Won With Nature

Ben is in western Tennessee with his girlfriend’s family this week. Both of them have such high grades that they were able to take the last week of school off, having finished all of their work early. (Read that last sentence again, please. I still have a hard time realizing I’m saying these things.)

So, while Male Offspring is galavanting around, it’s up to me to do the yardwork. Although I used to do it all the time, it’s been years since I’ve mowed the lawn. (Hey, that’s why we have kids.) How long, you ask? Long enough for two tree seeds to germinate and grow to eight feet at the side of the house, within a foot of the foundation. So after I mowed, I spent an hour or so hacking down trees, saplings and seedlings that had taken root near the house and fence. Gotta talk to that boy.


We have a pretty big yard that is difficult to maintain, mostly because we don’t want to maintain it. Half of the back yard is euphemistically dubbed “the woods” so that we don’t have to mow it as often. Still, it does give us those pretty white violets every spring. But it also gives us wild raspberries—ouch!— and poison ivy.

You know, a bunch of my favorite bloggers write pastoral posts of working with the earth, nurturing their gardens and feeling one with nature. I wish that was me. Because the only reason I like yardwork is the way the yard looks when it’s done. I would be more just as thrilled to have someone else do it. The way I see it, it’s me vs. nature, and nature would win if I had my way. I emerged victorious this round, but it’s only a matter of time.

I need a smaller house. And a smaller yard.

A Weather Event

That's what the weather people are calling this snowfall.The favorite cry seems to be "24 hours of snow!" We've got eleven inches on the ground with six more hours of snowfall expected. Just about everything is closed, not that it would matter: the snow plows have not found our neighborhood yet. I'm not going anywhere. My kingdom for a Diet Coke.

Update: Twelve and a half inches here, the sixth largest one-day snowfall in central Indiana history. I've just come in from three hours of bonding over snow shovels with my son. My neighbor had run out of gas for her snow blower, so we finished half the drive to let her take our car to the station. She is finishing our drive in return. And! She brought me back a Diet Coke. With crushed ice. Life is good.

Starbucked

Well, it's finally happened. I am now a customer at Starbucks. Until yesterday, that was not the case. I don't like coffee, and I've never had a cup. They don't offer fountain sodas, so they had nothing to offer me—until yesterday, when I saw snowflakes on my windshield and the car heater was taking way too long to warm up. And I thought, "Hot chocolate. I need hot chocolate." There was a Starbucks next to the office supply store I had to visit. And they apparently have a new drink they call Signature Hot Chocolate. Oh my. I'm hooked. So now I'm Starbucked. My dilemma is threefold:

1.  It costs $4 for this drink.

2.  There are 470 calories in a Grande (made with 2% milk and NO whipped cream)

3.  Now that I'm a customer, does that mean I can't make fun of them?

Postscript: Blogger has added all kinds of new options for me with my Mac. But it won't let me paste text in the box. Keep working on it, guys.

"What?"

Well, it’s official, dammit. I have inner ear damage resulting in hearing loss, probably permanent.

A couple of months ago in the dead of night, a storm came through the city. Lightning was cracking all around us, and being a deep sleeper I was only vaguely aware. But then a bolt struck in our back yard and the boom got us out of bed. The percussive wave of the strike turned on my bedlamp, which is activated by a pressure-sensitive rheostat. My head was ringing from the shockwave, and my ears hurt. It was like a large-bore cannon had gone off next to my head.

Two days later my ears still ached, so I saw my doctor. He saw no physical signs of damage, but my ears were ringing with a couple of loud tones that muffled some sounds. He sent me to a specialist, but I already knew the outcome. There is no cure for tinnitus.

I’ve had a very mild case of tinnitus since I was a kid, no doubt due to dropping out of trees a bunch of times. Those little tones—there were four distinct notes—were easy to ignore and really were discernible only in the quietest of times. No problem.

Not so anymore. This noise is so loud that it cannot be drowned by hubby’s white noise machine he uses at night. (He’s got radar dishes for ears and can’t sleep without it.) I’ve had to ask people to repeat themselves a number of times, especially on the phone. I have to avoid other loud sounds, as I’ve learned they make the noise louder. (Ben popped a balloon near me. Never again.) That means no more rock concerts or rocking out in the car on my commute.

Shit. This isn’t old age. This isn’t a cautionary tale. There is nothing to be learned here. This just sucks. I’m having a momentary pity party that I’ll get over. I’ve got so much going for me, and I can still hear most things. I wish I could hear what good will come of it.

#$%@!!

I’m not feeling especially eloquent right now, although I can think of a whole slew of words I’d like to use. I’ve been having kernel panic issues with my Powerbook, so I reinstalled the OS from the disks. I still need to update the OS and my browser but it quits before I can do it. I backed up all my music, pictures and writing. The big deal? I’ve lost ALL my bookmarks that took years to collect. I had copied and saved all of my blogger bookmarks (Yes!), but I don’t have any of my shopping, entertainment, travel or reference URLs. When I try to save a site in my address bar, Safari won’t let me do it. Shit. I’ve been at this almost all night. I’m going to bed.