Author: admin

<droops>

i am just mentally exhausted.

sometimes communication is just so damn hard.

sometimes you are both talking about the same thing, but thinking you are miscommunicating. thats kind of like banging your head against a brick wall.

sometimes you think everything is great, but its actually all gacked up. thats kinda like skipping down the sidewalk and getting a brick to the back of the head.

sometimes you both know what you are talking about, but have no idea what to do about it. thats kinda like using a slingshot to topple the brick wall.

sometimes you are talking, but no one is listening. how high is that wall?

its always dissapointing when what you thought would be a great relationship turns out to be silent and strained.

the inevitable is happening.

being that i am really allergic to dust, mildew and mold, i strongly suspected that the state of the apartment and the labor of cleaning it (and therefore snorting large quantities of these allergens) would result in my getting sick.

and i can feel it coming.

and this is the part i hate.

because i *know* i am getting sick.

my chest is tightening. i am lethargic. i have a low-grade headache that is making me a little nausious. i woke up constantly all night.

and yet, i couldnt go to a doctor yet. because even though *i* know i am getting sick, there is nothing yet to treat. and that sucks. because i know if i started battling it *NOW*, it wouldnt have time to fester and get worse.

<sighs>

so i have to do what i can with lots of water, vitamin c, echinacea, and napping – and pray my immune system can fight off the evil that i was breathing for the first day back.

hobbes also get worse and got an eye infection. poor thing look so pitiful with his eye all swollen shut. but i took him to the vet today and got all the good medicine. so hopefully, he will get better quickly.

the good news is that i finally got back on a scale today and after worrying that i would gain weight while travelling (its *so* much harder to eat the right way on the road!) i actually lost another pound 🙂 down to 119. this indeed is good news!

at 10am, it was 85. such a far cry from my highs of 72 at 4pm 2 weeks ago 🙂 ugh. anyone got some energy to spare? i could use it.

well, it is done.

i succeeded in travelling to the opposite tip of the country, working and playing hard all summer, and then getting back in one piece…and without too much drama to speak of.

70 hours of driving.

i think it will be a very very long time before i do that again. (please note that i have done that drive *3* times in 10 months now. i must be a madwoman!)
yes. belen. tell me your tale

well, we are finally in winona, MN!

it was an uneventful 30 hours of driving to get to Spirit Lake in Iowa to camp for the night and see david’s brother who drove up from des moines.

and then it was a short 3 hour jaunt to winona from there.

my god i love uneventful trips 🙂

we drove through the small city of Austin, Minnesota on the way here! population 22,000 people.

i have showered, eaten a good dinner with david’s family and i am about to sit on the couch until my eyes can no longer stay open. its almost 9, and that time won’t be long 🙂 i am exhausted.

this week we spend our time being social and carefree. mmmmmmm….vacation 🙂

<SIGHS>

its always something, isnt it?

so the little Snarker kitty apparently got my kitties sick…and now i have to run them to the vet the day before we travel 10 days across country.

its gonna be one helluva day. on the bright side, i feel significantly less stressed than i did 🙂

i finished our thank you present to lish. her strawberries were being eaten by slugs, so i bought this groovy strawberry pot, painted it and replanted the plants. see? http://www.belen.net/pictures/images/strawberries.jpg

oh my god, i havent laughed this hard in ages!

read the product and then read the comments. its astounding that parents can be that clueless! i almost split my sides.

so we know what to get our loved ones…with a lifetime supply of batteries, that is!

oh my, how time flies! it would appear the summer is over and its time to return home…

well, i guess i am about ready. it will be nice to have all my stuff handy again…although i can’t think of 1 thing i missed desperately. hrm. we better not tell david that or he will Downsize me again 🙂

i took on the daunting task of cleaning out the whole truck today…it *reeked* of dead campfire and other unpleasant camp smells. mmmmm….trapped for a week in a car with that smell. i think not. fabreeze and i had a love affair in the suburban today 🙂

for once in a blue moon, i am having a quiet night alone. david is in seattle, lish shipped out for a 10 day testing deployment (well, they have her hostage on the ship…same thing) and james is hanging out at chad’s. i haven’t figured out what i am doing with myself just yet. maybe it will involve puttering around and packing. maybe some puzzle time. maybe just a braindead movie.

i ran errands like a madwoman today. i bought a very plain laptop case, but i have grand plans for it. walmart had the CUTEST gerber daisy iron-on patches in the craft section, and i am headed there later tonight to acquire the darlings for some craftiness tonight or tomorrow.

i posted pics from our weekend camping trip on belen.net 🙂

the new kitty is sick. and the result is this great noise that he makes as he tries to breathe out his nose. its a SNARK. thus, his nickname has become Snarker and Snarky. *so* undignified for a cat. but *damn* its a cute noise 🙂

i am going to go do something other than sit endlessly in front of the glowing screen. god knows there is enough to occupy my time!

meet the newest member of lish’s household! he doesn’t have a name yet, but we are working on it 🙂 he is about 3-4 months old and came from the uhmane society. this should satisfy my baby kitty urges for a while 🙂

so we went to the yakima wine valley again, this time with david’s parents (yes, another weekend of camping!)

and i *knew* it would be an expensive trip, because we had decided that we would buy everyone wine for xmas. because with the discovery of ice wine and other tasty dessert wines from that valley, we indeed found the gift that keeps on giving 🙂

so after a day of wine touring, knowing there were already a few wineries we would buy from, we ended up with 2 cases of wine…roughly $400 worth.

yes, yes….we are a veritable fountain of wine right now 🙂

of course, in that stash is about 8 bottles for us, including a $30 and a $50 bottle of port :):):)

if you have never gone wine tasting at wineries, i highly recommend it. i really enjoy knowing what i am going to have before i buy it, and with case discounts, and wineries selling their stuff for about 15% under the store cost, it does turn out to be a lovely thing! it is also really really neat to interact with the winemakers themselves.

at the eaton hill winery, we wanted to get another few bottles of this amazing nectarine white wine that we had purchased in june…but they were completely sold out of it in only 8 months since bottling! it had won a ton of awards and was such a steal for $10 a bottle. and the owner was so awesome that he actually got us out a bottle from his personal reserve and sold it to us 🙂

anyway, so it was a well spent weekend. sunday will be a day of working for me to make up for the friday off..although, truth be knows, i did work while we travelled too. so much to do these days!

zephyr just brought home a live hopping mouse 🙂

it was the exact same size as his toy mice and he brought it up the stairs with a very cheerful mew, set it down for his cat parents to survey and all of a sudden is started running! it appeared unharmed, and zephyr helped us corral it until david caught it.

we spent some time marvelling over the unharmed and very cute creature and then released him back outside, farther out of cat territory.

i don’t think zephyr knows to kill them…he just keeps bringing us live, unharmed things 🙂