Oh, how I loved this movie.

If you haven't seen it, it's a Masterpiece Theatre type mini series made in 1979. I'm glad I rented these because I was able to watch all the episodes very quickly and not have to wait. It's addictive!

I had a sense that someone was going to get killed, one of the two brothers that fell in love with Christina. It was the one she married. And then I jumped ahead and wondered if Christina was going to end up marrying Mark, the other brother, but she ended up (surprise!) with Dick. But Mark married Christina's best friend, Dorothy, so it all turned out well in the end.

The heat wave continues and I have yet to turn on the AC. For years, I've run around closing shutters, drapes and blinds on the east side and then doing the same to the south and west as the sun rose in the sky, but it never really made a huge difference. I've also been running fans, including 2 fans in the attic.

But today I discovered quite by accident that the house stayed remarkably cool (75 degrees) if I shut up all the windows and closed off the doors to both the sun room and the family room. The house was really quite cool today when i got home from work. Usually it would be stifling. I think I underestimated how much the heat from the family room filters into the rest of the house. Even though I often would close off the sun room, I think the family room would heat up in its own right because all that hot air would be in the garage and just rise up above, to the family room.

I finished mowing the front lawn tonight in the sweltering heat. We're supposed to get rain by sunrise.

Thus far, I've had one ripe cherry tomato. The snow peas are pretty well spent in this heat, and the same goes for the lettuce, though I am still eating the greens; I don't mind a bit of bitterness. Tiny stringbeans have formed. Soybeans growing more slowly and haven't flowered yet.

I found an unwanted visitor in the garden: woodchuck! There were 2 burrows I filled in last year; dumping used cat litter really works well. I shall have to repeat the treatment first thing tomorrow. The dastardly fellow has already shorn my autumn joy sedum.

I made some hypertufa pots 2 days ago and they're taking a while to dry in the garage. It will be 3 weeks to cure so by the time I plant, we'll be halfway through the season. But I've wanted to try making them for a long time and it's very easy. I had a false start using the wrong kind of cement mix. Can't wait to remove the mold; maybe in the morning they will be hard enough to do so.

I'm hoping I can make extras and sell them along with the perennials. I remember one woman selling them and she was charging $50 and up for them! Outrageous when the ingredients to make them are so cheap.

I continue to work part-time at the small publisher. I've been there since January, working 2 days in the office and 1 day at home.

The editor in chief is becoming more of a problem. While we seem to have pleasant enough conversations when we're talking about her dogs, her family cabin in the Catskills or her Irish heritage, she takes on a very disrespectful and condescending tone when it comes to the work I'm doing.

It's hard to describe the nature of the work I'm doing, which requires online research of hundreds of different magazines half the time, while the other half the time I'm making updates to Quark and FileMaker listings which contain information about these magazines.

I don't think there's been a week I've been there where there hasn't been some change in the hardware, software, or procedures we're asked to follow. The work, while not rocket science, requires the utmost concentration because there are hundreds of places where, if you click the wrong box in filemaker or fail to mark something a certain way, it messes things up.

On top of that, there was just one day of "group" training of me and my counterpart (I'll call her Delia), who started the job when I did. After that, the editor in chief and another long-time woman, I'll call her Sally, would respond to specific questions, problems or issues that arose as they occurred with either of us. The problem was that when they worked with Delia on some situation, I wasn't always listening in on the conversation and so i didn't get the benefit of what they were telling her. And vice versa.

So yeah, the editor in chief, who has made it well known that she's been there for 25 years, is generally impatient, tense and snippy. There are tons of little rules and procedures involved in this job and it can be hard to remember the "right" way to do everything. So on any number of occasions, when she has to tell me how to do something more than once, she will ALWAYS take the opportunity to tell me how many times previously she told me the very same thing. As if doing so is going to improve my retention. On the contrary, it makes it harder, becus her obvious annoyance is a distraction.

The first time this happened, I just looked at her and didn't say anything, startled that she was so rude. I felt like she were addressing a 10-year-old.

The icing on the cake occurred last week. I was reviewing notes she had made on some new magazine listings I had written. She actually suggested that I was either "lazy" or "plagarizing" descriptions of the magazines.

Here's what happened.

We are working with ancient equipment and software. The company doesn't have any money to spend. I am using a small, 12-inch diameter monitor and need to have no less than 6 windows open at any time on the monitor: this includes the master quark file, the filemaker file, the website, the editor follow up form and the category page. Toggling back and forth and minimmizing screens is time-consuming. So what I had done to cause her nasty remarks was copy descriptions of a magazine directly from their website to my quark file, where I found it easy to rewrite the description when I could just look at what they wrote right in front of me. Unfortunately, there were two listings where I thought that I had already rewritten the description, when in fact i had not. A very unfortunate mistake, but certainly not laziness or plagarisim, either. Hence her comments.

I've worked as a writer for nearly 30 years, and I am neither. But i was so pissed when i read her notes that once again, i chose to completely ignore them and not say anything, even to defend myself.

Since then, I have fantasized about getting even. I happened to have another job interview on Friday, a place where I would love to work and which pays substantially better than the $15 an hour I'm making now. The woman I interviewed with actually told me the range she usually pays writers, from $30 to $45 an hour. It was really refreshing to talk to a prospective employer who was candid about pay instead of playing the game of trying to force me to name a price so they can determine how little they can pay me.

So my fantasy was that i get the job i interviewed for and then I can email the editor in chief, saying largely what I've said here, and announcing my departure, effective immediately. I would copy the people the editor in chief reports to. It would be a huge embarrassment to her.

From conversations I've had, she's like this to others. I mentioned here before that Delia, my counterpart in this job, who i like very much, told me she nearly quit herself last summer but was talked out of it by another woman who had our job previously (and left herself after 6 months on the job). In her case, the editor in chief was getting on her case...a lot..because she was working too slow and needed to work faster and complete more listings.

I know, I know, don't burn your bridges and all that, but i don't intend to make a name for myself in publishing and I don't think she could hurt me. What's frustrating is that I've built a career and enjoyed success, awards, kudos, etc. over the years. So when an editor who hardly knows me immediately accuses me of being either lazy or a plagarizer, it REALLY ticks me off.

The woman is so arrogant that when we email editors at the publications we are researching, in search of certain information that we can't find on their websites, she wouldn't even allow us to use our own name as the signature. She made us use HER name and title immediately below our name. Her reasoning was, being that she's been in the business for so long, some editors "might" recognize her name and there'd therefore be a better chance that they respond to us. Needless to say, using her signature with my name on an email I sent caused a lot of confusion, which was evident when various people would email me back, often addressing me by her name and so on. And here she's telling us she wants us to try to build "relationships" with various magazine editors when they don't know who they're talking to.

There have been any number of times when I've overheard her remark to Sally about how well we're doing in terms of progress, and listings written by me and Delia, especially when compared to where they were in previous years at this time. (They establishede weekly quotas we are supposed to meet as to the number of listings we complete.) Apparently there was always a lot of hair-pulling and last minute scrambles to get the books done. Not once, however, has the editor thought to address me and Delia directly to say hey, guys, you're doing a good job. Thanks.

In my last entry, I posted a simple line chart showing the ups and downs of my net worth over the past 17 years.

Ceejay remarked that it was "astounding" that I'd managed to maintain my net worth through what will be 3 years of underemployment this September.

I thought I'd analyze how I've been able to do that.

First, I'll define "underemployment." 2.5 years is a long time to go without steady full-time job, especially when you have a mortgage and all the bills that go with that.

Here's a rough synopsis of my employment history since 2009.

Mid-September 2009: I'm laid off. I was home sick with a bad cold and my boss, accompanied by an HR person, called to deliver the bad news. It took me completely by surprise that day, although the company had gone through two previous rounds of major, sweeping layoffs.

From there on, I focus on both finding another job as well as developing my freelance income. Truth be told, I have just a few regular clients, and the work is highly sporadic. I only average about $5,ooo to $6,000 a year in freelance writing.

March 2010: i get a f/t contract job with a start-up website. It pays $25/hr. It lasted 6 weeks before they let me go and later they pulled the site down to restructure, regroup and retry. (It's still not up.)

April 2010: I lucked out and after taking an exam to be a US Census Bureau worker, I got the job, which was probably 25 or 30 hours a week on average, paid $19.75 an hour + gas reimbursements, on which I actually MADE money becus i drive a Civic, and lasted through early August. It was an interesting experience.

September 2010: This time, I really lucked out and got a writing job thru a headhunter with a big, well-known financial services company. It was full-time but a contract job. It paid more than I've ever made before, $50 an hour. Or, on an annual basis, $104,000. Oddly, I have worked much harder on jobs that paid much less, and I found the job not that difficult, once again demonstrating that you don't have to work harder to make more money, only smarter.

Throughout all of this, of course, I'm continuously looking for work of all kinds (freelance, contract or salaried) and submitting my resume. I spent about 2 years doing online surveys, averaging as much as $100 a month, before I decided it just wasn't worth the time invested. I've also regularly done market research focus groups, product testing and even medical research studies involving blood draws or other stuff. I've been a poll worker in my town's local elections.

To generate money, I have also sold personal possessions on Craig's List, including firewood from my land and even perennials that I dug up and divided. I sold what little gold jewelery I had. I didn't consider this a hardship and am perfectly happy to wear my Technibond (sterling silver overlaid in 14K gold) which looks like the real thing.

