past 9 pm. We’re getting our first taste of fall’s cooler temperatures and I have a list of to-do chores for the weekend a mile long. But Monday will be mine, all mine to enjoy.

Enjoy your weekend!

Ten ways to Lighten My Mood. Are you insinuating I’m cranky???!!!!?

1. Plant sunflowers in your garden.
2. Go out to lunch with a friend.
3. Change the routine. We all need a little variety. So that would be peanut butter on the English muffin instead of jam.
4. Spend time puttering in the garden. As long as there are no aphids. Bastids.
5. Read an entertaining book. Fiction is best, although I just read Laurie Hertzel’s memoir News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist about growing up in the newspaper business and loved it.
6. Soak up some Vitamin D from the sun. Definitely need sun.
7. Get rid of that one thing that’s been nagging you because it’s not done, needs work, is a mess or is a constant irritation (We’re not talking husbands here, people. Stop it.) Throw that project in the trash and stop feeling guilty about it. You’ll feel so much better.
8. Clean something. It works to have my space tidy and organized. Because mostly it’s not. So when I get it organized I give myself a pat on the back.
9. I generally don’t eat to make myself feel better, but if I did it would be coffee ice cream in the summer and a baked potato with lots of butter and cheese in the winter.
10. Move. Go for a walk, a bike ride, stretch, do yoga, whatever it takes to get those endorphins flowing.

Go see Carole for more ideas.

~

Life is busy, busy, busy. I got approached to host a get-together for a local political candidate and turned that down only to get sucked into working for the campaign. Should have seen that one coming.

There’s been very little time to play with the Ladybug so the bonding process is slow. She’s beginning to grow on me but so far I haven’t been tempted to name her. Either she doesn’t need a name or Bug will have to do.

The garden is sort of winding down for the year. There’s not  a lot to do except water occasionally and watch things grow. And attack aphids. I’ve planted fall crops of carrots, spinach, beets and Swiss Chard so hopefully we’ll get a harvest of some sort later this year. The straw bales are decomposing nicely. While straw may make good compost, as a growing medium my considered opinion is that it sucks. Or maybe I’m just a lousy gardener.

/sigh

Next year.

You say it’s your birthday
It’s my birthday too, yeah
They say it’s my birthday
We’re gonna have a good time
I’m glad it’s my birthday
Happy birthday to me!!!

~

No water in the house this morning. There’s a water main break (well, duh) but that’s all we can find out. The city hasn’t given the dispatch office any other information. I woke up to Jack shouting at the police dispatcher over the phone. Now he’s driving around looking for the crew that’s supposed to be working on the break.

Apparently he really wants a drink of water.

I hope I don’t have to go bail him out.

Oh yay, happy birthday to me….

Ten things I would tell a college freshman. Oh my sweet Jeebus. Please don’t make me go back there. I’m getting nightmares just thinking about it.

1. It’s OK to question authority.
2. Don’t be smug because you don’t have any cellulite today because in exactly 12 years you are going to be 30.
3. You will now have to buy your own alcohol….your parents’ cabinet is no longer available.
4. Cold Duck will give you a horrible hangover.
5. Taking some business courses along with all those liberal arts classes might be worth a second thought.
6. If you’re stuck at the Albany bus station trying to get home for the holidays and the buses aren’t running because of a snow storm, find yourself a bunch of fresh-faced soldier boys also trying to get home. One of them will be old enough to rent a car and will offer you a ride as far as Rutland. Another one will buy you a piece of pie at the diner in Rutland while you wait for your family to come pick you up. It doesn’t matter that you’ve only known them for 1o minutes. It’s the holidays and we’re talking Vermonters damn near 40 years ago (OMFG, I’m old). None of them will get fresh because they’ve heard of your family. And your brothers. Dammit.
7. The trip to the grocery store at 1 am has to include salami, cheese and bread. And chocolate. Where else do you think the Freshman Fifteen comes from?
8. Those Latin and Greek classes you think are a waste of time? Think again. You’ll always be able to figure out what a word means because of those classes.
9. Think for yourself. It’s lonely, but at least the room won’t be crowded.
10. When you run out of money call your mother not your father.

