To Scotland

Taken by Marcheline on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland 1999

I have been to Scotland
And now I am returned
Nothing looks the same here
My heart, I think, has turned
My thoughts across the sea remain
A fool could see my lack
Though Scotland wooed my soul awa'
I brought my body back

- Marcheline

A new trailer for the Half Blood Prince!

The movie comes out in 262 days... to say I'm looking forward to it is a severe understatement...

Midnight ramblings

Here it is, almost 2:30AM, and I've been up for at least an hour. Don't know if it's my impending job change, or the fact that despite the cool fall weather outside, our bedroom feels as if it's a hundred degrees. Perhaps it's my tummy having its revenge after that deliciously spicy blackened cajun chicken and jambalaya Bear cooked for us last night.

Whatever it is, I'm awake.

Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, I am beset with thoughts about my dad's death, or my mind wants to rehash mistakes I've made or bills I'm worried about paying, raising my blood pressure and making it impossible to sleep.

Tonight, though, it's none of that. I just woke up, and that was that. I fear I may turn into one of those older people with insomnia problems that I hear about so often. There are times when it feels peaceful being awake when most everyone else is asleep. There are other times when it feels lonely and a bit scary.

The only thing that remains constant is that once I'm awake, it's pointless to lie there in bed trying to sleep. I get up, have a drink of water, play with the cats, read a book, or go online until my eyes start to droop. Usually once a bit of light appears in the morning sky, my clock kicks in and I'm ready for some serious Z's. Not helpful when the morning in question is a workday.

Luckily, tomorrow (today) is not a workday for me, but I still must get up at 8AM in order to get to a few doctors' appointments which will predicate my being hired for my new job (one is a physical, the other a drug screening). I also have reams of paperwork to fill out, mail, and fax to the home office. My plan is to get that done early on in the day so that I have time later to relax, perhaps make some beeswax candles, and maybe take a nap!

I wonder if perhaps right now, as I am typing away in the middle of the night, someone who reads my blog will see this post in the middle of their day somewhere around the world. It's a nice thought.

Last night's dream

So, last night I was asleep and dreaming, and had been assigned to work in a hospital. It was my job to make sure a female patient took her proper medicines at the proper time. I had just opened a vial, and had shaken out the right number of pills, when the patient suddenly turned into a black cat and streaked out of the room and down the hall.

Just then, Angelina Jolie arrived at the hospital. She walked in with no bodyguards and no entourage - for that matter, she was wearing no makeup and her hair was a mess. But of course she was still hotter than the fourth of July. Goes without saying.

Angie stood for a moment with her elbow pressed against mine as she discussed the day's duties with another hospital employee. I tried not to freak out or in any way distract her, as I was majorly WOW-ing over the fact that she was standing so close to me that we were actually touching... and then she sat down at a switchboard and began fielding calls for the hospital.

Meanwhile, I had to alert someone that the patient I had been assigned to had become a cat and fled the scene. I got hold of a microphone, and made a hospital-wide announcement that everyone should be on the lookout for my patient, who was now a black four-legged feline, on floor.... HELL - what floor was I on???

Quickly, I asked some interns that were walking by, and they told me we were on the fifth floor. I announced over the loudspeaker that the patient-turned-cat was on floor FIVE. At which point some nearby candystripers giggled and said, "We're on floor fifteen silly!" I got back on the microphone and said, "Make that floor ONE FIVE, floor FIFTEEN." I felt like a complete buffoon, and was embarrassed in case Angelina Jolie had heard me and thought I was an incompetent fool.

Suddenly I was running down a highway with seven or eight other members of an elite team of humans being spared from the end of the world. We were dodging cars, and crawling under buses that were parked on the side of the highway. I crawled under one and got caught, and thought I was a goner for sure.

Extricating myself from that little horror, the eight (or nine) of us boarded some sort of space craft and began flying at low altitudes across the countryside. The thing took a nosedive and I thought we were all going to die.

At this point, I believe I was woken by A) my husband snoring or B) the pain in my shoulder caused by my sleeping position, and the whole thing was wiped out.

Waking from dreams like this is sometimes a relief, as I would certainly prefer not to die in a fiery spaceship crash, and sometimes a dissapointment, as I would really have liked to meet Angelina in person.

I do believe the stresses of everyday life are getting to me.

No time

Working at the vineyard is cool and everything, but it is royally kicking my ass. I spend almost 12 hours a day away from home, five days a week, which means that I have to cram all of my shopping and cleaning and errand running into my two "days off".

When I worked closer to home, I could stop at the grocery store on my way home from work without bursting into tears from stabbing pains in my feet. I could come home one night and vacuum the house, clean the cat box, and make dinner. I could come home the next night and pay some bills, put the laundry away, and maybe watch a movie. By the time the weekend rolled around, the house was clean and Bear and I could relax.

As it stands now, Bear and I will never have a day off together again. He's off Saturday and Sunday, and I'm off Monday and Tuesday. This is not fun.