After the well-paying contract job ending December 31, 2010, I went through another long period of nothing coming up, and i relied on my freelance and unemployment to get by.

November 2011: I get some contract work with a small publisher for 2 months paying $15 an hour. It's better than nothing.

January 2012: The same publisher where I did the contract work invited me to work for them on a more permanent basis, still at $15/hr, but it would be 25 hours a week of steady work as a p-t employee, which means they pay a portion of payroll taxes, leaving me with a little more left in my pocket. The company is just barely getting by, not making much of a profit and the building they occupy is up for sale. No one is sure if the company will survive if and when the building sells.

So that's been the employment picture these past 2.5 years and it's pretty much where I stand today.

The fact that I've been able to maintain my net worth during this time is something i attribute to a bunch of things:

1. When i bought the house in 1995, i was lucky that the market was not over-priced the way it was in 2007. Of course, if it had been, I probably wouldn't have been buying.

2. Being risk-averse, I bought "less house" than my realtor said i could and i also put down a huge down payment of 45%. I did this becus as a single person, i didn't want to get in trouble with huge monthly payments if something should happen to my income. And "something," (a layoff), happened fully 5 TIMES since 1995. That's 4 layoffs and 1 company closure. So my monthly payments of currently $1,150, which includes the property taxes, is doable, and a lot less, i think, than what other homeowners pay.

3. Aside from a well-timed home purchase, I was not afraid to cut way back in my lifestyle when i lost my job. My basic cutbacks (a long time ago now) were eliminating cable TV, the cell phone, Netflix, all paid magazine subscriptions, all vacations, all paid forms of entertainment except the very occasional $2 movie theater, all eating out except an occasional fast food fix, always off the $1 menu and very little spent on gifts. (My family understands.)

There are times I feel a bit deprived, but largely i don't. I have created different release valve mechanisms to ensure those kinds of self-defeating feelings don't build up.

for instance, I got into credit card rewards in a big way. While I started off systematically applying for cards with the biggest ($200) cash rewards last year, this year I branched out into cards that say, gave you $250 in gift cards after you spent $2,000 in 3 months. I've used those gift cards in a variety of ways, probably an equal mix of stuff I actually need, like food or gas, as well as discretionary spending like some clothes and other items for the house.

The online surveys functioned in the same way; they ensured I wouldn't go on a spending binge due to pent-up frustrations. While I don't do the online surveys anymore except for Pinecone, I do still particpate in 4 online forums. In two of them, you're just asked to participate in brief surveys once a week and you're rewarded with $15 in gift cards. So that's $30 a month in amazon gift cards right there. In the BP forum, i recently got a $25 BP gas card, which thrilled me.

It's been easy for me to adjust to no spending on entertainment because i've always liked to do things like hiking/walking, kayaking, and bike riding. If I get together with a friend these days, it's usually limited to a cup of tea (or iced tea,these days). Many of my friends are either naturally frugal like I am or required to be that way due to their own circumstances. So I am not often pressured by other people in my life who want to go out and eat at a fancy restaurant.

I sometimes watch a few favorite TV shows free on Hulu. And I rent A LOT OF free DVDs from the library. It's getting hard now to find something I haven't seen!

I also spend a lot of time working and maintaining my yard and a large vegetable garden and giving my 2 cats a lot of TLC. I hope to picking wineberries soon and freezing them for winter use, along with tomatoes and homemade pesto using my basil plants.

So there you have it. What's been killing me all along is the crrently $562 I'm paying each month for COBRA. Having benign MS, I don't have many other choices, because the pre-existing condition would not likely be covered if I switched plans. My best hope would be to find another salaried position that included medical as a benefit, but salaried positions, folks, seem to have gone the way of the dodo bird. I suspect they won't return en masse until the jobs market fixes itself and the pool of job-seekers shrinks.

I had toyed with the idea of dropping the COBRA (or waiting for it to run out, in June 2013), taking a great risk by going uninsured for 6 months so that the state plan would pick me up. Except that while it used to be "somewhat" more affordable, it now is, well, not so much. the monthly premiums are $442, or about $100 less than what I'm paying now each month.

I do have one medication,the Copaxone, which I take for the MS. It's extremely expensive (an injectable) and not something I could purchase without health insurance, although my neurologist said the pharma company would probably give me the meds for free becus i've been on it for so long (since 2000) and they want to keep me as a customer i presume so that when i do return to work, i stay on the copaxone.

Big picture bright spots: 1. I'm about 8 months away from paying off the mortgage.

2. At some point in my future, when the housing market recovers, I will likely sell my high maintenance house and buy a small condo. I would pay 100$ cash for the condo so no mortgage and I would probably be able to pocket an additional $50K profit.

3. I'm fortunate to have a skill (copywriting) that lends itself to working at home and is something i can do all my life, even, presumably, if my MS ever worsens.

Big picture challenges:
1. I have a chronic illness that requires a very expensive drug and future prognosis is always uncertain.

2. I am in my early 50s and become more unemployable with each passing year as employers naturally favor young 'uns. I often wonder if I'll EVER find another salaried position.

3. I do worry about taking care of aging parents, particuarly my mother. I have a sister, but she's so uninterested in playing an active role in the family I pretty much feel like an only child when it comes to stepping up to tthe plate and doing what needs to be done.

4. I think most of my dating days are behind me. I wish I weren't looking at my future as a single person, but it's just the way it worked out. Let's face it. I don't look at all like I did when I was 30, although people say I look young for my age and I'm not hugely fat.

5. Getting back to money talk, one of the worst things about being unemployed, as far as I'm concerned, is that I've been unable to contribute a dime to a 401(k) or my SEP/IRA for my freelance work and while I have taxable savings that could be transferred to my roth IRA account, I'm reluctant to do so when I have only so much money left. so I'm behind in my retirement savings goals by 2.5 years. It's really unclear if I'll ever achieve my original goal of $1 million, or the comfy lifestyle with travel that I had envisioned.

Now, the goal has morphed more into a question of, can i get by and pay my bills until I'm of retirement age and can get onto Social Security at age 67? That's a big shift in thinking.

Among other questionable uses of my time, I created a rudimentary line chart some time ago. It tracks my net worth each January for the past 17 years, from 1996 through 2012.

I bought my house in December 1995 and used a good chunk of my savings as a 45% down payment. So 1996 seemed like a good time to begin the chart since my life savings were the lowest they'd been in a while.

What's interesting to me is how much I can read into this chart about the ebb and flow of my financial life, my career, unemployment and a few windfalls.

Let's take a look....



As you can see at the bottom left of the line, there was a nice, steady, upward trajectory in net worth from about $67,000 in 1996 to $221,000 in 1999. Those were the latter half of the good money days when I worked as a financial copywriter for a firm that sold mutual funds and annuities, but they were also high stress years with a long commute and not much of a social life. I socked away the maximum 15% in my 401k each year, contributed the maximum to my IRA and saved a few thousand more each year in taxable savings.

From 1999 to 2000, you can see an even steeper climb in net assets. It was in 1999 that I lucked out and sold some stock options. My two grandmothers both passed away around that time, around a year or so apart. I inherited from both.

From 2000 through 2003, I didn't seem to make much headway. Maybe because, burned out and tired of the long commute and demanding hours, I left the well-paying job in 1999 for a start-up financial publisher in my hometown, only to see that job, and its income, go kaput when the company folded a year-and-a-half later. A period of unemployment followed while I tried to make a go of freelancing full-time, as well as full-time, but low-paying work and some consulting.

From 2003 through 2007 there's another sharp climb in net asset, from $227,000 in 2003 to $437,000 in 2007. Those were bull market years, plus I was working full-time with no interruptions. (Even if you're unemployed for just a brief period between jobs, changing jobs has its penalty since many employers won't let you begin contributing to a 401(k) for 6 months.)

The big drop in 2009 was of course due to the stock market crash. That was also the year I was laid off. But as you can see, I've recovered net worth nicely in the past few years.

This is the big picture snapshot. There were a lot more fluctuations in the months between each January. My highest net worth, not really reflected in the line chart, was $525,000 in May 2011.

I was down about $25,000 in January 2012 compared to January 2011, but I did withdraw about $14,000 for vinyl siding last summer and I threw at least $15,000 at my mortgage around the same time. Because I'm not working steadily, I've been unable to replenish the funds taken out, which bothers me.

I've also plotted out my net worth on a monthly basis, and that reveals even more nuances than the year by year chart.

My dilemma about what to do today sort of solved itself when the woman i do legal editing for asked me to edit her new website. I spent a few hours editing, and offered quite a few unsolicited, yet i think valuable ideas for further marketing herself (with my help, of course). This included blog posts, some PR and a vest pocket, leave-behind brochure about her services.

I'd love to get some extra work from her. She asked about my rates for the above, and I really made them much lower than what i charge my main real estate client. The difference is becus my real estate client is a corporation whereas this woman, a social worker aside from the guardian ad litem work she does, works for herself, so it's coming out of her pocket. But she won't be issuing me a 1099 so that will help make for it.

I want her to consider giving me work on an ongoing basis, not just as a periodic, one-time event, so I needed to make my prices reasonable.