This wisdom brought to you by Diane, Gail and Fred.

It’s OK, Carole, I’ll understand if you tell Hannah to ignore our advice.

She followed me home, can I keep her?

I finally took the plunge and bought a spinning wheel. It wasn’t the one I thought I was going to buy, and it wasn’t the one that I really wanted but the Ladybug will do for a first wheel.

I almost got blindsided when I set aside my prejudices and tried a Saxony-style wheel (Ashford’s Elizabeth) and fell in love. The fact that I’d have to rearrange the whole living room to fit her in kept me from justifying the purchase.  I can’t guarantee what will happen next time I’m wheel shopping though. Who needs a couch anyway.

Sunday Supper

Sunday supper was eaten in a restaurant this week. Jack has been visiting his daughter for several days and his flight arrived right around dinnertime. I had declared the house a no-cook zone while he was gone and couldn’t think of a good reason to change that ruling until tomorrow. The crying baby in the next booth almost made me regret we didn’t eat leftovers — until the warm brownie and ice cream arrived for dessert.Yum.

…

I think I may have alluded to the fact that I’m working again. It’s the same contract position at the same place as last year. This time there’s a possibility it may turn into something permanent so this assignment feels like a three-month job interview. On both sides. While the position would draw on my detail and organization skills, as a creative outlet it hardly registers on the satisfaction scale.

All the more reason to break out the fiber and book some spinning classes.

So, no guarantees, but a very real possibility that I’ll be among the permanently-employed next year. Needles crossed for me, OK?

So what’s on your plate these days?

Um, wow, I guess the combination of mud and young guys hit a chord with a bunch of us so I went searching for the photos I took last year on the premise of giving your audience what they want.

And of course, all I could find was this:

Apparently, I was too busy gawking to actually take photos of the young ‘uns wrestling with chains and machines and mud. Oh, there are one or two photos, but they’re dressed in t-shirts and jeans, so where’s the fun in that?

So, I’ll just say what Mom used to say:

Use your imagination.

It’s probably better than the real thing anyway.

Last summer, the contractor got his backhoe stuck in one of our ponds during a dredging and reconstruction project. I have a ton of photos from the day they came to drag it out. All the neighbors turned out to watch, it was a Big Deal, full of drama and suspense. And hot young men covered in mud. It’s all written, I can’t believe I never showed you.

~

This year I woke up on the first day of February to find we had no heat. I wrote a whole post on what a cold and miserable January it had been and what a traitor the furnace was to start the new month off by failing. How come I didn’t post it? I have no idea.

~

Over a year ago, I wrote about how our 20-year old beautiful-wood-cabinet TV had finally gone to test-pattern-heaven and I decided not to replace it. I went 4 months watching TV on the kitchen or bedroom sets until I caved and replaced it. But here’s the line from the post that sticks with me most:

The Got Junk people removed the TV along with an ugly queen-sized sleeper sofa that I’ve been wishing would spontaneously combust for years.

Normally I would find a second home for a used piece of furniture, but trust me when I say that sending this item to the landfill was a gift to society. It was at least 40 years old and came with the husband. Here’s how much I hated it: it’s the only piece of furniture that Cleo was encouraged allowed to use as a scratching post.  And that’s all I’m saying.

Having that sofa out of the house tickled me as much as the new TV.

~

There’s a draft folder with a bunch of links in it, including this one of the Surprised Kitty, which everybody must have seen by now. Some of the links don’t work anymore, some I can’t figure out why I thought they were interesting, and others I’m keeping in reserve.

~

Speaking of kittehs, after I had Teddy put to sleep, I wrote a post on how vets handle feral cats. Didn’t post it, probably won’t now, but if you want to know, I’ll send it to you. (I still miss the little bastid.)

