It was grey and overcast most of the day yesterday, and this morning I awoke to more of the same. While Lin assures me he was stuck in a torrential downpour Monday afternoon not too far from the house, we still haven’t gotten any rain in our neighborhood. Looking at the radar, it appears it will be slipping right by us again, though I can hear the rumblings of thunder and there is occasionally a brief bit of cool damp breeze that blows through. Actually, I don’t much like the way the sky looks at the moment. It looks like hail weather. Also, it’s so quiet outside, as if the whole city is still asleep. It feels oppressive and a little spooky. The breezes, when they are strong enough to be apparent, are nice. I turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows. Always nice to get a chance to air out the house a little.

Last night I made baked chicken for dinner, and it wasn’t the usual chicken. Lin decided to buy some organic, hormone and antibiotic free, grain-fed, “fancy” chicken (thighs and legs). I wish I had cooked it in one of my usual ways so I could have better judged if there was any difference between it and the chicken we usually get, but I had to go try a new recipe (baked it in milk which made a perfect gravy). It was fabulous, but now I don’t really know if it was the chicken that was different or the fact that I cooked it differently. When we go grocery shopping next, I’m going to get some more and try baking it the way I usually would (rubbed down with oil and salted lightly). While I think my new recipe would make just about any chicken turn out great, I suspect the organic chicken actually was better than the average stuff. For dark meat, it was extremely moist, and there wasn’t much about it that was “dark” at all. Had I de-boned it after baking, I think it would have passed for breast meat, and it was very meaty too. The best thing about it is the fact it isn’t all that much more expensive than the cage-raised, chicken pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. I’m glad to see the prices on organic foods coming down. I’ve always wanted to go more organic and natural, but in some cases, it’s been prohibitively expensive.

I’d love to get started on the housework today. This week’s Hotzone is the living room. I can’t very well do much of anything as far as cleaning goes until this storm passes though. The lighting situation in the living room is in sad shape, and it’s so dark in the house right now you’d think it was still night-time. It’s difficult to dust and clean when you can’t see the dust. I don’t really mind. A morning or day off would be nice. I’ve been doing really well on sticking with the new housecleaning system the last few days, and it’s starting to show. It’s just going to take time. We’ve had three years to get the house into this cluttered and dusty state. I can’t exactly expect it to be fixed in a few days … or even a few weeks … but I am happy to be able to see the progress at last.

OK, funny story … Sunday when the laundry was done, I took the time to iron my new towels and all of Lin’s shirts, as well as make certain all the buttons and hems were in good repair. Come Monday morning, Lin puts on one of his polo shirts … not one of the nicely pressed linen ones. I ask him why he didn’t wear one of the ones I had ironed. “They looked too nice. I didn’t want to mess them up.” I had to laugh. You see, I am not big on ironing and usually do it on an as-needed basis, meaning if he wants to wear a shirt that needs ironing, I will iron it moments before he puts it on. I think it shocked him that all of his shirts were perfectly pressed. This has never been the case, not in all the years we have been together. That’s going to change. I found that if I set the ironing board in front of the doorway between kitchen and hall, I can watch the TV while ironing, which makes being stuck in the kitchen doing a whole lot of ironing not quite so horrible and boring. And yes, I was really proud of myself when I looked at how great Lin’s shirts turned out. I do wish he’d stop buying linen shirts though. They are awful to iron.

It’s starting to get really stormy here with lots of lightning and finally a bit of rain. I think I’ll make myself a cup of tea and go sit on the porch and enjoy it while it lasts. Damn does it feel GOOD to get some rain here at the house!

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is “a lie” and God and the nation’s founding fathers did not intend the country be “a nation of secular laws.”

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will “legislate sin,” including abortion and gay marriage.

Harris made the comments — which she clarified Saturday — in the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, which interviewed political candidates and asked them about religion and their positions on issues.

Separation of church and state is “a lie we have been told,” Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is “wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers.”

If you hear a loud booming noise, that would be my head exploding. I am speechless.

A few days ago the News 8 Poll asked whether or not victims of Hurricane Katrina should continue to get government assistance. An overwhelming number of those who voted and commented on the poll had harsh and heartless things to say. They want the “freeloaders” to stop getting assistance, because “a year is long enough.” These people should “get jobs now” or “go back to New Orleans.” I have to assume none of the commenters has ever had a life crisis which caused them to lose everything in their life.

