Pretty much everyone at work is signed up to get emails from the head of the local emergency management agency.  The agency that sends out notices when the weather is foul, or the wind is going in circles and touching the ground.

On Friday, I got a kick out of reading his email.  It was a fairly short (for him) email.  Sometimes at work we joke that he likes to hear himself talk too.. though it’s in email, so I guess it’s just that he likes to type.

He’s encouraging people to be prepared for bad weather.  Including having supplies on hand if the weather is really bad and the electricity goes out for longer than the few days that it was out last week.

Basically, to me on Friday, it sounded like he was describing homesteading.  Rather fascinating, since sometimes people like to see those who are into preparedness as wackos.

I’m not a wacko, I just don’t want to rely on a system that is so dependent on aging infrastructure.  What happens if the roads are blocked?  We can do without milk, what about having food on hand?  With all the tornadoes and flooding in the last few years, a stockpile isn’t necessarily a bad idea.   And my husband laughs at me.

All I’m interested in is being prepared, and finding a cheaper way to eat lawn clippings – er vegetables. Besides, have you tasted a real tomato lately instead of one of those waxy things you buy at the store?

Hey, 3 days in a row, anyone shocked yet?  Probably 🙂 I went so long without posting at all.

I’ve been looking into Homesteading lately.  Mostly because I’m frustrated with work and would love to be able to get by on just my husband’s income so I could stay home.

Though a dear friend has pointed out that me staying home would include me bored out of my mind.  I think this friend just knows me too well. LOL

Then again, there’s always gaming and writing to keep myself occupied.  Not to mention, working on a garden and whatever else is involved in homesteading (I really need to check into it – but our place is only 1/2 acre, not big enough for animals, not even chickens, so if Homesteading includes raising chickens, I may have to scrap that idea lol).

On the other hand, I will be starting a garden, most likely of the square foot variety.  With the quality of the fresh veggies you get at the store, and the price of said veggies, I think I need an alternative.

That’s why I started mulching old branches.  I’ll have to level the ground in the back yard and replant the grass as I can.

I’ll do the landscaping little by little as well.  I’m really planning on turning it into a work of art, just because that’s what I’ve always wanted to do.  I need to find a place where I can buy statuary, tho hubby won’t be happy mowing around it. We’ll just have to move it when we mow.

There’s another snow storm coming tonight.  School is already cancelled for tomorrow and nothing has hit yet.

And as much as I’m putting off going to sleep because I don’t want to work tomorrow, I already know they’re not closing the office.  Besides, I won’t be able to permanently avoid the power play going on, the one that I’m caught in the middle of.  I’m just going to have to ride everything out, and try to remember that it’s a steady paycheck, and the paycheck is what matters.

Now if they’d just let me work from home once the youngest starts pre-k next year.  Or else I need to really get my writing done.

So, late last week, I got a message on Facebook about setting up our 25th class reunion.   They’re planning it a year in advance so everyone can make it.

And of course a discussion about drinking and being able to hold your liquor came up.

Seriously?

Maybe it’s just that I don’t see the appeal of drinking, and I never really have.  Ok, so I went through a phase about 9 years ago where I drank a lot, or at least went out a lot.  I had just gone through a bad break-up and was feeling sorry for myself.  I was feeling like I was never going to find someone who would accept both myself and my son, and not let my son’s behavior drive them away.  After all, he was a kid and was going through a rough time himself.

Once I woke up to the fact that I didn’t need someone else, I stopped wanting more than an occasional drink.  Though I’ve considered learning to make my own beer, just because it sounds fun.  Like I need another hobby. LOL

Now, I could drink, but I really don’t care to.  I don’t see the appeal.  It’s much easier to relax after you’ve had a good run or other type of workout. I’m thinking a good hour-long martial arts or other workout, where your muscles shake because you’ve worked them so hard.

Alcohol is a depressant, and I tend toward depression any way.

I’ve always been able to have fun without drinking or drugs.

So, we shall see.  I will probably go to my reunion, but how much I participate will depend on how much drinking is involved.  I’d rather hike Mt. Pisgah.  I’d rather walk along Lake Memphremagog, or the brick streets at Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace.  Heck, even tour Ben & Jerry’s factory and the Vt. Teddy Bear Factory.  Those all sound more fun than getting bombed at night and sleeping all day.

Even better, maybe I can convince a few of the people who got me into gaming that we should start a quick gaming session… Maybe one of the newer games like Cards Against Humanity.

So, I obviously haven’t posted much for the last month.  I started clearing out another area of brush, and I have pictures of the before this time.  But the last few weekends have been a bit cold for me to work outside.  So I’ve been inside (we have the windows covered in plastic and a working fireplace, even though we don’t have any walls or other ways of heating the inside), or at least inside on the days that have been in the 50’s.