Oh yes, the eggs. In between this morning's hail storm and this afternoon's thunderstorm, we had a brief hiatus, and I slipped out to run down to the farm. I scored some eggs from their help yourself system, basically a large cooler on their front porch. There were maybe 4 dozen eggs there and a small box where you put your money. $3 i consider a bargain for locally laid eggs. We'll see how good they are tomorrow at breakfast!

I picked two cups of loosely packed basil leaves from my plants and for dinner whipped up a batch of homemade pesto sauce. Normally I don't cook anything (is that the way you're supposed to do it?) but since I decided I would freeze the leftover portion, I blanched the basil leaves for just 1 minute. It seemed a lot less sharp/pungent than how it usually is, but still very good.

After work i went for a leisurely walk around the block where I saw a rainbow. Where's my pot of gold??

We had an early morning (7:30 am) storm here, even hail. It's probably beaten down the bean seedlings.

The storm has passed but this was an entirely free day for me. I don't know what to do with myself! I had been toying with the idea of going kayaking, but it's wet, damp, and still very dark out there, plus thunder is still rumbling off in the distance.

For the same reason, I don't think i want to do weeding; I'll just get eaten up by mosquitoes.

I don't think I want to start the hypertufa until I'm read to buy the concrete and actually do it on the same day, because in this humid climate, I've found rock hard bags of unused concrete in my basement.

It's so dark and wet outside I'm disinclined to do much outdoors.

So...what to do, what to do.... about the only thing that appeals to me right now is maybe later i'll venture over to Cherry Grove Farm (don't you love that name?) and see if they have any eggs.

I'll likely read my simplicity book some more.

My attitudes about buying things have really changed in the past year. In fact, it's getting harder and harder to spend all these gift cards i've accumulated.

Case in point. i visited Home Goods a few weeks ago to try to spend a $25 gift card. You don't know how long I browsed the store. Twice down every row. Couldn't find anything I had to have. They must've thought I was trying to shop-lift or something. I did finally settle upon an attractive blue glass bottle wrapped in sisal, and a long, rectangular box made in India from a pinkish stone.

But then I reconsidered. I mean, what was I going to DO with these things. I would find a place for them and then they'd sit. Forever.

But darn. I had to use the gift card on something. So this a.m. I decided to head for TJ Maxx, which is owned by the same company as Marshall's and Home Goods. I figured I would get more use out of clothes and I do seem to have a shortage of presentable tops and bottoms.

I pretty much did the same thing at TJ Maxx as I did at Home Goods. Scourred the racks. Hit the dressing room I think 3 times. I finally settled on a pair of black capris, the kind made for working out, but so comfortable. They could be worn to my office. They were just $10, so I still had $15 to play with. I carefully searched through the shoes and didn't see anything remotely intersting. Then I browsed all the home decor aisles.

I was pretty well set on a largish yellow glass ball covered with macramed rope or something. It had a nautical feel to it. It would go perfectly with the goldish slipper chair I don't really care for, and the creamy yellow vase in my family room. I thought I would get a cute set of colored pencils carved out of wood, for my sister at Xmas.

Ahh, but then it hit me again. Why, I asked myself, am i buying more or less useless things? How will this improve my life? What purpose will these serve?

Reminding myself of my under-employment status (not that I could forget) I tried to think in more practical terms. So I spent the remaining $15 on gourmet imported food and toiletry items, the kinds of things I would never spend money on ordinarily, but since I had to spend it on SOMEthing in the store, i figured food would be a good choice. I would benefit in a tangible way. So i got some very interesting pasta sauce ($6 for the jar!) and some special honey (also $6) imported from Germany. Oh, yes, and a bar of soap with healthy ingredients.

It must have taken me 2 hours just to buy that stuff.

Then I did my usual grocery shopping and got tons of fruit, including nectarines and plums and organic grapes, plus some yummy dark chocolate-covered frozen bananas I'd never tried before. Also got a rotisserie chicken, which I chowed down on for lunch.

Dinner was light, just a large salad with greens from my garden (amazing they haven't bolted yet) and cucumber, tomato and croutons.

There are lots of green cherry tomatoes on my plants but nothing's ripe yet, and the one broccoli plant that had formed a small head, well, i didn't pick it soon enough and in the heat it's started to open up and bloom, so too late to eat it. I have a ton of snow peas in the fridge i need to do something with.

I learned to lift up the hay I've mulched with under the broccoli becus i discovered that's where the slugs hang out during the day and it's much esier to grab and fling them far away, across the lawn, now rather than early evening, when the mosquitos are biting.

So i was looking for slugs under the hay and found a cute little toad who had submerged himself in the soil so just the top of him showed when i lifted the hay, Toads eat slugs. I carefully replaced the hay.

Yesterday I went to Home Depot to get a washer for my garden hose, which is leaking. Of course you have to buy a dozen washers at a time, not just one, but they're only a buck or so. A young man approached me and talked me into a free, at home consultation for kitchen cabinet refinishing/refacing. I had always been curious how much that would cost, and i figured the kid probably made a commission based on how many people he signed up.

Well, i rethought that today. The appointment was to be Tuesday, but what was i thinking? I'm in no position to act on that, and it would be a temptation to do something if the price seemed reasonable. So I called him today to cancel it. Like I said, i did it more for the kid than for myself. Young people are finding it hard to land a job as it is. But i have to think of myself too, and kitchen redos aren't in the plan for 2012. Plus, the house is a MESS and I'd have to do some cleaning if i knew they were coming over.

I got psyched up about making some hypertufa troughs and pots. I've read about it before and had a strong interst, but the blogs I'd read didn't seem quite detailed enough to convince me I could do it. Then I came across a blog today and she had both step by step instructions and photos. It seems pretty easy. I went looking around the house for the right sized containers. You have to nest one inside the other with about an inch of space in between.

I'm all set with my containers, I think, but have to return to Home Depot and get some Portland cement, perlite and peat moss. the cement, i fear, is going to weight a ton. That's going to be the biggest pain, just getting the stuff home.

But I am excited to try it and will do it either tomorrow or next weekend.

Well, I'm feeling pretty good that I filled up my heating oil tank this past week. I may have mentioned, the price I paid per gallon ($2.96) is the lowest I've paid since February, 2010, when I paid $2.44 a gallon. The highest I ever paid was $3.52 a gallon, last year. What a killer.

So i should be set for winter's cold at least into December, perhaps early January. Having a full oil tank makes me feel "secure" in the same way that a well-stocked refrigerator does.

Got paid $350 for some freelance work this week. Nice. It,and the $175 I made as a poll worker will help offset the cost of the heating oil.

I did a quick preliminary tally of my June expenses and see that I'm ahead $200, income vs. expenses. Funny how it works...I often feel I make just what I need to make to cover expenses, and not much more. Although I'm not religious, it does remind me often of the bibilical saying about how the birds always finding a way to get the food they need.

I finished up my publishing/editorial work early afternoon and now my time is my own until next Wednesday. Got a request from the Massachusetts woman I've done some legal editing for to edit her website. I LOVE getting unexpected new business from existing clients.

I was going to head out to Trader Joe's this afternoon to beat weekend crowds, but, I don't know, it's still humid and so unpleasant, and now I hear rumblings of thunder. I think I'll just wait til tomorrow afternoon and brave the crowds.

I watched Mick Jagger on Saturday Night Live last night (on Hulu, not sure when it aired) and was amused by the guy. the Stones were once my #1 band, when I was in college. He's in amazing shape and can still parade around on stage with so much energy.

Looking forward to doing some repeatedly deferred "shopping" with assorted gift cards, including $25 worth of BP gas and a Sears gift card I want to use on a pair of white capris and perhaps a pair of shorts and/or a summer top. The mall and TJs are both down in the same area. I also have a Home Depot card and i really need to get some watering hose washers.

I ordered my annual dump sticker online and got a $5 discount for doing so online. First time they made that available. I guess the price went up, cus it's usually $80 and with the discount I still paid $85.

I'm afraid the front lawn needs mowing again. Bane of my existence. One wonders how much MORe overweight I'd be if it weren't for all the mowing I do.

It's blueberry-picking time Jersey now. Most of July is. I want to get down there to see my dad, maybe after the 4th of July weekend.

I've been trying to cut Luther's long fur to give him some relief from the heat, but he HATES it when I cut his fur! I don't pull on it at all, but it's the sound of the scissor he dislikes. So I can only cut a little at a time before he hisses at me (!) or runs away. What a baby!!

Today on the 2nd floor of my house wasn't as bad as yesterday, when it actually did get up to 90 upstairs. Today I see it was "just" 85 degrees.

They promise better weather tomorrow. It can't come soon enough.

I read somewhere there's a new A&E show called Barter Kings. Sounds like something I'd really like to see but, boo hoo, it's no available on Hulu.

Tons of birds flocking to the mulberry tree. This morning there was a Baltimore oriole in there (!), along with red-breasted grosbeaks, house finches, cardinals, catbirds, robins, squirrels and even a limber chipmunk.

Yesterday and today were brutally hot, very humid and in the 90s. There comes a point when running fans does little or nothing, as does draping blankets and towels over windows as the sun moves through the sky.