~

At one point, I had a question about why the Starmore books don’t seem to be fetching the prices they used to. That didn’t go anywhere so you didn’t miss anything there.

~

There are a few more posts in the draft folder that might eventually turn into something, including one called “Potential”. After time away from it I realize it is overly pretentious and it’s potential is low. You can’t win them all.

Rewrite!

I’m a skeptic when it comes to those weird recipes for bacon flavored ice cream or bacon brownies or bacon jello; I’ve had brown-sugar covered bacon and thought it was Awful. Leave the sweet for the maple syrup, thank you very much.

But I admit there are a few things that just aren’t right without bacon:

1. Scrambled eggs and….what? sausage? Oh, please. Everybody knows you serve sausage only if you’re out of bacon.
2. It’s not really a sandwich if there’s no B in front of the LT.
3. Quiche Lorraine. Quiche is my new summer dish. Cook it on Sunday and you’ve got breakfast or lunch for another day besides. Super change from mini-wheats.
4. Cobb salad…mmmm, blue cheese and bacon bits, yeah baby, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.
5. Bacon, egg and cheese sandwich from that place with the yellow arches, or even better, make your own.
6. Bacon, cheese and chives in a hot baked potato along with a salad and dinner is ready. This would be a November dinner, since I’m not baking potatoes when it’s 101 degrees out.
7. Calico beans wouldn’t be calico beans without at least half a pound of bacon and a pound is better.

OK, so 7  is the best I can do.  I might try peanut butter and bacon on toast some day, but bacon brownies…fuggedaboutit.

Now I’m going over to Carole’s so I can drool all over her Ten on Tuesday photo.

We’re all hiding from the heat today. The temperature is 98 degrees (36 degrees Celsius) and the heat index is 112 (44 Celsius), the hottest day this summer. Upstairs, the drapes are all drawn so there’s a shadowy coolness, perfect for cat napping. Me, I’m in a sweatshirt downstairs where it’s at least 5 degrees cooler.

Through the heat, and maybe because of it, the garden is thriving; the squash are beginning to grow, the green zebra is finally producing tomato babies and the smart-ass pepper has actually started flowering, even though it’s only about 8 inches high. In the summer heat, I’m preparing the raised bed for a fall crop of carrots, spinach, beets and maybe bush beans.

The garden is peaceful in the early morning when it’s just me, the geese flying overhead and the blue birds chasing each other. There are dragonflies sunning themselves, bees doing their thing and an occasional humming bird. When the wind is just right I can hear a train going by on the tracks half a mile away. This morning, the train whistle and the 8 o’clock church bells were perfectly synchronized, one beginning as the other one ended.

School starts in another week here. I grew up in the generation (or maybe the area of the country, I’m not sure) that went to school until after Memorial Day, and started the next year after Labor Day. Somehow, it made school more special to have its closing and opening marked by holidays. Now, it always catches me by surprise to hear mothers talking about school clothes and bus schedules in early August.

It’s hard to believe summer is fading, but the seed pods on the butterfly weed are beginning to break open, taking advantage of every stray breeze to sow next year’s plants. The cantaloupe vines in the next plot over are dying back to reveal a hidden harvest of six small cantaloupes. The gardener has been showing them off to everyone, she’s tickled with her success after her corn failed to produce.

Someone else has one fully grown pumpkin to show for their efforts.

There’s still plenty of time for the garden this year, but I can’t help but see a difference in the light, the air and the plants themselves.

Fall is coming.

My feet are cold, I need some socks.

Sunday Supper
There won’t be any cooking today. I briefly toyed with the idea of turning on the oven to bake cookies and then decided Pepperidge Farm would do this week. I made scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast and even that seemed too hot to eat.

There’s leftover pork tenderloin and a marinated cooked chicken breast in the fridge so it’ll be a pickup dinner. Cheese, tomatoes, a loaf of good bread and ice tea sound like the right combination. Peaches, early apples and cherries are sweet enough for dessert. The combinations are endless.

What’s on your plate?