I’ve had this post in draft mode for days. I guess it’s time to get it finished and posted!

Here are the Artist Trading Cards I received this month:

The top ones are from her_darcy: Fairy Tales: The Little Mermaid and Fairy Tales: The Snow Queen. Pretty background images/collage with little books containing quotes from the stories. Very cute! The bottom ones are from daisylullaby: The Little Prince 4/4 and The Little Prince 3/4. Collages of images and words from The Little Prince (one of my favorite stories).

Behind the cut are photos of the ones I sent out earlier this week. No peeking, those of you I am trading with.
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I was going to rant about some local news, but I hadn’t gotten to it yet. Jen has summed it up nicely, so go read about it over at her place on the ‘net: Hysteria.

I reserve the right to rant about it some other time though, because it’s one of those things that pushes my freaking buttons. It involves, kids, strangers, stupidity and hysteria.

Having food in the house again is sooooo wonderful! I’m actually glad to be off my Housewife Strike. This was the best meal we have eaten in ages. Mmmmm … tasty ravioli!

Huge desktop clearing link dump at Links of Note. Lots of good things to look at and listen to and play with … and just a little ranting.

Today’s weather forecast contains a 10% chance of thunderstorms. Yeah. Right. Don’t count on it at all. A week or so ago there was a 50% chance of thunderstorms, and while some of my local friends were thrilled to experience this thing called “rain,” we didn’t see a single drop of it at our house. I am weary of this drought. I am sick of summer.

I got my first emails from FlyLady telling me what I should be doing today (and every day). I am to scrub my kitchen sink until it shines (guess I’ll need to finish the dishes first, huh), drink plenty of water (not going to be a problem, I’m a water-drinker), “Swish and Swipe” my bathroom (going to take more than that to make it clean enough for guests), and start doing one load of laundry a day. So far, this sounds easier than what I would normally be planning on doing, but since they send out about ten emails a day, let’s see what else I should be doing today.

One thing I SHOULD consider doing today is getting some sleep. I knew all that sleeping late during my Housewife Strike was going to bite me in the butt. Also, I have been having some vivid nightmares again. These seem to center around someone coming into the house while we are sleeping and creeping down the hall to the bedroom. I suspect these might be caused by the fact we are now closing the bedroom door at night, since there isn’t a cat that will want to get in. I haven’t slept in a totally dark room with a closed door in 12 years. I like the totally dark bit, but the closed door combined with the noisy AC/Heater across the hall from it means I can’t hear a damn thing going on in the rest of the house. Also, there used to be Unauthorized Cat Noises in the house at night, and now it’s totally quiet all the time. That’s really starting to bother me.

Speaking of cats: I miss Fuzza something awful. I’m finally almost completely over the crying stage, though I do still sometimes get myself worked up about it while trying to fall asleep, and I am not constantly checking his water and food bowls (which have been long gone for a while now) when I pass from the den to the kitchen. I do still expect to see him sitting there when I walk in the front door from running errands or doing the shopping. In fact, I expect him to be sitting there every time I come back into the house, because he always was sitting there waiting.

In further cat news, I’d like to advise rescue groups of one thing: If you make it even more difficult to adopt a cat from you as it would be to adopt a human child, you will find many people put off by your intrusiveness. I can see making certain the people you are adopting to will care for the cat properly and would be decent owners and not abuse the animal, but really … having to keep them updated on every visit to the vet for the life of the pet, requiring that they only be fed the things you think they should be fed, and having home visits for the first year or longer? That’s slightly insane. If you can’t tell after a vet reference, an application and an interview that the person standing before you who wants a cat isn’t some insane Satanist planning to use it for dark rituals (or just a bad pet parent), you shouldn’t be in the business of adopting out pets … or maybe you are wee bit too connected to the animals and have lost the ability to interact with and judge the abilities and motives of human beings.

I guess I should get on with my day … scrubbing my sink and swishing my toilet and all that … and then maybe a nap. Or maybe the nap first. It looks like Lin is going to be working at home again for a while, and having to be quiet is making me sleepy.

I got the dishes done. OK, not ALL of them. There were three bowls that require a little soaking. You’d think I’d learn to rinse out bowls after using them to make anything doughy, but no … I never seem to learn.

I’m getting really determined to do something about the state of this house. I can’t take the clutter anymore. Lin seems to think I don’t mind the clutter, but the truth is I have gotten used to ignoring it. I’m not going to get any help getting rid of it, no matter how long I wait for that to happen, and so I have GOT to do something about all the junk we don’t need, don’t use, and could do without. It’s impossible to clean around it, and moving it to clean is out of the question. There aren’t enough hours in the day to get THAT done.

I found a web site, FlyLady, that has a system for creating good household habits for cleaning and de-cluttering … slowly, over time. At first glance, it seemed silly and stupid, but after reading through the web site, I’ve decided to give it a go. I’m going to do my best to stick to it too. I really want this to work. I suck at getting this stuff done without someone telling me what to do when. I have to have an agenda, a plan, a mission. I think this system might give me that. We’ll see how that goes.

