Saturday, May 23, 2026

just another unexciting week


shrimp plant

I have 70 emails in my inbox this (Friday) morning. I’m probably going to just have a delete party without looking at any of them. Well. most of them. There might be one two that are not newsletter notifications. I try to go through them every morning, reading some, deleting others unread, or saving some for later but apparently later never comes, hence 70 emails. Yesterday, of course, was Thursday when I have no time in the morning for anything other than getting ready to leave for SHARE and Thursday afternoons I have other things that need doing and evenings are spent reading or watching something on TV. 


I’m keeping nominally abreast of the news but I just don’t have the capacity for a deep dive right now. I mean it’s all bad, every day the orange turd spews garbage, lies, steals, plans another military aggression, announces some other vanity project that destroys the integrity of the people’s house and surrounding areas to be paid for by the taxpayers, rewarding the J6 insurrectionists, or just being a total embarrassment on the world stage while he formulates another plan to either steal or cancel the midterm elections. I just can’t. I don’t see how these people, the independent news, immerses themselves in it daily. I appreciate that they do but holy moly.


I winnowed it down to seven which I may or may not read.


Paisleigh and Harrison left with their mom Thursday for Arkansas until possibly the end of June at which time they will return here. Paisleigh will start school in August so they’ll be in residence here until next summer though their mom gets one weekend a month and alternate holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. It remains to be seen how often the monthly weekend exchange takes place since it’s a 10 hour drive and even meeting halfway to make the exchange, which the court has ordered, that’s still 5 hours for each of them on Fridays and Sundays. 


A big storm blew through Tuesday night giving us 3” of rain and another cool morning on Wednesday. I’ve said this before and surprised that it wasn’t but that was probably the last cool morning. It rained again lightly Thursday morning and another possible storm this Friday afternoon. Regardless, it’s hot and humid out there now, 83˚ at noon. We’ve been turning the AC on intermittently to cool the house during the day, turning it off at night. It stopped working Sunday evening and Monday and Tuesday were barely tolerable but the guy came out Tuesday afternoon and did whatever he did and it’s been working fine since.


I haven’t felt like doing much this week. The rain makes it impossible to do any real work out there even when it’s not raining because everything is so wet. I’m not currently engaged in any artistic endeavor. Mostly what I’ve been doing is reading the latest Pendergast novel by Preston and Child, Pendergast the Beginning, his first case as an FBI agent. I have 70 pages to go so that’s what I’ll be doing the rest of the day. Now that June is breathing down our necks with its heat, humidity, and now mosquitoes from the rain I’ll probably be more inclined to get out my paints and pencils.


Yeah, so that’s what I did yesterday, read those 70 pages and finished the book and then it was time to feed the kitties and too damn hot to walk the dog, later I told her, and then it was time to fix dinner.


After that long long long dry spell, when every community around us except us was getting the rain we needed, these storms are welcome but why do they always have to come in the middle of the night?! I suppose if I didn’t have a neurotic little dog that trembled hard enough to make the bed vibrate and panting bug eyed in constant motion when she wasn’t trying to lay down on my pillow above my head I’d be glad they came in the middle of the night because I’d be asleep! This one last night started with distant barely audible (to me) rumbles of thunder which caused Minnie’s head to pop up like a jack-in-the-box. Oh great, here we go. The lightning and thunder got closer and closer until it was literally right on top of us. One extremely bright flash and an almost simultaneous crash of noise had me hoping it didn’t hit anything. Eventually the storm moved on, the dog calmed down, and I was able to get to sleep until my pill alarm went off at 8:30 (I keep meaning to reset that fucker to 9). Now I’m up and Minnie is crashed out in her little dog bed. 


Another of my neighbors came to the door last night. Jose works on a farm and the farmer allows him to take as much corn as he wants after, I guess, he’s sold the bulk of it. Anyway, he brings us some every spring and last night he handed us a box of 30 ears. Since I’ve already put up all the corn I intend I’ll spread this around to my daughter and Rocky.


A few more day lilies.