I'm working at home all week, naturally, and my office and computer are on the second floor. I guess I could think about moving the computer downstairs. I must have the Internet connection, so I guess as long as I can plug in the modem into a phone jack, it should work, right? The place to do that would be the dining room table, but of course, no phone jack there. Hmm, that leaves the living room and the family room. The latter gets awfully hot in its own right, being over the garage. The living room is a tad cooler, but I don't have a spare table or anything to put there. I'll have to ponder that some more.

Don't much feel like cookin!

It's 80 degrees downstairs now, which means it's at least 85 upstairs. I did order two small box fans about 12 inches square on Amazon today with the last of my gift cards. I plan to put one in either of the two small windows in my attic, then put a larger box fan at the bottom of the attic stairs, blowing up. I will do this at night to sweet out the hot air which seems to get trapped in the attic.

Of course, by the time I get it, the heat wave will have broken, but it will be good to have the extra fans for the next time.

Between yesterday and today, I "cleared" a roughly 6 x 6 foot square area inside a fenced garden on the north side of the house. There was poison ivy in there, and vinca growing right up against blueberry bushes. I cleared the first one. Then I transplanted some perennials, then cut holes in a large piece of white plastic.

Tomorrow when i go to the landfill, I'l pick up as much mulch as I can carry, and I'll dump that over the plastic. If that doesn't kill the remaining vinca roots, I don't know what will.

It's extremely tiring work, but if I don't clear it out now, it will only spread more.


Clematis in bloom


More clematis


Astilbe


Yesterday I went on a fruitless search for local eggs. The two homes on a certain local street where I'd seen "Eggs for sale" signs several weeks ago no longer had signs out. Two other locales in town that I knew once sold eggs also aren't doing so now.

I went onto my town's Patch online and found an article talking about all the places in town that sell chicken eggs.

I now know of a farm that sells them and plan to go tomorrow.

Early this a.m. I started work ghostwriting an article for a builder magazine and was able to finish in a couple of hours. I got a brief email back later this afternoon. "Terrific, nice."

So then I billed them, $290.

The last few days have been absolutely LOVELY, weatherwise. Warm, in the 70s, but no humidity. All that's going to change Tuesday night, and Wednesday will be very humid and in the 80s/90s. I'm so bummed to see this great weather go. I imagine my productivity level will drop to 0.

Got some great news from the publisher's. They are setting up new computers and don't want me to come in at all this week. I can work at home all 3 days. Hooray!

Bluebirds already feeding young 'uns, second time around! I love watching them swoop around the yard refining their insect-hunting skills.

I went to CVS the other day to get some Zyrtec for Waldo, who has terrible seasonal allergies. I noticed the cashier checked the expiration date on the package for me, and I thanked her, commenting that no one had ever done that for me before.

She said oh, we have to, and that if anyone ever came back to the store to complain about expired meds, they'd look up to see who checked them out and fire them. I don't know if that's true...seems a little draconian. I've been going to CVS for years and I never noticed anyone else checking the expiration date of things I'd bought.

But I was more interested in what she had to say after that. That the store is so obssessed with getting rid of expired merchandise that they routinely throw out perfectly good stuff that doesn't have an expiration date. She specifically mentioned hairbrushes and those colorful rubber band things girls wear in their hair. They apparently throw it out if it's considered out of date.

Made me want to go dumpster-diving.

I was tempted to say something about the multiple times CVS has been caught carelessly exposing its customers to identity theft by throwing away sensitive patient data with birth dates and Social Security numbers in the dumpster (https://www.oag.state.tx.us/oagnews/release.php?id=1976), where anyone can fish it out, but I didn't.

I used to write a lot about identity theft in my last job, and what struck me was the apparent stupidity or obliviousness of CVS because after being convicted in one state, they did not clean up their act or change their procedures; it happened several times, not just in Texas, that I'm aware of. They should have used a professional shredding company to dispose of the reams of patient data they generate.

I love my long, 4-day weekends and the flexibility they offer.

I met a friend for iced tea this afternoon at a local coffee shop (NOT a starbucks). He was a former competitive water skiier and these days heads up a local non-profit that offers war veterans and disabled people (those who are blind, amputees or anything else) a chance to leave their disability behind for a day and learn how to waterski. My friend conveniently lives on a man-made lake, which really looks like a wide river.

You can imagine how freeing it would feel if you've been using prosthetics or been wheelchair-bound for years and you have a chance to get on the water. I'm not sure exactly how they do it, but for those who can't stand on 2 legs, i think they tow them in something.

Anyway, we were talking about going kayaking together at some point.

We are finally getting some new(ish) Macs at work. They will bring us into the 21st century. For those who know Macs, the ones we've been using all this time are OSX, which are pretty ancient. More importantly, we'll also be able to access FileMaker remotely when we work at home, something we haven't been able to do up til now. What a hassle to have to copy all our work at home onto flash drives, bring that in and then spend an hour transferring Quark files to the master Quark in the office as well as doing all the Filemamker stuff then. I had to lug a different Mac home yesterday and bring the dome I had in last week. Wednesday I'll bring it back in and then I'll get my updated one which should be much faster to use.

I think we'll be able to soon start working from home 2 days a week with 1 day in office, too. Right now, it's 2 days in office, 1 at home. My cats will really appreciate this change.

I started working today on the next directory; I'm splitting the work with my co-worker, who just left for 2 weeks in Alaska. How jealous I am. But anyway, we each are mostly done with our own directories, and then this next one is so big we're splitting the work between us. Still many loose ends with the first one but it's 90% done.

I've been enjoying watching The Bachelorette on Hulu TV. She's got some nice options, though I was glad to see that condescending one go.

I've been eating pea pods and lettuce from the garden. looking for new recipes that contain pea pods. If anyone has 'em, let me know. Getting a little tired of stir fry.

Waldo has been very congested with his allergies. I ordered an herbal remedy which I should get in a few days, and after much online research determined that Zyrtec, an antihistamine that people use, is safe. However, I had to calculate a much lower dosage based on weight. Directions said a child up to 2 years old should take no more than a half teaspoon. but i needed to convert teaspoon measurements to drops, so I actually counted how many drops it took to make a full teaspoon, and the answer is about 100. So that would be 50 drops for a child up to 2 years old, and i found online that the average 2 year old, male or female, weighs 28 pounds. My cat is 10 lbs, so i determined that he needs about 6 drops 3 times a day in his food.

His sense of taste and smell are so good that anything that smells a little out of kilter, he won't eat, so I mixed the drops, which smell fruity since it's made for kids, in with some tuna juice, which Waldo hesitatingly lapped.

Not sure if there's improvment yet, but this is just first day and I'm not sure he got the full dose yet. Don't want to mix the med in with too little food, or he won't eat it, or too MUCH food, becus then he won't eat it all and I won't be able to tel if he got all the meds. So there's a happy medium where it's mixed with enough food to completely camoflauge the taste but not so much that he doesn't finish it all.

The book I edited for The Author hit Amazon this week. I'll be curious to read the reviews as they come in. I see she had one of her friends write one. I think they're very important, becus you can't erase a bad review and I know that, personally, reviews by others influence me a great deal when I'm debating whether or not to buy a book.

She asked me to edit certain parts of the Amazon description page, which I did, but other parts she didn't ask me to look at, and I cringed a little when I read them, because you could see obvious mistakes with puncutation and sentence structure.

If it were me, I would take the time to do it right. She must've said to me a million times she was at the point where she just wanted to get it out there, be done with it and move on to the next book, but it's not a race! And you want it to be an achievement you can be proud of years from now when you look back.

I realize everyone has their own taste, but if you know of abook that you think would universally appeal to, well, me, please let me know the title and author.

I'm in the mood to buy more books on amazon.

I like travel books and those that have at least something to do with the outdoors and nature, but I'm open to pretty much everything.

Well, hooray. I got a $25 BP gas gift card in the mail today!! It was a reward from a BP gas forum I participate in online.

(I was really worried I wouldn't get it becus when i created my profile at the BP site, they had said we'd get rewards in the form of gift cards, so i assumed they meant online gift cards, like the other forum I participate in. So since I prefer to protect my privacy, i had created a fake snail mail address, and just happened to update it with my real address in a fit of remorse about a week before they announced the winners of a little contest, which I won. Phew!)

I know I'll have no problem spending the BP gift card, but today I TRIED to spend gift cards I've earned elsewhere and I did relatively little damage!

OK, so I had a balance of $10 left at Wal-Mart and $5 at Target and $25 at Home Goods. You wouldn't believe how long I wandered those stores, searching for something that was "worth it" and not just another tschotske that would collect dust.

The problem is, I've conditioned myself to spending so little for so long that I'm having a tough time allowing myself to buy something nice. I thought I found 2 items at Home Goods (a small woven tray basket for the bathroom and a stone box made in India) but then I looked at them and said, is this really worth it? And I decided it wasn't and walked out the store!

I did finally manage to buy 2 hand towels at Target that will match the new wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom. They were $8, so I had to actually pay $3 and change. Which rather bothered me.

At Wal-Mart, I finally bought a terra cotta pot made in USA because I want to plant more basil for my pesto sauce. Also bought some groceries.

I treated myself to 2 $1 burgers at McDonalds with a free cherry chiller, but after that, I was too tired to pursue Sears, Home Depot and Lowes, where I have more gift cards. I still also have about $30 worth of Amazon gift cards.

I really do want to get a hands free device for my cell phone so i dont get brain cancer, and hope to get that online at Amazon.

