Because...

I am just ornery that way.

The funniest thing about this photo was not the photo itself. The picture was taken on that hot, blistering day I spent outside from 2 p.m to 10 p.m. and I had a couple of beers, saw this and sent it to my Group text of 15 family members. Eh - they are used to stuff like this from me. I called it ¨Afternoon Delight¨.

The really funny aspect was a week later, I went to text my daughter and ask her what kind of iPod her beau had (I would have asked him but I did not want to bother him at work) and by mistake I chose the text from the above picture where the text asking about the iPod went out to 15 people instead of just my daughter, including her beau at work (who replied, by the way). It was the day of my Labor Day cook-out and even though I had imbibed in a few beers, this was hours later. The text read ¨What kind of iPod does beau have? A Touch or a regular one?¨

It was hilarious what people texted back. It ranged from ¨How the hell should I know?¨ to ¨Are you sure you sent this to the right person?" and even included ¨Ybdi¨ from a sister who could not find her glasses.  When I discovered what I had done, I immediately began another text stating my mistake. I could barely finish because I was laughing so hard at all the replies I kept getting from the first text.

I tried to tell them I was not drunk, but my fat fingers punched in ¨frunk¨ and that started a whole other set of replies that had me laughing until my sides hurt.

I think I will send a text by mistake to the Group family text list more often. Too much fun.

Edit:  omigosh, you guys! I don´t have all the features on this ubuntu machine so the photos are in a huge format because I cannot download a program that edits them to a smaller size. I just zoomed in and the grasshoppers are looking at me like, ¨DO YOU MIND?!"  And the top one looks like he(?) is holding onto motorcycle handlebars! LOL!

On my daily walk

And I thought walking under a ladder was bad luck. Just happened to look up while walking the dogs on Saturday and this is what I saw. Not real close to my house, but just around the corner. I took the dogs home, got my camera and came back for a shot. Still shooting with my daughter's camera, so I don't have it mastered, yet.

I like that my daughters' camera has the "shaky hand" feature, but if you want to zoom in real close you lose that ability. I zoomed this one and I got a slight blur with the pic. They look like mud wasps to me.

Dressage

No, I know that (dressage) isn't the correct term for this class of horse show, I was referring to the gentleman at the lead. He was quite the looker, most of the others were dressed in Western flash, you know rhinestones and neon silk shirts. If I remember correctly, this duo (trio?) pulled a second place in this event.

The fair (and it's greasy food) is a distant memory. I am catching up on my sleep (one night I think I slept nine hours - almost a record for me). My feet are still hurting. As soon as I get paid this Friday I am off to buy new shoes for work, play and walking. They have to tie on the top is what the doctor says. Wear a shoe that does not let the foot separate from the shoe bottom when you walk (flip flops are horrible!). I despise flip flops. In a couple of weeks I will take my new shoes and have the doctor slip the insert into them and cut it to fit my shoe I will wear the most. I guess that would be my work shoe.

After that is taken care of I have a few more medical procedures. I am hoping that the main one does not require a hospital stay. It is just minor and will hopefully make my life easier. I keep telling folks by Halloween I should be feeling much better. Maybe I'll even be able to do more yard work by then. I hated letting that go this summer. When I have the pups outside, I'll pull weeds and trim some around my Hosta. My moon flowers are doing so well in front of the patio, I am going to keep the big set of them there and let them take over as much as they want. The smell in the air at night is heavenly. It covers up what the pups are doing. Ha Ha!

The pups had their second set of boosters yesterday. They are 8 and 8.5 lbs, now. (When we first took them in mid-July they were 2.25 and 2.50 lbs). They are getting taller, leaner and can run like little rockets. We may have over-watered them.

Work is going well. Schools are starting back up and techs are anxious to get their networks started out on the right foot. The filter is a big part of that and I am busy making up "how to" documentation. I really enjoy doing that. Step by step instructions with pictures.

I talked to an old friend this evening. I've not seen her since the spring. She has 14 cats, only 2 inside. She thinks some dog is getting the baby kittens. I could not let that happen. For starters I'd be getting a slew of them fixed. The ones I couldn't get fixed, I'd be taking to a shelter. But, she was raised different out in the country.

