Lizard Season and Other Stuff

Forget about pregnancy—hubby thinks I should talk about lizards on my blog.

This little guy showed up on our porch recently:

He hasn't been there the past couple days but as the weather gets warmer I imagine he'll be back. Hubby looks for him all the time.

We also have a finch nest in a tree right in front of our porch, the nest is right at eye height so we have a good view of the babies. Hubby says he thinks there are four babies in the nest; when we got home from church this morning we looked at them and I saw at least three fuzzy heads, and two pairs of eyes and little beaks looking at us. They're really cute. (Sorry, no picture yet, maybe later.)

In other news, I'm still getting over the cold I talked about in my last post. It's been two weeks now and I've developed quite a cough, which I think is actually getting worse. I can barely breathe without coughing now and I'm barely sleeping at night. (I have to sleep on three pillows now to help with acid reflux, too, and sleeping on three pillows just isn't comfortable, I've found. I don't sleep deeply and I wake up a lot.) My cough is so bad I called the doctor (ob office) when we got home from church this morning and the midwife on-call called me back. She said it sounds like I might have a respiratory infection and could need an antibiotic. She suggested I call the office for an appointment first thing tomorrow morning. At the very least if my lungs are clear and I don't need an antibiotic they might be able to give me something for my cough, which I assure you isn't pleasant.

Last but not least, if you live in the south you probably experienced it and if you don't you probably heard about the storms that came through here over the past few days. I was at an all-day training session and hubby was at work when the storms came through our area; thankfully, the brunt of the storm seemed to go around our particular area, but not by much. I haven't seen it, but it's strange to read about the devastation that happened when tornadoes touched down only 20 miles or so from us. I was concerned since doggie was home alone during the storms, but hubby left her in the house when he went to work and she usually isn't too bothered by weather so we thought she'd be okay. And she was: She was very happy to see me when I got home but that was probably more because she'd been alone for several hours rather than her being bothered by the storm. Doggie isn't a fan of being by herself for more than a couple of hours, she prefers company.

Something To Say

I haven't been writing here much lately because: 1) I don't have time, and, 2) I haven't felt like I've had much to say recently, or at least nothing that I want to talk about on the Internet. But now I've got something to say:

I'm going back to work tomorrow.

Sort of. I mean, it's a job, but it's not the elusive (as a friend calls it) permanent position, I'm still working on that. Someone I know who owns a technical writing consulting company (yes, there are such things, quite a few of them, actually) wrote to me last week and asked if I might be available to help with some proofreading and editing. Apparently she's got a lot of files that need to be proofread and she's overwhelmed. She has several regular employees and is hiring me as a contractor for 4-6 weeks to work on this project. It's flexible hours, I probably won't work full-time (my choice), and she knows I'm looking for permanent work so I won't need to make up stories if/when other interviews come up. So it should work out well and give me something else to do for a few weeks, which will be nice.

Of course this will mean a whole new routine for me and remembering how to do things I haven't done in a while—things like having to be somewhere every morning, deal with a commute, and eat lunch in an office. I worked from home for several years before I went back to school so it's been a LONG time since I've had to make myself a lunch to take to work; I make hubby a lunch (or dinner, depending on his schedule) to take to work everyday but he's not a picky eater and I kind of am. (Okay, no "kind of" about it, I just am.) I went grocery shopping this week and got some things that should get me through this week, and I know there are a lot of websites out there with good recipes for lunches to take to work so I'm sure I can get creative if I want to take the time to do so. The good news is I may not need to be in the office everyday after the first week so that will help with the lunches and the commute. (At the moment I'm not sure how long the commute will be—especially if I try to do it during normal rush hour times—so I'll definitely try to avoid that. Hopefully it won't be more than 30-35 minutes if I can avoid traffic. Hour-long commutes are not my thing.)

