I have got to sit down tomorrow and relate to you the story of the invasion of my peaceful abode by the biggest, most flying-est palmetto bug (aka humongous cockroach) I have ever seen, and let me tell you, living in Texas my whole life as I have, I have seen more than my fair share of these abominations against nature. This was seriously the most horrifying one ever. It’s taken the cats and I almost 24 hours to track, maim, and kill the thing. What an adventure!

Well, it’s dead now, and I have to calm the cats down so I can go to bed in peace. They are still a little wound up about the whole thing. So am I for that matter. In fact, I think I have a sore throat from all the squealing like a school girl I have done tonight. LOL!

I have the best cats on the planet, even if it does occasionally take them a while to realize they should be KILLING THE FREAKING GIANT BUG and not lying around like sacks of flour. I guess they were just pretending to be useless.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend! We didn’t do much of anything. A lot of eating, watching movies, and lounging around in the den playing computer games. Laziness is good! It’s especially good when it leads to me feeling better, which this weekend did accomplish. Yeah!

I still don’t know exactly why I was feeling so wretched for a couple of weeks, but it seems like maybe I had a virus of some kind. Might have even been the flu. One of my local friends has flu now, and she’s reporting the same symptoms (only worse). Flu never hits me quite as hard as it does other people, probably because if there is a flu in existence, I’ve had it at least once and have a bit of immunity. All I know is I feel better, and that’s all that really matters at the moment.

Nothing much at all to report about our lazy long weekend, except that we watched some movies, two of which were really good and one which was weird but watchable. First up was Avatar, and the fact is everyone should see it. Yes, the story is a little old and possibly trite, but it’s a technological wonder and so well made. I’m definitely going to be needing the DVD in my collection, because I’m certain this is a film I’ll want to watch again and again. It’s got action, adventure, romance, fantastic (non-existent) locations, and the computer work is so well done it’s entirely possibly to completely forget the blue people don’t actually exist in reality. I’m one of those detail oriented movie viewers who can have my suspension of disbelief destroyed by the smallest of digital graphics work weirdness or (most especially) continuity errors), and I get totally sucked into the world and story of Avatar. Currently, it’s sitting in my top spot of Best Made Movies Ever … even over the LOTR trilogy (which I might add has loads of editing errors).

Then we watched The Road with Viggo Mortensen. A grim post-apocalypse future. A boy and his father trying to survive. Don’t expect any of the usual post-apocalypse Mad Max style nonsense, as it pretty much shows a world the way I think it probably would be after some major event killing most life on the planet. Mostly though, it’s a character drama, with the story revolving entirely around the relationship between the boy and the father. I liked it and didn’t like it at the same time. The acting was incredible, as one would expect from Viggo, and the cinematography was a fine piece of work, but I had unanswered questions at the end of the movie, and sometimes the characters behaved more stupidly than I would have expected them to behave. Those two things always leave a bad taste in my mouth after seeing a movie. Though if you are a fan of Viggo or can enjoy a movie just for it’s camera work and technical aspects while letting go of unanswered questions and overlooking the occasional character stupidity, it’s a good film.

The thing I wish I’d known going in was that all the dismal locations they were at actually exist in our reality (in the USA) right now, or did recently. The only CG work was changing the sky, and all that post-apocaplyptic awfulness was real and untouched by graphics work. Some scenes were filmed in New Orleans after Katrina, for example. Knowing that would have made the movie even more interesting to me on the cinematographic level. Worth seeing anyway, but I could have waited until it came out on one of the movie channels.

Monday night we rented a movie neither of us had even heard of before, just like The Road the night before. That’s always a risk. This time it paid off! Moon is the story of an astronaut working at a mining station on the moon, and then something unexpected happens. That’s really all I can say about it without giving away too much! It’s less a sci-fi movie and more a character drama with a good dose of mystery thrown in, but it was really, really interesting. The acting is great, the story -as outlandish as it seems to be- is plausible, and it’s a fun film that’ll keep you guessing on some things. Worth watching even if you aren’t into sci-fi movies. It’s a good story.

So other than watching movies, eating too much, and being lazy pigs, the lawn got mowed. So there’s the weekend wrap-up. Since I’m feeling better at long last, maybe I’ll actually have something to babble about this week. I haven’t been babbling enough lately.

Later I’ll have to sit down and tell the tale of the giant flying palmetto bug, but at the moment, the tale is ongoing with no resolution. Once that monster is dead, I will tell you all about my own personal horror story. LOL!

Well, I imagine today will be just like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that: me stuck at home, feeling crappy, doing housework and cooking, fighting weeds and bugs, tending to the cats’ every need, and being generally miserable. So … another boring day I expect will produce no posts of interest at all. I should just declare myself on blogging vacation and not even bother opening the posting window every morning. There seems to be little point in doing so.

No idea what time I fell asleep, but very shortly after I stretched out on the couch to ignore the news shows Lin was watching, I went out like a light. Lin woke me up at some point, and I vaguely remember moving to the bed, and then I slept straight through until my alarm went off. I think I might have actually gotten eight hours of sleep last night. Finally.