I feel so wiped out. Maybe it was all the fat in the burgers and sugar in the chiller.

The veggie garden is doing pretty well. Lettuce is finally ready for pickin (had some last night) and the pea pods are growing gangbusters. They're flowering now, so the pods won't be far behind. Have to remember to pick regularly so they don't stay on the vine too long and become inedible.

As in years past, I'll be keeping track of how much produce I harvest all summer long so I can calculate cost savings. Expenses were really minimal, just the cost of seedlings and seeds.

Yesterday, I also sowed a second long row of beans: wax, green and edamame. And that pretty much completes the garden, which now contains:

Pea pods
Lettuce
Wax beans
Green stringbeans
Edamame (soybeans)
Heirloom tomatoes, both cherry and regular-sized
Yellow squash & zucchini, 1 plant each, that's all I have room for.
1 eggplant, in a pot
Several pots of basil, for my homemade pesto.

I also have several broccoli, cauliflower and collards, but all are already so bug-ridden I don't know if I'll get anything out of them.

When I planted the broccoli, I covered them with a fabric, forget what you call it, but it's a fine mesh you might see on a bridal veil. The plants under neath the mesh seemed to fare no better than thos I'd left out, so that was a big disappointment.

When I was planting the 2nd row of beans, I decided that was a good time to dig a trench and bury the rest of my soaker hose. Before doing so, i decided to test it with the water on to see if i did possilby puncture another portion of the buried hose several weeks ago when i was pressing down a tomato hope metal prong.

Voila! The soaker hose still works! I am so thankful, becus burying it was a big pain. Probably not deep enough, in places just an inch below the surface, so i hope it does stay cool enough under a hot sun to still be usable any time during the day. Although I'm wondering how useful it is to plants not immediately next to it; Since I didn't want to disturb plants or seeds nearby, the hose is probably as much as 6-8 inches away from the plants i want to water. The way it drips, i don't know if that moisture will really spread much. Hmmmm.

Happy to see that after some sightings of both english sparrows and house wrens at the bird box, bluebirds have again appeared and seem to be nest-building in there for the 2nd time. Two bluebird nestings in a single season would be a first for me.

Yesterday early evening, I sat out on the front stoop for a while drinking a bottle of Beck's and surveying my wild kingdom. It was so cool to see flashes of blue flying by, left and right. I don't know if these could be the fledged babies or the parents, but it doesn't really matter. Just nice to have them around.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day, warm but not humid. I had to put in about 6.5 hours of work for the publishing job, but after that, I vaccuumed upstairs and down, did the aforementioned garden work and some other stuff.

I was able to confirm with Teva Neuroscience that my new health plan is a member of Teva's patient discount program and in fact they use the same pharmacy, Express Scripts, that I used before, so I don't need to do anything there. I will still be able to get my MS meds with no co-pay.

The assistant at my neurologist's also called to let me know she'd gotten my letter with the info on my new plan and the form the health insurer wants you to fill out for prescriptions, so she has sent that in so i can be assured there won't be a lapse in the prescriptions. If I'm lucky, they'll let me refill 3 months at a time instead of just 1 month like last insurer, which is a pain in the neck.

Today will be my big shopping/running around day, i think. Still have gift cards to use at Home Goods, Sears, Home Depot and Lowes and WalMart, and I have some plans for those. Want to see if walmart has any large terra cotta pots on the cheap. I dont like to plant edible things in plastic pots or pots of unknown substance made in China, but terra cotta seems safe, esp. if made in US. the whole toxic drywall/sheetrock thing made me leery of Chinese products generally.

Also might like to get some white capris or maybe even some sandals or comfy sneakers. The kind i'm into these days are the slip-on variety with no laces. I always remove my boots when i'm outside in the yard before coming in the house, so i'm constantly slipping my footwear on and off.

While I'm out, I'd like to use the McDonald's coupon good for a free berry cooler or whatever they call it. I tried to use it once before, but they said them machine wasn't working. Hmph.

My combined AT&T phone and internet bill last month was just $35, the result of my downgrading my phone service to the $7.50 a month base program where you pay .41 a minute for long distance calls and .03 a minute for local calls. It's ideal if you already have a cell phone and just like the landline as backup. If i can get in the habit of just not using the landline, even for local calls, i should get that bill down even more.

when i'm at wal mart today, i want to pick up a hands free device. Not sure how it works exactly as i'm not real cell phone savvy, but am hoping i could easily use it when interviewing someone on the phone and i need to type notes at the computer. I hope the sound quality is good enough that i can do that.

Yesterday I worked from 4:30 am to 8:30 pm as a poll worker for the 3rd time this year. And the budget failed to pass AGAIN.

Then this morning it was back to the usual at my p/t publishing job.

Got home, had some leftover barley and bacon casserole (yum), put the recycling out at the curb and took a walk around the block.

Feeling a little sad, there is death all around me. Only one whom I'm close to, but it's a reminder that nothing stays the same. My friend with the prostate cancer who anticpates things worsening in a few years time. My neighbor across the street who lost his 20-something daughter in a car accident about a year ago; he recently erected a small cross and plantings in his front yard as a memorial for her, and the family recently had an outdoor memorial service for her there....very sad. My builder, who did my sun room 2 years ago, lost his wife suddenly also about a year ago.

As it turned out, when I worked yesterday in the budget vote as a checker, checking people's IDs and names in the grand list, I sat next to a woman who, I learned, was the sister of my builder's wife who died. She apparently had just spoken to her husband 2 hours before she died, saying, see you later, etc. She dropped dead as she was leaving their house. An autopsy revealed some sort of heart valve defect that no one knew about.

It's all depressing to me.

On a more positive note, I finished up all the freelance work I'd gotten in recent weeks and figure i have over $700 in billable invoices out now.

I have a ton of projeccts to do in the yard. Weeding in many areas. After being unable to contact the cheap Guatemalan chainsaw guy to do some much needed tree pruning of damage caused by last fall's freak snowstorm, I managed to at least get branches off the ground for both a mighty hemlock and an apple tree. i didn't make the cuts the way they should be made, close to the main trunk, because there's just so much I can do with a hand/bow saw, but i did at least move stuff off the lawn so I can mow there again.

I've got to call my neighbors to see if they know why he's not returning my phone calls.

I was heartened to see that the Dow recovered a fair amount today from its wretched drop of prior days.

A few people are trying to make my town a "transition" town. This is a movement that's all about sustainability and weaning ourselves off oil and other fossil fuels.

I had registered to attend a showing of an interesting movie at the library about how Cuba experienced a kind of Peak Oil period after the Soviet Union collapsed and all the funding and aid they got from them dried up. Suddenly, there were oil and gas shortages, regular power outages and no food, so people started planting survival gardens wherever there was open space in Havana.

I was disappointed to find it was just me and one other woman attending the movie, with her daughter. There was supposed to be a discussion afterwards. The movie was ok, but a little dull, so when a thunderstorm suddenly arrived, I decided to dash home to put away a few things I'd left outside.

Today was the day I was going to addle the eggs of a pair of English sparrows that took up residence in one of the nest boxes after the bluebirds fledged. English sparrows and starlings are the only two birds you can legally kill in the US. English sparrows are very aggressive birds and will often peck the eggs of bluebirds, effectively killing them. They are responsible for the decline of many native songbirds and tend to dominate the habitat.

I consider myself very fortunate in that we don't seem to have an entrenched local population of English sparrows, starlings or cowbirds. I'm a longtime observer of birds in my own backyard, and in fact I've monitored songbird populations for Cornell for over 15 years. Occasionally I see the undesirable species but they usually appear to be passing through, and I consider myslef very lucky, becus I remember sitting on my lunch hour countless times when i worked in other towns, and all I'd ever see were English sparrows, starlings and doves. I felt like I lived in a little avian paradise. Until this spring, when I started seeing more and more of at least one pair of the dreaded English sparrows.

After doing some online research on the subject, I determined the best way to deal with these sparrows was to addle the eggs and pierce them with a needle as an additional precaution, then return them to the nest. There have been reports that if you destroy the eggs, the birds go after and attack the eggs of other birds, and I do have house wrens in the other nest box. Plus, if you return the eggs, the English sparrows will sit on them for another few weeks, which delays their ability to reproduce until they catch on the eggs aren't going to hatch.

So I approached the box this morning, not really relishing the prospect of eggicide, but realizing it was necessary. If you're a birder, you know what I mean. If you're not, it may seem harsh, but do the research and you'll understand.

I had cleaned out the box after the bluebirds left about a week and a half ago, and according to research, the English sparrows would have built their nest and laid their eggs by now. I wanted to get to the eggs before they hatched becus I know i'm not capable of harming live chicks, but i wanted to make sure all the eggs were laid (they usually lay one a day, up to about 7 eggs).

Then just yesterday, I saw a house wren hanging out by the box, which struck me as odd, since English sparrows are rather vicious and would have chased other birds away. I was surprised to find only a partially built nest inside, and NO eggs. For reasons unknown, the English sparrows apparently abandoned that nest. I had been seeing them repeatedly going in and out of the box, and I was sure they were nest-building. I would think it would be considered a prime nest site, but who knows.

