We have a new behavior in Emberville

I am not sure I like it, but in some ways it is useful.  Remember last blog, when Ember got me up early?  It messed with my morning routine.  She destroyed a pair of socks in the bargain?  And became a "free elf"?  Ah, yes!

Well, I think I have sussed out the real reason she barked and got me up.  She did not urgently need to go out (witness the distraction of the socks).  I had forgotten the cat was out for the night.  Cat must have asked to come in by pawing/scratching the door.

I think this now because it happened again.  A single bark at about 12:30 a.m.  I turned over and went back to sleep.  Then in the 2 a.m. hour, another bark or two.  This time I pulled on socks and a sweatshirt and padded down the stairs.  

This time I remembered that the cat was outside.  Sure enough, when I slid open the deck door, in trots The Prisoner!  I escorted him down to his luxury suite in the laundry room and came back upstairs.  Ember went back to sleep.  I did not.  I dressed, and here I am at 3:17 a.m. typing away.

Meanwhile, in the news, some of you may remember my traumatic day on November 5, 2009.  Mine, my son's, and his whole unit's traumatic day and all time since then.  17 years later, they are proposing to put the shooter to death via firing squad, and to live stream it.  But before that scheduled date, it is filling the news cycles with the image of the "bad guy" and completely ignoring the people who lost their lives, were wounded, or lost a family member.

Way to reopen wounds, people.  I have no desire to watch any execution, mind you.  Not even one where my son was present in the day.  I still have Facebook friends among the two units and the families. Their reactions are on all extremes of the spectrum.  

I am having to just look away from all that to preserve sanity.

On the good news front, a step forward.  The appellate court upheld the termination of parental rights of my foster grandson's birth parents.  The appealing parent has 30 days to file one last appeal to the state's supreme court.  That deadline lands on November 5th.  Yes, the anniversary of the Fort Hood incident!  If he does not file, the kids will be free to file for adoption of this young boy.  In the meantime, we wait and pray.  If he does file for that last appeal, we're in waiting mode for longer still.

Good Ember news:  on our walk on Saturday the 10th, she sniffed at a pumpkin someone had out for decor... and did NOT steal it!  Considering last November she stole two from yards on successive days, her mommy was very proud of her restraint this year.  The passage of time does help!

Other than that, life is moving on.  A family outing is planned for Friday the 16th, to the Luminarium in Omaha, with foster grand kiddo, his parents and the two grandmas.  Ember will get an extra day of day care to accommodate me being gone all day.

Guess I'd best post this or it will stretch to two weeks between blogs!

Recovery weekend and beyond!

I did not sleep well last Saturday night.  I am not sure why.  But I got up in the 3:00 a.m. hour, then took a nice long nap between 11:00 and 1:30.  We did get through Ember's morning routine, including about a 2-mile walk. 

Since then, I have started experimenting with using music CD's to fall asleep rather than YouTube "Boring X for sleep" videos.  I roll over and close my eyes to those, don't watch them!  Sometimes one works, sometimes the other.  Sometimes neither.  But... working on finding what works!

Our city / county recorded a record high amount of rainfall Wednesday overnight into Thursday.  This photo is from the runoff ditch at the park entrance about a block and a half from my house.

Thankfully, the inside of the house, basement level included, stayed dry.  Some parts of the city were cut off or underwater.  Low-lying areas, of course.  My daughter in law messaged the family group that two of her coworkers had water get into their automobiles where they lived.  Yikes!

The good news is that we are up for several dryer days now.  Friday morning dawned colder than it has been in a while:  47℉ when I got up.  That getting up was early and rushed, because Ember was whining in her crate and escalated to a bark before I even got dressed.

I hurried a bit and went downstairs in bare feet, carrying my socks and shoes, and let her out, thinking she'd head straight for the outside door.  Nope!  She focused on that rolled up pair of socks in my hand and swiped them from me!

Thankfully, this was a pair that was several years old, wearing thin, and I had already been debating with myself whether to pitch them or not.  "Decluttering by dog" quipped my sister in our early morning text exchange (you know the one, the "are we both still breathing" check-in).