Today News 8 started a series on the Kartrina victims that made their way to Austin, and I wish the poll had been put up at the same time as the first installment so some of these hard-nosed commenters could hear about some of the problems these people have been having getting jobs and housing. Not that it would have made much difference, I think. When your heart is cold, your ears can’t hear.

It’s not as easy as it sounds to just go get a job and an apartment or house in Austin, especially if you are starting out with nothing at all. One of the biggest problems? Transportation.

Many evacuees relied on public transportation in New Orleans and didn’t need a car in the city.

“I’ve heard some of the cynical comments, ‘Well, some of these folks should get a job.’ Well, it’s very difficult when you don’t have a car and you can’t catch a bus,” Pastor Roy Jones of Community Action Development and Assistance (C.A.D.A.) said.

This is something I can speak to personally, since I often experience long periods of time when I don’t have a reliable car of my own. Our public transportation system sucks. It’s fine if you live and work where the busses travel, but there are many areas of Austin which are under-served by the bus system, and heaven help you if you have to be at work at 6 am or get off of work after 11 pm. The bus system closes up shop at night. Some of the commuter routes run even shorter periods of time.

When I was attending college classes here in Austin, I would have to catch the earliest bus available, make three transfers as I traveled across town, and after a two and a half hour trip, I would find myself getting to the North Transfer Station praying the shuttle which represented the last leg of my journey hadn’t already left. At least three times a week I had to run down the highway after the shuttle hoping they would see me and stop. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes the shuttle had been gone so long, my only option was to wait an hour for the next one and miss a class. By the time I had gotten to school, I had spent about 3 hours on buses just to get across town … a trip of about 20-30 minutes in a car. It sucked, but it was my only option.

Luckily, you can miss a few days of class and not get kicked out of school. The same cannot be said about jobs. If you are continually late or miss work due to transportation problems, you will find yourself jobless. In fact, many places in town won’t even hire you unless you have “reliable transportation of your own,” and they ask that right on the application. Even employers know the local bus system can’t be considered to be reliable transportation.

My next brush with using the bus system for something other than trips to stores or the library, for things that are time and schedule dependent, was when I was working at TJX. I would catch the bus outside my apartment door and ride it as far south as I could. Then I had to walk a mile through a cow field to get to the mall. The journey was repeated in reverse every afternoon. If the weather was stormy, I had to walk along the highway where there were a few stretches of sidewalk and hardened dirt paths (from all the other people who made that trek daily). This made the walking portion of my trip to and from work a mile and a half long, and by the time I got to work, I was soaking wet and covered in mud, so I always had to carry my work clothes in tightly-sealed plastic bags and change when I got there. In this case, rain or not, it took me about an hour or more of bus riding and walking to make a trip that would only take 10 minutes by car, and on those nights when I had to work until closing? I had to run that mile or more to get to the bus before the last one left at 11 pm. I often didn’t make it, and that meant walking another 4 or so miles to get home. It’s a good thing I was in my twenties then, because I have to tell you, I would not be able to keep that up for any length of time if I had to do it today. And all of that effort was for a job that, at the time, paid a quarter over minimum wage. If I’d been on my own and not with Lin, I wouldn’t have been able to pull any of it off or even survive. Not that we were surviving so well back then. Those were the lean years when Lin was going back to school and working as a bartender.

Simply put, unless you are lucky in where you live and work, the bus system is not going to be helpful to you. Unlike other major urban areas, we do not have reliable public transportation in Austin.

As to the housing, we were having a housing crunch before Katrina hit. It doesn’t surprise me they are having problems finding affordable housing in Austin. Oh sure, new apartments are being built all the time, but they are the upscale variety that even Lin and I couldn’t afford to live in, and they are nowhere near a bus line.

So how are people who have lost everything supposed to acquire an apartment, a car, and a job in this town? I agree, it would be great if everyone could be settled into a new and productive life a year after the event, but this city doesn’t make it easy to do so. Austin is no longer a cheap place to live, and if the comments on that poll are any indication, it’s not a very nice place to live anymore either. I pray none of the commenters never have to go through the experience of losing everything and being shipped to another state to start over. Though it might change their tune, I wouldn’t wish something that awful on anyone.

We went to Sears. As has happened every time I have walked into a Sears store, I didn’t find a damn thing I wanted to buy. I don’t like their clothes, I don’t like the housewares, and what I really don’t like is the outrageous prices on stuff. The funny thing is they didn’t have any kitchen linens at all. None. It was weird.