The only other thing that happened is that a few days ago, I came home after being out, was in the sunroom and when i looked out the French door window, I saw what appeared to be a dead bird on the stoop outside. It most likely flew into the window, quite possibly frightened by a hawk. I've had hawk predation before ath the bird feeder, and birds will fly in a panic, in every direction, when a hawk appears. I felt sad as i looked at the bird, but didn't have time to dispose of it then. I didn't examine it closely, but thought it might be a song sparrow, which is a very pretty little bird.

I know from experience that sometimes what appears to be a dead bird is not really dead, but merely stunned from the head-on collision with glass, and that the best thing to do is leave it be (as long as it's safe from cats) and see if it recovers on its own. I checked the bird about 15 minutes later, and it was still there, so i figured, too bad, it's really dead.

The next morning, I made a point to go and take the dead bird somewhere, and guess what? It was gone! Either one of two things happened: 1. the bird was stunned, as described above, or 2. some kind of predator happened upon it over night and grabbed it.
I do have foxes and coyotes here, as well as cats and the occasional raccoon, but they are seldom seen and are not a daily visitor, as far as I know, especially so close to the house. So now I wonder if the bird recovered.

If it didn't recover, i suppose it's POSSIBLE it was the English sparrow female, which is easily confused with other sparrows and female house finches. That could be one reason why nest building ceased in the bluebird box.

Another riddle I guess I'll never know.

....I'm down $28,000 for the month of May alone in the stock market. The Euro mess is doing a Euro number on my portfolio.

I think things are getting back to normal at my p/t job. There were a few weeks there when, due to the point I had reached in my work, I had to come in to the office for my 3rd day of work (Fridays) instead of working at home. boo hoo. How much longer my abbreviated work week seemed when I had to work 3 days in office instead of 2 days in, 1 day at home.

Not that I'm complaining. Though I never thought I'd even have this job that long. But a variety of "sure thing" job interviews I had went nowhere. So here I am.

I'm going to ask the editor in chief if she minds if i relocate my work area to another desk in the back of the room. She seems to be of the habit of blasting the AC all day; she sits directly underneat the wall unit so maybe she doesn't get that much cold air, but where i sit, it's directly blowing on me. The first day i experienced this was last week, on the first day i'd returned to work after having a bad cold. I remember worrying all day as i worked whether having cold air blowing on me was going to worsen the cold, but i was reluctant to say anything to the editor, until finally i did later in the afternoon. I asked her if she minded turning it down a notch, and that's exactly what she did. Turn it down...a notch. Sigh.

So i'd rather just move my desk rather than disrupt her usual habits. I don't think she will object, as i'm told several others who used to sit where I sit also had major problems with that AC and had to wear sweaters in August.

Last night was good sleeping weather; the humidity of the last few days, so alarming to have in May, is gone, and while it's still warm, it's also much drier.

A few days ago I was sinking metal hoops around my tomatoe plants, which now number 8! I did a REALLY STUPID thing. As I sank the prongs of one into the ground, I felt a certain resistance before it sank in. I realized with a sinking heart that i was very close to the soaker hose I'd buried under a few inches of dirt. It was a lot of extra work to dig out a trench and lay that hose, and now I think I've punctured it!

The only way to know for sure is to hook up my 100-foot hose to the soaker hose, turn the water on and see if it comes out at the other end of the soaker hose, which i haven't buried yet. I haven't had a chanceto do that yet.

Poor Luther. I told you how when it gets bored and he's home along, he goes around and opens all the cabinet doors in the kitchen and elsewhere. Well, another really annoying habit he has, when I'm home, is he'll scratch the walls. Usually in the office when i'm at the computer, he'll start scratching in one spot. As soon as I yell at him, he comes running to me. I yell at him so much i think he thinks that's my normal speaking voice.

They will, especially on the first day they're allowed to graze pasture after a long winter of being confined to the barnyard and mostly indoors.

Here's a video: http://www.stonyfield.com/healthy-planet/organic-farming/have-cow/how-make-cow-happy-just-add-grass?utm_source=Silverpop&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Stonyfield%20Moos%20-%20May%202012%20Yahoo%20Day%201%205-25-2012&utm_content=&spMailingID=39250291&spUserID=MjQwMzg2NTAzNjQS1&spJobID=144252995&spReportId=MTQ0MjUyOTk1S0

Of course, the vast majority of cows raised on industrial farms never go outside, let alone see green grass.

i hadn't realized that it's a USDA requirement that cows raised on organic farms must graze on pasture...real grass.. at least 120 days of the year.

I got a lot done yesterday and the weekend ain't over yet!

1. Weeded a badly neglected perennial bed and then threw some mulch on it; it looks much better now.

2. Deposited a check at the bank.

3. Made some yummy "Sloppy Portobellos." Similar to a Sloppy Joe except this one's made of chopped up portobello mushrooom, onion and garlic instead of beef. I had it with a green salad, corn on the cob and homemade sweet potato fries. Will be having the leftovers today.

4. I planted the rest of my vegetable seedlings, only to come across afterwards a local woman on Craig's List selling heirloom tomatoes for just $3 each. So I contacted her and am set on going over there this a.m. althhough she hasn't confirmed the time yet. I don't have much room left, but would love to try a few heirloom varieties and see if they are superior to the usual mass marketed stuff.

I cam across 3 different toads recently in the veggie garden. I try to be on the lookout for them cus i don't want to step on them and i would like to encourage them to stick around, although they are surrounded by a sea of inhospitable (to a toad) lawn.

5. Did a load of laundry.

6. Changed the bed sheets.

7. Weed whacked around things in the front yard.

8. Cut down a broken branch of a crabapple tree and started cutting broken branches of an adjacent apple tree, for which I know I'll need to hire a tree guy to finish (maybe next weekend?), but this at least will make it easier to mow under there and allow more in air to dry things up.

I woke up around 6 am today and as per usual, walked into the bathroom where i raised the mini blinds at the back window. 99.9% of the time I put on my glasses before getting up, but this time I didn't for some reason, and wouldn't you know it, the noise from me raising the mini blinds (window partially open) scared away some interesting animal picking up the crumbs from the bird feeder. It was reddish, so i think it was a fox, which i don't see here that often. Darn! Without my glasses, it was all a blur. I saw it run off.

9. I went around taking photos of all the plants in my yard i figured i could sell, and came up with about a dozen. Then I wrote fairly detailed descriptions of each. Wondering what kind of response i'll get, if i get any. (I already had 2 customers.) This a.m. someone inquired about wanting a large amount of pachysandra, which i have more of than anything around here, but it's a BEAR to dig up mature and dense pachysandra. You really need to hack away at it with the shovel. I'm hoping the cheap price of $5 per perennial, or $5 per flat for the groundcovers, is cheap enough to be an inducement to people to come and dig their own. I'll help them do it, of course, but it's a lot of work just to save a few dollars. Most especially the pachysandra.

10. I also went to the library and got 5 DVDs, which will provide entertainment most of the rest of the coming week.

I think instead of doing the Chase Sapphire card next ($3,000 spend for $400 cash) I have my eye on the Amex Premier Rewards card (spend $2,000 for $250 in Gift cards). Charging $3,000 in 3 months would be a real challenge, easier if i were working and had some kind of planned major expense, so i think i will just settle for now for the Amex Premier card. Getting gift cards instead of cash "feels" like a lot more fun, and I can balance out a few "fun" purchases with things I really use/need, so i feel i can justify it. Buying grocery store gift cards is still a very handy/helpful thing to reach the spending target, as long as it's a reasonable amount and you're not having to buy $1,000 worth of grocery store gift cards.

anyway, I haven't gotten the bill yet for the Citi Thank you card and I'll have a bit of a lull until the planned application for the Amex card in July. I want to time the receipt of the new card to be just before i get my next car insurance bill.

I just spent at least 2 hours troubleshooting some unexpected computer problems. It all started becus my printer was once again not working. I've gotten into the habit of reinstalling the print driver becus it's the only thing I know that works to get the Dell computer and printer talking to each other. (I am no longer a Dell fan.) That, and having to stop and start the print spooler. Documents sit in the queue and prevent anything from being printed.

Then I had 21 MS updates to install, which took quite a while. then Norton anti-virus found "a problem" and had to fix it.

It seems there was a problem with my dleacoms.exe, which relates to printer communication. I figured out/stumbled upon a way to do a System Restore and finally everything is working just fine. (Let's hope it lasts.)

I now have my $250 worth of gift cards for Home Depot, Lowes, Sears and Wal-Mart (thanks, Citi), plus $40 of Amazon gift cards.

I was salivating over all the free stuff; it felt like Christmas morning. Now, though I haven't even spent them, my ardor has cooled. What's wrong with me? Don't want to spend money??

I do have plans to go out today and use a bunch of them, and I can do my grocery shopping with gift cards I bought trying to hit the spending target with that Citi credit card to begin with. So maybe my enthusiasm will return when I come home later today with a pile of stuff at no cost.

All of my beans...the wax beans, string beans and soybeans....are coming up now. I planted one long row of them. Yesterday I placed tiny little tinfoil collars around the base of each one to protect them from cut worms, who can mow them down with no warning.

Today's goal is to buy tomato and bell pepper plants, maybe cukes, too, and get them in the ground. I'd hoped to do this 2 weeks ago but my cold got in the way, and a bunch of other stuff.

I'd also like to hit Wal-Mart and get some nice summer clothes. See, I will be shopping frugally. Not sure I'm looking forward to the crowds, but I don't feel like waiting til Tuesday, when everyone (but me) goes back to work).

