My Saturday

I hear that it's hot outside. I haven't gone out to find out for myself, unless you count the sixty seconds or so that I worked on cleaning the impossible to clean sliding glass door. I decided it was a chore beyond my skill set so I came back inside and snapped a photo of the view from the Whine Cellar. I'm sure there are places in the world that are lovelier but none of them are home to me like this view is... and none of them have a nice cozy nest for me to hang out in on a hot Summer day. I'll take this view for now, thank you very much!

I'm nesting right here. I know it looks sorta tacky with the furniture all covered up. We have lots of fur shedding creatures around here and a one still very messy still a teenager living here and it's just easier to cover it than to try to undo their damage. It's so delightfully cool here in the basement! It was only five Summers ago that I was dying in the ungodly Jacksonville, Florida heat on the third floor with the a/c out for a week or so. For that matter, I grew up without air conditioning although I had much less insulation then and we had one of those massive attic fans that sucks everything for a ten mile radius up...  And for that matter... I worked Summers at a laundrymat. We took in napkins and tray liners for the different airlines and had to wash, dry and then press them on these huge open ironing machines in a building with no air conditioning. The money was good and it was walking distance (and you could safely walk in Riverdale then) from home and, again, much less insulation. But now? Give me air conditioning or give me death! I don't sweat pretty any more.

Today my cousin's son got married. It's my mom's oldest sibling's youngest child's oldest child, my first cousin once removed. We are distant enough that it wasn't something we would have been invited to (or gone, you know how I am about going ANYWHERE) but close enough that I'm happy for them and can't wait to see some photos posted on Facebook. Congrats to Mac and Hannah!

Tomorrow my Aunt Ginger and Uncle Carl are bringing Mama a boat. Yes. A boat. It belonged to my Granddaddy (I think) and when he passed it went to my Aunt Linda's house and in the midst of cleaning things up following her husband's death (two weeks ago tomorrow, already) the boat is one of the things that is being redistributed. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about boating because although the lake is lovely to look at from my cool and comfy nest... it's not critter free... and I'm not entirely sure that I would be confident of not capsizing and ending up in that water. With the critters. I guess from a fishing standpoint it will be nice to have although I doubt Oscar the Fishing Dachshund should be in a boat. One day when it's not hot outside (maybe next November) I'll walk down to the dock and take pictures of Oscar fishing. He's INTENSE! He loves fishing so much that you can't say the word "fish" around him without him spazzing out.

I changed a few things on my blah-g, it was getting sort of stale looking. I also wanted to link to a few of the blogs I read. There are approximately 500 on my list but of course not all of them update daily and even the ones that do, I don't always get around to reading even though I'm in cyberspace just about every waking moment. I picked the ones I like the best and if you're looking to expand your blog library, you might check a few of them out. I seem to be drawn to blogs of young Catholic mothers or women battling infertility which, I know is odd. I did so very much love being a new mommy (and am so glad that I am now an old mommy) and I always loved birth stories. Catholic mommies have lots of birth stories. 'Jes sayin'. And the infertility blogs are fascinating because I cannot imagine NOT having had babies and it breaks my heart that some women have to work so hard to achieve that blessing. For me it just took a lustful glance. Had I not had my tubes tied at age 26 I would have a dozen kids, no doubt. I also love historical stuff and families with multiples. Basically, I just like knowing how people live and if the blog is well written or has a lot of pictures or an interesting storyline... I'm there. It's a great way to pass time.

Anyways... so this has been a really lovely, restful day. Muscle spasms are the pain of the day and I have been resisting the urge to o.d. on muscle relaxers. Laying down vs. sitting in a recliner helps that a bit. It's ok. It's not the worst pain I've ever had and it just bugs me only slightly so I will survive.

In the nest.
Looking out at the lake.
In the air conditioning.
Happy Saturday, y'all.

My Not-So-Quick Takes

I'm trying something new (because my blah-g feels stale lately) and linking up with some of the ladies who keep me entertained daily. It's seven quick takes... here's what I have:

1. Out of respect to the single working mom of three boys that I spent more than a decade of my life being, I never, ever, ever will say that I am bored. Pinky swear. I will, however, admit that this peaceful existence here at the mountain house does, occasionally, lack excitement. We're in such a routine....

