Monday is the ONE day...

...where I start out slow and stay that way. For some reason. Didn't get up til after 8:30. Just finished the coffee and am sitting down now with my first cup. Moving slow,but feeling okay about it.  lol

  Having lunch with a friend , early, because I really need to get my hair colored today. It'll be early and short, probably, but we haven't caught up in a bit and she's leaving this week for the rest of the month. Found out last night that another friend has just had surgery for colon cancer. He didn't really tell anyone much...it was a shock, but I guess that particular cancer is epidemic lately. Wondering (to myself) if it could be the national past time of Big Macs and Whoppers instead of real slow food?  

  Having some cool and crisp fall days and cold nights.  Got the heat lamp and heated water dish installed in the chicken coop for the winter. Got the compost all cleaned up and turned into the winter cooking bed. Two completely empty bins now, all ready for me to fill up again with an assortment of food scraps and chicken coop cleanings. Got the tomato cages all pulled out of the ground and ready to sort through. This was the absolute LAST year for many of them. They are deteriorating, and will go to the scrap yard. Believe it or not (despite all my bluff) I am sad to see the gardens so bleak and down for the winter. Sort of.  lol

 On the other hand, if I could stop going to lunch, I could get my kitchen all straightened away and back to normal. I'm afraid that will have to wait until the end of the month, though. Between going to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving and writing NaNoWriMo, and working, I am knackered. In a good way.  I'm just not as resilient as I used to be. In my youth. lol  I'm still trying to get over the last bits of this cold/flu thing that knocked me for a loop weeks ago. There's the tiniest annoying bit of a cough hanging on and I am just plain tuckered out a lot of the time. I want to yell at my body..SNAP OUT OF IT !!!!  But I am trying to be kinder to my body these days, even if it is a little late in the game. I wonder if everyone goes through this?  Hell on wheels all their lives until suddenly things come to a screeching halt...and then it's "Oh, dear, sorry? Have I abused you, dear body? Oh here, let me make it up to you?..."   Apologies for all the years of working, drinking, playing like a demonic dervish...oh well. I have a plaque on my bathroom wall, a quote from Erma Bombeck, and she says at the end of her life she wants to say God, I used up everything you gave me. I've certainly used everything up. lol

  Okay. Off to the showers, since I've finished up my first cuppa and can now focus my eyes. I stayed up a little late writing, am at 27K+ words on my novella, and going strong. Yay, me!

  Have a marvelous Monday. I plan to.

Namaste.

October 18, 2009...Sunday night

This is a plant called coral bells ..it comes back every year if you baby it just a little, and the leaves come in every color from this light green with red veins to a dark crimson color. This is at my house in NC, from 5 years ago. This little thing would just bloom like crazy every year...the most beautiful and fragile looking white flowers. It's really quite gorgeous.


The yard and gardens have that yucky end of season look. Here in the midwest, when things are done, they are DONE. lol I suddenly have giant radishes coming up in the garden though...rather, they're leafing out again. I planted icicle radishes all scattered throughout the gardens because they are a good form of pest control in an organic garden. Lots of buggies are attracted to them. I've been pulling them up and feeding them to the chickens, who adore them. I even pulled up some volunteer peas...

All my lilies and roses and flowers look terrible, as we just had our first near miss of a frost last night. It's warmer today and tonight, but still chilly. 41 right now @ 10:30. Tomorrow is supposed to be much warmer than it has been. That's fine by me. lol

I brought home a 5 gallon bucket of coffee grounds today from the District meeting. The facilities guy said, I'm throwing these out. He's a friend of mine and I said I'd take them for my garden. He doesn't have a hard time giving them away in the summer apparently. I told him I'd throw 'em in my compost and on my garden beds, if he wanted to keep them for me.

It was a small meeting today, and our delegate was there to give a report on his participation at the 2009 GSO conference. He's a very nice man and it was interesting (to me, anyway). I chaired the meeting in the absence of our DCM...good practice for me. I think when the time comes next year, I will stand for the chair in the election. I've stayed active in service and it brings me great satisfaction...I know lots of people don't like this end of the AA game, but I do.


I'm grateful that I have something to give back. I'm blessed to have had lots of bad experiences in my life that have made me useful to God. I'm really grateful to be sober...to have a good life...and to be me today.

I'm grateful to have made friends in the rooms 19 years ago that are still my friends today. I'm grateful that I know somebody who's sober in almost every state in the union. I'm blessed to have an extended family that reaches across continents, and no matter where I go in the world, I am home.

Waiting for a young girl to call me back who's having a rough time of late. She's going to come out tomorrow and stay a bit and see if we can get through some serious issues and find some possible solutions. I thank my Creator for the opportunity, no matter how far down the scale I had gone, to be useful and helpful and compassionate. And for giving me just enough of everything I need to be able to help someone else from time to time.


Such a deal....



Namaste.

Fantastic Friday

[My summer home in New Orleans(just kidding) the famous Corn Mansion]

The story goes that a wealthy man married a farm girl from Iowa or Nebraska or some corn state, and moved her down to Nah'lens. She was so homesick for the cornfields that he had this gorgeous wrought iron fence made with all the corn stalks and ears on it, so she could look out the windows of the big house and see her beloved corn.

What a guy!

LOL..we had a lovely day here in corntown. The farmers have started harvesting corn and soybeans, the road crews are putting last minute tar and gravel on the township roads, and I am starting to clean up my flower beds and vegetable gardens. Putting everything to bed for the winter. I have a 3 bin compost set-up, and one of them (the last one) is the one all the cleanings from the chicken coop go into. It's nothing but straw and chicken poop. It will go on top of the garden beds after I tear out the remaining plants and lay them down on top of it. The rest of the compost pile will continue to cook throughout the winter, and then by early March it will be ready to spread out along the beds as well. When you just throw everything that isn't animal products onto the beds and let it compost naturally it works well. Layered composting, we call it. The chicken stuff is way too hot to be around any growing plants, it will burn them because it's so high in nitrogenm and ammonia. But after it has set in the bin for several months and then lay on the beds throughout the winter, it makes some pretty good stuff. Black gold, they call compost. It's a beautiful sight to see, even though it's not so easy on the nose while it's breaking down. All those little microbes in there, breaking things down so they can decompose like crazy. It's magic.

I have a lot of things to be grateful for today, but let me narrow it down. lol

* A really loving family, mixed and blended and real.
* A lot of sober friends.
* Beautiful autumn days
* Plenty of time to spend with the Little Prince.
* Knowing the difference today between my needs and my wants.
* Having at least 4 copies of Big Books in my possession.
* A great reading list that has quite a few books crossed off.
* Sobriety, love and joy.


I'm pretty tired and need to hit the hay. Tomorrow morning we are having pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakfast. The LP has been sacked out since about 9 o'clock. All this fresh air and outside adventures tucker him plum out...

All y'all...have a good night!