November 5

My hands are still stinging. 

This time I set my alarm, so I was ready for the six AM call. The girls were still here before I was ready for them to be, though, so something to work on for tomorrow. Maybe I will actually get up when the alarm goes off?

This morning's request for breakfast was scrambled eggs and french toast, and so it was. We had the rarest and smoothest of mornings. Hair was easy, breakfast was scarfed, there was even time for morning cartoons. The girls were off to school and then...I literally sat around until almost three PM. 

And I hated myself for it. It wasn't just that I was tired from the early morning wake up, which I was. It was some kind of lack of motivation. There are things I need to do. There are things I want to do. I sat and thought about them in my chair for most of the day, wondering what was wrong with me that I couldn't just get up and be excited about free time. Because this IS free time for me, time to get projects done that I don't have time for on house cleaning days. I have been waiting for a day like today. And still I sat. It crossed my mind this morning that what I really want to do is visit the beach. Since I live in the northern part of Texas, and nowhere near the beach, this was nothing more than a pipe dream, and I knew that. Still, though...We are retired...We may not be able to go today, but after our school duties are done for this week, we are open. We have nothing planned until Thanksgiving. Technically we could do it. 

So I sat and dreamed of sandy beaches and sparkling blue waters, and sighed heavy sighs until afternoon. Then reluctantly peeled myself out of my chair and took myself to the car wash and vacuumed out the vehicle. I always feel better when the vehicle is clean. 

Back again, I sat for a while longer, and then took myself out to the garden to do the yard things I didn't finish yesterday. I had decided I would move the two entwined rose bushes, and the trellis they were entwined in to another spot in the yard. I hadn't anticipated the difficulties involved in this "little" endeavor. The difficulty was that the trellis was six inches down in the hard compacted dry earth, and I couldn't dig it out, especially with the rose vines grabbing me by the hair and face and arms at every opportunity. So I decided now was a good time to prune, and I clipped off all the entwined bits from the trellis and then moved the two very heavy pots across the yard to two very different spots. Then I attacked that trellis. I shoveled. I hoed. I might have said some choice words. The problem was, that the trellis is old and broken. Probably a hundred years old, gifted to me by my Auntie. It's a treasure. Well it would be if it wasn't broken. And I couldn't get it out of the ground. After half an hour of digging and only making about two inches of progress, I just about gave up. But I didn't. I finally, finally, managed to get it out of the ground, but in the process, I bent one of the legs pretty severely. Which meant when I got it to it's new home, behind the Jasmine bush, It wouldn't go down in the ground. It just sort of leaned and kind of fell over, with all the broken parts springing around it, not supporting it. I almost threw it out. I actually did throw it on the ground. However, trellises these days ain't cheap, so I picked it back up and put my creative juices to work. I got an old concrete rectangle planter that is missing it's entire bottom, and moved it into place where the trellis should go, and then I set the trellis down inside. Then I filled it with dirt. Now the trellis, although still crazily unsteady, would at least stand up.  It still leans against the garage wall, it won't stand on it's own, but I'm thinking of ways that I can steady it. That will have to come later. At least now it was in the dirt, and the Jasmine, which was starting to grow vines long enough to trip me five feet away from the plant, has something to climb on. 

I also took all the remaining plants out of the garden. None of which were bearing, or were going to bear any more fruit. I left only one tomato plant, the one with the boat load of cherry tomatoes just about to start ripening. Claire, who is a fiend for cherry tomatoes, will be delighted. 

The Mr. came outside and was feeling purposeless, so I put him to work. I have had an old tire behind the shed for a zillion years and I'm tired of looking at it, so I asked him to move it out of sight for me. I wanted to do it myself, and almost started to think about doing it for myself, but my fear of snakes held me back. I know he is not afraid, having grown up in the country, so he obliged me. With him there I wasn't so afraid, so I helped him roll it the last few feet out of sight. No snakes. I breathed a sigh of relief when that was done. Being as there WERE snakes there just last year and the year before, I didn't chastise myself to much for being afraid. Digressing, and yet not digressing, I find it the most ironic thing in the world that Arya absolutely loves snakes. Well, she thinks she does, anyway. I don't think she has every actually seen one outside of an aquarium, but she is always talking about them. This morning she asked me if I knew that rattlesnakes were "polite". I said, no, how are they "polite"? She said, of course, because they warn you before they attack, or words to that effect. Probably, if she had seen the snake I saw two years ago as it made make a beeline across the garden, eight feet long if it was an inch, and hugely girthed, with the neighbor's orange cat in hot pursuit, she might feel the same as I do. That is to say, horrified. 

That was a long digression. 

So when the Mr. was through rolling away the Firestone (haha see what I did there) he suggested we put Frankie Bo Bo in the car and go get some coffee. It was five in the afternoon, a little late for coffee, but what the heck. So we did. On the way we found a Braum's for some burgers and fries. It was a nice little interlude between the day and the evening, with the mindless television, which began as soon as we got home. Tonight was Cops and Jail, and they both left me sad. 

I finally found an old rerun series I haven't seen all of, Growing Pains, so at least I won't go to bed depressed at watching some guy beat up his wife, or a prostitute at her 37th arrest and proud of what she does, so proud that she was working at nine months pregnant. Now her baby is a couple of months old and she is back at it. Not only was that a digression, but a heck of a run on sentence. 

I hope I have beat the lack of motivation blues. Tomorrow another early day with the girls, and then I will either get stuff ready for the garage sale we won't have, or paint the deck. Which will it be?

Thank you, Lord, for helping me get off my duff and do the stuff. It isn't good to sit around and be a spectator in my own life. And thank you that there were zero ant encounters today. My poor hands thank you, too.