While inside, I’ve been working on refinishing the kitchen cupboard.  This has been a very time consuming problem.  First, they are custom made of hard wood.  Second, the shelves are covered with a thick layer of paint and then a layer of contact paper.  Everything has been hardened until it’s almost concrete.

I spent about 1.5 hours one day, and got about a square foot scraped.  But, it’s more than 6 feet long, and has 3 shelves for one 2′ side.

I spent another 3 hours on the cupboard on Monday, since I had the day off work.  This time, I managed to get about 2 sqft. I also started taking the cupboard apart to make it easier to scrape.  I can very easily put it back together and make sure it’s sturdy.

This weekend, I’m going to pick up a heat/paint gun.  It’ll help me go faster than using the multi-tool that we got from Sears.  Though the multi-tool has a scraper attachment and a sand paper attachment, I’ve managed to gouge the wood, using the scraper attachment.  Just using sand paper takes too long.  So I’ll get a heat gun with a scraper attachment.

Hopefully that’ll mean pictures of the finished cabinet soon.  I’m going to leave it natural wood color and polyurethane it to protect it.  The walls will be apricot/peach colored to complement the cabinets, and hubby’s grandfather has already refinished the doors and coated them with polyurethane.

Inside the house, we have about 5′ more to finish out the last wall, and we have to put headers on I think 7 doors and/or windows, and put in about 4 more ‘king studs’ (studs that go beside the windows from the floor to the ceiling joists.  Apparently, these weren’t required when the older part of the house was built, so we need to add them now to get the house inspected, especially since they tore the walls out before we bought the house.

I should have a more exciting update on Sunday, if the snow and ice melt.  I haven’t looked at a forecast, so if it stays around 20 degrees, I’m not going to work on the house or the yard.

On the other hand, I really need to get back and check on the tulips that I found in the yard.  The last snowfall didn’t kill them, I hope this one didn’t either.  I found other flowers coming up, but have no idea what they are.  I’ll have to do a search online and compare the pictures.

Please enjoy my tulip stems lol.

So the drama at home is getting to me.  It’s gotta be something in the air, as someone else is full of drama this week too.

Instead, I just want to go on a vacation. But that’s not going to happen.

Someone was watching the end of Mission Impossible: 2 today at work, to avoid watching the State of the State address.  My mind wandered to the first movie in the series.  I’m thinking I saw it at a drive-in theater… there actually was one back in ’95/’96 in Vermont.

I often wonder if that theater is still around.  I should check Google Maps sometime… but it’d have to be summer time or there’d be no way to tell.

Today, while my husband was working on fixing some of the ‘headers’ and ‘king studs’ in the house, I was working in the yard.  I picked the biggest pile of branches and leaves to start cutting everything up and clearing it out.  I didn’t get the plastic bin that I had planned, but it appears that was a good thing anyway, there was way more than the size of the container that I picked up.   Since we’re in Oklahoma, I put the mulch behind the shed under some smaller trees.  Hopefully, moving everything so far from the original location will mean the wind can’t blow it back where it started.  LOL  I cut up the larger branches with a bypass lopper and put everything in a big pile.

I filled a banana box up 6 times with the leaves and detritus that I was going to put in the back yard to mulch.  It took me 2.5 hours to get one pile completed, so I’ll have to work on it again next week or the next time the weather is above 30 degrees.

On the other hand, my finished product looked nice, as you can see below.  Just ignore the trash that I fished out of the pile, it’s two ceiling fans that we took out of the house, plus some pipes that have come from somewhere inside as well.  The truck belongs to my grandfather-in-law, somewhere on there is a DAV sticker.

I really do think my husband doesn’t know me at all, which is really odd considering we’ve been married for over 8 years.  While I was cleaning up the yard, he asked me if I was going to start bringing trash home in the van since I’m mulching the branches from the tree.  Please excuse me while I roll my eyes.  We’ll be making enough trash of our own 😉 Egg shells, coffee grounds (and tea bags), etc.

Anyway, I’m tired after my work in the yard, and I’m trying to do a few more things with my writing.  Watch me as I work at turning a part of my life around.  Of course, for some reason, I forgot that it started tomorrow, and I haven’t figured out what I want to change.

I’m still not writing as much as I wanted to aim for, but I am writing more than I was… that’s a good thing.

Yet tonight, I’m at a loss for words.  How do I even start? I grew up in church, and I have three families from church where I felt like the parents were my parents.  My mother worked a lot, and I spent a lot of times at these houses.  One of the families was the pastor at the time.  I felt like their youngest was my little brother, and he and I spent a lot of time watching movies.

