I must count myself very lucky that I have been sleeping fairly well over the last year or so.  I think it’s been less than 5 times this past year that I have awoken in the night and simply not been able to get back to sleep.  I thought that perhaps my insomnia was a thing of the past.

Well, let me tell you, when that sucker rolls back into town, he does it with a vengeance!  Last night was no fun.

I got to sleep somewhere between 9:30 and 10:00 but spent a happy twilight between 9:00 and 9:30.  About 11:45, I awoke - WIDE AWAKE.  And, folks, there wasn’t anything that was getting me back to sleep.  I tried tossing and turning in my own bed for about an hour.  When that didn’t work, I headed down to the living room and snuggled up with one of the cats on the couch.  About two hours of wide awakeness later (I did get to see some interesting recipes on the Food Network for grilling), I went upstairs to the new cats’ room where I snuggled with them for the next hour.  There was no sleepy time in these other rooms at all, so I headed back to my own bed.

I got to see the last few innings of the replayed Phillies game and finally fell asleep somewhere before 4:00.

The alarm clock goes off at 5:00.  Who’s tired today??

Sometimes, it’s better to leave well enough alone.  Take today, for instance.

Buzz saw two of the same kind of small beetle in our kitchen in two different places this afternoon.  We didn’t know what kind of beetle they were but they were little and I just figured they’d come in from outside at some point.  We’ve been in and out of the house all weekend, after all.  But did I leave it at that??

NO!!!! I had to go do some researching on the intertubes.  I looked at many, many pictures of various beetles, in adult and larval form. 

And, while I was not successful in figuring out what they were, I sure did succeed in making myself so bugged out that I think there are little black beetles crawling all over me now!

*shudders*

I got up around 5:00 this morning.  That’s about the last thing that went right for the next two hours.

I woke up with some hefty intestinal problems that needed attention.  That took a bit of my time.  Then, after my shower, it was time to get dressed.  It’s casual Friday - normally, I throw on a pair of jeans and a sweater, but nothing was fitting right today.  And if it did fit, it was the wrong color, ‘cause I’m wearing a dark brown bra today - did you need to know that??  I swear, I tried on 15 different shirts. 

Once I finally found something passable, I went to choose my jewelry.  The pendant I wanted to wear was on the wrong chain so I had to switch it.  But it got stuck and I couldn’t get it off the chain.  Once I finally wrestled that into submission, I put on the rest of my jewelry and went into the bathroom to dry my hair.

I happened to glance at my watch and saw that it was almost 7:00!!  I could not believe that two hours had gone by already!

And, of course, my makeup wouldn’t go on right and it took me twice as long as normal to get that right.  Oh, and the pendant I had to wrestle before?  Looked stupid with my shirt.  But, hell, I was already 15 minutes late so I just shoved it inside my shirt.  Now that’s a worthwhile use of my time! 

Sheesh!  I’m glad tomorrow’s Saturday!

Back when Comedy Central used to be called Ha!, I saw a stand-up routine concerning shoulder pads.  It was regarding the danger of shoulder pad build-up - you would wear a blouse with shoulder pads, a sweater over that with shoulder pads, and a jacket over all of that with shoulder pads and you’d look like a linebacker.

I’m here to tell you that the same problem can be manifested with fiber.  You have a breakfast bar that’s chock full of fiber, followed by a lunch that’s jam-packed with fresh veggies, complete with the skin, have an afternoon snack of yogurt with added fiber and by the end of the work day, you’re ready to explode!

This is a real danger, I tell you!  So beware the fiber build-up!  And, for god’s sake, if it does happen to you, stay away from funny people who make you laugh really hard.  I share this with you because I care.

Well, our garden is in full swing now and I am VERY excited!  Everything we’ve planted has sprouted (even the carrots, which are microscopic at this point) but we still have more to plant.  We still have several types of beans (the drying-type and also green and wax beans), cucumbers (English and pickles), canteloupe, zucchini, yellow squash and a few more tomato plants. 

But the things that we already planted are doing well and are documented in pictures over on my Flickr site.  Check ‘em out!

We are so turning into a hippie family.  (Except we bathe every day and live in a house in the suburbs and have steady jobs.) We have been feeding our cats nothing but organic food since the whole cat food scare of ‘07.  They get Merrick California Roll canned food and they get Flint River Ranch dry food.

I’ve always used Arm & Hammer litter because I thought it was more down-to-earth than the rest, for some reason.  But over the last year or so, we’ve noticed a change.  There’s so much more dust when we add litter or scoop and surely that can’t be good for our kitties!

So we switched to Swheat Scoop Natural Wheat Litter.  Wheat litter!  Yep, now our cats are fully hippie-ized.  And good for them!!

Saturday has to go down as the most unproductive, bordering on destructive, day that we’ve had in a long time!  It started out so well.  Buzz finally got to sleep in after some four decades of needing those few extra hours of sleep.  (I actually went and checked to make sure he was still alive after he’d been asleep for about 13 hours.) I had time to get all kinds of things straightened up after our date on Friday night (we left a lot of martini makings here and there) and even started to bake a loaf of bread.  Life was good!

