Look!

My weekend of baking and cooking continues, and today I made pumpkin soup. 

I was a bit disappointed, though, because I was sure I had two cans of pumpkin in my pantry but I could only find one, so I couldn't double the recipe like I'd wanted to.  Oh well, it's enough for me, and I can always make more later on.  The only thing about pumpkin soup is that my mind tends to want it to taste like pumpkin pie, but it doesn't.  I suppose it could, if I added sugar to it.  I know some recipes call for maple syrup, but I didn't use one of those.  I think it might be good with just a touch of brown sugar in it.  I might try that next time I have a bowl.  

On a similar note, look at this!  

I found a baby tomato from my second planting!  I might end up with a late harvest after all.  I'd thought about making salsa, but I don't know if I would have the patience to chop all of those tomatoes so finely.  I didn't even chop my tomatoes for my soup very finely.  I just used my immersion blender after I'd cooked it. 

Wonderful tool, that immersion blender...but somehow I don't think it would work for salsa.  

Before we go on, I wanted to show you a photo of my spare room. 

It's a mess, isn't it?  Full disclosure, not all of that stuff is stuff I want to donate.  I've got my paint sprayer and several cans of the stain I'm using on my fence in that pile.  I had thought about getting some of that staining done this weekend, but we've got the chance of showers off and on for the next several days.  You know how that goes.  If I paint, it'll rain, but if I don't, it won't.  

There are also several bags of aspen shavings, which I will need when I change the bedding in my snake tanks, and my soaker hose system is somewhere in there.  I'll take care of that in the spring, before I plant my beds, then move the rest of the hose out to the shed.  

I was going to try to box up a bunch of stuff to take to the thrift shop, but I ended up being a bit disappointed, because several of my Subscribe And Save items arrived from Amazon.  I was hoping they'd be in a bigger box.  Not this time.  Oh well...I'll have to make multiple trips.  

Now for a bit of good news, the tree guy showed up!  He looked at the tree, gave me a quote, and when I asked him if he'd leave the limbs so I could cut them up for firewood, he knocked $100 off the quote.  I'm not mad about that. And he didn't get mad when he said he'd call me before he started, and I told him I wasn't allowed to have a phone at work.   

Hey, it's happened before.  

He asked if I could get texts, and laughed when I said it's easier to sneak my phone out to check a text than it would be to try to answer a call.  Anyway, he's going to come back not this coming week, but probably next week, and if he does, that'll be one more thing I can cross off my to-do list.  

The rest of the day was spent watching football and knitting.  

I had a little fun with AI while I was watching Navy vs Air Force and asked the three I have on my phone -- Chat GPT, Grok, and Gemini -- all to create a graphic which reads Go Navy Beat Air Force.  This is what they came up with.  This is what ChatGPT gave me:  

This was Grok's offering:  

This time, I think Gemini beat them all.  

Alas, Navy is in a rebuilding year and did not in fact beat Air Force.  More's the pity, but they lost a lot of good players to graduation last year, including most of the offense.  At least, it seems that way.  

I also finished another sailor hat while watching.  

Yarn:  Red Heart Super Saver Bitty Stripes

Colorway:  Rainbow

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5 mm

That's about all I did today, other than laundry, but I'm sure you don't want to hear about that.  But now, I reckon I'd better go get my kitchen cleaned up before the next ball game comes on.  

Laters.

It’s October

It's finally October, and you know what that means?  It means it's time for Pumpkin Kitty to make his debut.  

And look at me here saying, "Finally October"  when just two days ago at work, I muttered to no one in particular, "It's the last day of September already.  Where has this year gone?"

My coworker overheard me and said, "I know, right?"  

Nevertheless it is October, and Pumpkin Kitty is in the yard, and behind him I've got a second bluebonnet opening up.   

Crazy, right?  I'm not complaining.  I'm just glad I've finally found a place where they'll grow.  

Speaking of growing, look!   My green onions are coming back!  

I thought they'd died, but I guess I was wrong.  I don't know what I'm going to do with them, though.  I've still got so many onions in the freezer from last year.  I guess I need to start cooking more, but tossing a Michelina's Microwaveable Macaroni into the nuke is so much easier, especially after a 12 hour shift in the factory.  

