I'm Still Among the Living

I haven't really dropped off the face of the earth. I've just been mowing and mowing and mowing some more. Most of our grass was a good 12" high so I've been mowing it twice - once to get it down a little, the second time to mow it lower and make it look good. It's hard enough to mow it once, but twice is a bit much. I think I'll take a break from it today; partly because a bolt came off of the seat of my rider so the seat rocks as I mow. I don't think I've ever gotten seasick mowing the yard before! We'll look for the right bolt today (since I have no idea where the old one is) and if we can't find one, Dave will make one. Nice to have a machinist for a husband. :D

The whole yard is actually dry now! Of course it's cloudy today, and chilly the last 3 days, and showers are in the forecast for the weekend. I simply cannot win.

I've also been reading but haven't had a lot of time for it. I'm reading an old book about pioneer women of the early 19th century who settled Kansas. My great-grandparents homesteaded in Nebraska and I knew their life must have been difficult there but this book has opened my eyes to just how hard it was. The dirt floors, sod houses or dugouts cut into small hills or riverbanks, the crop failures, the wild animals, all of these things are pretty scary. In my great-grandparents' case, he lost an eye while splitting wood, a friend of theirs was murdered by an outlaw, she gave birth to my grandfather and his sister on the homestead, and then Gramps had polio. And that's just the hard luck stories I know about. It's no wonder they returned to Illinois where he got his desk job back at the railroad. My great-grandmother made the best doggone biscuits you could ever dream of, and her pies were to die for.

The book is fascinating and I'll review it, probably tomorrow, because I only have a few pages left to read. That's a relief since I have three ARCs waiting for me that look very good too.

Update on Scaredy Cat: She has a litter which Dave has seen but I haven't and she let me pet her head one morning but not since. Not sure what we're going to do about all this but I don't want her to spend another winter outside, and we would love to adopt one of the kittens and momma. We'll see what happens.

Summertime

I've been singing an old song lately, but the lyrics are altered to fit my life:

Summertime, and the livin' is killin'
Grass is growin', and the weeds are high
Bushes need trimmin', but geez now it is rainin'
Hush all you muscles, Ben-Gay is nigh.

Thanks to a rainy, windy, chilly day, I can either do some geneology this afternoon or read. I'll probably read since I'm involved in Mrs. Lincoln at the moment. It's June 9th but I'm wearing sweats, plus a nice warm fleece jacket to keep warm because I refuse to turn on the heat in June. This is a bummer.

Yesterday the sun was out so I used the trimmer for about two hours and still didn't make a dent in the work to be done. I tell Dave I can't prune the bushes because there are still baby birds in the nests. :D

The torturers at physical therapy have been mugging me twice a week and then all that trimming didn't help. Thank heaven for Ben-Gay! One of these days I'll get back in shape - except that I can practically hear the grass growing from inside. Yikes! Meanwhile, if you wondered why my posts are so sporadic lately, that's the answer.