Confessions of an Internet Junkie

Just a short one while I wait for pain meds to kick in. (It always sounds so melodramatic, doesn't it) I was weaning myself off prednisone, but I hit that three mg wall again. After several nights of no sleeping and days of shuffling around on painful joints, I upped the pred again and started taking T3s (that's high doses of tylenol, caffeine, and codeine in one pill). Last night was the first good night I got in a week. I'm going to have to keep the higher dosage until after the move next week; I just can't afford not to be active.

We're getting another dumpster. I think it comes tomorrow and we keep it until Tuesday. I am near weepy with joy. I was planning on having to drive stuff to the dump in my car using many trips and wrangling with the dump guy about the charges for dropping off oh,2 broken mops, a broken metal rake, and a tarp full of metal pipes. And that's just the easy stuff. No this will be better and faster and when you factor in the cost of each trip, probably only a bit more expensive. I'm psyched!

We rented a storage unit for the stuff not going into the new apartment. It's 10 x 10 x 20, and I'm sure we'll fill it all and possibly spill over to another one. We brought 44 boxes over today along with doing the regular chores and errands. Dar's friend Janice will be coming over to help with more packing and hauling. I love you, Janice.

I think Chloe and Jane will be in their new home this weekend, too. I hope they'll be happy. If I have my wish, they'll end up being sometime barn cats and mostly people cats. I really do believe that's how it will turn out.

Next Tuesday Dar and I will be taking a day to shepherd sparky77's two cats down to the Canadian/Michigan border. Q's dad will cross the border and meet us . . . somewhere. (Still have to find a place.) We'll hand over Pico and Lexy and be back on our way for more packing and moving and cleaning and is there anyone who really enjoys moving? Really?

The actual move will be Saturday and Sunday. We've got two cars and we're renting a U-Haul cube truck; we're hoping that friends who have been offering to help will actually show up and we can get this thing done with a minimum of high drama. Or would that be high farce? Oh, and that includes moving the animals, too. This should be very, very interesting.

So if you don't hear from me for the next 10 days . . . that's why. Just please put on your wishing caps, light your candles, strangle a rubber chicken - whatever your particular ritual is - and work on it not being a raging downpour or a snowstorm for that weekend. We all thank you in advance.

Dar had a doctor's appointment yesterday. While she was sitting among the crying, coughing children in the waiting room, I took a short walk to the nature reserve right behind the doctors' offices. It was windy and heading towards dusk.

( Birds of a feather )

Jane and Chloe are still in the house. Dar and Mark were feeling unwell yesterday, so we postponed it until today. That didn't happen, either, because of communication screw ups; among other things, our phone has been out of order - apparently all weekend. I'm not really complaining, because I am going to miss the little girl cats. But for two days in a row I've been psyching myself up to bring them to their new family, and it hasn't happened. It's just a little wearing.

The new owners and their three kids came over today to show the kids their new home. Very nice family, and good lord are they excited about this place. Dar took them all out to get a closer look at the alpacas (always a crowd pleaser), and then we went over information about the area and the house that they're going to need to know. I never did get around to telling them about the cursed mailbox, though :)

I had a funny run-in with our littlest cria, Tango. He's a chewer - your gloves, your hat, your pants, the door post, the fence wire. He loves to nom, nom, nom. Tonight I was getting ready to fill the alpaca chow bucket, which meant that the barn was full of impatient alpacas. I leaned over so Tango could nuzzle my face. He did that, and then he started chewing on my bandana - except he grabbed a hunk of my bangs along with it. Then he pulled. Hard. My bandana stayed, but a clump of bangs came out, and there was Tango happily chewing away on a big hank of my hair. He's such a character and probably the happiest alpaca I've ever met. I hope that he never changes.

Mostly goings. I don't know how far the word has spread, but we'll be moving on the 28th. We never did find a suitable farm to rent, so we'll be moving in with one of our alpaca friends. Deb's house is really two apartments; she'll be living in one, and we'll be in the other. It's three bedrooms and one bathroom, so it'll be sufficient for a while. Deb has alpacas (and a fiber mill), so there will be space for our alpacas, too. We'll hunker down for the winter and hope for better hunting toward spring.

