Hello October, I know I say this at the beginning of every month but how can it be October already?
All of a sudden the leaves have started to turn so many different and beautiful colors. The temperatures have cooled considerably, my work has slowed down a lot, my favorite holidays are just around the corner. It is my absolute favorite time of year!!! Maybe you can explain to me then why I am in such a funk, Because I surely do not know. There is no specific reason that I can pinpoint. I feel like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. AND I DON’T KNOW WHY!!!!
I went to work the other day and mentioned to a couple of my co-workers that I was in a major funk. They too said they had been in a funk. Wait…. What is going on? So it’s not just me. Strangely knowing that others were feeling the same way didn’t make my funk any better. I just feel bad for them.
So let me see: It could be because summer is over, nope I am not a big fan of summer and I’m tired of sweating. It could be because Mercury is in Retrograde, Possible, I will have to think about that. It could be because my underwear is too tight. That’s all I’m going to say about that. It could be SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, It’s hard to believe because I love fall so much. It could be COVID, I do truly believe that is a big part of the way I feel. I am so tired of hearing about sickness and death. So many of my friends are sick right now from Covid. It’s so scary. It could be because I secretly want to be in a rock band and travel the world and perform in a different city every night. I think that would be too tiring, I am a little lazier in my older age.
Or it could be that I am just in a big old temporary funk and I will soon work my way out of it. I think people go through periods in their lives when they think about lost loved ones and times gone by and it makes us a little sad. Maybe the changing of the seasons or a pandemic or having tight underwear makes us realize what we no longer have. Maybe this is a time to focus on what we do have in our lives right now this very minute: Fall leaves falling from the trees, beautiful colors, cooler weather, sweatah weatha, Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming!!!, I am alive healthy and blessed. I will focus on this.
Putting this into words actually makes me feel better already. So thanks for listening and thanks for reading.
Hello friends, Do you know what absolutely bogs me down, stops me in my tracks and causes me to second guess every little thing I do? Decisions. Maybe you’re like that maybe you’re not.
During the course of my work day I have to make hundreds if not thousands of decisions. No I am not a doctor and no one’s life is hanging in the balance but yet decisions must be made. Little things that you don’t even think about. That’s a decision. It can be exhausting: Deep in your brain thousands of decisions are being made.
Some decisions will require more thought than others. Some will make you stop in your tracks and consult with someone else. God? Your spouse? A co-worker? I always turn my decisions over to God unless I forget and arrogantly think I can handle them on my own.
Did I make the right decision? Did I make a mistake? Did I give the decision enough thought? Should I hold onto the decision and nurture it and pet it and name it George? Will someone’s life be affected by my decision? Not life threatening but you know what I mean. Will this decision lead to, GOD FORBID, another decision!!!!
You see where I coming from here, right? Case in point. My husband and I are trying to plan a beach vacation for maybe a week. What month?, Which days?, who will stay with the fur babies? the fur baby decision is a biggie. We either have to have someone come and stay at the house for most or all of the time. Molly has gotten so old and feeble we have to have someone here at our house just to get her in out of the heat in the middle of the day. And she stays in all the time now. We can’t take a chance on her being outside especially at night because of the C word. Coyotes, shhhhhhh. And now we have all the new kitties. What days can we both be off together?should we drive or fly? How many days?
WHEW!!!!! I am tired just thinking about it. Is it worth a few days on a sandy beach watching the ocean waves crash gently against the shore and if your lucky gently lapping against your toes? HECK YES!!!!! So I plug on.
I was never a parent, except to my fur babies. So I think when you are parenting you deal with about a million issues and decisions a day. That is what I have observed from my loved ones who are parents. So maybe I didn’t go through all of that and now decisions seem to overwhelm me. Yes I think that is it. Or maybe as I have gotten older I just don’t give a frack about what I do or what happens most of the time. Yes I think that is it. Or maybe it isn’t really important at all these decisions I think I “must” make. Yes I think that is it. Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t decide. And on that. I don’t have to because it doesn’t really matter.
Hello friends happy Sunday, it has been a very full week. We are still on kitten patrol over here. Feeding and caring for the kitten babies takes a lot of time. I always do the morning feedings and most of the evenings too if Mark is working. It is so much fun to go out in the mornings and see all the little kittens running and jumping they remind me of little popcorn kernels popping around everywhere. I was talking to my nephew on the phone a couple of days ago and he said so ” I hear you have become the crazy cat lady”. I said ” well I don’t know about that. Just because I now have six cats and am sitting here knitting a sock, Oh wait!!!! maybe I am!!!”
I get up early anyway and this helps out a lot because Molly, my big old girl, is still having the liver issues and she has to have a pill one to two hours before she can eat. So I get up, give Molly her pill, let Scruffy out to pee, feed Scruffy and Kitty Kitty and then feed the outside babies and mama kitty. Yep that’s eight. I usually do all of this even before I have my coffee. I just can’t bear to think of them hungry. I then get my coffee, breakfast, and get ready for work. By that time an hour or so has passed and I can feed Molly.
Orange kitty has won my heart he is such a playful goof ball. And what an eater. He is twice as big as the others.
This little guy seems to be the runt of the litter. He is very small but still very playful.