Speaking of cooking, I decided this would be a cooking and baking weekend, and the first thing I was going to make would be my tomato soup.  Funny thing is, I looked in my old faithful Better Homes and Betty Crocker cookbooks, and they didn't have a recipe for tomato soup that called for fresh tomatoes. 

They both called for canned tomatoes or canned tomato sauce.  Then I looked in my Little House cookbook, but I guess they didn't like tomatoes or something, because they didn't have a recipe for soup. 

Internet to the rescue and soon I had a nice pot of tomato soup bubbling on the stove. 

I wanted to make tomato basil soup, but this recipe didn't call for basil.  No worries, I was going to add it anyway.  Guess who forgot the basil?  

Yep... I remembered about the time it was done.  Eh, I added some anyway and simmered it another five minutes.  Maybe it wasn't long enough for the flavor to infuse, because I couldn't really taste the basil when I had a bowl for lunch -- along with a grilled cheese sandwich.  It was still good, though.  

I made a right proper mess of my kitchen, but I have six pints of soup tucked away in the freezer, all ready for a chilly winter day.  Tomorrow I want to make pumpkin soup, if I can find that good recipe I'd used last time...and the garlic I have in the freezer.   Because I planted the leftover garlic I'd bought for the tomato soup.  Right here where the rosemary used to be. 

I know they say not to plant grocery store garlic, but the bulbs I'd looked at on line were too expensive for my blood.  Burpee wanted $17 for four bulbs!  I had seven cloves left after I made the soup, so I planted them and we shall see.  

On a similar note, I think I may have messed up when I moved the rosemary.  It's looking worse and worse by the day. 

I've done some research, but haven't come up with any specific reason it could be dying.  It's getting almost the same amount of sunlight, is in the same type of soil, and if anything, it's got better drainage than it had before.  But it's not too dry.  I checked.  I'm going to keep on trying and hope it recovers, but if it doesn't, I'll buy a new one in the spring.  I am bummed, though, that I might have killed this one.  I don't like to kill anything.  

Except fire ants.  I'd wipe those suckers off the face of the earth if I could.  

The lemon balm, on the other hand, seems to be recovering nicely.  

It still looks a bit ragged, but it is late in the year after all.  I'll trim all the dead stuff off once first frost hits and it'll be fine next spring.  

The only other thing I did was to clean that massive pile of junk off my couch.  To be honest, I stuffed most of it into the spare room to be dealt with later.  Which I really need to do soon because that room is so cluttered I can hardly walk into it now.  I did take the aquarium ornaments and put them into what will eventually be my toad garden.  

I'd started to dig it up and get it prepped for spring, but the clay is still too hard.  We're supposed to get a good amount of rain over the weekend, and had a nice shower this afternoon, so maybe that'll soften things up a bit.  

And finally, be proud of me.  I messaged a tree guy, and he's supposed to come tomorrow to look at my tree.  If he shows up, and if he actually comes back to do the job, that's one more thing I can cross off my list.  After being ghosted so many times, I don't cross anything off until the job is finished.  

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a pumpkin soup recipe to find.

Laters. 

Crazy

So, I get to work bright and early yesterday morning, and one of my coworkers came up to me and said, "We're staying until 4:00 and it's mandatory now."  But I guess it's only mandatory for some people...but I'm not here to grumble.  Except that's exactly what I'm doing. 

I was so tired when I got home, I didn't do anything.  I went to bed at 6:30, and was practically shivering from exhaustion.  I didn't go to sleep right away, though.  I read a chapter in my book first.  

I keep forgetting to tell you that I finished reading The Oxford Detective Society.  It was pretty good if you like detective stories.  Now I'm reading one called The Baker Of Lost Memories. It's very compelling, and I'm having a hard time putting it down.  

But I was still asleep by 7:00.  Even after reading, and falling asleep watching a gardening video on my tablet...

All that to say, expect blogging to be sparse until common sense returns to the plant.  

Oh, wait...you'd never get a post then!  

In the meantime, look at this.  It absolutely sums up how crazy things have been this year.  I've got a bluebonnet blooming.

In September.  

 Silly thing doesn't realize it's supposed to bloom in March.  

Anyway, I'm almost as tired tonight as I was last night, so I'm going to bed.  Goodnight. 

I Missed The Moon

I missed the moon last night.

It's been a tradition in our family for as long as I can remember that we'd go outside and watch the Harvest Moon rise.  I kind of got away from it for a while, but once I made day shift out at the plant, I picked it back up with my son.  

