Yesterday, it rained almost .5 inches here.  I was getting worried, to be honest, that it wasn’t going to rain at all.  The weathermen were just swearing up and down that we were going to get LOTS of rain, but well, we all know how much we can trust weathermen!  About 4:30 or 5:00 there was about 10 minutes of downpour, and then the sun came back out.  Sadly, I figured that was going to be it, but then it started to rain again about 7:30.  And it might rain a bit more this morning (though I won’t hold my breath!).

Yesterday, I cleaned more carpet, I moved more furniture, and I worked on editing a friend’s dissertation.  She has to turn it in on Tuesday, so I’m doing a quick-edit for her, just checking grammar, punctuation, etc.  Content is up to her and her adviser.  This is what my students don’t really understand: the information is really irrelevant to the rules of grammar and usage and such.  The rules apply no matter what your topic is!  Anyway, my friend needed a fresh pair of eyes, and I was happy to help her out.  I’m about halfway done with her paper, so hopefully, I can finish that today, too.

I might run some errands today.  I might work on my classes for the Fall.  I might knit.  I might decide what to make if we go to a Fourth of July party tomorrow.  Or I might wait to decide about that until we decide whether we’re going!  So, it doesn’t look like it will be a terribly exciting Friday.  But hey, it’s Friday, and that’s enough!

It’s finished!!!

Yesterday, I finished editing the last chapter of my book project.  It is now a complete first draft, rewritten and reorganized.  And hopefully it is what Jeff was looking for.  This morning, I emailed him the last chapters (he has the first 2/3 of the first draft already), so now he has a full first draft.  I’ve been working on this project (on and off, mostly off at times) for about 7 years, so it’s high time I got it to this point.   Anyway, now I’ll just have to wait and see where Jeff wants to take it since it’s really his dad’s book.  I’ll keep you posted!

Yesterday, I worked on finishing the last couple of chapters.  I also moved furniture upstairs so that I could clean the floors.  Today, I’ll probably move all the furniture to the other side of the room it’s in and clean the other side.  Then I can put the rooms back together again.

Last night, I went to church with Eric to help with an ice cream social event for the choir/orchestra.  It was a rough evening for me.  It was good to see people (I tend to not get much socialization during the summer), but I swear, everything I said came out wrong, and I really had to work hard at not being annoyed at people (like the guy who came in just about demanding I get out the ice cream for him and his family and the lady who decided we needed her to help us serve out the ice cream).  Then again, I tend to be easily annoyed, so I finally had to decide to let them all just do what they wanted and not take it personally. 

So when I got home (at 10:00 because I stayed to help clean up), I called Karen to chat with her for a second, and when I got off the phone with her, I called a friend who had left a message at about 10:00 to ask a favor.  So Eric and I didn’t get to bed until 11:00 which is crazy late for us.  No wonder I’m so tired this morning!

EDIT: A JOKE
After 28 years of accident free driving I finally had a wreck.  I am fine, but it was one of those stupid rear end collisions, where it could have been avoided.  It was really nobody’s fault.
 
To my surprise, the guy I hit was a dwarf and he stormed out of his car, stomped back to my car and shouted at me, ” I AM NOT HAPPY !” 
 
So, I asked him, “Well, which one are you then?” 

Learned one thing about dwarfs; they don’t have a sense of humor……
:END EDIT

So many things to be thankful for.

• It’s Wednesday! 
• It might rain in the next 36 hours! 
• I’m 1 1/2 chapters from finishing my book project (first draft)! 
• I have the best husband in the world (for me anyway)!
• I have wonderful friends (on and off Xanga) who care about me and pray for me and are generally fabulous!
• Jesus loves me!
• God has blessed us in so many ways!

Actually, I was looking at some websites the other day that list volunteer opportunities in/around Columbus.  I really think it would be a great idea to find a place to volunteer.  I have a lot of free time, especially in the summer, and there are so many people who could use a hand.  I still haven’t found just the right one yet, but with all that God has given me, perhaps it’s time to give back.

New topic:
So yesterday, I cleaned some of the carpets upstairs with the carpet cleaner my parents bought us for Christmas last year (so we could stop borrowing theirs!).  It was the first time I’ve used it, and it works really well.  It’s also scary how black the water came out in rooms that do not look that dirty.    But I did the loft and upstairs hallway, so maybe today I’ll start working on the other rooms upstairs.  It’s a good summer job, really.

Huge Prayer Request
I need you all to pray with us for a situation with the Hogue dairy farm.  Brief history: in the 1940’s, the farmers, including Grandpa Hogue and his dad, sold the rights to a coal company for any coal that was under their land for about $45/acre.  In 1940, it was a great way to get out of debt.  Unfortunately, my FIL was told yesterday that there is a rumor that the coal company now wants that coal.  They want to buy their land for $2000 an acre so they can strip mine the coal they bought the rights to 65 years ago. This is huge. That price is not going rate for land (the farmer who told my FIL about it just bought land for almost $4000/acre), and if the rumor is true, they could be looking at the loss of the farm, their land, their livelihood, everything they’ve worked for over the last 100 years.  Please pray that, whatever happens, the farm does not have to be sold.  Just the thought of that is distressing.  And pray for wisdom to know what to do while they try to find out what’s up.  Thanks.

