Arrrgh!!!

FINALLY! We're having one day that looks like Fall. Clouds moved in yesterday, and late last night a line of storms came through. It rained pretty heavily. We needed the rain. Everything was dry and sere.

Today, it's overcast, and there's a little bit of wind. Leaves are falling and a carpet of yellow and brown is starting to build up.

I know.....I think of Fall days as being sunny, and crisp. We all watch for the beautiful color changes, and enjoy the pumpkins and taffy apples. But, this is the other look to Fall, where the trees and shrubs are storing up moisture to hold them through the winter.

I'm going to spend the day in the office, catching up on filing and paperwork. I plan to make a pot of tea, and plug in the mug warmer to keep it hot. Elegante Mother and I put a pot roast in the Crockpot. Dinner will be an easy fix, and Dear Husband will get the roast beef hash he has come to enjoy, later this week.

I hope you're all having a great day!

I was expecting my boat widowhood to end today. Dear Husband took the trailer to the boat yard last night in preparation for the homecoming. He spent the night on the boat, a last hurrah for the season, and motored to the boat yard early this morning.

He'd said that maybe 17 boats were ahead of him waiting to be lifted out. I didn't expect him to come home early today. A little after 4:00 he called to tell me that he was on one of the major Chicago tollways with a flat tire on the trailer.

It's VERY difficult to help long distance! I went to the computer and began searching in whitepages.com. A friend also searched, and sent me a more helpful search through MSN, where I found a 24 hour truck service. The problem is, the trailer has smaller tires than most trucks.

One of my family members works for the county sheriff's office, and he called the state troupers and asked to have a patrol car check the situation. Our problem is that the tire shops are closed for the night, and that boat and trailer will not be moving without a new tire.

We hope that the truck service is going to come through for us, otherwise, Dear Husband will have to separate the truck and trailer and leave the boat at the side of the road, a thought I don't want to entertain!

I'm going to go search for all night tire dealers, now. With any luck I'll get my husband back for the winter, soon.

It's been a stressful week. Our newest granddaughter developed a fever and was moved to NICU. Her fever spiked at 104 and it took several days to bring her back down to normal. The doctors believe that she may have picked up a virus that hit her family just before she was delivered. They're keeping her for a few more days, just to be sure that she'll go home healthy.

My step-daughter is recovering nicely. The docs let her go home Wednesday, but they travel back to the hospital each day to feed and visit with our newcomer.

I'm looking forward to a little more baby holding. I need to practice my lullabies. This is the first of three babies due within the next six months. There must be something in the water...

Dear Husband called to tell me that the Truck Service had found him, and brought just the tire he needed. He chose to leave the interstate and make his way home on surface roads. When he got close to home, he called again. I pulled on shoes and socks, and a long-sleeved t-shirt jacket to protect my arms from the mosquitoes. I grabbed a flashlight and headed down the driveway. We both made it to the end of the driveway at the same time.

As he was backing the boat into the drive, a car coming up behind him turned on his brights, to light the area. It didn't help a great deal, but I thought it was kind of the driver to give it a try. DH had the boat into the driveway within two minutes, and then things went much slower.

DH drives a truck with a 14 foot stake bed. He's VERY talented at backing it up with loads like equipment trailers, cement mixers or boats attached, but backing up our driveway in the dark is exceptionally difficult. The driveway is more than 250 feet long, and has a bend in it. That alone is difficult, but at the bend there are trees right next to the drive on either side. DH told me he was trying to miss the west tree...and pointed out the scrapes, just about at boat level, and admitted that he'd had some close calls over the years. Now add darkness to the mix, and you can imagine how difficult things were. He actually had the boat in the perfect position when he stopped. Unfortunately, the truck has to be in the perfect position, too, and it wasn't.

Please make note in your Day Timers: I am going to praise my husband!

Dear Husband had the sense to turn off the motor, leave the truck, and lock it up for the night. He left it standing on the drive, and came in to have some supper. He finished the move this morning, all by himself. The Arr!! is settled in for the winter. Over the next week or so, DH will off load food, sails, cushions, and anything that might suffer from mildew. I really think he's trying to make it less inviting for the raccoons! *G*

As my sister might say...."Home again, Home again....."

My boat widowhood is coming to a close for 2007.