Today was my second day off. I emptied a load of crap out of the attic, to include:

• ancient computer monitor of dubious functionality
• prom dresses and long gowns I wore in high school and college, which I finally decided to stop fantasizing about ever fitting into again
• denim jackets that were never in fashion when I wore them, and never will be
• a kitten carrier
• a razor scooter that my father gave me for some unknown reason, as I was 38 years old and unlikely to be risking my coccyx down at the Dairy Queen with the local elementary school boys on Saturday nights
• a full-length massage cushion - a great idea in theory, but actually just annoying
• blankets and bedspreads
• new but obsolete printer/photo/scanner monstrosities

The stuff that was decent was dropped off at the Salvation Army. They insisted on taking the nine thousand pound prehistoric computer monitor, even though I told them it was crap and I was going to take it to the dump. Dunno what they plan to do with it - maybe use it as a doorstop?

I also removed a bewildering array of cardboard boxes filled with non-burnable packing material from my storage room. Normally I would just burn cardboard boxes in my outdoor fire pit, but then I would be left with scads of styrofoam peanuts and plastic sheeting to deal with, so I took the whole lot to the dump.

When I got home, I noticed that the parking area and shrubbery outside looked like 1313 Mockingbird Lane, so I jumped into my storage room, slammed the door shut, and when it opened again Clipper Girl emerged, armed with a heavy-duty fifty-foot orange extension cord and an electric hedge trimmer.

I whacked twenty feet of yew hedges. I buzzed sixteen rose of Sharons. I slaughtered scads of eye-endangering drooping climbing rose brambles around the cottage entryway. I shaved the overhanging shelf of porcelain-berry vines on the back patio. I trimmed the boxwood cornerpiece in the back garden, and gave the grandfather's beard a shaping up.

After all this, I took a pair of large clippers out front, and went all around the edge of the railroad tie wall, chopping through the ivy that had overgrown it and trailed out into the parking area. This ivy was making it impossible for the tenants to see how close they were to the wall when parking, resulting in their parking too far out from it, which in turn made it a circus trick for me to get my truck in and out of my own spot.

Then out came the rake. I raked up all the rose brambles first. This created a large, rolling ball of greenery that stuck to itself, and also picked up all the other branches and junk that I raked it over. By the time I reached the end of the parking area, I had a waist-high ball of branches that was five feet wide. With a little maneuvering I was able to rake it right up over the edge of the railroad tie border and into the underbrush by the fence where it can rot away in peace over the winter and not bother anyone.

Broom next. Sweeping all the yew needles and detritus that was left in front of the cottage door and down the walkway into the parking area. Sweeping all the dirt which the rains leech out between the cracks in the railroad tie wall.

Then all tools went back in the gazebo/shed, probably known to the neighbors as The Bloody Great Ivy Covered Thing. The orange cord got re-wound, the electric trimmer went back in its box.

Then Clipper Girl fell onto the sofa. Turner Classic Movies was dialed up on the remote control, the volume was set to low, and a nap ensued.

My anniversary flowers

A poem for thought

When I was a young man, and very well thought of,
I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied.
I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins
And I never spoke love but I know that I lied.

But I said to myself, "Ah, they none of them know
The secret I shelter and savor and save.
I wait for the one who will see through my seeming,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave."

The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens,
The ladies went by me like snow on the wind.
I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled,
And I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned.

But I said to myself, "Ah, they none of them see
There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave.
My lady is late, but she'll find I've been faithful,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave."

At last came a lady both knowing and tender
Saying "You're not at all what they take you to be."
I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking,
And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea.

And I say to myself, when there's time for a word,
As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved,
"Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger,
And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved."

- from "The Last Unicorn", by Peter S. Beagle

Tales from the dungeon

It's been raining too hard and too often lately, so it was no great surprise to hear from the tenants that the basement in the front house was flooded. It was, however, a surprise to hear water gushing as we went down the stairs, and to find four inches of water standing in the basement, and Niagara Falls pouring out of one of the basement walls.

Put in a call to our plumber, normally a stellar customer service provider, who told us he was at EMT class, and would not be able to come over and look at the problem until 9 or 10pm. At 11:30 he had still not arrived, and was not answering his cell phone. At midnight, we gave up and went to bed, disgruntled, overtired, and worried about the front house floating away. Thank goodness we finally got the basement sump pump working again and most of the water was being pumped out... but the entire basement smelled like ass and everything down there was soggy through and through. Disgusting.

I woke up at 4am, worrying about the flooded basement, the brick steps that are on their way to collapse, the driveway that needs paving, and the general collapse of our country's economy, and was unable to get back to sleep until just before the alarm went off. Of course.

Hubby stayed home to locate our delinquent plumber, who finally showed up and found a water pipe with a hole in it. Fixed it. We owe him three hundred dollars.

When Bear asked him why he didn't call us or show up last night, he said EMT class "ran late" and then he "forgot".

Translated, that means "after EMT class, everyone went out for beers, so to hell with the flooded basement people."