Lin needed to drive around to a few of his work sites, so that’s what we did next, and when I noticed we were close to the shopping center that has a Big Lots store in it, I asked if we could stop for a minute or two. We did, and that was when I found the dish towels of my dreams.

100% Egyptian cotton, lint free, and embroidered with kittens and dishes. They are even blue and unbleached white. It wasn’t until after I bought two packs of three and got them out to the truck that I noticed they are Martha Stewart brand. I can’t believe I got them for a dollar a towel plus tax. So they aren’t hand embroidered, don’t have the weekdays on them, and I only have six, but hey … they are PERFECT all the same and a great bargain! I’m so excited, I am doing the happy dance! I may even be inspired to do the dinner dishes right after dinner tonight, just so I can use one of my new towels (which are going in my load of laundry for today about five minutes from now).

Then we stopped at Goodwill where I found one of those drain plugs with the little metal sieve on it (to keep crap from going down the drain) for a whole buck-fifty. We haven’t had one since we moved in, and it’s been annoying me no end. It doesn’t work for plugging the drain, because I swear our sink is a nonstandard size or something, but I have a plug that works just fine. I just wanted something to catch anything and keep it from disappearing down the sink and causing plumbing issues. Now I can stop stressing about that.

Yippee! Shopping therapy worked today! Finally! Amazing how happy getting dish towels can make a person isn’t it?

Now I am off to call Mom for a few minutes and start planning dinner. Lin and I both had a semi-productive day today, and that’s a good thing. I’m hoping I can keep it up.

Maybe you have been wondering how I have been doing with the new de-cluttering/housecleaning system or maybe not. Either way, I’ll tell you.

Not well. I’m not entirely failing to do the things I should do every day, but my sink … it does not shine. I have yet to get a handle on getting the dishes done every day before going to bed. The simple fact is I am tired of doing the dishes by hand. I loathe the task with a passion that knows no bounds. The simple problem is there is no room in the kitchen for an automatic dishwasher of any size. I am going to be stuck doing the dishes by hand until the kitchen gets remodeled or I die of old age, whichever comes first.

I also haven’t gotten a handle of swishing and swiping the bathroom daily. I hate being in the bathroom at all. I hate my bathroom.

I have been getting dressed in real clothes every day, and today I even put on shoes which is one of FlyLady’s biggies. She’s big on putting on shoes every morning. I have also been drinking all my water every day, but I always did that anyway, and I am getting better at putting things away when I am done with them. Additionally, I have spent 15 minutes here and there hitting “hotspots” and de-cluttering … not that you can see much difference yet. The biggest change is doing a load of laundry every day. I am finding I like doing one load a day. I am almost caught up on the laundry, and I can see in the future, there will be days when I don’t even have a load to do. I look forward to the future.

So my progress has been middling at best. I’m not going to beat myself up about it. All you can do is the best you can do, even if others may not see that as being good enough. While the house isn’t showing vast improvement, my mental attitude is better. I at least feel like I am trying harder, and one of these days all those little 15 minute mad cleaning sprees will begin to make a difference.

On the list for household work today is cleaning the stove and microwave, taking out the trash, and washing the trash-can inside and out … and finishing up the last two pots from last night’s dinner. Then, just maybe, I’ll get around to shining my sink. I really want to shine my sink. I also want to go to Sears and use the last of my gift card for some new dish towels. I want one for every day of the week. Last night I looked at getting tea towels and doing those old vintage “days of the week” embroidery on them, but a) the supplies to do so are out of my budget range and b) I suck at embroidery. I think I am going to put the word out that I’d like some embroidered “days of the week” towels for Xmas, but I don’t think anyone in my family does that kind of embroidery either or would want to bother making them for me. So I guess I’ll have to settle for whatever inexpensive dish towels I can find at Sears. Somehow, I don’t think they are going to end up being all that inexpensive, but I need more than the one towel I have now, and it’d be nice to have a new one every day of the week.

You know, while it’s true that I live in a dusty, cluttered wreck of a house, I am actually a clean freak. I think this may be one of the things that leaves me feeling so blue all the time. I just can’t seem to get “caught up” on the house cleaning, and it makes me a little crazy. I guess I’ll just keep plugging away at it, and maybe someday I’ll have a spotless and beautiful home. Or … maybe that will never happen.

I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty depressed today. Didn’t sleep well and had all sorts of awful dreams.