In any case, this started off my day differently from what I envisioned, and now I have some catching up to do!  I'm off to feed the cat (belated), take a shower, etc.

Hope you all have a good weekend and week ahead!

Life's good, even when unexpected things happen!  Spark on!

The old project and feeling overwhelmed

I have to confess that I dragged my feet getting to this particular piece of furniture in the great project to turn my master bedroom into a Sanctuary.  It is a bookcase.

I sort of nibbled around the edges over the weekend, vacuuming around it, shifting a couple of books to another room, removing the old tax files to a different form of storage.  I promised myself I would start on it Tuesday.  I promise I spent more than half an hour on it.  But it felt as though I'd got nowhere.

I still have piles of things too complex to even think about what to do with them.  A stack of financial stuff.  A stack of family history stuff.  A couple of "raw materials" things.  

But as for "what to do next"?  

I have backed up piles of things to donate, and a guilt complex about HOW to donate them!  

I have a bag of family history transcripts that my older sister put together and gave me TWO copies of everything, one copy of which was for my son, but he so far has shown no interest in receiving said copies.  I know they have meaning, so again, a guilt complex about what to do with them!

Wednesday morning, I put down on my planner two tasks:  get the donation items to the car, and deliver them to somewhere!  I did a quick lookup on Google and determined where:  The Humane Society for a few dog items that Ember no longer uses or never took to.  And the People's City Mission (one of my son's recommended charities) for personal use items.  Soap, deodorant, etc. that was either delivered here in error, or that I never much cared for the fragrance and had bought a six pack of.  Toothbrushes that always come home from the dentist, even though I use an electric.  About a dozen combs that came in a multipack that I only use ONE of.  You get the idea.

Ember was whining as I loaded the boxes into the car, and since it's cooler out I can leave her in the car while I do stuff.  So I harnessed her up and off we went.  Deliveries made, and I somehow feel much lighter!

New experiment.  I got sucked in by another ad for something to "help" your dog.  Elevated bowls.  Ember tried this out for the first time on Wednesday.

A little suspicious at first, but there is food involved, so...

She takes a bite, drops it on the floor beside the bowl, then bends down to finish consuming it.  So much for the intention of eliminating the need for the dog to bend down to eat!

While Ember was off to day care on Thursday, I went and got my flu and Covid-19 (updated for 2025-2026) shots.

The decluttering is moving very slowly at this point.  I have only two days a week, 15-minute sessions scheduled for this.  Once I get started, I rarely am able to stop immediately at the 15 minute mark.  

Today I put back some shelves that had been sitting on the bookcase since 2018 (I know that's when they came down from the nook in the office; that's when the office got painted).  It was frustrating because the support arms would not hook into the strips and stay there, then the shelf placed on them would come down.  I finally decided I don't need all of those shelves in that nook, and two of them are going in the discard pile, along with their support arms!

The maintenance of the area already decluttered led me to taking down cobwebs and "dusting" the walls.  Also put up a framed art-box that my foster grandson gave to me I think it was a year ago Christmas time!  I put it where I did have a wall calendar, but I like the look of kid's art better for my sanctuary feeling.  

Thursday I went and got both my flu shot and the most recent Covid-19 booster.  I seem to get amnesia between Covid shots, forgetting how they kick my fanny!

In any case, I was worthless on Friday, and poor Ember had to play nurse-maid.  She's very good at the job, by the way.

Saturday morning I felt as well as one does on recovery from any side-line, and we went on a nice neighborhood walk, on leash.  It was soggy, having rained most of Friday.  Which is part of the reason we missed our Friday walkies, it wasn't just Mommy being flattened by the shot.

Life is good.  Keep Sparking, my friends!

By the way, if you're interested in nostalgia, I have started copying Kevin (MOBYCARP) blogs from his SparkPeople 1.0 days.  I only copy about one a day.  I am dating them with the date he posted them on SP 1.

They are here.  I have only got through the first month, and I find myself laughing as I copy, because of course I read as I copy.  They are #1 so totally my brother!  and #2, so classic newbie at Spark, too.  Who could guess, from those first few entries that this man would become a Boston Marathoner?  Or that he would have less than 8 years left to inhabit the earth?  He did a LOT in those last 8 years.

