We had a pretty dismal summer, garden-wise, so I wasn’t at all sorry to rip everything out last Sunday
Better luck next year, eh.
We raked and bagged up a ton of leaves, and the trees seem fairly bare after the strong winds; hopefully we’ll only have to do one more round.
Oh well, at least the tree out front looks great…
…especially if you ignore the surrounding weeds.
Still haven’t caught any mice, and am seriously considering borrowing my sister-in-law’s cat…
But at least I was able to upload my photos from Halloween. Such as they are. I missed my oldest nephew and my youngest niece. Sigh.
Nonetheless, here you go:
Mario
Wario
Princess Peach
The whole technicolor family
Spider-Girl and Super-Girl
Mario, a bunny, and Elmo
(this is after trick-or-treating, can’t you tell?)
We were all slightly worse for wear afterwards.
I’m sorry to say, I haven’t been able to download the Halloween pictures yet.
If it’s any consolation, I also haven’t synched my phone since Friday.
Or done much of anything in the house aside from obsess over the effing mouse problem. Oh, there has been cleaning, cooking, etc., but everything else has fallen by the wayside.
Things have reached a pretty dreadful state. I’m stomping around the house, knocking on walls and singing loud before walking into a room, all in hopes of NOT surprising a mouse at work.
Larry says that’s defeating the purpose – he wants to catch them, not scare them. But I want to catch them without a confrontation, thank you very much.
I’ll do my best to rise above tomorrow and post the photos.
Today has been a bit of a mixed bag. It all started last night, really.
I was sitting on the couch while the cauliflower was roasting and the steak was marinating, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of movement – a flash of brownish-grey across the dining room. A mouse! So apparently we didn’t get them all.
An hour or so later, I was upstairs and heard a faint rustling sound inside the radiator cover. Larry had said earlier that he thought they were traveling through the house by the heat pipes, and he had plugged up the ones from the basement to the first floor – but we (I, at least) never thought that they’d be going upstairs.
Needless to say, I did the whole 1950’s television housewife thing – jumped on top of the furniture and squealed like a stuck pig. And Larry did the manly thing, and put down the traps again.
On top of that, the Peep had a pretty restless night – he had a runny nose starting yesterday afternoon, and it kept him sniffling and coughing all night – so by extension, Larry and I didn’t get quality sleep. Which of course translated into waking up late, and the associated mad dash to get to work on time for the 9 o’clock meeting. I made it, walked in at 8:57, but it wasn’t easy.
On the other hand, we just got out of a company meeting that delivered some happy news, so that was good.
I’m now ready to look ahead to the weekend, and I’ve got to tell you, the immediate future looks a bit foggy.
Will the boy be recovered in time for tomorrow’s festivities, or will we be dragging around a kid who, costume notwithstanding, closely resembles a wet noodle?
Will I finally be able to get the vegetable bed ready for winter, and put the grill and the yard furniture in the garage?
Will I really be able to turn the heel on these danged socks? I’ve got an inch of leg to go, so I’m hoping yes.
And most importantly – will we be able to resolve our mouse problem once and for all?
Not much going on these past few days. A lot of work, a little knitting on Larry’s socks, precious few chores. That about sums it up.
I’m hoping to turn the heel of the socks over the weekend, so hopefully the end is in sight.
But for the most part, nothing to see here, folks; move along.
One of my local yarn shops is closing today. For good.
This stinks on several levels:
- Small businesses are continuing to struggle in this economy.
- Good yarn shops are hard to find and support.
- It’s another sign of the homogenization of Harvard Square.
- The people were uniformly nice and helpful. So much so, in fact, that my non-knitting male cousin, who’d been in there twice to buy me gift certificates, said upon hearing the news “That stinks – they were really nice”.
I visited the shop for the last time on Saturday, and managed to score a couple of luxury fibers at a discount. Which was bittersweet – great score, but sad to know it was the last time I’d be petting yarn there.
For that matter, we’re running out of yarn shops in general. This can be chalked up to the number of online vendors selling yarn, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself; it makes me sad that there can’t be a happy medium, though.
So a moment of silence, please, for Woolcott and Company. Sean (owner) says that he’s got a few things up his sleeve; I’m steadily sending good vibes his way.
