Grass Cutting Disaster...

Yesterday started off as a good day. Got the windows done. Then it went downhill from there. On my first sweep of the yard I ran into an old gas line that the propane man had just thrown down there when he replaced it last fall. It was hidden in the grass and bent the lawn mower blade in an almost 45 degree angle. I was pissed. I had heard my neighbor with his weed eater a little earlier so I waited until I thought he was inside and called him to come have a look at it to see if it could be bent back in shape. In the mean time I got the weed eater out and after 300 tries got it started. I couldn't start it last week and I finally figured out why. It didn't have any gas in it. Well, DUH! So I finally got it started yesterday and proceeded to get rid of the high grass around my flower beds and the fire pit. Then I thought what the heck. I started on the rest of the lawn. Have you ever cut your entire yard with a weed eater? It ain't fun. Ernie showed up as I was about half way through and I took a break while he tried like crazy to fix the blade. It couldn't be fixed. He'd brought his lawn mower up when he came and got it down off the truck and finished the yard for me while I hit the perimeters with the weed eater. He is such a great neighbor and friend. I am blessed to have him.

I waited for him to leave and stripped down on the porch all the way to my undies (Bet you can't do that) so I wouldn't track grass all over the house. Boy that shower felt good.

Grabbed my Kindle and hit the swing on the front porch. So the day ended nicely.

All I had to eat yesterday was a chicken sandwich, a couple of ounces of cheese, some pretzels and a huge salad. Then before bedtime, some rice pudding and a granola bar.

Company called last night and are heading my way this morning, so I've got a lot to accomplish before they arrive. I thought they weren't coming until tomorrow but they surprised me.

Have fun this weekend y'all.

My New Technology...

Have you ever had a "well, DUH" moment? I seem to be having them a lot lately. I'm having a hard time getting used to my DSL. Hey, did I tell you I have DSL? Just kidding.

It's making me realize how long it takes to form new habits. I will sometimes be online and wonder if someone tried to call while I was online. Well, DUH, I would have heard the phone ring. But I catch myself picking up the phone to check my voice mail. And there's the times that I'm setting here and get hungry and jump up to get myself a sandwich and think to myself, "I'd better disconnect first in case someone wants to call." Then it hits me that I don't have to do that anymore. It's been almost a month now and these thoughts are getting fewer but they still happen.


Hey, I didn't share with y'all what I got for Mother's Day.

I'm a lovin' my new Kindle. It is a little weird getting used to not turning pages to read but I think this habit will form eventually too. Well, gotta fess up, I bought it for myself for Mother's
Day. But the girls were both thrilled that I'd gotten it so I just think of it as being from them. I don't want either of them spending their hard earned money on me. And what on earth could they get me anyway. They know that if I want anything I'll get it for myself.


I just finished cleaning all my windows and am having a bite of lunch before I go out and cut the grass. (Of course I'll let it settle a while first, don't want to get sick.) Got company coming Sunday and will have a lot to do Saturday to get ready for them so I couldn't put it off any longer. I hate cleaning windows!


Have a great holiday weekend!

A Welcome Critter...

Didn't check in yesterday (weigh-in day) because I was really disgusted. The 2.5 pounds that came off last week were back on this week. I have no idea why! I'll just keep on doing the right thing and it will come off eventually. But it is a real bummer.

Just had to share another "critter" with you. At least this one isn't inside the house. But I was really happy to see it. I have a family of ravens living near the cabin. You can't tell by this picture but they are huge. They are bigger than either of my cats and almost as big as my dogs.

I do enjoy watching them, though. I can sometimes see them flying off my porch and more than once there was something in their mouths. So I'm pretty careful not to leave anything laying around out there that I want to keep. I did catch sight of a clothes pin once.



Hope you have a great Friday.

More Critters???

GOOD GRIEF!!

The past couple of nights I was hearing something downstairs after I went to bed. Sounded like one of the cats roaming around, but...the cats are outside. I kept coming down here to check it out and found nothing. Just before bedtime last night I heard it again near the back door. I have a huge box there that I collect junk mail and old bills and stuff to burn. It was coming from the box. I picked it up and shook it a while and no sound or site of anything. Then I picked up a another small box that was in there partially crushed and EEEK, a mouse! The whole big box is now on the front porch on it's side hoping the mouse has escaped. But it will stay out there for at least another day to make sure. I'm not really afraid of mice (I think their cute), but I don't want any in my house.