Additionally, I am going to print myself up a daily planner using the templates at D*I*Y Planner. I don’t know where my daily planner notebook from college is, so until I run across it while de-cluttering the house, I guess I’ll have to clip the pages together. That’ll do for now. I was a much happier and better organized person when I used a daily planner. I don’t know why I ever stopped. Oh, wait … yes I do. The reason is utterly unimportant. I just shouldn’t have ever stopped that good habit I had of being super-organized with my life. It’s going to be hard to get back into that again, but as with doing something about the house, I am determined to succeed at using a daily planner again as well.

I have GOT to get my life in order and on a schedule. I can’t take it anymore. Left to my own devices, I’d be doing dishes at 3 am, watching stupid old movies or educational TV shows until dawn, and then sleeping the day away. While some aspects of that make me happy, overall, it’s not a great way to live.

Of course, somewhere along the line I hope to figure out what to do about the insomnia that makes staying up all night even when I have been up all day seem like the thing to do. This may or may not require actually taking pills to deal with it. I am not thrilled with that idea, but at some point I may try some over-the-counter products first and see what happens.

I just want to be normal, you know? I just want to be awake during the day like a normal person, have a presentable house like a normal person, and know what’s happening when in my life like a normal person. I’m probably asking too much of myself.

Being a glutton for punishment, I made another post at Metafilter. Once again, I thought I’d drop it here as well. I know not all of you slog through Metafilter every day like some of us addicts do.

Have fun with your food! You may never look at fair foods the same way again thanks to this year’s ad campaign for the Utah State Fair. (Warning: videos auto-start)

The ads are pretty silly and funny, but I expect to be razzed into the next century for them not being the Best of the Web … something we so rarely see at Metafilter anymore, unless you think endless squabbling about politics and current events is Best of the Web. I personally don’t. I’d rather see singing and dancing fair foods.

What am I doing awake and surfing the Utah State Fair web site at this hour of the day? Avoiding doing the dishes. I’ve successfully avoided doing them all night … so far.

I have run across two web sites that I have to use that insist I must use Internet Explorer. I decide to bite the bullet and install the last version of IE that Microsnot put out for Macs. Lo and behold, not only are they no longer going to produce IE for Macs (which I had heard about), but they won’t even let you download the last version.

INTERNET EXPLORER FOR MAC NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

In June 2003, the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit announced that Internet Explorer for Mac would undergo no further development, and support would cease in 2005. In accordance with published support lifecycle policies, Microsoft ended support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and is not providing any further security or performance updates.

Accordingly, as of January 31st, 2006, Internet Explorer for the Mac is no longer available for download from Microsoft. It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple’s Safari.
–source

Fine. I guess I’ll have to keep my ancient Windows box on my desk for the rest of my life just so I can access those two web sites that stupidly insist I use a crappy browser. I didn’t want to install IE on My Precious anyway. The HORROR!

If I should decide to change my mind about that, I did find a place to get the latest Mac version. Thank you Wikipedia … I think.

Lin: So if people are shooting at me, are you going to grab a gun and come save me?
Orb: Of course.

We discovered a wasp nest attached to the door frame of the front door. Forgot to do anything about it before we went to get groceries. We were bringing in the groceries, when I hear Lin scream he’d been stung. I grab the can of bug spray, run through a swarm of angry wasps, stand about five feet away and blast the things dead on the first shot. Yup … a real “Here I come to save the day” sort of moment.

And yes … we went grocery shopping at last. Lin “helped” … somewhat. I sent him off to start at the produce department while I started at the paper-goods and dairy. The plan was to meet in the meat department and tackle the canned goods and other aisles together. When I arrived at the meat department, my basket already getting quite full, I found him still in the produce department picking out lemons … so I finished up all the aisles myself. Gods, he is slow about shopping.

My Housewife Strike sort of officially ended last night when I decided I had to do his laundry, because I couldn’t have him leaving the house in dirty clothing. Now the kitchen is fully restocked again, I suppose my strike is most definitely over. Not that anyone learned anything from it, but at least I had a few days to goof off and not feel guilty about not doing the housework. Of course there’s now a huge pile of dishes to do, and after dinner, I guess I’ll get to those … unless there’s something worth watching on TV, which will mean putting them off until the morning.

Dammit. Now that we have coffee beans in the house again, no more sleeping late for me. That’s going to suck. I’d gotten used to not getting up at the crack of dawn every day. Oh well … vacation is over.

Best news of the day? I ran into Crazy Linda at the grocery store, and she said they were heading out in the morning to go camping and would be gone for a while. Yippee!!! The insane neighbors are going to be gone a while! I better use my that time wisely to enjoy being able to be out in my yard without having to deal with them. I’ve been wanting to lay out in the sun and try to get a bit of a tan before we have to go to a pool party at Lin’s boss’s house, and this seems like a good time to get that done. Not that I tan, per se, but Lin seems to think I should make the effort to not be the whitest girl in America. The end result will be me being pink or maybe even red. I guess that’s slightly better than being printer-paper white.

Eh, well … nothing else to report or complain about. Been sort of a slow and boring day. I could do with a few more like it, and seeing as the insane neighbors are going to be gone, I might just get my wish.

Christmas may still be a ways off, but it’s never too early to learn about the joys of tree decorating with cats.

Oh, it’s just too cute.