As for the rest of life…it’s not that interesting.  I did laundry yesterday and wrote.  That about covers it.  Today, I don’t have much to do either, but since the humidity is back with a vengeance, I don’t think I’ll be spending much time outside.  Viva air conditioning!

It’s gray outside again today.  It was mostly gray yesterday, too.  I wouldn’t mind so much if the clouds resulted in rain, but nope…it’s seems to just be clouds.  I think the sun is supposed to come back in a day or two.

The weekend was pretty busy, but we had a good time.  My friends all arrived between 5 and 6.  Karen came over for a bit to say hello.  My parents came up a little after 6 to eat dinner with us, too.  Tim and Steph got here first with their son Brandt (7 months).  Then Mike & Erika arrived with Connor (6), Ella (3), and Cate (10 months).  We had supper and played and talked and had a good time.

Mike & Erika stayed at a hotel on Friday night (with their kids, of course! ), and Tim & Steph stayed here.  Brandt woke up screaming (let me repeat, SCREAMING) at about 4:30 am.   He was unhappy for about an hour before he finally settled back down.  He didn’t nap well in the morning, and they were starting to wonder if he was teething.  They kept apologizing profusely for his noise.  I kept trying to convince them that it wasn’t a big deal; we were aware of the fact that babies scream sometimes, and it wasn’t a big deal.  Besides, I always appreciate the reality check about what having kids is really like!  No idealized versions of parenthood for me!

We all had met up again on Saturday, but Tim & Steph had to meet their family at the zoo (the original reason for their being in Columbus), so they left a bit after noon.  We had a light lunch with everybody else and then they headed home about 2:00.  It was so much fun to see everybody, and I’ll have some pics tomorrow.

The rest of Saturday and Sunday were very low key.  I was exhausted for the rest of Saturday.  Eric played with his computer and I just hung out mostly.  We went running in the afternoon, and then goofed off until bedtime (which came very early!).  Sunday was church.  They announced Pastor George’s leaving officially.  I am really bummed to see them go.  But if this is what God wants, I’m sure we can trust him to work it out. 

I did very little on Sunday. Eric worked more on his computer.  I read the newspaper, did the dishes, wrote some, knitted and watched television.  Then we went to bed.  Today I don’t really have much to do.  I think I might to the laundry up just so that it’s done, with all the visitors, I have lots of towels to do!

I am currently sitting in front of my computer (obviously ) hoping that the clouds above my house will actually result in rain so that I don’t have to water my plants.  Supposedly, it’s going to rain a bit this morning and then clear off for the rest of the weekend.  But what do weathermen know, really…

Yesterday, I worked on my house some more.  I cleaned and organized my two remaining upstairs rooms, vacuumed them and generally made sure they were ready for guests tonight.  I also cleaned up the kitchen, watered the plants (they are so cute!), and other such minor chores.  Today, I will re-tidy things so that we’ll be ready when my friends come this afternoon.  I also have to run some errands this morning and then get the food ready this afternoon.  It shouldn’t be a lot of prep work, but I should stay busy.  And of course, I’ll take time to goof off as well!

Last night, Eric watered the lawn and we watched some television.  Thursdays are bad TV nights, though, so he ended up watching the movie Eragon which I had seen most of on Wednesday night.  I only watched the last 10 minutes with him since that’s how much I didn’t see the night before; I read a book for the rest of it.  Frankly, I have a hard time with movies made from books because they are so rarely even close to as good as the book that it’s pathetic.  Some movies are okay because they just claim to be “based on” the book which then makes it easier for me to accept them because they aren’t trying to actually re-do the book’s story.  But others, like Eragon, make huge changes that make it fundamentally different…just not a good thing, in my opinion.  The books were TONS better.

I’m so glad Xanga is back online today…I hardly knew what to do with myself all afternoon yesterday!

My social time was fun, but regularly interrupted.  We got there about 10 (I was a little late).  Vicki’s four kids were running in and out, of course.  They’re getting old enough now that they suspect we’ll talk about interesting things, so they try to catch parts of the conversation, I think!   Of course, that means that the good stuff we do talk about we have to do while they’re busy elsewhere!   Other than the kids, Vicki’s cousin came with her kids (ages 3 and 4 months) to join us for a while.  They were there until about 1:00, then they went home.  We chatted for a few minutes and another lady came to drop off her son while she went to the Parade of Homes.  Then we talked for a bit and another lady came to pick up her daughter who had spent the night with Vicki’s daughter.  And then it was time for us to go!  But despite the hectic-ness, we did have a great chat!