After the bread finished, the day took a decided downward turn (well, the bread didn’t turn out very pretty but that was minor - it was still delicious).  We headed out to the big garden shop nearby, intending to get some plants for the front porch planters and to fill in other places.  Along with the fact that we were far from the only people who had this idea (the place was packed and the line to check out was VERY long), we couldn’t find anything we really wanted.  So we left empty-handed.  That’s a first!  Then we decided to go to the other garden shop near work, since I had to stop in at work anyway because I couldn’t tap into my work computer from home for some reason.  We stopped at work first.  I found my computer all boogered up and totally frozen.  I had to power down hard to get it to boot.  Then it took forever because it was updating some auto-logon script or something.  I finally got it happy, locked it up and came out to where Buzz was waiting in the van.

The van that had just had the entire instrument panel die.  He says to me that we need to get this in to be fixed very soon.  I happened to glance at the inspection sticker, which had expired at the end of April.  I NEVER let this stuff slip by me!  But we just bought the other car and I had to get emergency registration cards because I had neglected to send them in on time (because April was only three days long, seemingly) and I just lost it.  So we crept home, hoping not to get pulled over either for speeding (because we could no longer tell how fast we were going) or for the expired inspection sticker.

We made it home without incident, thankfully.  I decided to do the bills, which I do through my bank online.  I went to log in and the bank doesn’t like the fact that I’m using Safari as my browser now and it didn’t recognize me.  It started asking me challenge questions that I don’t remember choosing.  Needless to say, I was now locked out and could not pay the bills!  In the meantime, Buzz tried to log onto American Express to check reward points and it didn’t accept his password and he got locked out of there!  I began to think that someone had gotten a hold of our logons and was trying to steal our identities so I panicked.

Buzz got American Express straightened out and I called the bank this morning and got that straightened out.  So I think we’re OK but, holy criminy, we were like the anti-King Midas for a day - everything we touched turned to shit!

Buzz and I had a different kind of music night tonight.  We drank martinis and listened to nothing but vinyl.

First up was a volume 2 of a Billie Holiday collection.  It was wonderful.  I sipped a cosmopolitan and Buzz had a vesper a la James Bond.

Then we had dinner - an amazing combination of whole grain garlic Italiano Rice-a-Roni and petite sea scallops sauteed in butter and olive oil.

Then we bellied up to our bar and continued with the vinyl music.  Buzz put on Revolver, which, as everyone knows, is one of the best Beatles albums ever.  Which inspired me to play Let It Be, which then inspired me to play Hey Jude.  Amazing stuff and wonderful British and Japanese pressings of these vinyl albums.  Truly a joy!  But the last album reminded me of a song which changed my life.  That song was Rain.  To this day, I am a much more grounded, less-stress-filled person because of this song.  Not to mention the fact that I have been walking in the rain at a slow pace for the last 25 years or so since first discovering this song.  So now I share with you the lyrics of Rain by John Lennon.

If the rain comes they run and hide their heads.
They might as well be dead.
If the rain comes, if the rain comes.
When the sun shines they slip into the shade
(When the sun shines down.)
And sip their lemonade.
(When the sun shines down.)
When the sun shines, when the sun shines.
Rain, I don’t mind.
Shine, the weather’s fine.
I can show you that when it starts to rain,
(When the Rain comes down.)
Everything’s the same.
(When the Rain comes down.)
I can show you, I can show you.
Rain, I don’t mind.
Shine, the weather’s fine.
Can you hear me, that when it rains and shines,
(When it Rains and shines.)
It’s just a state of mind?
(When it rains and shines.)
Can you hear me, can you hear me?
If the rain comes they run and hide their heads.

These last two days have been pretty extraordinarily lucky for me.  I come from a long line of very unlucky people but the stars have been shining on me the last two days.

Yesterday, as I sat at a traffic light at a particularly sketchy intersection (I’m always nervous when I have to stop there), I watched in my rearview mirror as a huge construction truck could not stop and plowed into the person sitting immediately behind me in line.  I was inches from being involved in a messy collision.

Today, as I bent down to pick up the wine bag with which we are going to tote our wine to the BYOB restaurant tonight for dinner, I happened to raise my eyes and see that the hook that we hang the bar towel on was about an eighth of an inch from my eyeball.  We were about to have radically different plans for the evening if I hadn’t missed that thing.  And I was about to have radically different plans for the rest of my life, what with having only one eye and all.

So these narrow escapes have not gone unnoticed by me.  I know when things are going good and I know better than to ignore them.  Thanks, lucky stars, for keeping me safe in the midst of close danger!

Sorry if you’re not familiar with the Cheryl Wheeler “Potato” song.

These are the beginnings of the potato plants in our square-foot garden!