Hi Hi!

I'm awake in the morning again! That's two days in a row and this time I didn't even need an alarm clock. I think I've finally gotten my sleep back on track. So, I'm doing something that I've always liked to do, I'm sucking coffee before 7. That means that I can accomplish much more today than I can when I sleep until noon. I enjoy an occasional night time cleaning frenzy, but most of the stuff I need to do requires banker's hours.

By the way, I'm SURE that my sister's plane has landed, so if you read this girl, call me so I know where you are. That kind of information comes in handy if the cops need to find you for me. (That's what I used to tell the kids when they would go out. I would ask, "When will you be back?" They always tried to say something non-committal like "I don't know!" I would counter that with, "OK...if you should be tied up in a car trunk, what time do you want me to send the cops out looking for you?" That always sharpened their minds a bit.)

Anyway, I just saw a commercial for one of those storage bags that you attach to your vacuum cleaners. The bag gets sucked to such a small size that you can pile all of your winter sweaters in one bag and then slip it under the closet door. Does anyone out there have one of those? It would be right handy if it worked like it did on TV. Right now I just keep my winter clothes in another closet but it'd be nice to have that space for crap I don't like enough to use but still can't throw away.

I woke up singing that Proclaimers song, 500 Miles. I thought that it was on my playlist so I came here to listen to it and it's not there. I wonder where the heck a song can go? That's odd.

Yesterday evening I decided to do something really stupid. I took one look at the lawn and thought that I could mow it. Well, I didn't think I could so much as I didn't care, I just wanted the lawn mowed. My son always says that he needs the blades high so that the grass doesn't clog the blades. But the grass is never very short so the first thing I did was lower the blades. I lowered them so much that I couldn't push the back at all without lifting it. I finally figured out how to get those blades up a bit and I tried to push it around the yard. The reason my son wanted it high was so that he could mow over the pine cones. If you don't pick those suckers up, you end up with grounded pine cones all over.

I ended up pushing the mower around a couple of times and then taking a break. I'm nowhere near done but I'm sure I'll finish before August. I could be like the people painting the Golden Gate bridge, I'll just never stop and that way the lawn will be interesting looking with grass of varying heights all over.

I was able to stage another battle against the evil and quite durable honeysuckle. What a will to live that life form has! I finally realized that I can't pull them out by the roots because it's probably just one really, really long ass plant. If the roots that I see are so thick, the sucker taking it all the way along my fence line must be huge. That's why I keep falling on my ass trying to pull them out. I wonder if I could kill it simply by constantly cutting the offshoots? It has to have leaves to live.

Aw, screw it. That plant probably pops up in Omaha somewhere and gets all the nutrition that it needs to mess up my fence.

I was also trying to get rid of some other ivy that I saw out back. One tree had some Virginia Creeper growing up the side so I just cut it's throat at the bottom. I tried to pull it down but those pine trees get pretty tall and so did that Virginia Creeper. Then, I thought that I saw some more on the back fence so I went to kill that. I grabbed it with one hand and I had a steak knife in the other hand. I was using an OJ slicer sort of maneuver.

I looked at the ivy in front of me and noticed three familiar leaves. They were the three leaves of poison ivy. Then I realized that I had a huge bunch of it in my left hand and I was about to cut it with my right hand. I froze for a moment and then I decided to hobble back into the kitchen and scrub my hands raw. I put that anti-bacteria crap on and, using the the rough side of my kitchen sponge, I scrubbed my arms and rinsed them well in running water. Then, I took a shower just in case. I took a LONG shower. I stood there until the water got too cold to deal with.

Then I just said "Fuck it." and I put my jammies on. I watched TV for a while and just went to bed. I don't seem to be breaking out yet but I don't really know how long it takes for the acid the burn the skin. I'm just hoping that I caught it in time and washed well enough to prevent it from affecting me at all. I HATE poison ivy.

So naturally, I shall get dressed and go out and attack the poison ivy today. I'm not quite sure how to do it but I will be before I go out there. It will die a slow and painful death for all of the poison ivy victims out there.

That's my plan for the morning!