Our new granddaughter is still at the hospital. The kids hope that she will be coming home early this coming week. DH's daughter sent us the link below to explain why the doctors have kept the baby this past week. She has an enterovirus.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/revb/enterovirus/non-polio_entero.htm

When the doctors release her, the baby will have to visit for developmental tests during the following month. Given what they know about enteroviruses, I'd rather the doctors be aggressive about her care. Of course, we're hoping for the best, and that we will have a story to tell about the scare that turned out to be nothing. Your prayers are welcomed. *S*

I meant to get out to work on the gardens at the entrance to the house this morning. We have had a phenomenal growing season, despite the fact that storms have been few and far between, and it's quite a jumble of incredible plants and more incredible weeds.

Unfortunately, we are still in the grasp of a major heat wave. I think I heard that we were at least 20 degrees above normal yesterday, and the heat has been here for several days. We're supposed to get rain early in the coming week, followed by more realistic temperatures....in the upper sixties. So, I'm sure that I will be doing a LOT of gardening in the next three weeks. By the end of the month it's time to put the gardens to bed for the winter.

I suspect the family of chipmunks that has made it's home in my mulch pile is going to be TICKED!! I'll be using part of that pile on the front garden, around the new redbud, and more of it on the fern bed and herb garden. There goes their new condo! I bet I'll find black walnuts buried in the mulch.

Well, I've stalled as much as I can. I have to go to the grocery store. Normally, it wouldn't be an issue, but this is Sunday. The entire world will be there by now. Have a good day, all! I'm off and running!

I've laughingly filed this under "In the Garden," because that's where these will end up. I wanted to get a picture of the sprinkling of nuts from one tree. Our lot line is covered with these husks, each of which hold a rock hard black walnut. My Dad would have loved them! So do the squirrels! *G*

This weekend, Dear Husband and I plan to drive to Indiana to watch my niece's band compete in the Class C Northern Indiana Regionals. I'm really looking forward to the trip. The kids march just before 1:00, and the weather is supposed to be sunny and in the 60s. We watched in the snow one year, and have worried about rain occasionally.

Seventeen Class C bands will be competing tomorrow, and only five of them will be selected to go on to State Competition at Indianapolis next Saturday. My niece's band has gone to state at least the last three years, and you know that she hopes they will make it one more time. Tomorrow could possibly be her last chance to march on a football field as a high school student. Or, she may get to go out in a blaze of glory, at State, next week.

I sent her a note, to tell her that some nervousness is fine. I used to tell my students that if they were not worried, they weren't really prepared to perform. If you are absolutely calm, the chances are good that you've overlooked something. Her concern is that the band is very young this year. The ratio of beginners to experienced students is far too in favor of the beginners. Still, I've seen inexperienced students rise to the occasion when you least expect it.

On the other side of the coin, the band has a tradition of excellent shows. The music and movement always compliment each other, and this show is the type which gets points for daring moves, well executed. The assistant director and the director of bands have swapped responsibilities this year, but the basic band program is still in place, and there is a HUGE parent's group helping behind the scenes.

All they can do now, is take the field and do their best. I'm sure they will do well.

K.....I'll be with you in spirit on the field, and in the stands screaming myself hoarse. Have faith, sweetie....have faith!

The quilters called! My quilts have been put in the mail, and I should see them early next week!

I'll be able to get them bound and take them for a show and tell at the end of the month!

Yippeeeeeeeeeee!!

I have a new game for you all. It's called "Choosing Clothing by Flashlight." The winner is the one who is able to best dress herself despite being unable to see most of her clothing choices in the dark.

First you need a walk-in clothing closet, which has no windows. Rules allow for lights and/or skylights in the adjacent room. You get extra points for dressing correctly on an overcast day, and more points if you dress before the sun comes up. You loose points if you end up mixing navy blue and black.

The light bulbs in my closet have been flickering and failing to light for weeks. Every couple of days, I talk with Dear Husband about the difficulty of choosing clothes in the dark. My youngest sister, bless her heart, came to his aid and suggested I take a flashlight into the closet with me. (sigh)

We've been in the house 17 years. It's more than possible we just need to change the light bulbs. My friend, Midnight, tells me that it could also be as simple as a starter needing to be replaced. He described it for me, and I'll try to see if that could be the problem. Failing that, the ballast has gone out. DH tells me we have a spare ballast ......somewhere.....

Midnight has been counseling me to do the repair on my own, coaching me on what to look for, and telling me how easy it is to replace. I think he's planning to become a marriage counselor in another life. Personally, I think this is a GUY thing.....one of the few indoor things that shouldn't be my responsibility!