29 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness! That first day lily! I've never seen that one. I just love it!
    They keep forecasting rain here but it's all lies, I tell you. Lies!
    I just spent a good amount of time out in the garden today and guess what I did? I used my beach umbrella for shade. I just move it around to where I need it. Works pretty darn well!
    I'm so glad I don't have a doggie that freaks out during storms. Well, it wouldn't matter. We never get any any more.
    That schedule for Paisleigh and Harrison sounds hard on everyone but divorce is never easy in my experience. Still, I wish it weren't like that.

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    1. We'll see how it all pans out. Divorce in the sense that they split up but were not married. She left one day with the kids for a week visit with her family and never came back. After 3 weeks Mikey went and got the kids. When she finally told him 6 weeks later she wasn't coming back he got a lawyer and got a legal custody arrangement. She did this when they were living in Arkansas and Paisleigh was two, moved out and wouldn't give him access to Paisleigh because she was afraid he would take her and move back here. He got a lawyer then too but they got together again before anything happened.

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    2. What a mess. I hope they're getting it together for the kids' sake.

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  2. I am slowly unsubscribing to some of the newsletters I used to read. But my daily deleting list each morning is most of the mail. And just an hour ago Facebook posted the shooting at the White House...copied from CNN. I'm ok with skipping broadcast news almost completely, but I do record it each day in case something worth looking at comes along. These days, that's really rare! Love your lilies. Our holiday weekend has had rain most of the time so far, and will have it come and go all weekend. I know we need it, but I'm not really a fan.

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    1. I need to do that too. I never watch broadcast news because they are just puppets to the regime which is why I have so many independent news subscriptions but they all write about the same thing so I don't need all of them.

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  3. Gee, Ellen. Where in the world have I been??? How did I miss the fact that there was a divorce? I suppose there are good and bad sides to the fact that the kids are so young. The changing locations, etc. will seem natural to them since it's part of their growing up. I did realize that they were with their dad often, and thus have had good times with you, but....... Sad for all.
    Maybe you are "agin" pills for dogs. Our Yorkie Sheba would go ballistic with the weather. The vet gave me a prescription that really helped me get some sleep, and seemed to have no bad effect on her. I called them her "thunder pills". They did not make her a Zombie. And, I just can't ..... with the state of this country. 😟😱

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    1. Well, no divorce, they weren't married. She just left and moved back to Arkansas, took the kids with her. He went and got them after 3 weeks. When she finally told him she wasn't coming back (and already had another boyfriend) he got a lawyer and a legal custody arrangement so she couldn't take the kids and deny him access like she did when Paisleigh was about two when they were living in Arkansas and she broke up with him. He got a lawyer then but they got back together. He's not taking her back this time. Since the kids were both born in Texas, even though they have joint custody, the kid's primary residence is here with their dad.

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  4. I envy you having 70 emails. Currently I am up to 18,000 unread. I know I need to do something about it, but I just don't. I am giving some thought to just deleting them all. The first lilly is really pretty.

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    1. I try to delete them every day and mostly succeed but they really pile up between Wednesday morning and Friday morning since I don't have time on Thursdays.

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  5. This problem with email overload afflicts us all, I think. I am not quite sure how to solve it, but more than once something I really needed to answer has moved far down the list and has been overlooked until the sender reminds me.

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    1. It would help if I would unsubscribe to the newsletters a rarely read.

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  6. I can't imagine 70 emails in an inbox. Currently, mine is down to five, and having an empty inbox is something I work toward constantly. Not subscribing to newsletters and such helps; I gave that up a couple of years ago. Any that need to be saved (e.g. business, customers, important information about where to find certain plants, etc.) get moved to different tabs, and the rest get responded to or deleted immediately. Once I got rid of the newsletters and such, my spam count went to nearly zero, too. I might get one or two spam emails each week, but they get processed out by my spam filter and I never see them anyway.

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    1. Spam gets filtered out in both my email accounts so these are things I signed up for. I need to unsubscribe from the ones I rarely read. They just pile up between wednesday morning and Friday morning when I don't have time on Thursdays to delete them.

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  7. I've never seen a day lily like that pink one. How fancy!
    Too bad there is such a distance between Paisleigh's parents. I didn't realize they were divorced now. Hope the family can work out a good solution.

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    1. There are so many variations of day lilies. Most of these I traded for with a woman who was diving up hers.