While getting some decent sleep has improved my mental state, I still physically feel like total crud. Not totally crappy enough to declare myself actually sick, but crappy enough to make life miserable. My best guess is it’s my allergies being just bothersome enough to wear down my immune system, and then I keep catching other stupid stuff, and there is other stupid stuff out there to catch. I have one friend down with something like flu, and a couple of friends seem to have colds right now. Yuck. Nothing worse than a summer cold.

And I feel fat on top of it. Oh, I know there is no definition of the word “fat” into which I fit, but still, I’ve gained some weight, thanks to not being as active as I normally am during the warmer months, and I don’t like it. Not much I can do about it, because I’m not going to starve myself to lose a couple pounds of weight, and I can’t really be as active as I usually am until the neck/back thing straightens out (that is getting much better on its own) and my energy level is higher. Just doing a little work in the garden wears me completely out, and if I manage to get in fifteen minute of my usual exercise routine done a day, I feel like I have accomplished something. Sucks, but there’s not much to be done about it at the moment. Eventually my health complaints will either go away or be dealt with, and then I’ll get active again and stop feeling fat.

I’d take something from my cornucopia of medications, if I knew which one to take. I certainly can’t take them all, at least not if I want to feel in the least bit human and useful. I have too much stuff to get done that requires using my brain to be too terribly brain dead right now. I think I’ll take one of my super-strength allergy pills today and see if that does anything at all for how I feel. I do believe the allergies are the source for feeling crappy. Maybe if I can get them under control (and get these two projects over and done with) I’ll start feeling better. Or … I’ll just have to seek medical assistance. Hate to do that when I am certain I am not about to die, but sometimes seeing a doctor is necessary, if only to put one’s mind at ease that one ISN’T about to die. I’m sure he’ll say I’m just a middle-aged woman going through menopause and having severe allergies and a bad back, the combination of which can make a person feel like they are dying. LOL!

I should go have a cup of coffee (started my day with Dr Pepper this morning), and then I need to get to that long-put-off bread baking. I’m certain not to feel too much like having dinner be a production number, so if I can get bread made today, we can have sandwiches and soup for dinner. In fact, if I get going on it right now, I can have a sandwich for lunch. Mmmmm. Sandwich on freshly baked bread. Now there’s some motivation to get moving!

Trying to decide what to do with my day. There’s a list, of course, but the list is going to have to be altered to take into account I have only had two hours of sleep. There’s just no way I will get done the things I planned to get done today. Therefore, the list must be trimmed.

Since I made pizza last night, and there are leftovers, I don’t have to make bread today. I keep putting that off, but I don’t like baking bread when I am utterly fatigued, and I have been utterly fatigued all week (longer, actually). So dinner will be leftover pizza, and a salad or pasta. Yippee … easy dinner.

I’ve been wanting to make cookies, but since we have ice cream, I can totally put that off too. So, no baking at all today. I can live with that.

The trash has to be taken out, the litter box has to be cleaned, and the dishes must be done. Luckily, these are all things that require no thought at all and shouldn’t take too long. If I have an energetic moment, I should also vacuum the living room rug before the cat hair on it gains sentience.

The bathroom desperately needs to be cleaned, but I desperately don’t want to do it today, so off the list it goes. We’ll survive another day (or two). I’m out of vinegar anyway, and using actual cleaning chemicals in the tiny room with no air circulation at all is probably not something I should do when already feeling like crap.

That leaves the quasi-fun stuff like working on that painting and playing around with a friend’s business logo and doing some sewing. As much as I would LIKE to do all of those things today, I imagine once I get the housework done I intend to get done, eat lunch, and check my online stuff, I’ll be completely wiped out and finally able to sleep. At least, I sort of hope so. I really need some sleep. Not sleeping is not helping me not feel like crap. Or maybe feeling like crap is what is keeping me from sleeping. Doesn’t matter which it is, I’m miserable, and I haven’t been having much fun lately.

Furthermore, if there’s going to be 90% humidity and no breeze at all, could it please just rain? The hot and steamy weather is not helping with my feeling miserable at all. Really, just rain already! I won’t mind! It might even help me sleep!

And don’t talk to me about the garden. It’s really depressing. The only thing doing well are the tomatoes (for which I am thankful) and the weedy basil. I’m sure I’ll be making a post to whine about the garden soon. I was really hoping for this spring season to be really stellar, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be. I don’t know if I even want to have a garden ever again.^†

Well, my alarm just went off, so I think I will now go officially start my day by making Lin’s coffee … and closing the windows and turning on the AC. It’s a freaking steam bath in the house, and I can’t take it anymore. The cats will just have to survive without their morning kitchen window time today.

1. † Don’t believe this for a minute. I’ll say I am giving up on the garden now, but you know I won’t. I am an addict. Even when it SUCKS, I can’t stop trying to make it not suck. [↩]