A rainy cool Monday--

 Apropo for a day like today. I am loving myself enough to take it easy today.  The house is a mess, there are apples to process, dog hair to clean up, dishes to do...but I am moving a little slower than usual due to this darn back again. Instead of pushing my way through it, I'm going to go slow,  take it easy and try to learn something today about the relationship of my body to my state of mind. Sigh...life's little lessons...

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 Seriously, this kind of weather makes me want to go back to bed. lol I slept about 7 hours last night, so you'd think I wouldn't be too sleepy, but I am. And then I decided I needed to have a big bowl of whole oats with raisins and pecans and butter and molasses for breakfast. Comfort food at it's finest. It was good, but it put me to sleep.  lol  Serious as a heart attack...At 10:30 I went back to bed and slept until after 1. My body must have been in need of rest, because I slept like  baby.  I'm not much for naps usually...only because my body has a hard time sleeping during the day.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

   Now I'm home and it's about midnight.  Husbandman brought home a desk chair from work,  all the office people got new chairs and were throwing the old ones away. It's quite nice actually, with a coffee stain on the seat, but otherwise apparently unmolested. I was thinking the other day that my old one might be part of the cause of the back problems...it's VERY comfy, which probably means it's shot. It's kind of a slouchy chair, if you know what I mean.  I'm sitting in the new one now, and it's quite straight and tight. We'll see...

   We have some major thunderstorms coming our way. Warmed up nicely today, even though it was rainy. Tomorrow is supposed to be something crazy like 50 and then it's going to hit 74 and then back down again.  A person can't keep track of temperatures like that--lordy, you don't know how to dress from one day to the next. lol The rain has been good though, we were getting pretty dry.  And an earthquake in Oklahoma??  Wonder what Rubye Jack had to do with that???  Did she bring earthquakes with her from California ???  And now I see a big one has hit Turkey, 7.2, and at least a thousand feared dead right off the bat.   Yikes.  Tomorrow morning I have to get out there and pick beans and peas again. Maybe some turnips too. Have to see. I have to bake a couple of pies and make the Irishman some mobile supper since he has class again this Tuesday.  One of the pies is going with him to class...a lemon meringue, all made from scratch. There's a certain nun there I need to impress.  lol  They're talking about the possibility of a pie workshop, though they may have been kidding. I really like doing these.

   Have a couple of friends who are having some troubles, and as much as I feel bad for them, there's really nothing I can do to help, except be a friend. A shoulder to cry on, and a sounding board. I can do that. Prayers and healing thoughts going out to all.

   I ordered an apple corer/slicer from Amazon and a book for himself that are supposed to be delivered tomorrow. Hope so. The apple appliance was only about 8 dollars, and it's a stainless steel contraption with easy grip rubber handles on it. It cores and evenly slices the apple in one fell swoop. That will be perfect for drying apple slices.  One of the problems I have dehydrating sometimes is that it's hard to cut all your slices of ANYTHING  all the same thickness when you're slicing by hand. My son gave me a deli slicer last summer, and I was thinking that would work for slicing apples into rounds, if I decide to go that direction too. I just might....  If I still had 2 freezers, I would make and freeze some complete pies, but I don't, so I'll not be doing that.  To be honest, I make more apple crisps than I do regular pies anyway.

  The book is by a man named Jeremy Rifkin and is called "The Third Industrial Revolution".  I'm looking forward to reading it myself. Mr. Rifkin (an internationally renowned U.S. economist)  is a social critic and author who advises the European Union on climate change and energy security. He has some interesting things to say about peak oil and the world economy.

  I'm still knee-deep in Sharon Astyk's book, Independence Days. It's an amazing read and I'm loving it and learning new stuff all the time. I want to read "A Nation of Farmers" next.  Might put that book on my Christmas wish list.  :)

  Alrighty...I'm going to bed now so I can get up early tomorrow for a day of writing and baking and cleaning and gardening (if the timeline on the storms doesn't change). It's midnight and I'm not all that tired, but the yawning is starting and so I should be able to fall asleep quick enough.  

  sweet dreams, my darlings...

Namaste.