My eating has been good but I'm back up to where I was when I started trying to lose this 9 pounds. Drats!! I'll keep at it though. Have to get out there and mow the lawn in the next day or so and that will help burn some calories.

My Internet was down from yesterday until just now and I was really having withdrawals. Guess I could have cleaned the house instead of pining away for Internet, but...that's too much like work.

Have a great day!

EEEEEWWWWW...

It's cold out!! No wonder I slept so well last night. I have a hard time sleeping when I'm hot.

I moved my bed out away from the window yesterday. Why, you ask? Well, here goes another bat story. Get ready. You're all going to say EEEEWWWWW.

This pic gives you an idea of what I'm talking about when I say that I have high ceilings. See the apex way up there? That's where the bat comes in. Either there or through the one in my bedroom and I'm bettin' it's the one in my bedroom because...

I was lyin' in bed, night before last, just sleepin' away and all of a sudden felt myself being pelted with little thingys. I jumped up and turned on the light and found bat droppings all over the top of my bed. These were dried up ones and they look a lot like mouse droppings except they're a little bigger. (Now comes the EEEWWWWWW's) So I surmised that a bat had just entered the cabin and dislodged some of the droppings he'd left while hiding out up there in the daylight. I ran downstairs and grabbed my rainbow sweeper with all the long attachments, I paid extra for, and proceeded to climb on the bed and sweep up as many droppings as I could from the crack in the apex, and of course from my bed.

So now my bed is in the middle of the floor and I'm thinkin' about changing things around up there and making it catty cornered, but don't know if it will work or not. I really can't sleep under that apex anymore until I can find someone that can climb up there and seal things off. I've tried to get someone to do that but can't find anyone that is willing to climb that high on a ladder and do it for me. And believe you me, I'm not getting on a ladder that high up. It's about 35 feet off the ground on the outside and I'm too old for that sh&%.

Was going to mow the grass again today but it's still too wet. Looks like I'll have a good opportunity to do it any day this week as there's no rain predicted.

Have a great Sunday!!

Two and a Half Pounds...

YAY, 2.5 pounds gone this week. And here I was fretting all week, hopping on the scales daily and sometimes 2-3 times a day. Just "shows to go ya" that you have to be patient and wait for a whole week to be over. I know this next week won't be as grand. I always did have a big (well, this was big for me) loss on the first week after a huge stumble. Stumble? More like rolling down the mountain. Remember doing that when we were kids? You got started and couldn't stop until you got to the bottom? Thank goodness I did stop before hitting bottom. I'm even thinking that I may try to get a little more off this time. I don't know for sure, it will all depend on how long this 6.5 pounds takes and how I feel at that point. I stopped at 180 because I had become so obsessed with dieting that I wasn't a happy person anymore so we shall see how I feel when I get back down there.

And when I do get back down there I'm going to remember something I saw on Biggest Loser a couple of weeks ago when they sent everyone home for a month. When Jillian showed up at her teams homes she stressed allowing ourselves some comfort once in a while and just remember that we all have to allow it and learn to deal with it through our calorie counting and exercise. I'm going to have to find a way to allow myself the little extras without going overboard.

Have a great weekend!

Life of a Mountain Woman...

Yay, the Orkin man came on time. Did his regular spraying inside and out and then he brought the extension ladder in the house. He had to climb up to my ceiling which is about 25 feet up. He checked and checked and couldn't find any bees or ants (of the carpenter variety), but he laid out some ant bait. He didn't want to spray the stuff needed for the bees in the house. So we took the ladder outside and set it up there and he climbed again and the bees were swarming up there. Well, not really swarming, but there were about 5 of them and they were very active going in and out of some cracks that I can't reach to caulk. He still couldn't spray what he really wanted to spray because it is in a huge back-pack that he wears and its so heavy he's afraid he'll get top heavy on the ladder and come tumbling off. So he's going to go back to his boss and see if they can't rig something up so that he can spray from the ground 30 feet into the air. He's even afraid to wait my normal 2 months for the next appointment. He says as active as they are he'd better come back in a month or less.

