Busy!

I've been neglecting my blog--and my blog-reading; I promise to catch up!--but I have a good excuse: I've been busy.

No, really.

What have I been doing?

I've been taking care of a garden for a faculty member (from another department) who's been in Bulgaria. Since she has a lot of plants outdoors in big pots, and no outdoor faucet, this entails filling a large watering container, lugging it out to the patio, watering 2 plants, refilling the watering can, lugging it out to the patio... etc., until everything's been watered. The house plants didn't need it as much. I started doing pushups--not real ones, but standing about 2 or 3 feet away from the sink, putting my hands on the edge of the sink, and doing pushups that way, trying to keep my body straight. I could do 20 pushups while the can was filling, so there were days when I did 80!

I've been cat-sitting, but that hardly counts, since that was only for two days. I think this is the last time for this cat, which makes me very sad. Her people are moving to Chicago. I'll miss her, and I'll miss their lovely house. Also their tomatoes and raspberries. And esp. the people, who are a very nice couple. *sigh* Things change and life goes on.

I've been knitting. I've gotten to the back of the baby sweater and am now aiming toward a length of 13", to start decreasing for the sleeves. Have you ever been working on something and you knit row after row after row after row, and when you measure, it still says the same as it said last time you measured? This is the long part--both sleeves and the entire body--once I get the sleeves cast off and am just doing the body it will go a lot faster. But meanwhile--I begin to doubt I'll ever get to the point of casting off those sleeves!

This weekend I did 7 loads of laundry. No, it wasn't all clothes. There was a load of towels, and one of sheets, and one load of clothes was actually stuff I found hanging in one of those hang-up plastic wardrobes you store clothes in, and they look like they'll fit me, but since they were hanging in the basement, I wanted to wash them before I tried them on. I'm sure the folks at work will be glad to see me in something besides a t-shirt. Did you know I have enough t-shirts to wear a different one every day for 3 weeks? I still need a couple more GSD t-shirts to have enough for every day of the week, though. :) Anyway, these are (mostly) madras plaids in ice-cream colors. I remember buying them, but can't think why I bought those colors--very different from what I usually wore at the time I bought them.

I've been gardening. Mostly pulling maple seedlings (I hate NOrway maples, have I mentioned that before?), but I also planted 9 Casablanca lilies (of which so far 3 are coming up--buy cheap, you get cheap), moved a tiny hosta to a place it's not likely to get walked on, planted some more ageratum (that's not spelled right), realized I wasn't going to put the pentas and petunias out front, so potted them up with some blue angelonia and set them near the blue and yellow violas, which will be quite pretty if the pentas decide to bloom again and the yellow violas get over themselves and bloom.

I'm planning to take Wednesday and Thursday off--when it's supposed to get back into the 90s, of course; I swear, whenever I take a vacation, it's too hot or a tree falls on the house or one of my animals dies. I think the only time a vacation worked out just fine was the trip Stella and I took to Stratford, Ontario. Anyway, the Asiatic lilies have started to bloom, so I'm going to dig up the cream-colored ones and move them to the east side of the house. They'll probably hate it, but too bad. I don't want them where they are. Then next year I'll have to look for the yellows, golds, oranges, and reds that I really want.

And I picked up a couple of odd jobs--one is an editing job, which won't be too hard--I've done jobs like this before--it's an older guy who's written about his life for, I guess, his family and friends. They don't like you messing with their words or structure; all he wants is for me to check his ms for stuff like spelling, typos, punctuation, and the like. I had no idea what to charge him--in the past I'd have charged a dollar a page. We settled on $12.50, which is probably too low, but it'll be some income.

A friend also paid me $50 to print some labels for her. I screamed that it was way too much, but she was obstinant. And actually it is kind of a long job. She collects quarters, and wants labels for them, but she doesn't want like one label per quarter--she wants 27 for this one and 32 for that one and 12 for another one. It's not at all hard, just a bit time consuming.

This weekend I got the dogs out 4 times a day. I was pleased, and they were happy, and I got a lot of knitting done. And I got to musing on how much I miss "nature," but that's another post. When we were inside I was watching Ken Burns' The Civil War and got interested in Grant and Sherman and Lee, so I went looking for books on Amazon. I picked out 5 that, new, totalled $88 plus shipping. Then I looked for used ones, and got the order down to $24 plus shipping. And THAT is one of my favorite things about Amazon. When they come I can leave off JRR Tolkien writing himself into a hopeless corner trying to fit his Christian values onto the Elves of Arda (Elves can only have one spouse--but Elves are immortal--and if one is slain or dies of grief, they go to the Halls of Mandos until they're ready to be reborn as their own children, when they remember the details of their past life--but meanwhile how is it fair for the spouse to wait 500 years or 1000 years to have children esp. since Elves only procreate during their (relative) youth when for all practical purposes the spouse is dead... He never did get out of that, but just kept digging himself in deeper and deeper until he broke off in midsentence, realizing, I suspect, how futile it was to sort it out) and the total incompetence of the Valar. A classic case of showing being more powerful than telling--he keeps TELLING us how powerful and loving and wise the Valar are (with the exception of Melkor), but the tales SHOW us self-absorbed, easily-duped beings who get their feelings hurt and wall themselves off (literally) from the world they're supposed to create and rule. Sheesh. Why am I torturing myself with this stuff? Well, partly because this series of Christopher Tolkien's shows a writer at work, how the mythos changed and grew and put out branches and roots. And what a tin ear the guy occasionally had. The same man who gave us beautiful words like Galadriel and Beleriand could also come up with Solosimpi and Tinfang Warble. And Bingo Baggins as the hero of his sequel to The Hobbit.

At any rate, once my books on Grant and Sherman and Lee come, I can leave behind the torments of Arda for the torments of the War Between the States.

And oh yes, I've been searching for more information on my 3 Civil War ancestors--in vain, I'm afraid. One was with the Army of Northern Virginia, one fought under Joe Johnston, and the other fought under Sherman. It's kind of thrilling, and terrifying, to see the names of famous battles associated with their units. What I wouldn't give for some old letters or diaries associated with them to turn up, along with a picture of each. Well, I have a photo of one either before or after the war--probably just after, since it's paired with a photo of his first wife and they weren't married until 1866 or thereabouts. And I suspect the Yankee looked a good deal like his younger brother, my great-great-grandfather, since his Army papers describe him as having dark hair and eyes like his brother. As for the Virginian, I haven't a clue. He's the younger brother of the wife mentioned above. (This really belongs in the genealogical blog, but you know, having names and faces--sort of--associated with the things being talked about in the documentary makes it real-er and more tragic. None of them actually were on the same battlefield, but that's only because one got wounded just before the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.) My mother's mother was the granddaughter of the man who served under Johnston and great-niece of the Virginian and the Yankee, and I understand she had the uniform of one or the other of them for many years, but I never saw it, darn it, and I don't know what happened to it after she died. And boy would I like to know if there were any personal papers associated with that uniform.

The Virginian got himself promoted to 2nd Lt., so I keep wondering if he might not appear in some orders or battle report or something, but so far no luck. Ah well. One of the little joys of genealogy--you just keep looking and poking around and asking and posting on boards and sometimes something pops up. Maybe I'll get lucky.