Tonight, their 2nd oldest posted on Facebook that his mother was diagnosed with colon cancer.

In the last 3 years, two of my friends from eDiets died from cancer, so this hits home for me.  I know that people live through cancer, but right now I’m just worried, scared and sad and understand exactly why her son was rather scattered when he was posting the update on Facebook.

I’m at a loss for words.  There is much more going on with her health, but all I can do from here is pray that she gets better. And send my love to the family that is down there dealing with these issues.  And do my best not to cry.

I don’t even remember where I found the link below, but I really enjoyed reading the comic.

About a year ago, I was pushing myself to do a bunch of writing that I didn’t find very exciting.  I ended up with burnout.  Now, I’m struggling to get back to where I was before I started pushing myself so much.

So, enjoy, the comic in the link by The Oatmeal. (link opens in a new window)

So I’m on day 6 of my goal to write at least 1000 words a day.  But I haven’t met the goal even one day except if you want to count work emails.  For those, I’ve written plenty.  There have been issues with at least one person I work closely with – she doesn’t act professional, preferring to yell if she thinks you’re not doing what she wants done.  She’s not my boss, so I’m not putting up with it.  I reported it to my boss.

Obviously, I’m not being specific.  That’s just not something I want to go into, but I had to write a long email explaining exactly what happened during the last incident.

Add to that, my sister is pregnant.  She’s going to have another little bundle in 8 weeks.  I’d love to go visit her, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen until the house is finished.

I forgot to buy the tub I wanted today, I had the youngest two kids today, and they were stir crazy from winter vacation.  Neither of them were listening, so I did the littlest amount I could do today.

Tomorrow they can run and go crazy at the house while I cut the branches into smaller pieces.  Since I don’t have the bin to use for mulching, right now I’m just going to pile them near the shed in the back, and try to get help picking up the trash in the yard.  I probably won’t have much luck with the help.

We still need to take a trip to Walmart for some stuff for hubby, I’m hoping to get the bin while we’re there.  It’ll depend on what is going on – if it gets too hectic, I’m sure I’ll forget it like I forgot to buy milk today.  I really need to make a list when I go out of the house lol. Of course, a list would help keep hubby from adding things too, which would save money.

Today has been a long day, especially since the furnace went out last night and the guy was here to fix it at 7 am.  I think it’s time for some sleep.  Laterness & g’night.

After the drama earlier this week with politics, I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking we need to start treating these politicians like children.  Maybe it’s time for them to go back to school and learn about sharing or compromise.  Grr, it’s aggravating that they have so much control over what happens when they can’t be bothered to actually act in our best interests.  Congress need term limits just like the president.  They’re all acting like spoiled brats.  I’d say they’re idiots, but even idiots have more sense when it comes time to work together.

In other matters, I’ve been doing some research on how to get a compost bin going in my yard.  I think I’m going to get a big plastic bin and drill holes in it.  I hate to bring all of these branches to the dump when they’d make great compost for the square foot garden I want to plant.  Besides, the dump gets plenty of trash, there’s hardly any recycling in this city.  There are several options.  You can do it yourself by trying to get everything to the center during their normal business hours, or you can hire someone for $10 a month.  Once we’re in our own place, we’ll hire the company that charges $10 a month, but the attitude around here is that recycling is too much trouble.

I need to do some looking around to find some smaller clippers to cut up the branches to put in the plastic bin.  I also need to find a way to cut down the tree that’s growing so close to the back of our house that eventually we won’t be able to use our back door.  A hack saw might work, if hubby hasn’t bent all of the blades.

I need to run the lawn mower to mulch the nuts that I didn’t pick up this year, but I think I need to wait until spring thaw.  They should be more likely to crush easily then too.

Speaking of nuts, I need to add an electric sheller to my wishlist some time.  After about an hour of cracking pecans, my hand starts hurting.  Or I’m just a wuss and eventually my hands will get used to the work.

Actually, since I just did a search for an electric nut sheller, I can either spend almost $400 or make one myself.  Of course, I’ll have to find a real way to make one myself since the tutorial I found looks like it uses a drill press, which I don’t have.  I’d spend as much if not more to buy one of those first.

There’s so much more cleaning to do in the yard, it’s hard to know where to start.  I’m going to spend some time cleaning up the branches we cut last summer and trimming back the crape myrtle that is planted edging the street.  I want to at least be able to see the number sign that’s in the yard.  Eventually I want to replace the crape myrtle with lilacs and butterfly bushes.

It seems like 10:30 comes earlier and earlier.  G’night.