Her grandson started 4th grade today and she had to tell me all about it. Her older granddaughter is out west and is in dire straits. Seems she is pregnant with her boyfriend's baby. He happens to be married and is staying with his wife. She (my friend's granddaughter) was staying with his sisters, but they kicked her out. Now she is staying with one of her boyfriend's buddies. Yikes. My friend is so angry and upset with her. She won't listen to reason.

On the movie front, we watched "Identity" last week. It was a thriller. Remember "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie? Or it's other name "Ten Little Indians"? It kind of reminds you of that story. It has John Cusak so it was great in my book.

What would you do?

My scheduled appointment was 9:00 a.m. I was way early. It was a beautiful sunny morning. I filled the gas tank ($2.04 per gallon), cleaned all the car windows and my camera was in the front seat with 2 fully charged batteries. What would you do? Yep. That's what I thought. Backroad central here I come!

My daughter and I have determined that a new medication I started Tuesday is causing a bit of mental hyperactivity. My posts (such as yesterdays) may come across a bit weird until I adjust to the pills. Goofy talk.

Hyper drive

It looks as if this soybean field is diseased with stem rot or stem canker of a sort. I am not sure. It makes for a colorful photo, though. I am still having the early morning insomnia.

I ended up being in a state of hyper activity yesterday, probably due to sleep deprivation. It wasn't the coffee I purchased because that was basically undrinkable. By the time I arrived at the meeting I was in supersonic "ON". I was practically beaming. I tend to be funny (quite possibly annoying) when I am in this state. I tried to "check" myself many times. I would say to myself 'calm down' or 'relax' a few times.

After the meeting I went on to another job in a neighboring county. That went okay. I ate a quick lunch, then home to take a 20 minute nap.

At the dinner I was in super sonic mode again. I bounced around an overheated cafeteria chatting with small children who were complete strangers to me. That is what I do. I move around quickly so I don't come across as a freaky stalker. By the time it came for me to sell raffle tickets my hyper drive was in full force. This may have been in part to the cream stick I ate after my late lunch. Hmmm.

I kept the never ending line of folks in stitches. Again, maybe I was annoying. I didn't need to worry about the dinner falling flat. It was so successful they sold out of dinner tickets and had to start using them over again. It went all too fast and at the end I was left with a feeling of complete and utter melancholy. I walked the halls of the high school (no longer my daughter's school) lost in a wave of sadness, watching the students pump up for the pep rally. The band was in full swing as they marched through the halls to the cadence of their snare drum player (memories of when I was in the high school band).

All of a sudden I was in 1975 with my clarinet feeding off of the roar of the crowd. My daughter is not a part of this. She never was. She shuns school and her fellow students.

I watched five minutes of the rally and sadly walked to my car. I remember selling raffle tickets for a millennium quilt when she was in third grade. I had parked in the exact same spot. Nine years have come and gone. The crash had begun.

The woods and the jungle

Here is another view of the falls I found last week. It is as close to the jungle as we get here in Ohio. I wanted to mention the book I finished reading a couple of weeks ago.

When I was in high school I remember the war ending and I remember having a Vietnamese family move in down the road from us and our bus would pick them up for school. I worked for a restaurant where the owner was a Vietnamese lady. Tu. She had married a service man and he brought her back to Ohio with him. She was not afraid to try anything. The last I heard she had moved to Las Vegas. She divorced and they say it was her family money that purchased the restaurant so she got to keep it. I worked there about three years on and off. Other times I drank there and we kept on good terms. I have no idea where she is or what she is doing. If she even stayed in Vegas. She was married about a total of 4 times.

The book was about the Hmong people. I had never even heard of this race of people. The life is from a girl's perspective. She told about her family and how it came to be that they ended up in Minnesota. Her family lived in the jungle. I think it was in Laos. After the war ended, they were not welcome in Vietnam, Laos or Thailand. After some years in a refugee camp, her family came to the United States. It was a very good read.

I find myself thinking as I read about what happened to her Mother in 1979. Because the woman was close to my age. A year or two younger. About the time I was 19 and working an office job, dancing in the discos at night. Her Mother was struggling to stay alive in the jungle.

I sat humbled by the story. Why is it that I could dance in a disco while her poor Mother dodged bullets in the jungle at the same time?

Bee nice

I don't have a fear of them as some folks do, but I give them lots of room and respect. This photo is over a month old. I have not taken any photos in the past week. Just the horses in a field near our house.

