Mountain Mama's Point Of View

  Insomnia is my constant night time companion. I always ask myself if I should just get up, or stay in bed. If I stay in bed, I won't sleep, but I won't disturb the other occupants of the bed. I will be miserable and want to toss and turn .... On the other hand, if I try to slip quietly out of the bed, the dogs will know I am not there. Toni Louise and Mr. BoJangles will follow me. The doxies will sit at the end of the bed and cry for me eventually. Toni will ascertain that no treats are forthcoming and find her way back to her master's bed to take over my side of the bed. I will have to get up from the couch to let Cujo and Eddie down to follow me and Bo will run to and fro, trying to decide whether to sleep in the bed or on the couch. The dogs will sleep as long as I am present and accounted for. Most nights I will finally succumb around 3 or 4 am and fall into a fitful sleep, only to be awakened by 7:30 by Bo, the keeper of time here. Oh, I can let the dogs out and they...

  This past week seems to have flown by. Cool nights and pleasant days have had me outside working my butt off (if only that could be). Changing clothes three times a day to try to stay dry. I have a dermotology consult in my future. They seem to think injecting botox in my sweat glands to stop the intense sweating. I don't know that I am too happy about that, but I will go. Got all the lattice up by the She Shed. Yes, it does look a little wavy. The ground is full of rocks and hard as cement, so driving those fence stakes into the ground is no job for one so weak as I! There will be plants climbing and holding it together. Bachelor Buttons have been planted on the far end, and a nice clematis on the very end. Not too sure what this vine is, I rescued it at Walmart. It was one of those baskets with various plants in it. This was in the middle surrounded by some tiny white flowered plants. Any idea what it is? I suppose I could look it up ... Elephant Ears on steroids? They just kee...

  Still a work in progress, landscaping my She Shed "yard". But I made it all the way to the end!!!! I lost count of the number of bags of mulch I have spread. The past couple of days were spent on 7 bags and I have finally finished! Not that I won't pick up a few more bags, you know, just in case ... It goes without saying that I will never really be done. Gardens never are. But now this one is established and will be easier to fill with tons of color next year. You can see the beginning our our drive here. That sign says PRIVATE DRIVE. I put my chainsaw frog in front of it and today I will put our house numbers on it. I would have preferred a dog with very short legs, but the guy making it to pay us back for letting him have some downed trees said he had no idea how to make a dachshund, hence the frog. I am still confused about it, because if you can do an eagle, a cardinal or a frog, why can't you do a dog? Another view of my efforts later in the day when I hiked u...

  After I posted yesterday, I tackled the kitchen and all its surfaces. The night before I thought I felt a flea on my face in bed. Maybe I imagined it? Maybe not. I had bathed the dogs and applied their monthly dose of flea and tick killer yesterday. This is not a task to be taken lightly. My dream home would include a dog bathing station, counter height to spare my back. For now, I lean over the tub and use the hand held shower attachment to accomplish doggy cleanliness. After I bathed Eddie, I sat on the toilet seat and dried him vigorously with his second towel, the first one soaked and on the floor. He has hairy toes, my Charming Eddie and I have attempted a good trim several times in the past. That hair around his toes and on the bottom of his feet gathers dirt and sand and distributes it on my floors and sheets. Eddie is quite vulnerable after a bath. He likes to be held close while I whisper sweet nothings in his ears as I clean them. I took full advantage of his weakened s...

  Life goes on. Now we start a new round of pre-op testing with back to back appointments. Every night when my insomnia hits I fantasize about my She Shed. I want to get started on organizing. I have put it off to garden and get the outdoors more to my liking. I don't want to start unless I can really make some headway. But I want to get started before winter! We had appointments with our primary doctor tomorrow. Those had to be rescheduled in favor of a stress test that will have us up and at 'em at 6:30 AM to get there in time. I did toy with the idea of doing both appointments tomorrow, but the offices are in different cities and we would be cutting it close if everything went on schedule, so I rescheduled.  HeWho has two appointments this week. One is tomorrow and one is Thursday. Same location. Why they are unable to accomplish both tests in one visit is a mystery to me. To further confuse issues, the scheduling person called HeWho instead of me. I heard the conversation ...

  My strawberry plants are blooming. They hovered between dying and surviving since I put them in the ground. I decided to move them to a sunnier location since the carport cast a shadow over them and now they are blooming. Only 4 plants survived, so if I get any berries, it will be just a handful. A baby gourd!!! Two years in a row I planted gourds and they produced a crazy amount of gourds. Since then, no matter where or how I planted them, they just withered and the vines turned brown. I planted these without any expectation next to the lattice. The soil there is silty with clay and I didn't really expect then to even come up. The vines are covering the lattice and there were 3 tiny gourds this morning. After I said hello to the baby gourds, I went behind the house to pull some weeds creeping into my mulched in flower bed that faces the ravine. Nobody sees it but me, but I am important! I was trying to stay close to the house while HeWho was still sleeping. 65 degrees had me out...

  I woke at 6:30 and started the day. A quick cup of coffee to drink while I sorted pills for the next two weeks, then I showered and dressed before I woke the man who would be denied food and drink. I fed and watered the animals while he dressed, then we headed out for the hospital in Atlanta. Siri assured us that it should only take a couple of hours, but we left early just in case. HeWho is never without a drink close by (used to be Diet Coke before the nurse practitioner confirmed that his wife was right about the sodium content). He normally has flavored water or ice tea to sip on all day. He was a little irritable. We drove the route that took us through Helen from Hiawassee. The road through the mountains is treacherous with only two lanes and crazy curves at 20 mph. We encountered road repair twice and had to wait. The switch backs and the steep drop on the side of the road makes me nervous. When we went this way in the big motorhome, we could smell the brakes burning!! We ...

  Rain coming down in buckets and predicted to rain like this all day long. All the dirt I hacked off the side of the mountain to cover the drain pipe is now making its way through the yard. Clay, I should say. So, I was sitting here sipping coffee and watching Netflix when the power went off. No problem I say to myself, I have some chores to attend to anyway. I pull the dog towels out of the washer, having put them in last night before I went to bed. Normally, I hang them outside to dry. But, it is raining. So, myself thinks I should just toss them in the dryer ... but can't do that, it requires electricity. No worries, I take them onto the porch and drape them over the outdoor chairs. I know they won't dry, but they won't sour, either. In case you may be wondering hat "dog towels" are; they are the towels used when bathing the dogs. I wash them separately and add a good dose of bleach to them and they are always a bit hairy, too. The mopping did not require any ...