Molly is getting around a lot better. On Wednesday I was starting out the front door with my purse and keys. Molly comes to the door like she needed to go back out. I let her out to pee. She made the rounds of the front yard and just as I thought she was heading back in she veered to the side of the house and trotted off into the woods. This wouldn’t normally bother me except I was close to being late for work as it was. I ran back in the house and got the leash. I didn’t dare leave her out because she can’t handle the heat of the day. Back outside and no Molly!! I yelled for her, of course she’s almost completely deaf so that was a waste, and nothing. I went to the back of the house and no Molly!!! for an old lady who can barely walk because of stiff arthritic legs she had gotten away pretty quick. The temps were already high and the humidity felt like walking through water. My hair was frizzled beyond belief and I had sweat running everywhere. My makeup was history. I knew she would be back as soon as she had made her rounds through the woods and sure enough about fifteen minutes later she came wandering back. By this time I had already messaged my co workers and let them know I was running late.
Look at Molly feeling quite proud of herself after she made her mommy late for work. She know she’s still in charge.
Work was a full week of being busy. Our visitation has slowed but we are still fairly busy. This upcoming weekend will be Labor Day weekend and after that we will see shorter work hours and much fewer people. I am always ready for this breather.
I have been knitting on the blue stripped socks. I did almost an entire sock yesterday and today. I am almost out of yarn and trying to finish this sock without having to start another ball. I do have an extra ball but I hate to start one in the middle of a sock because it seems like you can never get the stitches quite tight enough. I remember telling another knitting friend that I finished an entire sock once in one day. She said yes you can do that but you will get nothing else done. This is so true. I get consumed with the stitches and nothing else gets done. It’s o.k. it’s sort of mindless therapy.
Will I make it without having to start another ball of yarn? I don’t think so. I still have several inches to go.
I also started another granny square afghan. I saw a picture of one I really liked on Instagram and I had almost all the same colors of yarn. I am using the same color sequence. Lord knows I do not want or need another afghan I may give this one to one of my nephews. But I just love making them. I realized I have become that aunt that knits and crochets things and gives them to her family whether they want them or not. HA!!!
I am loving this afghan. I throw all of it into a big green canvas bag so I can easily carry it with me when I go from room to room.
When I was growing up my grandmother made afghans for us all the time. Through the years they seemed to disappear one by one until we had very few of them left. My parents house had an old basement and part of it was a root cellar where my mama kept things she had canned. When my parents died and my sisters and I were cleaning everything out of the house we went down into the basement and found one of the afghans stuffed into the corner of the dirt cellar. Vines had grown through the afghan and it was covered in dirt and mud. My sisters refused to try and salvage it but I cut the vines away and it was actually in pretty good shape. All the stitches were still in tact. I took it home and cut the vines out piece by piece and washed it several times. It looked just like it had when she gave it to us. I still have it and treasure it because it was made by her.
This is the afghan my grandmother made. I think it looks pretty good to have been rescued from a root cellar.
I am glad to have the diversion of my fur babies. It keeps my mind off of the bastardly Covid virus. Not completely, because it has been hitting closer to home lately with lots of people I know and love getting sick and even having to be hospitalized.
I hope your weekend is going well and you will take a minute to say a prayer for the people in the path of hurricane Ida, The people who lost their lives in the airport attack in Kabul, The fires in the western states and all the people suffering from Covid. These things have been weighing heavy on my mind and heart this week.
Happy Sunday, how was your weekend? I didn’t really have a lot to do except the usual grocery shopping and laundry. I had planned to take my mother in law out for a ride but she called a couple of days ago and said they were on lock down at the assisted living facility. This is to last for two weeks, apparently someone in one of the nearby buildings has COVID and they are restricting visitation for awhile. Mark had to work so I felt so strange with nothing really planned. It was wonderful!!!
For several weeks I have been wanting to just get out and drive and see the countryside and take pictures. You know how much I love taking pictures of church steeples and I also love the little country church signs that pop up near every stop sign. So that is what I did I took pictures of these signs I think they are just precious. I will be doing a post on them soon probably on Wordless Wednesday. They do speak for themselves.
The beautiful countryside near my house takes my breath away.
I was also on the hunt for blackberries. We have a huge patch of bushes down on our road. I watched day by day as the red berries started turning. Of course it’s not really our road it is a county road so I guess the blackberries were public property. But I watched them every day waiting for them to ripen. My plan was that I would go down with a container and get just enough for a blackberry cobbler. Mark loves blackberry cobbler, I do not. But I do try to make one for him every year.
But a strange thing happened, no sooner than I would see the big plump blackberries ready for picking than they would disappear. What??? I had an idea of who was getting to them first. I assumed it was a woman who lived a little closer to the blackberries than I did. She is at home every day so I was sure she had plenty of time to get them. I thought about calling her and asking for just a few for a cobbler. But it was not her. As I was driving home one day I saw a teenage girl out walking her dog. I had noticed her before. She has beautiful long read hair and she is always taking such good care to watch her dog on our crazy roads. As I got near the blackberry bushes I saw her with a plastic container in one hand and the dog leash in the other. I knew she had those berries in the container but you know what? It made me feel really good that this young girl was picking blackberries to make a pie or perhaps to give to her mom to make a pie. You don’t see that every day.
So there I was in search of blackberries as well as taking pictures. I decided to visit the Mennonite market near my house. No blackberries there but they did have some amazing looking okra which I had also been wanting. I bought the okra and continued on my way.
I can’t wait to try this okra
I got a lot of pictures and bought groceries and went home to take care of the babies. We have added another baby to the family I will have more on that in a future post.
A beautiful steeple on this very old church in nearby Tellico Plains.
On Sunday I watched a couple of movies on Netflix and started knitting another sock. I did laundry and went to feed and check on my nephew’s cat while he is gone for a few days. I ordered a pizza on the way home and went home to finish laundry. A relaxing and fun weekend.
I am loving this blue and white striped yarn.
So how was your weekend? I hope you did something fun and relaxing!!!