On June 26th I posted a story about work. When I was told to clean out the garage on a very hot day. Dirty, hot and lifting heavy equipment is not my idea of a good time. I was short with my boss, I was short with everyone.

About 3 weeks later, he gives me an evaluation. I am thinking my last eval was over 5 years ago. He gave me a bad rap on my manners and my attitude with co-workers. I told him to give me an example. He cited that I was short with him that day. I blasted him. We went back and forth for about 10 minutes. It was not pretty. I signed the eval and was done with it.

I stewed for a couple of days. I considered writing a rebuttal but just thought it would stir things up. It occurred to me later that perhaps he gave me an eval to get back at me for being short with him. Who knows? Like I said it was hot, dusty and I was lifting heavy equipment. A couple of co-workers laughed at me (which I told my boss). My co-worker (a diabetic and recovering from a serious heart attack was the only one assigned to help me). And, they wanted Miss Congeniality? So I was short with him, big hairy deal. One day in 5 years and this is what he bases my eval on?

Besides, the person over his head is the same gal I got into confrontations with in 2005. When she was the manager of another department. She was attempting to manage everybody and I didn't take kindly to it. She got the last laugh, now she is the director over all of us. I've more or less mended fences with her.

I run into this at most every job I work at. I am a good worker. That's why they keep me around. But, I don't kowtow. Insecure managers have a problem with that. And sooner or later I butt heads with them. I am a repeat offender. I do recognize the behavior and I do get better at it with each job. Usually, I move on because my nerves, health and mental well being are affected. I take my job very seriously and I am proud of what I do. When I have to deal with managers like this, I get depressed and wonder why I put up with it. It gets harder to move on every time as you can imagine.

I have to work through it and get through it. I sit every day, every week, every month and watch a co-worker sleep her way through the day. I pointed out to my manager that day of the eval that if he hears any complaints about me not speaking to her, let it be known that if she talks about work, I will answer her every time. But when it comes down to what color or shade do I think she should get for her kitchen counter, sometimes I am not so nice. I let her have it the other day. I told her "I don't care! I REALLY don't!" She sniffled a little bit and picked up all her samples and put them away. This is what she does all day long! She clearly does not have enough work to keep her day occupied. But, she gets all the accolades because she is a mammoth kowtower. We are in a remote office and it is more or less the honor system for us to keep a good work ethic. I know, I know. I have peace of mind knowing that I am doing the right thing. It just builds up and gets to me over the years and I have to purge it out. So, it is out. Move on.

On a side note, I am not a prude. If a co-worker talks to me about home stuff, I listen. But there is a limit and a mature person should know this. I am talking hours here. HOURS of nonstop, chatty, diarrhea of the mouth.

My schools (my clients) have not one bad word to say about me. This is what I base my evaluation on. Co-workers and managers be damned. Peruby may bend a little, but she is not changing. Not now, not in the near future. If you rub me the wrong way, I let you know it. And most of the time, not in a nice way. Get over it. You're a manager for Pete's sake. I figure it was a "pecking order" scenario happening here. He got pecked on and he needed to peck on somebody else to make himself feel better. This chick pecks back.

Honeysuckle, honeybee

The pictures of a bumblebee didn't come out quite as well as this one I had of the honeybee. I think that is honeysuckle. There is honeysuckle in the hedge along my alley, and it smells quite nice. Years ago I went to Florida and coming out of the motel room one evening and taking a walk, I smelled the orange blossoms. How sweet and heady was that smell.

The other evening before the rains, I could smell the sweet and heady smell of honeysuckle. So, I needn't be envious of Florida and their evening scents. Ohio has it's own. The honeysuckle. Always planted near the outhouses along with the lilacs. Where the outhouses used to be, rather.

I had a free week-end and I thought to myself "I can finally focus on getting some serious cleaning and straightening up around here." First thing Saturday morning I hang the flag out for "Flag Day" and after coming inside I notice that my left muscle between my shoulder and neck (I think it may be the trapezius) is stinging and burning. I strained it again. For a couple of hours (along with Advil) I moped around and cursed the day. Then I got angry. I moved furniture around, I vacuumed, I cleaned, I straightened up. My neck was hurt anyway and I was bound and determined not to let this "free" time go by.

Edit: 8:50 p.m. As fate would have it, I happened to catch a Nature show later this evening on this bee about CCD.