Then...I'm lying in bed reading last night trying to get sleepy and see something out of the corner of my eye. I look that way and there's nothing there. So I go back to reading. Then it happens again. I put the book down and look really good this time and find nothing. I got up and walked all over the bedroom and look over the balcony to the living room and find nothing again. So, it's back to bed and the book. When it happened again I was quicker and discovered a bat flying around. Oh, joy! I watched it for a while and since there was nothing I could do I just read some more and then went to sleep. I've come to find out that they won't bother me since they are just flying around up toward the top of my ceiling. And...there's no way I could ever reach them to take a broom or anything to them to bat them down. I'm just a brave mountain woman, I guess.

Eating was really good yesterday. Hopefully today will be the same.

Have a great Friday and weekend!!

Disillusionment...

Yesterday was a bust. Neither thing I mentioned in yesterday's post happened. Right after I posted I started having to run to the bathroom (and I do mean run), so I had to call and cancel taking the dogs in. Then the Orkin man never showed up. I called the office around 5:30 and they had no idea why he hadn't come. He just called a little while ago and told me the office was supposed to call and let me know he was running some one else's route yesterday but they didn't. So he's coming today.

Eating was much better yesterday, mainly because I was afraid to eat too much. I didn't want to spend too much time in the bathroom. But that part of it passed after a few hours and the "feel bads" took over. I spent most of the day lying around. So far today I feel fine. Must have been something I ate on Tuesday.

The fun of the new Mini computer has worn off. Actually it is more like a disillusionment. That thing may be 3 years newer than my main computer but it is 3 times slower than the main one too. You would think that being that much newer it would be faster or at least as fast. Setting down with it and surfing the net is almost like having dial up again. It's not quite that slow but almost. My first thoughts when I got it were that I'd use it for the web and that way I wouldn't get viruses on my main one but I can't stand the slowness of it. I did a defrag on it last night and haven't tried it this morning to see if that helped or not.

Not much planned for today except waiting for the Orkin man. At least he told me he'd be here between 2:30 and 4:30. That's when he usually comes. Was going to take the walk around my driveway and take pics for you guys but the weather isn't going to be conducive for that until Monday at the earliest.

Have a great day!

No Walking Shoes...

I sort of went on an impromptu walk yesterday. I started out just walking around the yard and then kept seeing something else and before you know it I was down one side of my driveway and looking back up. The worst part was that I didn't have on walking shoes. I had on my winter clogs, just because they were by the door and easy to slip into.

Does any one know what the names of these flowers/plants are? The purple one, I found in the woods around here several years ago and transplanted it by my porch. I've never been able to find out what it is but it is definitely a wild flower. The other two are ground cover that has been given to me and I wasn't told the names of them. The bushy one with the yellow flowers on top is really soft. Even the leaves are as soft as a feather. It sends off underground shoots and pops up just anywhere it wants too, as you can see in the last picture of the little lone plant.

My eating wasn't any better yesterday than it was the day before. Still famished all day. I didn't "splurge" on anything, meaning that I ate all healthy foods but there was still too much of them. My official weigh-in day has changed since I started on this on Saturday. So we shall see what this Saturday brings. But I have been hopping on the scales every day and have watched it go down and up for the past 5 days. Today it's back to where it was when I started again on Saturday.

Did you watch Biggest Loser last night? It was great. I was so pleased with both winners. Since this was the first season I've ever watched I didn't know what to expect or how things worked. Needless to say I was glued for 3 hours. Thank goodness for my DVR so I could go potty and, unfortunately, hope up and make myself a salad.

I almost missed the beginning. I was so tired around 7:00 that I was lying on the couch and dozed off for just a little while. Then what do you know but I couldn't get to sleep when I went to bed. Kept turning the light back on and reading some more until around 2:00. And with a busy day ahead of me. Have to take the dogs to the groomers and go back a pick them up before Orkin gets here. My carpenter bees are back.

Have a great hump day!