We'd go out and watch the moon rise, then come back inside and drink hot chocolate and eat Harvest Moon cookies -- usually large sugar cookies or white chocolate macadamia cookies from Walmart if I was too tired to bake them myself.  

Alas, last night it was too cloudy.  I stepped outside several times and occasionally managed to glimpse the moon through the clouds, but for the most part, I missed it. 

I still came back inside and drank hot chocolate, because it's tradition. 

I even thought about digging some cookies out from the bottom of the deep freeze, but I didn't. I kind of let that part of the tradition go once Cody was grown and gone.  

Still, while I was outside, I took a quick snap of my fairy garden house.  

I'm thinking about not even putting my fairy garden back into one of the big raised beds.  I'm thinking about getting one of those large planters that kind of looks like half of a barrel and setting it up in there with a few annuals.  I might even go ahead and get one and put pansies or something into it.  

Speaking of, I finally got around to putting some mulch into these planters.  

The lemon balm has perked right back up, but the rosemary seems to be still struggling a bit.  Maybe it just needs a little more time.  But if it doesn't, I'll buy a new one in the spring and start over.  

By the way, The Mart of Wal has mulch on clearance right now for $2 per bag, so I've been picking up a bag every time I go in.  They also have the bags of garden soil marked down to $4, but I'm considering trying to see if I can find somewhere locally that I can buy it in bulk, especially now that I have my dump cart.  Alas, that will likely require a phone call, and we all know how I feel about those. 

In other news, I got my act in gear and sorted those last two boxes out while watching football this afternoon.  Once I got started, it really didn't take all that long.  I still have this pile of stuff to go through, but it isn't that much.  

The fake logs will go into my toad garden, and the two bags will become project bags.  The red ratchet straps I'll put into my cabinet out in the shed, just in case I need to ratchet strap something.  The rest will likely go into the garbage or the donation box.  Then I'll be all finished with sorting things for a while.  Except I still plan on at least trying to clean out the snake/craft room.  There is a lot of stuff to donate that I just tossed in there to "deal with later."  It really needs to be taken care of.  

Maybe now that I have the shed mostly cleaned out, I can finally get around to it. 

Finally Fall

It is finally Fall, folks.  For reals.  We've passed meteorological fall, traditional fall, the autumnal equinox, the Harvest Moon rises tonight, candy corn is in the stores, football is on the TV, and it was in the 60s when I got up this morning.  In fact, it felt so much like fall that I finally put out my fall decorations. 

I won't show you a bunch of photos because I always put everything in the same place.  It looks the same as it did last year.  Mostly.  This year, I left this painting where it is. 

For those of you who don't know, there was a teacher at my elementary school named Mrs. Matthews.  I never had her as a teacher, but she also went to the church I started going to after I graduated.  When she retired from teaching, she took up painting as a hobby.  Before she passed away, she gave this painting to my cousin with the specific instruction that it was to come to me.   

Normally, I take it down and put this wreath there, 

but for some reason, this year I just didn't want to.  I couldn't stand the idea of putting it away for three months out of the year.  So I didn't.  

Before I did all of that, I recorded a new garden vlog, which if you're so inclined you can watch here:  Garden Vlog.  

Once I'd finished and got that to uploading, I washed and strung the peppers I'd harvested, which I didn't take a photo of, but you can see them in the vlog.  Then I ground up some of the cayenne peppers I'd already dried.  I got enough to completely fill one jar and start a second. 

I'll most likely be able to fill that second jar, because I've got plenty of peppers already drying and plenty more still on the plants.

In fact, the plants have done so well in these beds - - much better than the ones I'd put into the other bed, I might put whichever peppers I grow next year into them as well.  I don't know if I'll plant more cayennes, though.  I'm thinking I might do chili or tabasco peppers next time around.  Or maybe jalapeños.  Or maybe some of each.  I don't know.  I'll have to ask Cody which ones he wants me to grow.  He's the cook in the family.  

In football news, Navy played yesterday -- on Friday.  I don't like that.  Friday is for high school.  Saturday is for college and Sunday is for NFL.  All that to say, I finished my latest sailor hat while watching them play.  

Yarn:  Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn

Colorway:  Rainbow Galaxy

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5 mm

That's the last of the Hobby Lobby yarn.  Now I'm back to using Red Heart, at least until I can get back up to Batesville.  Maybe I'll go up there next weekend. 

