groundhog week

It's been just like in the movie, only an entire seven days. Gray and dreary for the first of the next six weeks of winter. I do feel rather fortunate not to be in the Northeast right now....any damn where. I like a nice pretty little snow that melts in a few days and everybody is able to get a pic of their kid and the snowman. Then I'm ready to plant flowers and bitch about the heat for six months. Yes sir....that's how I roll. Because I can. When you get to be middle aged and under loved like me, it really doesn't matter whether people like you or not. It is what it is. And thank you so very very much Beverly for putting me on the road to that peaceful frame of mind. PS. I still have those 15 extra pounds :)

I'm busy paying bills that have interest tacked on them thanks to my government's return of my tax dollars that they borrowed all year interest free. Everybody else is out buying big screen TVs and computers. I'm paying off the people who have helped me and the BG to survive during this past year. She got her degree after several years of very hard work and has gone head first into the hoops you jump through to deliver care. Kinda like her old mom, but with a lot less money for her effort. The only fear that I ever had about her entering the field was burnout, which is rampant among those trying to serve clients well while they attempt to obey all of big brother's rules. Having a good immediate supervisor helps, and I've been blessed in that respect. We were in the trenches together a long time before that happened, but it's a big positive aspect of an otherwise thankless job.

I went angel shopping in our gift store at the sawmill today looking for just the right figurine to give to Gigi. Besides all the pool action, she has been there for me through the thick and thin of this past year or so and listened to my ramblings and concerns about my parents. Both of hers are gone, and she misses them terribly. Their dog Smokey still roams the neighborhood between the houses of the sisters who helped to care for them until their deaths.

Procrastination has always been an integral part of my nature. Only Big Ernie knows how I've managed to pass multiple inspections at work and keep a household running because I'm just not a detail kind of gal. I'm the one with the "big picture" ideas who throws them out and lets the detail people put them into place. If I had to do that for a living I would slit my wrists. I have, however, made great strides in organizing the household including a clean desk drawer and a filing cabinet that has some sense of order. Yay me! The attic is essentially empty except for BG's childhood stuff and the china that will be passed onto her. I was married back in the day when everybody who knew you and your momma'n'them would send something from the jewelry store. Mine is Noritake...real pretty.

The basement is manageable now, thanks to lots of trips up and down those concrete stairs to burn shit stuff out back. Not to worry about catching the pasture on fire right now! Asparagus season is coming up soon and I've got to clear off last year's ferns since I never got around to the big yearly burn. There's this big old bunch of dirt that we call "the pile" out by the road where the dozer guy left it sitting after he did the driveway last spring. I'm hoping that the Easter bunny will bring somebody to put that crap back in the potholes of my driveway. Maybe there will be some gravel in the summer :)

March madness will soon be upon us but we've got to get past the Superbowl first. That is the one day of the year that I wish I had invested my retirement money in Ro-tel and Velveeta. I could give a rat's ass about football, but NCAA basketball just gets me all excited, sort of like my redneck friend Angelina Ballerina.

Ya'll keep the faith.

^j^