Airy Nothing Chatter

Today has been about as blah as a day can be. I did not want to get up. Once I did, I knew why. My hip has been hurting all day and that's with the Vicodin! I don't really understand the on/off deal with this pain. It's not as bad with the Vicodin as without, but it's a pain, not an ache. Aches are easier to deal with. I suppose it's a bonus that my back isn't feeling much.

I finally found my water bottle. I was reusing the ones the water came in, but I don't want to buy more water. (Except for Mom and Alex because they both like the flavored water that's too acidic for me.) I am using the filtered water from the refrigerator and putting the Tea To Go in it. I think Mandarin Mango is my favorite, but they're all good.

I got my shelves cleared of non books. Now it's a matter of fitting all the books in. Probably the mass market paperbacks will end up on a different shelf, I guess. The shelf in the hall still has room and they fit well there. Not may of the trade paperbacks and hardcovers fit those shelves. It's going slower than I'd hoped because it just hurts too much to keep reaching and bending.

I like Lost, but it's so aggravating. As I watch I keep thinking "I wish this were a book I could read." Today didn't answer anything, really. Just more questions.

Something else that's aggravating me is that I can't find all my notebooks. It's hard enough to find what I'm looking for in them because I have no order. I write in the nearest notebook and may have a week or a few months in one and then start using another. That's OK, since I'm not likely to change. but I know I have more than four notebooks for the last thirty-five years. They must be somewhere, but it's not like I can go shuffling boxes around in order to find them.

My goal for this week is to have all the stuff that isn't books or appropriate decorative items off my bookshelves by Friday dinner. I also want all the books on the bookshelves rather than the chair and the floor. I want the desk and worktable cleared off. In short, I want this room cleaned, dusted, vacuumed -- the whole works!

It doesn't sound like much, but I remind myself of Pigpen from the Peanuts comic. It's not dirt that follows me like a tornado, though. It's disorder. (Although the dust level has gotten so high lately that I must admit it's also dirt right now.) It's always difficult for me to establish order (probably the ADD), but it seems even harder lately. I can't do half the things I want to do because they involve lifting, tugging, pushing or in other ways stressing my back. I don't want to do that without the doc's OK (especially since whenever I do forget and do something, it hurts for two days afterward). It also doesn't help that my good mood comes and goes with the sun.

I still don't get that. I don't even have to know if it's sunny or not. I can tell by my mood. I guess it could be worse. For all the rainy cloudy weather days we have here, it's a big help that many of them are also partly sunny. Sometimes rain and sun together. That's a positive feeling, so it's not that rain is negative. It's lack of sun that's negative. I need to remember to turn on my desk lamp more often... no because I need it to see. I don't, which is why I forget to turn it on. I need it because it is also a SAD lamp and when I have it on enough, I feel better.

:idea: OMG!! I just figured out why I'm getting to be more and more a night person! I turn the lamp on at night! I'm getting more of the light I need at night. Maybe that'll be my key to getting back to more of a day schedule. I must remember to turn the lamp on first thing when I get to my desk. And then turn it off earlier in the evening and use other lamps. I'll let you know how that works out.

ADD strikes again! I finished that last paragraph over two hours ago. Then I went looking for the bar above. Then I had to see if I could create a file like the smilies where I could just click on a thumbnail or type in a code. Then I discovered I had an awful lot of duplicates in my graphics folder, so I ran the duplicate file finder. At first nothing came up...huh??? Then I saw it was looking for them by name, so I set it for content and BOOM! It's still deleting... and I have to upload each bar, one by one... but I did it with my Filezilla so I put them all up. I still need to figure out how to make it so all blogs can use them without duplicating them. I will need to sort them and rename them also, or I will never know what is what.

With that, I think I should go read, now. And I didn't get anything picked up yet... maybe I'll do a little of that first.

PS: Sorry Xanga and LJ folks, but my website host does not allow hosting photos for off site, so the bars I've used won't show for you.

Is pretty boring around here. Iqbal is watching soccer and I've been attempting to catch up with my LJ friends list and Xanga subs. I'm gonna have to skim more than I have been. Google tells me I also have 583 (!!) unread posts there. Fortunately quite a few of those are ones I can simply click as read after skimming the titles.

I have another book review to write, but I have a harder than usual time doing the religious books, especially those that are evangelical in purpose. I suppose it'll be blander than usual and I think my reviews are too bland to begin with. ::sigh:: The book was not bland, though. You can't condemn a biography for plot, but this lady's life has been exciting, if not always pleasant.