Jane and Chloe won't be going with us. They'll be moving in with some other alpaca friends of ours who are looking for barn cats who are also people cats. I really like them; they obviously love animals, and I know that they'll love my two girls. The property is beautiful - it's 50 acres of fields and woods with a lovely pond. The barn is really a huge greenhouse that will be warm and comfy. What I'm hoping (and suspecting) is that the girls will be out in the barn area during the day and back in the house at night. I think that it will be a good place for them. I love them dearly, and I'll miss them terribly, but they'll be together and they'll be loved and protected. And they'll have plenty of mice to catch and eat. We're bringing them over to the new place on Saturday. The plan is for the girls to stay in the house for a few days so they can bond with their new family, and then they'll start introducing them to the barn and the alpacas. I hope this works out for everyone.

We have so much to do. It isn't so much about the packing as it is the sorting. There's still a ton of stuff to sort through; most of what we have is going into storage, but some will be thrown out. We'll be moving ourselves with the help of friends. I expect utter chaos :) The closing isn't until the 30th, so we have a little leeway.

The new owners will be coming over on Sunday to check out the place more closely, take measurements, show the kids their new rooms, that sort of thing. We have such bad memories of how uncooperative the people were who owned this house before us; we don't want to be those people, you know?

I seem to have a running battle with tires. This time it was the tires on the utility wagon that I hitch onto the lawn tractor. I thought it was running rough, and when I finished and unhitched it I noticed that one of the tires was just about flat. The other one wasn't that great, either. Long story short, I filled one and had to take the other one in to have the inner tube replaced. Now I'm hoping that I won't go out there tomorrow and find the tractor tires flat :)

And that's about it. No ill effects from my flu shot, although I'm fighting off a cold. As Dar predicted when I got the shot. Because Dar knows all. Our living room is a sea of empty liquor boxes waiting to be filled. The cats are enjoying it, especially Lexy who thinks sleeping in boxes is, well, the cat's meow. Heh. Eh, everything will work because it has to. Right? Right.

I've been packing up the books in my room, but I stopped to browse through the diary I kept (sporadically) when I was 12 through 14. This one is worth repeating:

Feb. 26, 1964. Brother! I went downtown twice today to get a Beatles album. It was worth it! They're wonderful and I love all of them. This album is great. I hope they come to Conn. so I can see them. I think I'd either faint or try to kiss them. I mean it when I say I love them. I include them in my prayers & everything. I wish I could meet them! I know I'd do something rash like kissing them, but that's what love does to you. Am I Glad!

Along with my abiding love for the boys from Liverpool, I seemed to watch a lot of TV back then. There are breathless entries about The Tall Man. Surfside Six. Bonanza. Rawhide. 77 Sunset Strip. Dr. Kildare. (Huge crush on Richard Chamberlain. HUGE.) I guess there's always been a bit of the fangirl about me.

Back to packing.

I'm street legal at last. I finally got my car registered at 4:30PM this afternoon, after two weeks of wrangling with insurance companies and garages and leaky tires and freaky weather and one anxiety-inducing emissions test.

OK - who wants to go for a ride?!

I come from New England. We know from wacky, changeable weather. I have never seen anything like what we encountered today here in our area. Rapid-fire changes of precipitation - snow, sleet, hail, rain interspersed with brief moments of brilliant sunshine. At one point it was snowing like a blizzard while the sun streamed down on us. The wind was crazy, changing directions so often and so quickly that the trees were whipping around. I'm surprised that we didn't lose any. We had to drive into Kitchener during this; at one point we were in a white-out of hail. Hail! It was nearly horizontal. I was very glad to be off of the highway by then, because it was difficult enough to drive through it in city traffic. We ended with a brief but furious snow squall. The cats were going nuts, maybe it was the air pressure changes. Everything and everyone seems to have settled down now, but really . . . insane weather day.

