Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.
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| Like The Queen Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content. |
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4 Comments:
Oh man, it would take a will of iron to resist those puppies - adorable! Insomnia is going around, it seems. Glad your stessful/eventful week is over. Now on to Summer, and sewwt dreams! That was supposed to be "sweet" dreams. "Sewwt" sounds like something you put out for birds. Anyway... I've been "busy" as you know and haven't checked in - thank God we were both preoccupied and you didn't post a picture of those pups a few days ago - I would have been on a road trip to VA. Those faces melted my heart. Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Sunday, June 25, 2006 Sheeeeeeeeeee’s Back! TheQueen has been resting up after the past week, but at last I’m ready to put fingers to keyboard and update the news from TheCastle. Last week was a whirlwind of a climaxes, demands, beginnings and climaxes. The summer reading club started on Monday, with dozens and dozens (and dozens) of little children clutching their plastic bags full of word-goodies; bookmarks, mood pencils, reading logs. The county funded a little part time summer help for us so, of course, I doubled the number of library programs we’re offering this summer. We have one for preschoolers, one for elementary kids, middle school kids and a family film night. All of them cranked into gear last week so we got to find out how well our planning went as attendance rendered proof. I’d say it was a B- minus week. Lots of folk for 2 programs, not so many for the other two, but enthusiasm for those who came to the family film night was very high even if attendance was low. Well, they deserve as much fun as twice or thrice their number and they all said they’d be brining friends and neighbors next week. So. We shall see. The thing about planning these programs for the library is that - until we get them up and going, I worry and obsess and fret myself out of sleeping at night. By Friday I had slept about 6 hours in 60 and was scheduled to do my spinning story telling at a neighboring library two counties away. Fortunately, relief that this was my last scheduled obligation for the week and, I suspect, the healthier diet we’ve been eating, combined to leave me fresh and energetic and ready to have fun. In fact, though I’d been expecting a terrible crash sometime around midday on Friday, the letdown was just a mental lassitude that wasn’t all that trying. I just sort of buzzed around the rest of the day, slightly ticked off because our new(ish) DVD player has quit working just when 3 Netflicks shipments arrived. Happily, the library still has a good video collection and I can always laugh at Dawn French and the rest of the Dibbly folk. Throughout the week of swarming children we also switched our network over to wireless. That is, we made about 85% of the switch. There’s 15% of machinery and staff training (Me being the staff who has to get the most training)left to do. The day began inauspiciously enough with huge lightening storms dancing about the county. My network administrator, something of a “stranger, upon whose kindness I frequently cast myself”, who lives 2 counties up and one over, had driven all the way down to T-town in order to make all my machines talk to their machines. Fortunately he had a bit of doctoring to do to some of the pc’s so that even if we couldn’t go live that day his trip wouldn’t have been wasted, and even more fortunately, it stopped raining after about an hour and cute guys (including one who used to be in my summer reading club - back in the early 90’s!) swarmed up the town water tower to put up more equipment. And just as quickly swarmed back down, covered in angry Mother Osprey goo, victims of protective parents dive bombing them from two sides. Turns out some of the babies are not flying yet and as long as they’re nestlings, there will be no carbon based ambulatory bi-peds crawling around up on the water tower. I can still get wireless connectivity - they can add customers from the main office - but I won’t get the sooperdooper high-speed option via the point-to-point bridge I paid $1,500 for till after those babies grow up. Sometime around September, the cute guys with tools will swarm up again and install MoreStuff, (and swarm back down to put EvenMoreStuff in the library) so folk can use their own computers to log onto the internet - after getting the password from library staff, that is. In the mean time, we’ll only have to pay for what’s actually up and running so I am satisfied and the 1.2 mb speed is actually as good as the shared T1 I was getting from the school system. And when little somethings do go wrong I can ask for help from the position of a paying customer instead of a charity case. Last weekend, friends who’d