Oh, well. Maybe in time I'll develop, if not a knack, maybe a certain credible ability. I think I prefer the discussion questions -- with or after a group discussion of the book. With those, I can write up a storm, talking about theme and what not. No worries about spoilers. But a spoiler makes for a bad review.

Next up might be a poetry book or two. I have exactly no idea how to do that. I finds it far easier to write poetry than write about it, not that my poetry is great, but some of it is fair.

Back and legs (both) ache a lot today. This coming week I'll be scheduling therapy. I suppose it's too much to expect to actually get in this week. We'll see.

I have finally found something to drink that is calorie free and tastier than tap water. It's Lipton's Iced Tea mix To Go. I just get filtered water from my fridge and add a packet of the tea mix. They don't add vitamin C, which is good for me. I was drinking Kool-Aid, but aside from not many flavors geared to adult tastes, it does have vitamin C and too much C makes me way too acidic. I'd rather not have to take Tums every day! Anyway, I'm back to drinking a lot. The To Go flavors are good -- Mandarin Mango, Blueberry Pomegranate, Raspberry Lime, Cherry Blossom and Apple Cranberry. There are some other citrusy flavors (like lemon), but I didn't care for them and thought too much C naturally.

I keep the packets in a flower pot on my desk.

It rained a lot today. Made it kind of hard looking around Lowe's. I ended up getting a decorative sprinkler for my corner garden. Mom got some tall primroses and soaker hoses for her vegetable beds.

Magnolia and red bud trees burst into bloom this week. The daffs started to bloom last week. I have one hyacinth in a pot that's blooming. The small primrose has been getting stronger color. I can she that I need to repot them so that they have good dirt or they won't make it through another hot summer and then winter. They love this middle weather, though and are very brightly colored.

A arrowhead are coming up all over. I dug out and discarded so many of the bulblets or tubers or whatever they are, it amazes me that there can still be so many. I think they are the rabbits of plants. I wonder if deer would like them.

Besides reading books more, I have been working on my website. Mostly, it's been just maintenance work, although I did revamp the face of my LocalHabitation page and the connections of each of the pages that now connect to the b2 blogs (updates, recipes and photos). I made a private blog for my family, but they're all a bunch of tech phobes, I think.

I don't really get Twitter. I've read a few of the titter posts on LJ and most of the time it seems that it makes no sense except to the one to whom it's directed. I can see wanting to send someone a short message, but isn't that what texting is for?

I thought there was something I wanted to say, but I can't remember what. I think I'll go read. The recliner is more comfortable than the desk chair.

Hmmm... I need to figure out how to fix the "Listening to" button. All I get is an error.

We can't go to Marco Polo's Restaurant without stopping in at The Book Bin and I can't go into a book store without getting something! I restrained myself and got only three books, but Iqbal also got three books and Alex got three LPs. Then I ended up surfing around at LibraryThing after I added the new books. I can't keep up with my flist and other blogs as it is, but I added more. ::sigh:: Well, at least I always have plenty of choice in what to read, online and off!

I also got a copy of Feverblau in the mail Wednesday. I got it cheap, and since it's no longer available new, I don't feel bad about it. Otherwise I really do try to get a new copy of the books of the writers on my flist.

Since I got my last review done and the next review book hasn't arrived yet, I can read what I want. Should it be some dense theo-philosophy (Teilhard) or a goblin story? Goblins win!

Mom has been bugging me to take her to a local used book store. This one is across the river and has street parking on a busy road. I wasn't keen on it. This week they are having a sale, so I gave in. Used books stores do well when we go into them.

A few weeks ago we ate at Marco Polo's and, at their new (and nicer) place, they are right next to The Book Habit. It makes for great after dinner perusing and I came away with an armload of books. I came away with more from the Readers Guide to Recycled Literature. (Don't you love the names of used bookstores?) Fortunately, because of their sale, I actually spent less. My focus today was poetry (6 books), although I also came away with some fiction and biography (5 more books).

I was going to work on my website some more this evening, but I think I will read instead. I'm almost finished with Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town (available April 21) and want to get the review written quickly. Goblin Quest is also waiting for me to get back to it. I had started it when Outcasts United arrived and found it delightful. I stopped only because I wanted to get the review done in timely fashion.

I also want to see if I can start some poetry today. It's nagging me. A different kind of nagging. Usually the poem is already starting in my head when it nags. Now I simply feel the urge to write with paper and pen. I'm not sure what to write, but the word 'butterfly' keeps coming to me. And then I thought 'chickadee,' though that may simply be because I have a plush chickadee here on my monitor. I'm off to see what's in my head that wants to come out. (and that made me think of something creepy or even gruesome a la Alien).