Sign up for the game in the comments, and I'll get back to you on a start time.

We're home from Indiana. We had hoped to be doing a victory dance for the fourth time in a row, but it isn't to be. I'd like to think that I am not prejudiced in favor of my niece's band. I watched from the top of the stands as seventeen bands performed. I rooted for them all, but more for K's band. I marked my program with the five I thought would go on to state. I was confident that her band would be one of the five. While they received a gold for performance, they weren't selected for State.

This is the time when they begin building for next year. The band will go to Indianapolis next Saturday and watch the performances of the ten bands which will compete in their class. They'll come home to pizza and a party to end the marching year, and immediately, work will begin on the program for the next year.

To K.....Sweetie, to go three years in a row, and rate as high as your band did, is an amazing record. You've had an incredible experience over these four years that will travel with you all your life. I'm very proud of you for going the distance, and you did a fine job. Be proud of your achievements!

Dear Husband took 30 minutes today and repaired the light in our clothes closet. He tells me that it was a ballast problem. The bulbs that were installed 17 years ago are still functional.

Ahhhhhhhh, LIGHT!!! *G* It almost made me want to go in and change over our wardrobes for the winter. Instead, I cleaned out parts of my quilting stash, and began making a list of quilts to take to show the ladies at My-Sister-The-Nurse's church at the end of the month. In two weeks, I'll have three more full size quilts bound!

Or maybe that should be Mooooooooovable Tyyyyyype! Our host at RedEagleSpirit has upgraded our Movable Type program. I can blog again, but it's going to take some time to find all the parts to the program. For now, I'm happy to be able to post.

We've had the most unusual fall! Our color change didn't begin until a week ago, and we are still not at the peak of color. We haven't had a frost yet, and usually our first hard frost comes early in October. We had a week with days in the 80s and days in the 60s.

We're beginning to see the red colors creep out in trees and shrubs. We have a fair amount of yellow, a bit of red, but still an unusual amount of green for so late in the season.

I spent about ten hours in the gardens and working on the grounds this past weekend. I had intended to start putting the gardens to bed, but everything is still growing or blooming! I cut back the spent flower heads on the garlic chives. In the past, I've left them, thinking that the animals would eat them, but it seems that nobody wants the seeds, and they lodge in crevices in and around the herb garden, and make more work. I'll have to take a shovel or spade to take out a few pods that are growing in inappropriate places.

I cut back the lemon verbena, which grows as an annual in Zone 5. I save the dried leaves for potpourri, and to give the house a lemony scent. I have one very large cookie sheet mounded with the leaves, and about as many more to strip from the plants. It's a shame we can't winter over lemon verbena.

I started cleaning out some of the container garden pots. Dear Husband made a huge "sieve" which sits over the wheelbarrow. I empty the pots into the sieve, and then separate the soil from the roots. The soil drops down into the wheelbarrow, and the screening catches things like plastic peanuts, or clay shards or glass pebbles. I began cleaning up the pots in the garage, and trying to reorganize the gardening tools, so that there would be more room for the over-sized containers when we finally get a frost.

I weeded the gardens along the front sidewalk, and cut back some of the iris leaves. We had such a bounty of volunteer plants this year that the iris were short on sunlight for part of the summer. They are fairly hardy plants and will enjoy the sunlight that will get to them for the next six weeks or so. The poison ivy.....yes...the plants that I was supposed to rip out this summer, have turned red. It should make them easier to remove, IF I can get enough time in the gardens this fall.

I started cutting back volunteer shrubs and trees in the gardens and around the house. I still need to use the brush-hogger to clear out two flower beds and an area on the west side of the house, but family obligations kept me from working all through the afternoon both days. It's probably just as well. My back has been crabby, and 16 hours in one weekend would have been a bad choice if I hope to get back into the gardens again, soon.

Soooooooo....we're enjoying the vagaries of fall, the whimsy of the weather, and the capriciousness of Mother Nature. Somewhere, those words must define the word "fall," don't you think?

Happy Autumn!

It's likely that it will take me a while to find my way around the new version of Movable Type, and ~T~ is still doing some tweaking of the program for us. Each new function brings a few new problems, so pardon our dust as we get settled in again.

~T~, this time the program won't let me publish a comment. *G* When you find the time, smack it for me, won't you??