( Because you may be here tomorrow . . . )

I got an H1N1 vaccination today, and the process really wasn't that bad. The clinic was scheduled to run from 1-7PM, but I knew about the very long lines and hundreds of people turned away in Toronto and other cities so I showed up at 10AM. There was a sign on the door that said pretty much "Don't even think about trying to come through this door before 1PM!" So I left :) I came back a little before 1; there were about 60 people ahead of me and a line rapidly growing behind me. The doors opened at 1, and I have to say that things went pretty smoothly. I was out of there in less than an hour. One woman was turned away while I was there because she was over 65 and didn't have a chronic condition. She was pretty pissed. I was surprised that there weren't more people, but then I realized that none of the Mennonite families had shown up; that would have easily doubled the number of people trying to get inside. Maybe even tripled. Big, big families in the Mennonite community.

I know some people on my flist have tried to get the vaccination and weren't able to. I'm really sorry about that, and I hope you stay flu free until more vaccine shows up.

I finally got my temporary registration on Monday, but Dar had to call in the big guns before that happened. As in the chairman of the Canadian Insurance Bureau, who is also an acquaintance of hers. One call and bam . . . they couldn't get this stuff completed fast enough. It pisses me off that it takes that kind of pressure. What about all the people who aren't fortunate enough to be able to call on powerful people? They're just left dangling.

The easiest part of the whole process so far was dealing with the Motor Vehicle people. The woman was great! We were in and out in a jiff. Of course we can't let this be a completely smooth process, can we? I need to get an emissions test on the car before I can get it registered. I have a half tank of very old gas that I need to run off before I get it tested. I also have four brand new tires on the car - three of which have leaky valves. So I have to keep running into town to put air in them. I wanted just to be able to go for a long drive to run through the gas, but I don't trust the air pressure. I also want to get the car registered asap, so I don't want it stuck back in the garage waiting for tire repairs again while the time on my temporary registration runs out. Why can't it ever go smooth?

There are two things I think y'all should check out.

1. A piece by Melissa McEwan about the defeat of gay marriage rights in Maine. This country is not, and never has been, well-served by leaving the civil rights of the minority in the hands of the majority. Putting that up to a vote which is subject to deeply held prejudice is ruling not by democracy, but by mob mentality. I was shocked by Prop 8 in CA; I was shocked by the decision in ME. I can't believe that I'm still this naive about the majority view of homosexuals in America.

2. On a much lighter note: The Dodge Viper is one macho machine, right? Not so much.

Three unrelated things:


Chloe's sleepy nose! I love when cats sleep like that.


This was taken this morning. We had a non-existent autumn.


Tent building that is the bus station where Mark grabs the bus
for Toronto every morning. And this is morning.

I need to sleep, guys. I have to get up in four hours. Sleep, damn it to heckula.

I'm going to be by the numbers because my brain's not working in a linear fashion. Or not much at all, really.

( Follow the lovely cut tag . . . if you dare. Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! )

7. Ooh, The Amazing Race is coming on. I'm really enjoying this season, and so far I'm liking most of the teams and loving the race itself. It's one of the few TV shows that I'm keeping up with, because I have to go to bed so early lately. I stopped watching Flash Forward and Dexter and Glee, but I've been following the recaps on TWOP, so I hope to catch up again once we get the car situation settled. Anyway, TAR!

The cast of Glee sang the national anthem before the game last night.

I missed Castle! i can't believe that I missed Castle! Was he dressed like Mal? Really? Waaaaah.

1. This post bought to you by Carolans who kick Bailey ass in the cream Irish liquor wars, let me tell you. Carolona, 1 baclofen, and 1 Imovane. should go boom soon.

2. I thought last weeks of bought of having to take the jeep was going to do me in by the time it ended. The Insomnia Queen has to get up at 5AM, drive 45 minutes with Mark to the bus station to borrow the jeep for the day, scoot over to the just-opened Starbucks to mainline some caffeine, drive back to the farmlet and then commence chores of avarious srots, either animal (alpacas and horsie), vegetable (hauling grain and hay to the barn) or mineral (driving big metal vehicle and/or raking up poo which is liquid gold.) run, run, run. Down ritalin to keep me focused (two kinds: one short term and one long term taken concurrently. Works, babies.) Run, run, run some more. Backo n the highway to pick Mark up at the bus station somewhere between 7:25 and 8:25 PM. Drive home. Take drugs to fall asleep, and may do it again the next day.