• 8am - I wake up, watch Good Morning America
• 9am - shower and get dressed, watch the first part of Kelly and Michael and switch to Zimmerman trial. Eat something so I can take first meds of the day. Make coffee. Mom wakes up sometime in the 9 o'clock hour. Crank up the old laptop and connect with the outside world. 
• Noon - change to Atlanta News briefly. Do something in the way of eating lunch. More meds on bad days if the pain is hanging around. 
• 1pm - Watch either How I Met Your Mother or more of the Zimmerman trial.
• 2pm - Watch two hours of Grey's Anatomy and eat a bowl of ice cream.
• 4pm - back to the Atlanta News / Zimmerman trial. Austin wakes up and wanders upstairs. (I'm not kidding).
• 5pm - Watch The Five - it makes me happy. I adore all the folks that are on this show. 
• 6pm - Dinner? Maybe? We generally eat light. I do a lot of salad-y things like tabbouleh or pasta salad - things that we can eat at different times. Or frozen pizza. We live on frozen pizza here since we're not anywhere near a delivery zone so we can't just call Dominos. We watch Toddlers and Tiaras and... yeah, we live it up. 
• 7pm - I watch the Big Bang Theory, get in my sleeping clothes, take my evening drugs and/or head down to the Whine Cellar for my alone time where I read blogs, read whatever's on my Nook. play sudoku and just enjoy my happy place. 

I fall asleep anywhere between 9pm and tomorrow. You just never know. It's not boring but it is predictable.

2. Did you notice that my routine is mostly tv and internet? Yeah. I need to work on that. My mom is much more well-rounded. She works in the garden or does yard work or goes fishing. We both get up a gajillion times a day to feed dogs/cats, give dogs/cats water, let dogs out to the Poop Pen. The furry creatures are a lot of work but we love them. I figure you can't go from "giver of life" and "nurturer" to a phone call once a week or so without having some living being who still needs you. For us, it's the fur babies. For me, mostly, it's my Trouble Kitty. The odd thing is that if I'm upstairs in the main level where all the animals are, he doesn't cuddle with me. If we're in the Whine Cellar he is my Siamese twin. (Another reason I love my Whine Cellar)

3. Does everybody get what I mean by "Whine Cellar" or is that a private joke that I only share with myself?
The mountain house has three levels... the main level has the master bedroom, kitchen, living room and a bath and a half. The top level has two huge bedrooms and a full bath (that I co-opted for my private dressing room). The bottom level is a finished basement with a huge living room space, two bedrooms and a bath. Since it's sort of mine and Austin's territory, and since I am a notorious whiner, I refer to it as the "Whine Cellar". Eventually I want to have a kitchenette put in the Whine Cellar but that will have to come after the disability is approved (which is hopefully before the end of this calendar year and/or the end of my little nest egg).

4. More on the post about being an anti-social extrovert: I love being in my 40's because I think it is a time of life when you start to live without apologies and realize that you are who you are. That's not to say that we never have room for improvement because we do. I do. I also can't avoid the fact that a lot of people have disappointed me in the past decade. A lot. I've suffered a lot of battle wounds and there is some measure of me that just doesn't want to bother with human interaction in order to avoid any more scars. I've also grown oh-so-very-weary of trying to explain/excuse what it's like to live life in pain. I don't go for the dramatic moaning and groaning. Most of the time I don't even want to draw attention to myself - I just want to quietly slip away. Or just not be there at all, which is what happens most of the time. Eventually if you never go anywhere people stop expecting to see you so you don't have to explain why you weren't there.

5. From a spiritual standpoint a lot of Godly people have done things (or not done things) that made me NOT want to be a part of the Christian lifestyle. If/when your life takes some seriously unplanned paths you can't help but think "if there's a God, He really must not like me" but I am also quick to say that I am so incredibly blessed. This is not the life I would have picked for myself but I just can't help but see those metaphoric footprints in the sand. If you're not interacting with people hardly ever it becomes very easy to not interact with God either. And for me... my Christian walk was centered on preparing myself for the day by praying my way to work everyday. Lord knows that some of the employment/life situations I've been in over the past decade required an enormous amount of prayerful preparation. It doesn't take a lot of prayer to prepare for a day of channel and web surfing. You could say that I need God more than ever because of the pain and because of the uncertainty of this whole disability process - but there is so little that I absolutely have to do in the course of a day - that I don't have that absolute terror that "only God can get me through this day" and lean on Him like I used to.  This kind of goes back to that post I did two days ago about my inheritance - just because you don't NEED your family any more doesn't mean that you no longer interact with them. And you shouldn't only interact with people because of what they can do for you. I'm working on being present in relationships with people and with God not because of what those relationships can do for me but because people I love - and people who love me- DESERVE my attention. (Was that a long walk for a short drink of water or did that make sense?)

6. Obviously I am no good at quick takes. It's raining and the satellite went out. Mom, Pop and Oscar are at Lowe's. Austin is downstairs. It's super quiet here right now and I have actually had a few minutes of uninterrupted thought which is a catalyst for long-winded blogging for me, apparently.

7. It's the weekend and I have no plans. What are y'all doing this weekend? Any fabulous plans for the 4th of July?

Hope you have a happy, happy weekend and don't suffer from the extreme Summer weather. Love and hugs, y'all.