When I got home, I worked on cleaning some more.  I also washed, dried and ironed all the dress clothes.  I made the bed for my friends who’ll be staying with us on Friday night and tried to organize the upstairs rooms a bit more.  While Eric was gone to orchestra, I ironed and watched a movie (Eragon…the book is SOOO much better!).   Eric got home a little early last night and brought the tuba home with him.  His ‘official’ instrument is the trombone, but he’s playing the tube this summer because the tuba player is taking some time off.  So he came home and tooted on it for a while (he even played me the VeggieTales theme song!) before we watched the all-new Mythbusters about snow myths.  Then we went to bed.  It was sort of a strange day, obviously!

Yesterday, I hung out at home.  It did rain some (less than 1/10 of an inch according to our rain gauge) but the flower beds were still a bit wet this morning, and my impatiens looked very happy!   So I’ll be thankful for even that much rain.  And my container garden is doing very well now, so that’s exciting too!

I spent most of my day cleaning the loft yesterday.  I sorted out old bills, shredded stuff, and filed the information we keep.  Then I vacuumed and dusted.  The carpet really needs to be cleaned, but I didn’t to that yet.  I also washed the floors in the bathrooms, and since I had the soapy water, I also swept up and mopped the kitchen floor.  I also unintentionally got sucked into working in my closet, so I weeded out some clothes we never wear and rearranged the rest of the clothes to make better use of the space.  I think we need bigger dressers so that we can get rid of the plastic shelves/bins we hide in the closet.  Or maybe we should just get rid of a few more things we never wear!

Today, I’m going to hang out with some friends of mine from church.  We met weekly for an accountability group last year, but haven’t done that in a while.  It might be nice to start that up again, but who knows!  For today, we’ll just have lunch and chat for a few hours.  After that, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’m sure something will present itself!

Not much to talk about today, I guess.  Yesterday morning, I goofed around on the computer some, and then I went grocery shopping.  Karen called me as I was driving home because she and Erik were right behind me on the road, so she called to tell me so.  They were heading to CU for classes, and we chatted for a bit before her phone got low.

In the afternoon, I cleaned some more.  I finished the windows and doors in the living room.  I also cleaned the bathrooms really well, and I vacuumed the stairs.  It has been so humid out that I actually worked up a bit of a sweat even with the air conditioning on!  Anyway, now I especially have reason to clean because my friends from college are coming down for a cookout on Friday night.  So I’ll be continuing my cleaning all week!

After dinner, Eric fertilized the lawn and I washed the dishes.  Then he played on the computer.  I tried to write, but I’m really struggling with the chapter I’m on, so I stopped to listen to the sermon on which this chapter was based.  Hopefully, that will help me get it right!  Then I read for a good while before going to bed.

On a slightly different note, I would appreciate it if you all would say a quick prayer for me.  There’s no big crises or anything, but I’ve been really dumpy and discouraged lately, and I’m tired of it.  I’m trying to keep in mind all of God’s promises, and remember that I’m not supposed to bear all the burdens that are getting me down (I’m supposed to give them to him), but I think some extra prayer would help.  Thanks!

The weekend…

So Friday night, we just hung out at home.  I made some leftovers for dinner to use them up since we’d be gone all weekend.  And then we both sort of goofed off and read and such.

Saturday morning, Eric asked me if I, by any chance, had let his mom know we were planning to come to the farm for the weekend.  I had not (that’s his job!).  So he called his mom on Saturday morning.  She said it was fine if we came.  His parents had just gotten home from a trip to New York on Friday night, and his mom and brother were leaving for a statewide church conference for Methodists at 2:00 pm on Sunday afternoon, but we could certainly come.  Um…okay.

Anyway, we went.  I had a bad attitude for a while, I must admit.  It sounded a bit ridiculous to spend no time with my dad to spend so little time with his dad (who would also have lots of farm work to do while we were there) OR his mom.  And to be in the way while his mom tried to get unpacked and re-packed in the almost 36 hours she was home! 

Of course, it wasn’t that bad.  I think it would’ve been a bit easier for his mom not to have to think about us, too, but she does like when we come home.  And she saw our vacation pics, and we saw hers.  And Eric got to fly with his dad in the paraplane on Saturday night.  So that was good, too.  And I read about 2 books while we were there. 

Sunday, after church, we had dinner with the family (including the grandparents Hogue) and then they went home. Then after a bit, Eric’s dad went out to work, his brother left, and his mom and brother headed out to their conference.  It was 2:30 in the afternoon.  So we just packed up our car and headed out, too.  We ended up stopping in to see Eric’s other grandparents for a bit, so we got home about 6:00.  Then we just hung out for the evening, and I called my dad.  Then we watched Good Eats and went to bed at 10:00.