Or maybe not.  I don't know.  

We'll see. 

Hello Again

Hello again.  Yes, I know it's been a while, except for the plunger story which was so funny I had to share it with you.  Truth is, I'm plumb tuckered.  I walked into work Monday morning to see some of the brazers already there working.  Now, if I were like some previous brazers who no longer work there, I'd have stormed off to HR complaining about favoritism.  

But I'm not like that.  I figured if Group Leader Shark wanted me to come in early, she'd let me know.  Sure enough, about five minutes later she came around the corner and told me to start coming in at 4:00 AM.  And we are still staying until 3:00 PM, so that makes for a long work day.  Heck, Wednesday she came around and asked people to volunteer to stay until 4:00.  It's been a long time since I've worked a 12 hour day.  I came home that night and absolutely collapsed.  

You know, as much as I grumble and fuss about getting up at 2:30, there are advantages to going in early -- one of them being that you don't have to walk through that ridiculous metal detector.  The other one is that there is ice in the machines.  My poor countertop ice maker can finally get a bit of a break. 

Of course, my first thought was, "Oh boy!  More money to buy stuff for my garden!"  From the overtime, you know.  And that's just what I did.  Truth is, I've been wanting a yard wagon for quite some time now, and after watching a few gardening channels, I settled on this one:  

It's a dump cart!  That means, I can lift the cart part up and dump out whatever is inside it.  Most of the big channels get a ... higher dollar brand, but I figured this one was good enough for what I needed since my garden is much smaller than theirs.  The channels I watch, I mean.   It has already come in so handy, but more about that in a minute.  

Funny thing, while I was researching the different carts and reading customer reviews, one guy had posted that he didn't get a cart.  He got parts to a cart!  Not only did they expect him to pay for his cart, they expected him to put it together himself!  Oh the horror! 

I didn't find the cart at all difficult put together, but I did break out my own rachet instead of using the open end wrenches they sent with it.  That made it go so much faster.  I'm still learning how to steer the thing, which has made for some quite comical moments. 

The other thing I bought was some crimson clover seeds to use as a cover crop this winter. 

Clover is one of the best cover crops you can plant, because it fixes nitrogen in the soil.  Plus, I think it's downright gorgeous.  I love seeing it on the side of the roads in the spring.  This package has enough seeds that I might plant some in the back yard.  Hopefully it will choke out the creeping Charlie.  The only thing is, I have to make sure to cut it down before it goes to seed -- in my raised beds, I mean -- or I'll have clover coming up everywhere.  

That's fine in the yard, but I don't want it in my veg patches!  

Speaking of, today's project was to get the red clay dug out from under a second round bed so I could get it filled with dirt.  Even though the weather was much cooler than it has been being, I was still drenched with sweat by the time I'd finished.  Then I went and mowed.  And weed eated.  But just the front yard.  The back can stay long.  That's why I got a privacy fence. 

Since we haven't had any appreciable rainfall since I filled the first bed, and we don't have any in the forecast for a few more days, I put the sprinkler on the two new beds to settle the soil.  

Turns out, I needn't have bothered because that lemon balm had such a massive root ball, I ended up having to take most of the soil back out to get it to fit.  When I was digging it up, I discovered that some of the roots had even burrowed below the bed lining in the old bed.  It doesn't have that problem now.  These beds are pretty deep, plus it has clear access to the soil beneath.  Those roots can grow as deeply as they want to.  

The rosemary's root ball wasn't quite as big, but I still had to remove quite a bit of soil to get it to fit.  No matter.  They are both settled into their forever homes, looking a bit bedraggled from the move, but I'm hoping they'll pick up once they get over transplant shock.  I'll get some mulch down soon, too.  Maybe tomorrow.  

That's what I used the dump cart for this morning.  I moved the red clay back into the pile behind the shop, then used it to move the soil into -- and back out of -- the round beds.  I'm so loving this thing.  It's much easier to handle than my wheelbarrow.  

While I was working in the yard, I trimmed back my crepe myrtle, but I did not commit crepe murder.  

I only cut off the lower branches that were slapping me in the face while I'm trying to work in my garden spot.  I left the rest of it growing naturally.  It's had a rough time this year, too, with the drought and all.  Yeah, I was thinking last night that it would be such a good night to sit out beside the fire pit, but we're still under a burn ban.  I guess I could have sat out there without a fire, but it's just not the same. 