3. My mazda is fixed. Yay! Way more expensive than we thought. Heart attack! And it's still got to be registered *and* pass a safety test. Sack cloth and ashes! And it's not registered yet. Rend garmets and pull out hair and burn it! So a lot of that gets down tomorrow. I hope. I hope I can get an appointment to get the car safety checked tomorrow. This could get even weirder.

4. No new home. We're working on it. At least now with my car fixed, we have enough room to live in the Mazda and the jeep, you know. Cats in my car! I've lived in my car before; it's doable.

5. Still no visa. They're never going to give it to me. I'm going to die of whatever it is that's been breeding inside me for the past eight months during which I couldn't afford the montly blood tests to head off whatever it is, but hey . . . universal health care is great. If you actually have access to it. Which I don't and no one will say why. But be happy! It's the Canadian Way! :) :) :)

6. First house we look at still isn't rented. Having a dead guy in the barn and a metric fuck ton of junk in the house, garage, and barn will put in crimp in the excitement of agreeing to rent it. The owner called last week to offer it to us for a cut in rent. And sitll the answer was . . . um, no.

7 Must to bed. Schlafs gut, eh, y'all

Thinky thoughts but I either don't have the time or the brain to do put it all together. Maybe this weekend.

Happiest of Birthdays to sparky77

My wish for you is that this is the last birthday you'll spend as sick and as tired as you are. I hope that this year turns around in a big damn hurry and finds you happy and crazy (in that special Q way) and so healthy that it's obnoxious :)

This is an inspiring photo essay on women farmers inspired by Secretary Hillary Clinton's op-ed piece on food security. Melissa, the blog mistress, gathered all of the photos; I think she did a stunning job.

I miss being able to work out there. Until lupus hit - and even during the first year or so - I loved being out there in the fields and the paddocks. I'd stay there for most of the day; I loved the work, I loved the animals, I loved the barn, I loved being outside. Not many of those days anymore.

Anyway . . . say the word farmer, and the image of a man on a tractor comes most immediately to mind for most of us. It's our learned response. Yet most of the farmers that I know now are women, and the people who have to come to help us here with the chores and the animals are also women - most especially sparky77, cajoje, and sffan. Most of the members of our alpaca collective are women. In developing parts of the world, many women work in farm collectives, too. It's a good system for us.

I just wanted to share this with you, because it brought a lump to my throat. And because it was missing from the photo essay, I want to end with a picture of Farmer Dar.
( Not all farming is done in the sunshine )

Happy Birthday, Puff! I hope it was a good one full of skinny jeans and soaps and Seacrest. I miss you.

Let's start with this fact: the house was built in 1832, and it still has the original windows. Yeah. It also had outdated electrics that no doubt are not up to code. And it was filled with junk that we would have to get rid of. It looked lovely on the outside (Scottish masons built it to last), but inside it was pretty much jaw-droppingly unworkable for us. Small bedrooms (and only three not four), no closets, one bathroom, and the basement was literally a hole in the floor with a rickety stair.

The barn was huge, and the stable on the bottom floor would have been great for the alpacas. He had a tack room that he turned into a man cave; we quickly renamed it The Cowboy Room. (Dar: "Toby would love this!") The top of the barn was for hay and general storage, including the world's oldest working (I assume) tractor. And several steer skulls. And we'd have to share it with his son-in-law who stores his boat and boating equipment up there.

I haven't uploaded the pictures yet, but I will. We were very disappointed.

Ganked from sffan.

Your result for The What is Your Spirit Animal Test...

The Grizzly Bear

Here's your results! Your spirit animal has a Nobility ranking of 14 out of 18.

Take The What is Your Spirit Animal Test at OkCupid