Curses

I opened the front door today - adhering to the better late than never philosophy of setting off on our walk around 9AM - and paused to stare at the flowerbed. I spent an hour or so yesterday clipping back the dead and dying flowers. I'm never sure how to encourage them to grow again, so I shake out the seeds and hope for the best. After I had stuffed all the plant matter into a large garbage bag, I added a couple bags of deep brown mulch and raked it sort of smooth before calling it done.

It shouldn't have surprised me all that much this morning when the flowers were gone, especially as I was the one who removed them. But I found I missed the color that lingered in their petals. I didn't expect to be nostalgic over such a small thing.

More predictable, perhaps, is the appearance of lake photos in my header. Chienne and I had to battle a pack of beagles to make our way to the lake. I smiled at their different collars - one red, one blue, one green and another purple. But they were running loose right around the sign that demanded pets be on leashes and I struggled to reign my leashed hound in when she wanted desperately to run and play. It was also too warm - I didn't get to shiver at all down by the lake and found it hard to focus on prayer or thought when I was irritated over the temperature.

I meant to go to work - I really did - but somehow didn't make it. I started playing with some data that continues to befuddle me and Carrie had some advice that I was able to use to work at home. Just as I was getting bored and frustrated, Jane said she wasn't sure she could deal with Anti-Friend much more and asked me to tackle the problem myself. So I started clearing off space on my laptop and moving files back from external storage and off an ftp site. So I'm now in the middle of two large projects and have no real idea of how to do them correctly. I also spent some time organizing data and making phone calls from the might-get-credit-might-not project. Which is always a good way to make me feel all twitchy.

So I feel stressed and inadequate and overwhelmed. So shoot and phooey and snazzlefrats. Frick and darn and crossed arms and stomped feet.

But I do think the new header is pretty.