And finally, a few days ago, I was scattering some corn behind the fence for all of the critters who eat corn.  We don't turn anyone away.  All are welcome at this table.  Except fire ants, but they don't eat corn anyway so it's a moot point.  

Anyway, I was scattering corn and noticed something a bit odd on the ground.  Looking closer, I saw it was a small rock.  

"Huh?" I mused.  "I wonder where that came from..."  At first, I thought maybe I'd dropped it, but I hadn't carried any rocks behind the fence.  I finished scattering the corn, and was walking back to put the scoop back into the corn bin when it hit me.

It was a crow gift!  I'd finally gotten a crow gift!!

I dashed back and snatched it up post haste, and it is now sitting on my entertainment center in the living room.   

You know you're living right when a crow gives you a gift.  

Mishap

I had me a little mishap a while back.  Oh it was nothing serious. You’re going to laugh at me, and that’s all right because I’m laughing, too.

See, what happened was I have one of those toilet wand thingies that you click the sponge onto the handle to clean your toilets with. Like this one, but I have the cheap Walmart brand.

So I was cleaning the toilet in the half bath off of my bedroom, and I guess I got a little too enthusiastic in my scrubbing because the sponge came right off of the handle and fell into the bottom of the toilet!

I tried and tried to get it out, but the harder I tried the deeper into the drain it went. I even got my little drain snake out to try to grab the sponge with that, but it just pushed it further down. 

OK, plan B.  I got the plunger out and spent days on end plunging, but the sponge wouldn’t budge.

As luck would have it, I had just seen an ad for a pneumatic plunger on some website.  I don't remember which. I’ll bet that would knock that stuck sponge loose. 

First, I looked on the Walmart and Lowe’s apps to see if I could find one locally, but no dice.  In the end I had to order one from Amazon. It arrived yesterday.  

I quickly unboxed it and put it together, then ran with it into the bathroom.  Now, the description on Amazon had said to start with a low PSI, then work your way up, so I pumped the pressure up to 1 PSI.  I stuck it into the bottom of the toilet and pressed the trigger.

Nothing. 

OK, I'll try again, I thought.  I pumped it up to 2 PSI this time, put the plunger into the toilet and pulled the trigger.  

WHOMP!  I heard and all the water in the toilet began draining out.  Woo hoo!  Very cautiously, I flushed...then flushed again.  It worked perfectly.  In fact, that toilet is flushing better than it has since I moved into this house.  I think I'm going to go plunge the toilet in the hall bathroom to see if it will stop screaming at me every time I flush. 

Don't envy me my exciting life...

Duh Moment

I was sitting there this morning watching the church service when I had a bit of a duh moment. 

If you'll remember, yesterday I was talking about filling those round beds and getting my lemon balm and rosemary settled in before winter.  I'd been saying I wanted to take the dirt from my planter -- the one I had put the spare basil in-- to top the round beds up.  

One bag of the garden soil I'd been buying at Walmart will mostly fill one bed up, but not quite, so I  needed just a little bit more dirt. And yes, I know I could have just opened another bag, but I don't really like having opened bags sitting around for fear critters might get into them.  Most likely snakes -- which I'm not afraid of, but still don't want to get bitten.

So, I was sitting there during church when I suddenly remembered I had this bed, sitting there completely empty except for my fairy garden.  

Now, for clarification, these are 8' beds with a divider in the middle, making two 4' sections.  My mind thinks of each section as its own separate bed, even though they are connected.  I was going to empty these beds out anyway, so I could move them this winter, after the first frost kills off all of the zinnias growing in the other side. Why not go ahead and do it now? 

As soon as church was over, that's exactly what I did.  First thing was to move my fairy garden, which I put into the planter temporarily.  

I still want to have it in my pollinator garden, which I will need to plan better next spring.  But for now, this is where it will sit. 

Then I dug out enough soil to finish filling the round bed.  

I'm going to let it settle a week or so, then top it up before I move the lemon balm into it.  Probably sometime this week, I'll dig the red clay out of the bottom of another one of these and fill it to put the rosemary.  

As you can see, I've had to put that plastic fencing stuff on top, because the cat has already found it. Once I get the plants settled in, I'll cut it to fit and put mulch over it.  Hopefully, that'll be enough to discourage her digging in it.  

