3 Boxes

Folks, I have gone through three boxes of Kleenex in the past five days. That means, I have blown my nose at least 810 times.

However! I don't look like Rudolph! I found a miracle. Eucerin's Aquaphor Healing Ointment. I know it probably is just fancy (expensive) petroleum jelly, but damn, it works. My pores look a poorly thought out polka dot pattern, but whatever. I have not whimpered 810 times.

I am still congested ( after Five! Days!) and have a nasty cough. I am going to guzzle some cough syrup (not enough to really have fun, alas) and try to go to work. I feel up to it, I just hate going to work as a 5'2" petri dish. Hopefully I am not contagious anymore.

Are you bored yet?

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While laid up, I finally saw Grey's Anatomy for the first time ever. Yep. I am totally sucked in and have some updating to do to my Netflix queue.

What is in your queue?

Friday Five

1. Last night I squeezed 10 lemons and stored the juice in the fridge. Originally, those lemons were to be the sour in homemade Whiskey Sours. Now they are the lemon in my "I'm siiiiiick" tea with honey.

2. I am staying home again today. This is my third day home. I could probably load up on cold medicine and manage to suffer through a work day, but I would rather not. Plus, I really don't want to spread germs around. This cold has been a doozey, and I certainly don't want anyone else feeling this crappy.

3. Speaking of spreading germs, I really, really, hope I didn't spread this yuckiness to A. He leaves tonight to do some scouting work in his elk hunting area. He knows of a rarely-used trail in the area and wants to clear it of any dead, fallen trees and such this weekend. It would not be fun to do all that hard work while feeling this crappy.

I was originally considering going with him. I kind of liked the idea of helping with the hunt on some level. But I feel wretched, still. Plus, two of his hunting buddies have decided to join him. I might put a damper on their weekend in the mountains.

Besides, my head apparently exists solely as a vessel for copious amounts of snot, and my throat is raw from me breathing through my mouth for the past two days. Man, I really hope he doesn't catch this.

4. I am so sick of tea, you guys.

5. That's it. I am getting rid of as many books as necessary to make it so every book has a spot in our existing bookshelf. Who am I kidding? I am not going to re-read Dante's Inferno or The Art of Mesoamerica again anytime soon.

In between marathon nose-blowing, I am going to start hauling books into boxes for donation to the library. At least I won't be sitting around watching the Lifetime network again today.(Um, I have a new confession: I kind of LOVE the show Wife Swap. I know.)

Happy Friday to you!

Bleh

I genuinely do not believe I've ever had a throat this sore before. Ugh. I am going in to work long enought to make a few changes to the cookbook's index, preflight and package the files and upload them to the printer's FTP site. I should stay longer, but, ugh. No.

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Good Earth's Sweet and Spicy tea is the only thing I can tolerate. I've even considered pouring into my throbbing right ear.

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Tomorrow is the first day of a conference around food security issues. No way in hell am I going to miss a minute of that. AWESOME.

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We woke up to an inch of snow on Monday. SNOW.

It snowed until mid-afternoon, and we went to bed with snow still on the ground.

SNOW.

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Ok. I am off to put on my most comfy sweatshirt so I can sneak in to work for an hour or so. If I don't curl up in bed first.

Sweat

There is not a single cloud in the sky and the air is crisp and clean after a long night of rain. The building are glowing gold in the sunlight. I can smell a bit of fall in the air. It is not far off, now.

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A. and I worked part of the weekend getting the firewood ready for the winter, but took breaks to watch the Wyoming/Texas game on Saturday and the Vikings on Sunday. There was more lounging around this weekend than we originally planned. There is still much work to be done to be ready for winter.

It is work that I enjoy, even if it is hard enough labor to make me sweat and ache. It just feels, I don't know, honest, to labor over the felled trees. It makes me appreciate all of the resources and energy - and not just my own - that goes into keeping me and my family warm throughout the winter. Hell, it is not just keeping us warm. We have weeks at a time where the temperature does not reach 0 degrees. These trees are ensuring we survive the winter.

The primal nature of this chore gets into my head, my muscles, my bones.

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In a small way, I was disappointed that A. and I did not get a deer last fall when we went hunting together. True, I was anxious as all hell to be around when he killed an animal. I did not know how I would handle it. I am sure there would have been much blubbering and snotty blowing of my nose. But, I knew how I wanted to handle at least one aspect of it.

I want to be present at the moment of harvest. I want to kneel next to that neigbhor of mine and say a prayer of thanks, of gratitude. I want to voice my inteniton to God, to the Universe, to use this animal's life for good. That the energy and life that this animal has given to me will be invested in doing good for all my neighbors, human and non-human. That this animal will fuel my actions throughout the next year, and out of respect for this animal's life I will try my best to live an honest life. A life that contributes to the world. A life lived in an effort to to take for granted that my days on this earth are sustained by the death of others. That there is a balance out there; death fueling life, whether it animal deaths or the deaths of plants, of microorganisms, whatever. That I try to respect that balance in how I live my life.

I guess I hope that by voicing my prayer it will serve as a reminder of how I want to live my life.