rented a cottage at one of the NC beaches called and urged us to come for a visit. There was no way I could get away during the week but BD had just completed a major push to get his latest book finished and was ready for some R&R, so on Wednesday he took the car and headed south. That left me with a chariot in the shape of an ancient, slightly unreliable, behemoth sized Ford truck. I am sure its breaks need work and I’m sure it needs to have the freeon topped off. I’m also quite sure there is something very rickety about its starting capabilities. It’s driven so little that repairs on it take absolutely last place on our list of ThingsToPayFor. Its main job is to drive the boat trailer down to the launching point and back again; 3 miles round trip if you really try hard. But when one of us wants to go out of town, the other is left with the truck for transportation. We’ve been talking about getting a real second vehicle, but we can talk about things like that forever. It’s going to take a crisis to make us actually look - and even to say “us” is an inaccuracy - for BD will do all the looking. TheQueen does not shop for cars. She drives them when the show up in front of TheCastle. As far as I am concerned, that crisis came on Friday. On my last stop of the day, after haircuts, gym visits, story telling and grocery shopping, I pulled into our local trash pickup center and there that truck just stopped. The ground was too flat to get a push. The neighbor who runs the place had jumper cables and he could get it started, but all I could think of was thank goodness this didn’t happen in Nortumberland Co.! I live down a long dead end road that pierces plenty of forest and farmland in its drive to the sea. From time to time we are the unfortunate recipients of abandoned puppies, left by disciples of Satan who have, so far, escaped capture and death by TheQueen's decree. If, my friends, you ever hear that I have been sentenced to life in prison, you will know that I finally did catch one of those scum-sucking lowlifes and gave him the same treatment he was inflicting on canine innocents. I have no problem with putting newborn pups down. I think it’s sad but I am not horrified by the act. Our county has both a dog warden who will pick them up and loving vets who will gently put them to sleep. But to let these creatures grow enough to open their eyes, grow teeth, begin to attach themselves to the world and then, starve them to death in strange woodlands is an evil that deserves justice - it almost deserves revenge. I have two precious dogs who were dropped off and I’ve just been grateful there haven’t been any more for the past 5 years. But Tuesday, GD found these darlings and took them home. She kept them till LD could find homes for them, but they had to go away for a few days, so GrandmaBess has them for the weekend. My own dogs are friendly and kind and took very little time to adjust to the newcomers. Jack still remembers being a puppy and jumps around them like he’s discovered a new toy. Socks has taken the little girl to heart and shepherds her everywhere by putting her mouth over the pup’s head. It’s always wet with drool but the little girl doesn’t seem to mind. Priss will give a kiss, but then tell them to “move along now”. I can hear them outside, growling and thundering on tiny paws, after each other, after the big dogs, after toads, after their own feet. Of course my heart is growing very weepy and maternal, but I don’t want 4 dogs. Still, I could well understand the call I got on Friday evening ... “Mom? Don’t find homes for those puppies yet. We’re kind of thinking about keeping one of them.” So. That was last week and that was why I had neither time nor inclination to post. Even yesterday I was still sort of dopey. BD got home late Friday night and we had lots of catching up to do - and lots of puppy play too. I’m feeling more normal now, a good thing, since the weather has decided to slam us with jungle like monsoon dampness. It’s so humid that poor Bella creaks when I treadle on her and I have to soap her regularly. It rained last night as if all the clouds on earth decided to empty themselves on the farm. I wonder what the wheat looks like. Thank goodness there wasn’t any hail with it. I see one limb down behind the car and I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t some trees down as well. I did a wee bit of spinning on beautiful Bella yesterday. A sampling bit of Falkland Island Polwarth and then I continued on with the Romeldale. One bobbin just about half full. If the treadle wants to move today I’ll fill that bobbin the rest of the way. If it doesn’t ... I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe nothing. Maybe I’ll daydream the day away. Or read a book. Or play with puppies. Whatever it is - I am sure it will be sweet pleasure. May you have the same. posted by Bess | 8:16 AM |
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