While I was taking the fairy garden stuff out, I found a little toad.  I carefully caught him and put him on one of the rocks in this old dog bowl.  Naturally, the moment I got my phone out to take a photo, he  jumped out.  

He's still in the photo, but you'd have to blow it way up to see.  He's beside the fence, just behind that first ground ivy leaf.   I'm going to have to take it easy for a bit, because my back is so sore today.  I can't handle the hard labor like I did when I was younger. 

In other news, I got one more storage box emptied out, and I'm wondering why in the world I kept some of that stuff so long.  I'm talking about old cell phone chargers for models that are completely obsolete, old phones -- flip phones-- that no longer work, dimmer switches that I used to use in my snake tanks -- some of which are totally burned up.  Not sure why I kept them, but they're in the garbage now.  I've got two more boxes to sort through, but to be honest, I'm kind of burned out about the whole thing.  I said I was going to put them into the spare room, but I'm afraid if I do that, it'll be out of sight out of mind and they'll never get sorted.  

And finally, I got this much knitted while I was watching football yesterday.  

Yarn:  Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn

Colorway:  Rainbow Galaxy

Pattern: Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5 mm

We've got football on the TV, knitting on my needles, and homemade jelly in the pantry.  Now all we need is some Fall feeling weather...

Come on not-as-hot front!

That Was Strange

Wanna guess what I did this morning?  Do ya?  Do ya?  

If you said I made six more jars of pepper jelly, give yourself a cookie because that's exactly what I did.  

In my defense, I had one more pouch of the liquid pectin that I needed to use up, and I wanted to make some sort of jelly with it.  I'd actually thought about trying to make some mint jelly, but I knew I wouldn't have enough fresh mint, so I went with peppers instead.  I have plenty of those.  Heck, even after this batch of pepper jelly, I've still got two gallon size Ziploc bags in the freezer. 

I had enough jelly to almost fill a seventh jar, 

which went directly into the refrigerator since it didn't have the correct headspace to do the water bath canning thing.   No matter.  I expect it will be eaten up before too much longer.  Heh, I've already eaten two jars of the stuff by myself.  With cream cheese, on crackers.  It's pretty good, if I do say so myself. 

I made the jelly pretty early, so once I was done with that, I had time to get outside and work in the garden spot before it got too hot.  I dragged out the ol' roto-tiller and managed to get this spot level enough that I put two of the beds into their final spots. 

I'll still need to level the ground some more before I get the one at the bottom of the photo settled into place for good, but that's going to have to wait until it cools off some.  

Before I came inside to huddle in the air conditioning, I started filling one of the beds with garden soil.  

The plan had been to take the soil out of the planter where I had been growing the spare basil and add it to this, but since that basil is coming back, I might have to pivot.   I'm thinking I transplant those two into the bed where I pulled up the tomatoes and that will free up this dirt to use in these round beds.  I want to fill this bed up and get my rosemary and lemon balm moved into it pretty soon so they'll have time to get over transplant shock and settle in before the first frost hits.  

I think they will do so much better away from the house where they have good air flow and room to grow.  

Speaking of growing, I've got bluebonnet seedlings coming up all over the place. 

I ought to have a gorgeous stand come spring. For now, my little mum I bought is opening up and brightening my front porch. 

That and the wreath are all the Fall decor I have up at the moment.  I'm hoping I can motivate myself this evening to go through the boxes I still have in the house and get them sorted.  Then I can start dragging out all the boxes with the Fall stuff in them. 

In the meantime, I'll just be sitting here knitting on a new sailor hat. 

Yarn:  Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn

Colorway:  Rainbow Galaxy

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5 mm

This is the last of the HL yarn I have, then I'll be back to knitting from stash for a bit.  Although, I do want to go up to Batesville -- just not this weekend.  

And finally, I had a bit of a strange response when I saw the thrift shop had posted this photo of the Micropets I'd donated. 

My first inclination was to say, "Those are MINE!  I want them back!"  But it passed pretty quickly when I remembered that they'd been in storage for over a decade and I'd barely thought of them in all that time.  It's better that they go to a collector or someone who will treasure them.  

For what it's worth, these are the three beanie babies I kept.  

I'm not sure why I kept the dog, but there he is.  

I guess that's it for today.  I think I'm going to go take a quick shower while it's halftime, then I'll start sorting those other boxes out.

Don't envy me my exciting life...