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It is much easier to understand the energy, the life, the deaths, that go into my survival, my life, through the handling of the firewood and the animals.

Friday Five: Pioneer Shoes

1. Grocery shopping: done. Weekly errands: done. Liquor cabinet: stocked.

I am ready to get to my house tonight and not come into town again until Monday morning.

You see, tomorrow is the Wyoming Cowboys/Texas Longhorns game. Hotels are sold out in town and within a 75-mile radius. There have been RV's camped out all over the place with Texas plates. Apparently, a whole slew of Wyoming season tickets were bought up by Texans to ensure they could see this game. I can't imagine why. I love Wyoming with all my heart, but we all know who is going to win. 

No way in hell do I want to be anywhere near all the drunk students this week. Nor the insane crowd of TEXANS. Drunk or sober.

We can deduce two things from my reaction to, and preparation for, the upcoming event: 1) I have reacclimated to small-town Wyoming rather completely and 2) I am getting old and crotchety.  

2. I hope we don't get completely obliterated by the Longhorns. Or that any of the players get hurt. 

3. A. and I are going to try to split and stack nearly four cords of wood this weekend. I am quite certain I won't be able to raise my hands over my head on Monday. Oy.

4. The little division of landowners in our area do not have a HOA. This does not surprise me in the least; Wyomingites aren't really into rules and people telling them what they can and can't do with their property. The culture here is, for the most part, live and let live. In fact, a tiny town about 45 miles north of us HAS NO LAW ENFORCEMENT OF ANY SORT. None. Well, unless you count the Game Warden who lives there.

Not having a HOA means that there is no association to handle getting our roads graded and plowed (we aren't on a county road, boo.), among other things. A few weekends ago, while A. and I were fly-fishing our way across western Wyoming, all the landowners got together for a potluck to discuss the road issue. I was so dissappointed to miss the meal. It is hard to get to know your neighbors with 10, 20 and 40 acres between you and them and I was hoping to talk to the people I wave to everyday. 

From what I hear, the meeting went really well. People agreed on how to pay for fixing the road and grading and plowing it. To have it done professionally will cost twice as much so we are doing it ourselves. One of my neighbors used to build roads for the Forest Service so we are going to draw on his expertise. Another neighbor has nearly all of the major equipment we need.

Next weekend, we are renting the couple of machines we don't have access to and all of the neighbors are coming out to tear up and rebuild the first section of road off the highway. A. and I will be spending our weekend hauling huge ass rocks to the grinder, then helping lay them out after the road has been built up and leveled.

In a rather overdramatic, romantic sort of way, I feel like a fucking pioneer. Building my own road? Chopping four MORE cords of wood to ensure heat throughout the winter? Also, A. will be going hunting in a couple of weeks and hopefully will come home with what will be our meat for the year. Geez. I am both amused and dismayed by this.

5. Whenever I am in the mountains or plains doing something, especially getting firewood or some other work, I always think about the shoes pioneer women wore, the hideous, purposely-smaller-than-her-foot, too-many-buttoned shoes. How the fuck did they walk, let alone work in those? It makes be think twice about bitching when the screw in my ankle rubs on my hiking boots. 

Not to mention corsets. 

Friday Five

1. I think I want a cat.

I know I don't want a cat. The reality of living with a cat is not for me. I don't think.

But I want a sweet little kitty to cuddle in my lap.

As long as I was SURE it wasn't going to chew out my throat with gleeful abandon.

If I were to get a kitty, I would want a black and white (tuxedo?) one with white feet, or a grey striped shorthair.

That wasn't evil.

2. How do you spell grey? I always lean toward grey with an "e," rather than gray with an "a." Thoughts? Bibliodiva, is there some official something or other that explains when to use which?

3. Last Thursday, A. and I took off for the other side of the state to the Bridger-Teton National Forest. We stayed for four days, roaming throughout the park, camping and staying in a National Forest crew cabin. We fly fished until we were sore, sunburned, and beaten. I even wore the skin away on the crook of my right index finger from stripping so much line. I felt kind of bad ass. (But it was kind of gross. Ew.) We fished for about 22 hours or so over the four days.

It was awesome.

I have never utterly relaxed like that before. Now I understand why people take vacations and leave work. Geez!

4. I completed my Cutt Slam! Here I am, having caught an itty-bitty Bonneville to complete the Slam at dusk on Friday. Wahoo! (I don't know what the hell is up with The Super Excited Face.)

5. I have decided to start a separate blog, A Fledgling Artemisia, to talk about and journey through the world of therapy, depression, and anxiety. I decided to try out Wordpress (the free version; I don't need a website "project" to further lure me away from The Thesis!). Hope you don't mind. If I decide I don't like it, I will migrate the blog to a blogger.com format.

If you are interested in hanging out with me as I find out what size Crazypants I wear, hopeful to return them to the store from which they came, and maybe grown and heal along beside me, please visit.

Happy Friday to you!

Smiles

All is well, I am just busy as hell. I will post tonight or in the next day or so.

Until then, Buster and Belle send you their love!