Monday, December 01, 2008

Long laundry list


After a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, topped off with Gonzaga's big triumph in the Old Spice Tournament, this morning has started out with a lot of gloom and doom and the reality of a month with too much to do and too many expenses.

First, literal gloom. I can barely see the fence across the yard, and the horses are but shadows in the dense fog. There's not a lot of talk of it lifting soon either, but it IS warm outside.

The day began on a bright note. When it was still dark outside, I turned over the calendars to December. The redneck folks are claiming that you may be a redneck if you decorate your dog for Christmas.

Well, I did decorate Annie last week when the weather turned cold. She's an old gal, maybe 13 this year, and she can't stand the cold. So, I bought her a purple doggie blanket. She's extremely proud to wear it, but she still has the horses perking up their ears and eyes, wondering what the heck kind of purple monster that is moseying down the lane or through the woods.

Part of this morning's gloom, though, is that Annie also has an ear filled with ear mites. And, they've done a number on her, so I'll be calling Cherise, the vet to come and help her out.

Speaking of vets, one of the grandpuppies in Boise had a tough Thanksgiving. Miss Brooke had to go to the vet because of an infection that put her temperature up to 105. She received IV's and three different kinds of pills to fight it off.

She has also received a lot of tender loving care from her parents and her brother Todd. We're thankful to hear she's on the mend, and so are her Border Collie buddies here at the Lovestead.

Meanwhile, we're all tickled this morning with our "world famous horse," Miss Lily. Appaloosa homes around the world turned over their calendars to see that lovely face of Lily aka Miss December sniffing at some plastic poinsettias in the antique manure spreader. Annie snapped the photo two years ago, shortly after Lily's arrival from Oklahoma.

Back to the doom and gloom: Our lights keep burning out. This morning it was the yard light on the house, which required Bill to go get the big, big ladder and me to hold it while he climbed up to remove the burnt-out bulb.


Bill has gone to Home Depot twice in the past couple of weeks to find the proper bulb to replace in the overhead kitchen light, but he's finally determined that the whole unit, fixture, battery pack and all will have to be replaced---at least 50 bucks.

Our car is in need of two more trips to the shop after a $400 trip last week. It has 137,000 miles on it, and, of course, right before Christmas it has to contract several ailments.

I have to call the washing machine repair man at 8 and see if he can come out soon to fix our washer which is agitating us cuz it isn't doing its agitating. In the meantime, the dirty clothes will have to wait.

Why is it that everything times itself to dump the big blitz all at once? We've all been there several times in life, haven't we?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Bill says that today may be the day the governor decides to slice the budget and cut state employee pay. He said he heard the slash was supposed to happen last week, but someone suggested that it might be nice for Mr. Otter to wait until after Thanksgiving. I wonder why.

I also just peeked and saw that the week-long surge in the stock market has fizzled this morning. Last time I looked it was down almost 400 points.

Well, where IS that Ann Murray when we need to hear her sing about "a little good news today"?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not sitting here feeling sorry for myself in any way, shape or form. Life is still good in so many ways that I don't have the fingers, toes or nose hairs to count them all. Actually, I'm sitting here multi-tasking and taking inventory of the day's challenges.

I'm writing my blog, making it last and at the same time figuring out how to tackle that long laundry list of things to do and money to spend and deciding where to start first.

We folks in North Idaho have that inherent, legendary quality of resilience and constant reminders that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

And, I'm still figuring I'm pretty tough. After all, we've had a lifetime of experience at pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, and I'd better get started.

Speaking of getting started, I'm still looking for Amish friendship bread starter takers! Anyone? Anyone?

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