To get ready for work—and because it desperately needed it—yesterday I took advantage of the nicer weather we've FINALLY been having the past couple of days and gave my car its semi-annual cleaning. (I'd like to say I'm exaggerating on the semi-annual part but, um, no.) It'll be nice to be able to see out of the windows again. And we gave doggy a bath; we wash her more than semi-annually but she definitely needed it. We usually give her a pedicure (as in cut her toenails) whenever we give her a bath so she's clicking less when she walks now, too. She'd never admit it, but I'm sure she feels better when she's all clean and fluffy again. It's just the process of getting that way that isn't so great.

I hope you all are having a wonderful Labor Day. I'm working on homework and trying to catch up on some other computer things, like finally updating this blog—that's one thing I can cross off my list!

A Note to Mississippians

To the Mississippians who read my blog: I hope you're all okay! I don't know where you all live exactly but I read about the tornado that ripped through Mississippi today and the damage it caused. As a native Californian I've never experienced a tornado and can't imagine what it's like (and hope I'll never know), but I really hope none of you were in its path. My prayers are with all of the people who were affected by it.

Please post or comment when you can!

Broken Blog and Other Things

If you've looked at my blog lately you've probably noticed it doesn't look quite right. The sidebars now have light text on a light background which makes them very difficult to read. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it. It's happening because the colors are part of the template, and the template is drawing color blocks from other Web sites. Something must have happened to the page that has the sidebar color block. I've noticed it's happened before but it's always managed to fix itself. It's been several days now so maybe the break is permanent this time. The only way for me to fix it would be to put together a new template, and needless to say I don't have time to do that right now. So, I'm ignoring it. At least my posts are still readable.

In other news, this is how my hubby spends his time off:

Can you guess what this is?

That, my friends, is a pollen ball—pure pollen mixed with a little bit of water. After working seven days in a row this is how my hubby starts his day off, by making a pollen ball. I'm so proud.

A Word About Seasons

I'd like to have a word with the people who told me when we moved to North Carolina I'd get to experience seasons. News flash: "Too hot," "too cold," and "pollen" are not seasons. Geesh.

Last summer, when I sweltered in the humidity, my husband said to just wait until fall, then it would be nice. Well, fall lasted all of about 3 weeks before winter hit, and it was a long, colder-than-usual winter, so I'm told. Don't get me wrong, I like winter, but I think if it's gonna be cold I should also get to enjoy some snow. We did get snow twice over the winter but it was cold a lot more than that.

Then there's this spring thing, or so they tell me. Yes, things are starting to bloom and it's very pretty, but weather-wise we had about 3 days of spring before it seems to have turned to summer. I am just not into summer in April, thank you very much. It's been in the 80's for the past few days and supposed to get to 90 before it cools down toward the end of the week. Overnight we went from having the heat on to needing to turn on the air conditioner. Not good for the utility bills at all.

Last but not least, there's the pollen. Didn't have to deal with that in California. Something else that happens overnight: Yesterday everything started turning yellow. Today, all the cars are covered with it. I only wash my car twice a year here, it seems, and naturally yesterday I finally got to it because my car was so embarrassingly dirty. It's in the garage now and I'm afraid to take it out. SIGH...

Let me be clear: If we're going to have seasons here then there should be four of 'em, and spring and fall should get equal time with summer and winter. Pollen is not a season, it's just annoying. (Ok, maybe not for the pine trees.) And seriously, a couple months of not needing the heat or the air conditioner is required to keep up with the utility bills the rest of the year. Otherwise it's just not right!

Snow!

It doesn't snow very often in our neck of the woods so when it does we have to take advantage of it. For me, that means breaking out the cross-country skis I got when I lived in Oregon. (After I'd learned to ski in Alaska... Long story.) Below are pictures of our winter wonderland, some of which we took as I skied around the neighborhood and hubby followed along with the dog. One of these days we'll have to get hubby some cross-country skis so he can join in the fun!

A pile of snow greeted us outside our back door when we woke up this morning. Doggie wasn't sure how to get through it!

Snow piled around the dog house.

Can I come in now?

Our roses buried in the snow.

Hubby and doggie out for a walk.

Skiing down the street!

We saw this snowman as we were going around the neighborhood. It was so cute I had to have a picture.

Our happy family.