Roberta, thanks for your kind comment about my description of Fall. You have a wonderful way with words, so your compliment means a lot.

I have to go bind a quilt. I have an entire entry I want to do about binding, but I have a personal showing of my quilts tomorrow night, so I'll have to wait until I have more time.

In yesterday's mail, we received a Notice of General Assessment. The Township Assessor and the Supervisor of Assessments have declared that our house has increased in value $80,000 in just one year! And that was in a year where economically things have been slow. We have not changed our house in any way. It's a year older, and needs some maintenance. There have been no changes to the area around us, that would make our house more valuable. The township simply wants to be able to charge more in taxes.

Our present manner of funding for education is going to drive the average homeowner right out of their houses and into the streets. We'll see tent cities like those in the depression, or homes where both husband and wife work will see third and fourth jobs becoming common.

Our General Assembly refuses to consider the people who elect them, and THEIR needs. Instead, they play political games which keep them from signing off on a balanced budget, and then they have the gall to complain that they are not paid a large enough per diem for the "overtime!" Meanwhile, our Governor takes pots shots at the General Assembly, trying to set himself up for re-election, and he's not doing anything for us, either!

Our taxes have increased a horrendous amount each year at a time when we are trying to save for retirement. Just who is going to support us when the money we've saved runs out? What is going to happen to people who are so strapped by the taxes that they can't save?

We've been paying into Social Security our entire lives. Unfortunately, by the time we reach the age when the Federal Government allows us to draw on Social Security, I doubt there will be a cent left, due to mismanagement by the government. Add the cost of medical care, and the war, and things look pretty grim.

I'm not a happy camper today. I doubt I'll be a happy camper until SOMEONE turns our government around.
I read somewhere that a quarter or more of the population of the United States works in some governmental capacity: township, city, county, state, federal, the judicial system, the military, the CIA, the FBI, the CDC, Homeland Security......it's endless. We give money away to other countries, when we are so strapped that we can't provide decent health care to our uninsured.

Nope.....I'm not a happy camper. I'm ready for change!

It appears that hearing is becoming an issue for more than just Elegante Mother. Now, if I want to talk with Dear Husband, I need his attention. I'd LIKE to say that I'm fine, but it's possible that I've lost some of my hearing as well.

It occurred to me that we should be learning sign language. (To Dear Husband: NO, not THAT kind of sign language!) If our hearing continues to deteriorate, we may need to be able to sign to communicate.

I hear a high pitched electrical white noise, especially when the house is quiet, or when I'm drifting off to sleep. At one time in my life, I was a grade school band director, so I'm not surprised to find that I may be loosing my hearing. Dear Husband has worked on construction sites for most of his life, around all sorts of saws and mixers. I'm sure the noise has hurt his hearing.

It's time we both had our hearing tested.

Then, when he leads me astray, and I ask,"What!?" I can smack him for his awful puns!

I think this has been the busiest October in the past 20 years! Mother and I have the usual standing appointments at the salon. We go to exercise three mornings a week, shop for groceries at least twice a week, visit the library, the bank, and the post office. We're normally pretty busy, and that doesn't take into account the office work I do.

October is one of the busiest birthday months for my family. Dear Husband and I both have birthdays in October, as well as one of my sisters, his brother, and a slew of nieces and nephews.

We traveled to Indiana to see one of my nieces compete in Marching Band. Elegante Mother and I watched one of her great grandsons act a role in a "Midsummer Night's Dream." We visited the Farmer's Market, and ate out five or six times. We traveled to the far North side of Chicago to have dinner with one of my nieces and her husband last night.

We've shopped, and gardened. I shared my quilts with the ladies of My-Sister-The-Nurse's church, and the Empty Nester's from EM's church came for their monthly visit. We visited with a church member who is going to machine quilt four quilts that we've made for the church bazaar.

We've enjoyed amazingly warm weather for most of the month and we're hoping it lasts through tomorrow night, when kids will be out celebrating Halloween. We don't expect to have visitors, but we're prepared, just in case they should come. Our drive is too long, and too dark to make it profitable for kids to trick or treat at our house, but a lot of visitors would bring this month to an appropriate end.

I enjoyed everything we did, but I could use one day of calm a week. It would be nice to be able to build up reserves so that I could go full tilt the rest of the week. Oddly, Tuesday seems to be the only candidate at the moment, and it looks like it could be swallowed up, too!

We're just busy people!