I got 1 of my 2 real estate freelance projects done, so I can bill the client today for $200; I had hoped to be working on the 2nd one this weekend, but the builder never called me. My client has indicated, though, that she'll have a third project for me as well, so that's cool.

I sent out another mortgage payment, which has now become exciting and momentous becus this latest payment, for instance, should get my balance down below $7,000.

The job market sucks. I am really beginning to feel a full-time salaried job is a hopeless search. I'm now paying $562/mth for COBRA on a p/t income, and the COBRA will only last til June 2013. Something has to give. I'm just not seeing any jobs. Yeah, I can keep myself pretty occupied chasing after the "scraps..." the poll worker stuff, the freelance here and there, and whatever else I can find to earn a buck, like Craig's List sales of plants in my yard....but this is just not a sustainable way to live. I keep hoping for an economic turnaround that would dramatically lower the unemployment rate and i often feel like it's a race, and who's going to win? Can I sit out the recession or will it last longer than I can?

That's me. All day long. I guess it'll get worse before it gets better.

Naturally, when I'm feeling my lowest is when i get more work to do.

My real estate client has already given me a 2nd sales brochure to do in addition to the first, which I only just began. I am thrilled to have the work. Both are luxury home subdivisions. I usually interview the builder, often the sales manager appointed to market the property by the real estate company, and then I do my writeup.

It's just a little hard to really go at it because my energy level is zilch and I don't feel much like talking, let alone intelligently.

I should be all over it now since I go back to my p/t job Wed/Thurs/Friday so won't have time to interview anyone.

Ah, well.

I got a big $3 settlement from a class action lawsuit involving KFC.

It's raining now. Good for the garden.

Thinking more about what to do about an IRA contribution this year. I have never missed making the full contribution on any year, but that's because, since I always had ample savings, I would simply sell taxable mutual funds and transfer the money over to my Roth.


I could do the same this year, though I'm nervous about doing so as my income is so low. Also, all my taxable money is stuck in an international fund, which is way down due to what's happening in Europe. So i'd be selling at a big loss.

I have only so much free cash on hand and at some point in the next few years, I imagine I'll need a new car. Once unemployment runs out, if I'm still lacking a salaried position, I may be needing that taxable lump sum to live on. So I don't know. I think I will take the risk and contribute to the Roth anyway, since I could withdraw without penalty if I needed to.

My cold is still bothering me, though so far it seems milder than ordinary winter colds.

So, I've taken it easy this weekend, although yesterday I did saw down two trees I didn't want growing in my wineberry patch: a black locust and an ailanthus that seemingly appeared from nowhere and rapidly grew to about 20 feet high. Each was about 4 inch diameter.

Don't ask me what possessed me to do it, with a cold, except that I'd been wanting to do it for weeks, especially before the ailanthus bloomed; that tree is known to cause big allergy problems, and Waldo has really suffered each summer. I'm pretty sure now the ailanthus is the villian, but there's not much I can do now about the giant one growing very close to the house.

Today I made a jug of iced tea, using black and green tea bags. I read the skimpy Sunday paper, clipped a few coupons and did a load of laundry. I refreshed the hummingbird water and the black oil sunflower seed for the other birds. Sprayed some poison ivy and topped off the solar bird bath so the fountain pump doesn't run dry.

I watered the new grass I planted and the transplanted viburnum which has only a 50/50 chance of survival, it appears. checked on the veggie garden; no sign of bean seedlings yet.

Did the first part of the writeup for a new freelance assignment. Plan to call the builder back tomorrow to schedule an interview time.

Didn't leave the house either day.

I brought up the rest of the window screens and inserted them for the season. Applied for 2 jobs online. I finished reading Wild, by Cheryl Strayed. It was very interesting. She did the kind of thing I always wanted to do, although it was the Appalachian Trail I would have hiked. And I don't think I would have endured the chawed up feet and blackened toenails, or hiked alone, as she did.

Tomorrow, if i have the energy, I'd like to get some groceries and then pick up milk at Walgreens. And I have to talk to the bulider to write the rest of the sales brochure. And I'd really like to buy my tomato plants this weekend.

I am looking forward to maybe getting some fun summer sandals and a summer top or two with some of my gift cards, once I get them in the mail. It could be a few weeks before I do.

I'm going to hit the sack early.

Yesterday my second plant/perennial customer came over after work and together we dug up 6 flats worth of lily of the valley. I earned an easy $30 from getting rid of some plants that were growing in the wrong place and spreading into a path.

I haven't had a chance to post again on Craig's List with even more plants offered, but I plan to.

This morning was the long-awaited redemption of Citi Thank You points. I earned 27,105, so I spread the money around (very carefully) among gift cards for Home Depot, Lowes, Sears and WalMart. (I was momentarily tempted to get a Pottery Barn gift card, as I've always liked their stuff, but I figured I'd get a lot less bang for the buck becus of their higher prices, and so I passed.)

The Lowes and Home Depot cards ($50 each) could possibly be used for veggie plants, if I get them soon enough, or otherwise various and assorted needs for the house that arise from time to time.

The Walmart and Sears cards ($100 and $50, respectively, I would like to use a portion of for clothing; a lot of my clothing doesn't fit right, and I've been hanging on to some favorite t-shirts for years in the likely vain hope i will someday fit into them again. I seem to have only a few summer tops that look respectable on me and now that i am working outside the home for a portion of the week, i can't repeat the same outfits all the time.

The Wal-mart card can easily be used for other household needs like cat food or the occasional grocery item.

I only need another 400 points or so to earn another $25 gift card which I was thinking would be nice to use for a Bed Bath & Beyond trip.

I really didn't want all the cards to be used for frivolous things I don't really "need," but I figure a few well-chosen tops and the veggie plants and some needs for the house can be justified.

In addition to the $250 in Citi gift cards, I also have collected $40 in Amazon gift cards and I have a $25 Home Goods gift card, all earned from various online surveys/forums. I'm feeling dizzy with the possiblities. For someone who's self-enforced a strict no spending policy due to underemployment for the past 2.5 years, the gift cards are sort of like a Chinese buffet to someone stranded on a desert island. But I want to make sure that every dollar used is well considered and carefully made.

I am very annoyed to be coming down with some sort of cold, which is very unusual for me in May! I think I know when I got it, though. When I was working as a poll worker last Tuesday, a mother holding a kid and another at her side came up to the table. My head was down as i was looking up her name, but I heard the mother say, "Cover your mouth, honey," and I think the kid had sneezed, right at me.

The voter registrar already asked me if I could work the THIRD budget vote (yes, the last one failed by about 5oo votes) and I said yes, so June 5 will be another go-round. Hopefully, I should be all better by then.

Yesterday after work I finally finished mowing the lawn; it took me 3 days to mow all of it. I hope this isn't a sign that I'm even more out of shape, but just because the grass got a little higher than normal with all the rain we'd had, before I had a chance to cut it.

Sspring has indeed arrived here. I'm pretty sure the resident bluebirds have fledged their babies becus i haven't seen any activity around the box. I hope they all made it ok. I remember one year i found a dead baby bird inside the box when i cleaned it out. I think it was house wrens that used the box that year......just as i wrote that, i caught sight of a bird entering the box, and i coudln't make out what it was. It could have been the female bluebird, which is a more drab color than the male, or it could have been another bird ready to take up residence if the bluebirds were gone. Or, it could have been a wren or English sparrow, both aggressive birds. The sparrows have been known to puncture bluebird eggs with their beaks and even kill baby bluebirds in an attempt to take over the box.

I've never had a problem with English sparrows here but this spring have been unhappy to see a few at the feeder. I will not allow them to nest in either of my 2 nest boxes.

Ahh, the bluebirds are still in the box! Just saw the male fly in with food, except that he's no longer entering the box but perched on the outside and sticks his head in; that must mean the babies are getting big and the nest is getting too crowded. I think they are just days away from fledging.

Here is the pretty mother's day gift my sister gave my mother; i love the way she decorates her gifts...


Yes, they're real flowers.


This was my no-bake kiwi cheesecake, so yummy, and just 4 ingredients.


And my small tabletop bouquet, from the garden.

I worked 15 hours today in the polls and at the end of the night, we learned the 2nd budget vote FAILED by about 100 votes. The people have spoken! And that means that 1. my property taxes will be lower and 2. I get to work a 3rd time as a poll worker.

Then there are still the Democratic primary in August and of course the national election, so i have the potential of earning $875 from working the polls 5x this year.

My old real estate client said they have several new communities for me to write sales brochures, so that's also great; I haven't gotten any work from them since February!

AND, a SECOND person is coming up here Friday after work to buy more of my perennials. This one wants 5 flats of lily of the valley, which grows like crazy here.

I also yesterday finished up my 3rd guardian ad litem report for someone and am just waiting for a small final piece of the report; then I can bill her, though I don't charge her much. $87 so far and then the final piece.

I wish I could relax tomorrow but I can't...have to go to my normal p/t job.

wow, this feels like the first time all day I've actually sat down.

What did I do?

1. Confirmed with voter registrar that I WILL be working tomorrow in our 2nd budget vote. And along that vein, for tomorrow's lunch, I shredded the rest of the turkey from the turkey breast I had for mother's day and made a turkey salad with mayo, dried cranberries and chopped green apple, and a little red onion.