I’m going to go clean the stove now, then maybe I can convince Lin to take me to Sears. I’d take myself in the truck, but the store is in one of those areas of town I don’t drive in even with a vehicle I am familiar with. It’s a traffic nightmare there no matter the day of the week. Besides, I am feeling fuzzy in the head, and I hate driving when my mind isn’t in its right place.

Was today only Saturday? Ugh. That means I have to put up with Lin for another whole day. He’s being annoying. Not at this particular moment, seeing as he’s sleeping and he actually went to the bedroom to do so … but in general, he’s being annoying.

What did I do today, you ask? Not much. Lin had to go to the gas station, so I tagged along and got that gallon of gas I needed for the Dart. That led to messing around with the Dart and trying to figure out what the problem with it is. It isn’t a lack of gas. I knew that as soon as I started pouring the gas into the tank and heard it hitting other gas already there. So I tried starting it. Turns over just fine. Won’t start. Next I opened the hood and checked all the fluids, since I had the thing open, might as well, right? They were all fine, though it needed a few cups of water to top off the radiator. Then I opened the air filter to look at the carb. That’s when it struck me that I wasn’t smelling the usual gasoline smell. Seeing as I had just tried several times to start it and it hadn’t started, there should have been quite a strong gas smell. There was none at all. Knowing there is gas in the car, and knowing that everything else is working right, the only thing the lack of a gas smell could mean is the gas isn’t getting to the carb. I stuck my finger down into it, and sure enough … bone dry.

Now at least I know where to start looking for the problem. It started getting dark, so I didn’t really want to get too into poking around in and under the car. I put a few teaspoons of gas in the carb, and tried starting it again. It roared up and then died as it sucked that little bit down. Then the battery said no more. You can only try starting it so many times before it drains the battery. Dammit. Tomorrow when I get up, I’m going to hook up the charger and dig out the mechanical manual. Basically, it could be the fuel filter, the fuel line, or the carb’s jets that are clogged with gunk from when I ran out of gas … or the fuel pump might be non-functioning or gunked up as well. While I am more than a little annoyed about it all, I am considering myself very lucky I made it home from running errands that day. It could have decided to not start again in the Hobby Lobby parking lot, and that would have sucked about 10,000 times worse than it not starting in my own driveway. At least it’s at home and parked in a location where it can be worked on without hassle … although we are going to have to push it back a few feet the next time Lin wants to get the lawn tractor out of the back yard. Perhaps that will inspire him to help me work on the car. I doubt it. I secretly thinks he likes it when I don’t have a car. Apparently he believes it gives him full reign to be an ass, because what am I going to do about it. Leave? On foot? Did I mention he’s being annoying?

I also started working on OrbiZart. I built something of a test site using iWeb, just to see how that would work out. It might work out really well. You can check it out if you want to, but be forewarned, there are some things broken, and most of the stuff there now is just placeholders and test “babble”. Nothing new, in other words.

And … Lin forced me to drive the truck around the block. It made me very nervous, but his new truck does seem pretty easy to drive. I guess I’ll get better at it (OK, I stalled it at a stop sign, sue me). I’ll probably do better at it when he isn’t sitting in the passenger seat barking orders at me and acting like I’d never driven anything before. My dad did that when he first taught me to drive too, and I hated it so much I pulled the car over about two blocks from the house and told him to get out, and then I drove off. I taught myself to drive just fine, thank you very much (in the Dart, no less). I don’t do well with people barking at me or sitting there fidgeting and acting nervous themselves … or making fun of me. I guess some evening this week I’ll take it to the craft store or some other nearby location ALONE. That’s the only way I am going to figure out for myself how sensitive the clutch is and when exactly I need to shift. These really aren’t things you can tell someone. They have to get the feel of it themselves. It’s not like I can’t drive a standard. I did, after all, drive his huge and nasty old work truck almost all the way to Waco to pick up Lin and Kenny when they had car trouble. Obviously, I am capable of doing it well enough.

Oh, and I made a real dinner, which is something of an oddity for weekend meals. Normally we have sandwiches or microwaveable stuff, but I was really hungry and wanted something really good. The end result was mushrooms, Brussels sprouts and fake crab sautéed in lemon-garlic butter and served on a bed of Alfredo pasta, as you can see in the photo above. I wish I had made more, because there aren’t any leftovers, and it would have made a great midnight snack. It was so rich, you could feel your arteries hardening with every bite.