Another week in Emberville

 

Would you believe I bought that turquoise cow for her two years ago in August, when she was spayed and needed new toys?  It's still surviving, it even still squeaks!

I washed it with a few of her other toys last week.  After they dried, I put them in the basement crate.  Ember has this habit of not wanting to play fetch, but if later she finds the ball while going about her business outside, she'll bring it up to the deck or inside.  This extended to the toys in the basement crate... one by one, she's been bringing them upstairs and playing with them, as though they were "new".

Both Monday and Wednesday were rainy days when we had to juggle the walk schedule.  Ember did OK with it, but she has expectations!

Friday is predicted to hit 90℉.  I overslept!  I was kind of hurried getting down to the pets.  Ember and I went walking early, so as to avoid the heat to come.  It's mid-September and we're still going to have one last day of HEAT.  

The amusing part of Friday morning's walk is that Ember walked right by on the sidewalk today, at the house where they added a new half-buried skeleton to the two upright standing ones this year.  Twice since they put it up, she took me to the opposite side of the street.  This morning, we were OK if a little skittish right on the sidewalk next to it.

On the decluttering front, I had a couple of "easy" 15-minute sessions, with the file cabinet drawers, the bedding tubs, and deciding on a storage strategy for the master bedroom bathroom.  At this point, I would say about half of the master bedroom is in "beta test" mode.  The challenge will be if it fits into my normal routine, or if my normal routine works out a way for this tidier look to function and not accumulate piles again.  The next prescription run, the next day when I'm too exhausted to sort the junk mail or statements to be filed, etc. will be the real test.

That's it!  A calm and quiet, and mostly rainy week, in the books.  Here's hoping your lives are giving you some peace, amid whatever is going on in them!

Life is good.  Spark on!

Back to an old project

 

Mt. St. Omigawd project returns.  For two and a half years things have got shuffled into piles not on the dining room table, as they were in days of old, but all over the house behind doors that could be closed for fear of the puppy getting to the piles.

The master bedroom, the office, the guest room... all have become pretty junky over time.

With the return of SparkPeople as version 2.0, I'm using this project as a way to figure out how their Goals/Milestones/Action Steps work together with the Planner to make progress toward a larger goal that's NOT weight loss or athletic outing related.

The entire exercise got my brain wriggling around the "why do the piles of clutter return?"  While a good deal of it was related to the rush of protecting things from the puppy, it's a pattern that has plagued my life for much, much longer than she's been with me!  In fact, I started trying to improve in this area when I was a teenager.

The why it keeps recurring has to be buried in the bowels of the spaces versus the systems of my life.  And of course, a large dose of my inner life, energy, etc.  I need to rebuild these areas, one by one, in my home to actually serve living the life I have.  Not to be perfect, mind you (impossible goal), but to be functional for me and for Ember and The Prisoner, too, for that matter.

One thing that happens over and over again is that I'm an "out of sight, out of mind" person, so partially finished tasks, especially cleaning tasks, end up with the tools left out on the counter.  This is far from the gold standard of "a place for everything and everything in its place."  Some of this can be addressed with tools, but most of it goes back to the Messies Manual books by Sandra Felton!  Suddenly I'm remembering the Mount Vernon method.  Using the hidden spaces that exist, and clearing out what doesn't belong to trash, to donation, or to another storage space... leaving only what is functional for the purpose of that drawer!

Deep breath!  That's just the intro to what will be a "mental work in progress" probably for the rest of my natural lifetime!

Thursday, September 10, 2026

I was determined to finish the vanity today.  I had only the last flat, center drawer to clear out.  Well, I discovered the rabbit holes of distraction.  Anybody remember this little item?

I still had its instruction booklet, buried in that drawer.  Nostalgia is an amazing time suck when you are trying to decide whether to keep something or not!  I settled on taking its photo before sending it to the landfill or recycling.

I also found, and shredded, a social security card from someone who passed away in 1996, and a library card from before my son's deployments.  And a TON of hair.  Yes, hair, because that middle flat drawer holds my combs, and is often open when I comb my hair.  My hair is so fine and light, it's invisible until it accumulates!