2. Picked up my free 8 x 10 photo at walgreen's, thanks to an alert by Monkey mama.

3. ran to Target to pick up some Lean Cuisines. got them at the sale price of $2.50, plus i got a $5 Target gift card for doing so AND I participate in the Lean Cuisine promotion from which I already got 2 magazine subscriptions.

4. looked for some tomato and pepper plants, but the store i went to had very poor looking stock, all leggy.

5. Kept digging up sod in the veggie garden so i could plant some yellow wax beans, green string beans and soybeans before the expected rain of the next few days. Mission accomplished. i also laid a portion of my soaker hose in a shallow trench right next to where i planted the beans. As i worked, i saved all the grubs i found and put them in a shallow tray for the bluebirds, who gobbled them up.

Gosh, I know I did more but now i can't remember!

Yesterday's Mother's Day dinner consisted of the above-mentioned turkey breast (a freebie from Shop rite after spending $200 in one month last November) with gravy, mashed (organic) potatoes, a yummy chutney I made with chopped pineapple, golden raisins, red onion and freshly grated ginger, my sister's asparagus salad and for dessert, i made a kiwi (no bake) cheesecake which used just 4 ingredients. (Appetizer was a crusty Trader Joe's bread with an eggplant spread.)

As mentioned in my last post, someone responded to my Craig's List ad where I offered three or four different perennials for sale.

She was here bright and early this morning. I dug up some extra plants cus i wasn't sure which she'd want, and she casually took them all! (If I had known how easy this would be, I would have dug up more!) Ahh, I remember those days when I would spend money just as easily for things that I wanted. The good old days....So I made an easy $40 from baby plants, and I still have all the mother plants and more babies.

So I got to thinking, and realized I have probably a dozen different perennials I could offer for sale. I made theones I sold pretty cheap, $5 for a larger plant or $2.50 for a little one. I figured if I didn't, people might just as soon go to a Home Depot and get a better selection or something.

So I may post another ad before i return to work.

It was such a gorgeous day today, sunny and in the 70s. So I spent much of the afternoon working outside. I really have to get going on the veggie garden. My goal is to plant my soybeans and string beans this weekend, but i have a lot of sod to shake out and still more digging. It's back breaking work when you're diggin up lawn.

Whenever I came across a grub in the sod, instead of squashing it as I usually do, I saved them in a little cup and then put in on a bucket lid on the grass near the bluebird box. I think I'm getting them trained now to look for grubs when i put it out, because when i looked at the cup a short time later, it was already turned upside down. I had 3 grubs in there, 1 was huge. (Somebody got a treat.)

I used up the rest of my pile of mulch under the big rhododendron in back. I think the Patient Saver Mulch Crisis has now abated.

I earned $30 worth of Amazon gift cards from some online forums I particpate in on an ongoing basis. In the past, I've used these gift cards for a variety of stuff, including a very nice pendant light fixture for over the kitchen sink and 5 lbs of black licorice, which in hindsight was not the best spend, but i was in the mood for licorice and they only sold it in 5 lb quantities. More recently, I also bought 3 books, 2 vegan cook books and a best-seller that I've just begun reading, Wild.

Books are a treat and I don't read enough, so I am leaning toward using the current $30 on books; I could save them and wait another month when I'll get another $30 in gift cards, which would no doubt multiply the possiblities, but doubt i can wait that long with gift cards burning a hole in my pocket!

I haven't been able to bring myself to do any of those stupid online surveys. Lately I've begun to wonder if some of them have made it even harder to earn points. Countless times I've been totally annoyed to spend 10 or 15 minutes answering questions only to be told I don't qualify for the survey. These things just aren't worth it, really. I've done them for over a year and I've about had my fill. Maybe I'll just do the Pinecone and Toluna ones and forget all the others. That may have been part of the problem. I used to do Pinecone and Toluna exclusively, and then I reached the $600 earnings point with Toluna, believe it or not, and then I couldn't do any more surveys with them that year until I gave them my SS number so they could report the earnings. It was at that point, around September of last year, I think, that I stopped doing the Toluna surveys to avoid paying the taxes and opened up accounts with 3 or 4 other places of the same ilk. But doing so also means I'm spreading my surveys, time and points among 5 or so different survey outfits rather than one, so it tooks much longer to earn money. it's only worth doing this if you're an invalid and can't leave the house, and if you devote a LOT of time to them. In my case, I believe they really distract me from spending my time on much more worthwhile endeavors, whether it's money making or not.

This is the feral one...he's come a long way.

I did some grocery shopping this a.m. and bought some gift cards (another $200 worth) to finally meet my target spending goal. All told, I had to buy $700 worth of grocery gift cards, in addition to my normal spending! Basically, that's about 2.5 months of advance groceries.

If I decide to do the Sapphire card later this year, I'll make SURE to time it so I can pay my homeowners bill with it. That will help a lot.

This afternoon, I moved a small viburnum I'd planted a number of years ago, that hadn't grown much since it was really getting shaded out by much larger shrubs. i moved it to what i think will be a much sunnier spot in back. I HOPE it will survive having been dug up.

I also sprayed poison ivy growing in the area where I moved three silky dogwood seedlings. I will be berry picking in that area this summer, and I'd rather not be tromping thru poison ivy each time, although I always wear knee-high boots. The silky dogwood is still alive, no doubt helped my some well-timed rain right after planting.

I planted two pots of basil seed.

I did a bit more work digging up sod in my veggie garden. The snap peas are doing well, about two inches high now. Lettuce is teeny, teeny. Cauliflower and collard seelings getting chewed by bugs. Broccoli hanging in there.

I ran to a local bait shop and bought 25 mealy worms for $1.85 after watching mom and dad bluebird fly back and forth, back and forth, to the nest box to feed the babies. I spread the meely worms out on the lid of a bucket and put it on the lawn about 10 feet from the bird box. Took them a while to realize there was good food there, but then I had a lot of fun, watching with binoculars from my office window, as the bluebird male returned again and again to stuff as many meely worms in his mouth at once and fly to the box.

I drove to town hall to see if i could finally find out from voter registar if I can work this Tuesday, a 2nd referendum vote, but the office was closed. I will try to call again on Monday.


Here's a pretty shot I took on a recent walk.

Oh, yes, and I'm psyched. Someone actually responded to a Craig's List ad i put in last week offering some perennials for sale, $5 each. She wants 4 blue milkweeds and is coming tomorrow for them. Truth be told, this is not the best time to dig them up as they're getting ready to flower very soon. But I have some growing on the north side of the house, which gets less sun and so they're a little behind the other plants, growthwise. I don't want them to be so wilted that she declines to buy them, so I think I'll wait til the morning to dig them up. These are pretty hardy plants and I know they'll bounce back as long as they're given plenty of water, as I've transplanted them many times now. I may be able to interest her in some coral bells too; i have both the green and burgundy varieties.

UPDATE: She wants the coral bells...yes! But the babies are small, so to be fair i'll give her 2 small coral bells for $5. Or more, if she wants more.

I hadn't expected any responses on these plants, so I'm happy to be making a few dollars on plants that have multiplied by themselves....It will multiply the cash in my pocket, to about $25.

Oh, don't mind me. My mood will improve eventually.

I just had a bad afternoon at the office today. Everything seemed to be blowing up in my face and the editor in chief was on my case. The other project editor was very kind and said she was ready to quit last year when ed in chief was similarly bitching at her, but someone else talked her out of it.

I kinda felt that way today and was glad to get out of there; i don't have to return til Wednesday, so after playing catch-up for missed work hours last week and not feeling like i was getting much of a break, i can now relish a stretch of time off to do other stuff.

The other reason i'm in a bad mood is today i received notice of my COBRA rate increase for the coming year. I knew this was coming. The big question was, how much more as I anxiously recalculated my budget for like the millionth time. I had read that on average, health insurance premiums were rising by about 7% this year, so that's what i was counting on, but no, Connecticut is higher. I guess my increase was in the neighborhood of 16.5%, more than double the nat'l average. My COBRA ws $469/month and starting June 1 will be $562. Oww.

I mowed the lawn tonight to get that out of the way. I have a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow. And then there's Mother's Day, which honestly, I'm in no mood to plan, but my sister hasn't volunteered to have any kind of get-together at her place for years. I see my mother ALL the time; i don't see why we need to have yet another obligatory get-together with my sullen sister. And me having to pull together some kind of meal.

I suppose i sound grumpy and selfish, but like i said, bad mood. Need to vent.

I need to do some planting and do a lot of work in the vegetable garden. I need to check to make sure my docs are all in network under the new plan and call to see if Teva Neuroscience has a discount plan with Anthem the way they do elsewhere. This is a huge help, since it means I have no co-pays for this drug.

Umm, the guy I met for coffee the other night? He was nice, but far too old for me. I hadn't paid much attention to his age when he contacted me online. I'm sorry, I'm not ready to date a senior citizen and it didn't help when the first thing he talked about when we met was how funny he felt when he applied for Medicare the other day. I'm not there yet!!!

The vast majority of men love to date women far younger than themselves, which might work for a while, but there comes a point when those same women who may have dated you in your 40s aren't interested in doing same when you're 64 and she's 52! Time to be a bit more realistic about what you can attract.