Since tomorrow is likely going to be another long, hot, boring and annoying day, I suppose I should go to bed and get some rest. What I really feel like doing though is drawing, and maybe I’ll do just that … for a little while at least. Might be easier to go to sleep if my mind is relaxed. Also might help if I were at least a wee bit sleepy, which I am not at the moment. What I am is agitated about my car situation. It’s hard to sleep when you are agitated.

Little link dump at Links of Note.

Pointy stuffed kitty-cats are cute! You can find the free pattern to make your own right here (as well as some other cute free patterns), and look at the Wee Wonderfuls Pointy Kitties Pool at Flickr for inspiration.

I have GOT to make me some of these. Really, really cute … and who doesn’t need a bunch of cute stuffed kitties sitting around their house.

Of course, first I’ll have to make room for the sewing machine somewhere … and clean and oil the sewing machine … and then find all my sewing tools. Ugh. I wish I had a craft room. I was supposed to have a craft room, but for the last three years, my “craft room” has been filled with boxes of junk we apparently haven’t missed at all in the three years we have been living here. I swear, that stuff has to go. I WANT A CRAFT ROOM SO I CAN SEW POINTY KITTIES!

Those of you who keep beer mugs in the freezer, go right now and verify none of them are in positions from which they may move by themselves and bludgeon you on the head. Heed my warning.

Last night I was taking a bag of seasoned french fries out of the bottom of the freezer, when suddenly and with not even so much as a sound of warning, I was beaned on the head by a very heavy bar-type beer mug which had somehow mysteriously removed itself from the top shelf in the freezer. You know the big ones with the heavy bottoms? Yeah, one of those. Then, the girl who almost never cries due to physical pain, grasped her head, dropped to the floor and wept … but not until an extremely unladylike stream of expletives escaped my lips. Who knew I know more than two curse words?!

Lin didn’t make the trip to the kitchen to determine my physical state until he heard the weeping and wailing. Apparently the sounds of me cursing loudly from the kitchen is a common event in his eyes. I swear … I only swear when I burn the toast, which is never my fault, by the way. Our toaster sucks. It was made in the 70’s. Anyway, after making sure I was breathing, able to think somewhat rationally, and there wasn’t any blood to be found anywhere, he returned to his TV show, and I returned to weeping and making french fries.

While the initial pain of being bludgeoned by a beer mug was horrendous, mostly due to the unexpectedness of it (and the weight of these particular mugs), the on-going agony caused by the lump left on my head is going to drive me even more insane than I already am. Holy hell! I thought when I woke up today, it wouldn’t hurt quite so badly, but I was mistaken. It still hurts BADLY. I don’t have any other symptoms of a concussion, so I guess I’m not going to end up brain damaged … but still … OW OW OW! I shouldn’t be so surprised it still hurts, seeing as this large mass of heavy glass fell at least three feet before striking my skull. It had some good momentum built up. Good thing I have a thick brain protector huh?

Remember folks, I have these grand adventures and face these perilous events so you don’t have to. Rather than having to be bashed in the head with a stray beer mug, you can learn from my mistakes. Go … GO NOW … and make sure any large heavy beer mugs you may have in the freezer aren’t going to bash you in the head the next time you get out the french fries.

I have been a whirlwind of productivity this morning. Unfortunately, it’s not the housework I have been expending my precious energy on. No, I decided I wanted to play around with iWeb some more, and thus a new section of Just Orb was born: Scrapbook. As far as I can tell, it will render and function adequately in all the latest browsers. The code is compliant, and so actually, I’m not caring all that much right now if it looks like crap in IE … though I’ve been told it doesn’t.

For the record, I am loving iWeb. When I want to throw together a quick and easy photo gallery, it’s just the tool for the job. I don’t even mind using pre-made templates (which you know I usually hate). As I get more photos organized, I’ll add more scrapbooks (and make one just for movies). For now though … I am feeling somewhat accomplished. That must mean it’s time to go do the dishes, plan dinner, and then get some sleep.

Yup, still on my whacked-out sleep schedule. Nothing to be done about it really except wait for it to roll around and adjust to something more normal.

On a mostly unrelated note: I think most of the problems I have been experiencing while visiting my own web site, as well as some problems I have been having with my computer, are being caused by Firefox. I may have to start using Safari, which isn’t the end of the world, but I do hate changing browsers.

And if there are problems viewing or using the new gallery, please do let me know. No guarantee that I can or will fix it, but I’d like to know all the same … in case I decide to try to fix it.