Erulisse Dances

Sunday started out with DH and I hitting McDonald's for breakfast. DH loves going there (especially when Monopoly is ongoing) and I can tolerate it. He had his usual Egg McMuffin and Hotcakes with Coffee, I had a Yogurt Parfait, a Hash Brown and Coffee plus a Sprite. There's not a lot I can eat for breakfast there without feeling sick for the rest of the day, so yogurt parfait is a safe choice. It was good. Then we went on to Target for our monthly shop - restocked on lots of food and standard goods. And then, while putting things away, we realized that we needed to clean.



( cleaning and misc thoughts with pics (of course) below the cut... )

It's getting hotter and I expect that I'll be a sweaty mess by the time I finish cleaning house at the end of the day. I'll be a cleaning tornado around my house when I get home from my errands mid-morning. I've cancelled everything else on my schedule and will be sitting down with gloves, chemicals, scrubbers and compounds to try and get the last things clean. Cleaning a house in our humidity and high temps is almost hopeless, but if I don't keep up with it ... well, let me just say that dirt is one of the super-villains of the world, but one that Superman and Batman would have no chance to defeat forever. I want some scientist to invent something that I can spray onto shower grout to forever eliminate mildew. It's SO frustrating. I've tried educating DH about wipe-downs, etc but it just never seems to sink in, leaving me with serious cleaning issues *sigh*.

( discussions about housecleaning, Seth and Sharon below the cut )

Maxine Kumin wrote a lovely poem called In the Moment from her book of poems Where I Live, and when I read it this morning on my daily poetry reading, I was struck by the following lines that I share with you.

...Dogs live in the moment, pursuing

that brilliant dragonfly called pleasure.
Only we, sunstruck in this azure

day, must drag along the backpacks
of our past, must peer into the bottom muck

of what's to come, scanning the plot
for words that say another year, or not.

These words speak to me so clearly. When I add them to a cartoon that I've had posted in my office for several years that features a running dog and the legend: "All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it. - Samuel Butler" it screams out at me. But we don't live our lives in isolation, and we don't live our lives in the moment. We interact with others, sharing our hopes, dreams, lives and homes. We plan for the future, we reminisce about our past, and we very rarely truly live in the now. It's very hard to do.

( Read more... )

Two very different voices died on Tuesday and bookshelves will never be quite the same again.


Gore Vidal, author of Lincoln was well known for his acerbic wit. Many newspapers and on-line sites have been listing some of his quotes, so how could I resist joining the tidal wave.

( Read more... )

I don't get sick because I have no time to get sick. But yesterday I awakened with a sore throat that had similarities to hot needles placed in the left side of my throat. Comfortable? NO!

( More and pics below the cut... )

 I finally had a good night's sleep last night, probably because I was too tired to do otherwise.  And I also had finally fixed the toilet in our guest bathroom. 


( Text and pics below the cut... )



After getting the water level down a bit, I noticed that it actually was an interior valve that leaked, not the water supply pipe.  The interior valve which is attached to the float is not something that will be easy to replace.  It was the very top of it that was leaking, badly, causing water to wick down the tank top and down the tank body to the floor.  Very bad.  I did, however, work a temporary fix.  I wanted to keep the spray totally in the tank, so I enclosed it.  I cut an empty margarine container to fit over the valve and duck taped it in.  Then I tested it.  It works beautifully.  With the tank top back on, it is completely invisible.  This will have to get fixed, but not immediately, so I'm very grateful that my fix - using something that my recycling people don't accept, ended up getting recycled to a good purpose anyway. 





I spent the rest of yesterday on two things - scrubbing walls and floor in the main bathroom and the guest bathroom (still more to do, but some serious inroads - very happy, and finalizing a story for the August ALEC contest.  Thank goodness for friends who are willing to help me out by looking over stories at the last minute.  Thanks to Elfscribe, I ended up with a story that I'm quite pleased with.  So, all in all, my day off was a successful day, even if I did post late - LOL.  

 So the insurance adjuster is due at my Father-by-Marriage's garage sometime between 9am and noon today.  My DH is NOT looking forward to spending up to three hours there with nothing to do.  I'm grateful that I have to be at work. 

( Pics and text below the cut... )

DH had cut up trees at the small house, trees that had fallen on communication lines.  He bundled the brush and left them behind the garage.  So yesterday, among my errands, I took each bundle into Grape and drove them over to the county compost area which is quite near to the house, but still a trip.  The bundles were heavy and long, I had to flip all of the seats down and some of the bundles were close to 7 feet long.  But, I persevered and it took more than an hour, but I got them all loaded and dropped off.  I also got new flourescent bulbs for my two kitchen fixtures, changed the filter in the furnace/A/C at the shop, grocery shopped and did two loads of laundry.  After DH got home from work, we loaded the lawn mower and were back at the small house to mow the lawn. 




I was too tired to clean, so I'm even more behind schedule now.  But I did work on my H-U story and got the first chapter posted for my writing board to crit out.  I have such difficulty with Point Of View.  Arghhhhh.  So frustrating.  I'll get this nailed, though.  It's getting better all the time :-)  Have a creative day, stay cool!