I now have five vanity drawers with only intentional pieces in each drawer, and only two storage "things" on top of the vanity.  My jewelry box, and an organizer for my dental stuff "beyond brushing".  

And then of course, the nightmare beyond organizing is, "what's leftover and what do you do with it?

There were several pocketknives, buttons from garments that shipped with spares (probably most of the garments are long gone from my closet), several foreign coins, and a few pieces of jewelry that I almost forgot I had.

The jewelry obviously went into the jewelry box.  The coins went into the safe, even though they probably hold little value other than what memories they could trigger.  I actually have a button box, which is where the buttons were relocated.

I think I counted six pocketknives and various small tools, some screws and bolts.  These all went to the kitchen junk drawer, which will become a project of its own, down the line.

Peeking out from the kneehole, you can see I have a largeish basket of electronic cords and gadgets and connectors, and a few other odds and ends. This will also have to be processed on its own, as I try to figure out how they all fit into processes.

I checked off the vanity from my goal structure.  This was supposed to be 15 minutes, two days a week pace.  Today's effort took about an hour and a half, when you add in all the little detours.

Getting to the button box brought out a stack of books to relocated to a shelf in another room, for example.  I talked turkey to myself about not going down rabbit holes, either with the kitchen junk draw OR the bookshelves!

The real test of the vanity, will be what happens in the next month or so, as I try to live with the newly organized thing, and try to avoid re-piling "stuff" onto it or into its drawers.

Wish me luck.  And I'll move on to the next area of the room, but not until Tuesday!

Life is good, here in Emberville.  Spark on!

A tree comes down

 A giant tree, you've seen it in my sunrise photos, and in my moonscapes.  It is my neighbor's tree.  It is HUGE.  Must be 30 feet tall.  As big around the trunk as four mature trees.

I noticed this morning that my neighbor to the East was parking all his vehicles on the west side of my house, as opposed to where he normally left them during the workday, in his driveway and along the street south of my house.

OK, something's up, I thought.  Maybe they are having something delivered, and need driveway access?  Guests coming, perhaps?

Nope.  About two p.m. this big rig showed up and guys in reflective gear started putting ropes around the tree.  A little while later, they had a guy up in a cherry picker in the mix.  Branches began being thinned out, and a chipper was put into service.

It was clear that this would take several hours.  I could still hear them buzzing away, at 7 p.m.

The Prisoner came in with confetti sized wood chip on his coat.  When I went to pick up Ember from daycare and brought her home, she went out and sniffed at the deck.  The deck was getting a dusting of those tiny wood chips, brought by the wind from the chipper.

I will miss this tree.  I have no doubt that my neighbors will miss it, too, as it provided excellent shade from the afternoon sun!  Their A/C bill will no doubt go up.

It took, in the end, more than 24 hours!

Sunrise, Wednesday with a much reduced tree, above.

Down to the final trunk standing.

Then shorter.

Aaaaand... The big ol' stump when it's all down!  Now my deck is in full sunshine, no more filter to the sunrise!

Life goes on.  Despite this loss, Life is good.

Spark on!

Whatever the weather... we'll weather it.

My goodness, the news and the flooding in many places, but locally, it's the return of the heat to start September.  The first two weeks are slated to have high temperatures in the 90's Fahrenheit.  Ember and I are taking our leash walks in the 7 a.m. hour.

We come home, me drenched in sweat, even though the temperature might be "only" 74F.  Some days a shade less, this past week.  We've actually had a nice cool patch, but it's over now.

Ooh!  Ooh!  Big news... Chris Downie just posted on Facebook the announcement of SparkPeople 2.0 being live, and said we can post our personal invitation links on Facebook or wherever, so here's my invitation to you.

On the Lynda front:  I heard through the Spark-grapevine that some one of the group called her son's restaurant and the person who answered the phone had seen Lynda the day before.  So it just seems she's "offline" as far as the blog is concerned.  That is good news, but I don't know how we'll keep up if she can't post and doesn't get her voicemail.  

That said, Life is good, Ember is taking up the whole couch, and keep on Sparking!