      Well, no divorce, they weren't married. She just left and moved back to Arkansas, took the kids with her. He went and got them after 3 weeks. When she finally told him she wasn't coming back (and already had another boyfriend) he got a lawyer and a legal custody arrangement so she couldn't take the kids and deny him access like she did when Paisleigh was about two when they were living in Arkansas and she broke up with him. He got a lawyer then but they got back together. He's not taking her back this time. Since the kids were both born in Texas, even though they have joint custody, the kid's primary residence is here with their dad.

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  8. Poor Minnie! (And poor you!) I love rain in the middle of the night but not with the neurotic dog factor. I usually delete all my e-mail every day except one or two. The ones I do read I leave in my "read" folder where they just stack up as a sort of archive, in case I have to go back and find anything. I think I have e-mails there going back to about 2007!

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    1. I generally do every day but they pile up on days I don't have time to deal with them.

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  9. Codex haven't read pendergast in ages. Any good?
    Thought it was a really unique character then it got too weird.

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    1. Pendergast continues to be weird. And in fact, I think he's moved beyond weird to some other place that I don't really have words for. I still enjoy the books though. Ha!

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    2. Codex I thought the character would be another Sherlock homes james bond type. I stopped reading the novels because he became almost farcical. Then came the aristocratic part (if I remember correctly), weirdo family. Took away from what could have been a great staple of detectives in literature. Might try again. Thanks bug.

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    3. If you didn't care for the character previously you probably wouldn't enjoy this one either. I love the books and his character for all their 'weirdnesses'. He is almost supernatural as are the books. They aren't intended to be run of the mill Sherlock Holmes James Bond type. You'd probably really be put off when he and Constance time travel.

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    4. Codex I did like him initially.

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  10. I missed the divorce too. What a tough situation for all concerned. Here I'm the one who told you about the Pendergast book & you finished it before me! I took too long & had to return it to the library. Now it's on hold again & won't be available for another (checks the Libby app) - oh hold up! I'm 3rd in line now (started out at 20). Excellent - maybe I won't have to start back at the beginning!

    I love the daylilies - our neighbor has some yellow ones, but now I feel like I need that top one. Wow!

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    1. Well, no divorce, they weren't married. She just left and moved back to Arkansas, took the kids with her. He went and got them after 3 weeks. When she finally told him she wasn't coming back (and already had another boyfriend) he got a lawyer and a legal custody arrangement so she couldn't take the kids and deny him access like she did when Paisleigh was about two when they were living in Arkansas and she broke up with him. He got a lawyer then but they got back together. He's not taking her back this time. Since the kids were both born in Texas, even though they have joint custody, the kid's primary residence is here with their dad.

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  11. Lots of rain here, as well. The news is depressing. I can't seem to grasp what it is about this idiot that demands loyalty, much less that so many are willing to give it. I read something the other day about a man and his wife saying how much they appreciate Trump and they are doing everything they can to make sure he has all the resources he needs, that they are fasting and sending the food money to him! Brain washing is the only thing that comes to mind for that kind of loyalty!

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    1. It's a cult of personality. I don't get it either.

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  12. I’ve seen a lot of day lilies but never one like in that first image!

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    1. There are so many varieties of daylily. I got most of these from a woman who was separating her vast collection, traded her some bulbs I had.

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  13. Liebe Ellen,

    manchmal gibt es einfach solche Wochen, in denen alles ein bisschen zu viel erscheint – die Nachrichten, das Wetter, die Müdigkeit und dieses Gefühl, dass die Energie irgendwo unterwegs verloren gegangen ist. Dein Beitrag hat das sehr ehrlich eingefangen.

    Trotzdem finde ich es schön, dass zwischen all dem Schweren immer wieder kleine, warme Momente auftauchen: das Lesen eines guten Buches, die Kätzchen, der Mais vom Nachbarn, die Taglilien oder sogar der kleine, nervöse Hund, der nachts eigentlich nur Nähe und Sicherheit sucht.

    Und vielleicht ist es manchmal völlig genug, sich genau an solchen Dingen festzuhalten, bis die eigene Kraft langsam wiederkommt.

    Ich hoffe sehr, dass die kommenden Tage etwas ruhiger und leichter für dich werden – mit weniger Gewittern draußen und auch weniger Gewittern im Kopf. 💛

    Liebe Grüße
    Anette

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.