Let’s talk about LastFm for a bit. I am still really new to it, and I thank the 12 of you who have become my friends, as I still don’t know how to make more friends, tho some of you have TRIED to explain.

I can’t seem to find the “Add as Friend” tab you all seem to have.

It gets a little weirder. My page is always different. And I am pretty sure I have only the one identity. Tho I was pretty sure I only had one on Blogger, and we all know that story.

When I click on someone ELSE, it will pop of their page and what they have been listening to all day, which I always thought was fun. On mine, today, I finally found that again, sort of. And sometimes it will only give me an option for “Your Library” and not “Your Neighbors” or “Your Recommendations”. If I dig around a while, I can find them, but not always, and I like the My Recommendations listening thing.

Which also gets weird…This morning, it seemed to think that all I wanted to hear was music from Film scores, which I like ok, but wasn’t the thing, and then it moved on to female pop, which I also liked. I had to go and find the Oyster Band, and play music LIKE the Oyster Band and rate the songs I like to get it back on track.

Of course, I just gave a Heart to the “Unicorn Song” Paul, I am SURE will have something to say about it. And Fod knows what Last FM will start thinking I like….

There is also a new (to me anyway) tab called “Paint It Black” I don’t even want to GO there, as I am sure it will wipe me out of existence. It sounds fairly ominous doesn’t it?

Anything anyone has to say on LastFM would be great. I want Hera to be my friend, and tried so hard to ask her….(And anyone else out there if you want to be my friend, I know how to ACCEPT your friendship, just not how to GET it)

This is getting surreal…

Great News! I got our Entry Tags for the X County Fair! Now we must select the most perfect jar of honey and comb and take them on in. Since I already showed you the most recent honey, here is an exciting photo of what Bee Hives look like on a Summer’s afternoon….

Ok. So not so exciting. And since I neither got stung, nearly stung nor went in them, we can move on. Sure did smell wonderful down there tho, all like honey air, kind of…

I’ll leave you with a picture of “First Time Dog Tries the New Bridge” The outcome was successful..

Hope your day was too!

Love and Music and Bees,
Lorraine

Hello all,

This will be a short post, as I want to get home and see my Kitties, and perhaps clean the darn place up a little. WHO gets it that messed up??? I mean, I live alone…Could this be the Bengals???? It seems beyond them, but you never know….

I did some agility with Cabal, then came in for a bubble bath which went completely out of control when the jet things came on. I had to kind of dig my way in and out, and thought that this was perhaps a fitting end to a day when so many things went wrong, it was beginning to feel like a Comedy of Errors.

And my intentions were so good….

I did get a lovely package from Spacelaw, which I think has lovely herbs for making tea, which s JUST what is called for tonight. And maybee a little Bat Watching Bengal Walking.

And I am certain there will be adventures tomorrow, promise!

Blogger seems not to allow me to delete comments anymore, I’ve asked Malena to fix that, and I am certain she will. I am sorry for the nastiness, but until it is fixed,which will hopefully be shortly, let’s not feed the Trolls.

Love and Nighttime, Lorraine

Well, you asked for a report on how Cabal’s First Slumber Party was going. Are they doing their nails? Wrestling non-stop? Watching scary movies? Well, er, no. They aren’t. Nothing says PARTY like a trip to Doggie ER….

We had been having a wonderfully fine day. Freckles came out early, and then Johnny showed up with his dog, a black lab named King Kong, and Merry Housekeeper brought Golden Retriever Kuda, we had a PACK! A pack of big dogs who all wanted to play with Cabal. He was so happy. We had a game where I would let them out, for a run and yell Pack Coming!” And Johnny would yell “Release the Hounds!” and out they would go!

Here is Cabal, and his sleep over buddy, Freckles, this morning, when his, hopefully fair minded owners, dropped him off….(Hey, I’ll watch him for you, it will be fun, what could go wrong? How hard could it be?)

And here is the pack in a rare moment of repose…

I finished extracting the honey, by the Old Fashioned Cheesecloth Bucket Method…

Only to have our New Fangled Honey Extractor, that was meant to have been majorly delayed, show up. Hand and Johnny put it together, that is Johnny and Merry Housekeeper (who is going to raise Merry Havoc about all the blood all over the floors and carpets she just today cleaned when she comes in tomorrow..It looks like Massacre of the Innocents)

We went, Cabal, Freckles and my friend Susan (to wrangle Freck, and take a walk while Cabal and I worked out and astounded the rest of the class with his brilliance) to Agility Class, which was wonderful fun. And then back home, where Cabal and Freck went for a final run, as the sun sank slowly, and I changed over the garden hoses…

All was serene, until we got in and being a sober sort of on the ball gal, I could not help but notice that there was BLOOD everywhere. “Right, guys, says I, who is bleeding???” Freck says, “Well now that you mention it, I seem to be gushing blood everywhere..”

A quick look, leads to a quick call to the ER Vet line, where they tell me there is a FEE for this sort of thing, and did I want to put a bandaid on it and call them in the morning.

Now I don’t know much about dog medicine (or people either, for that matter) but it is pretty clear when some thing needs to be stitched. And I said that I thought the owners might be rather more irritated if their dog bled to death in the night than if I took him in.

Freck went under, they stitched, we got medicine and I have promised things like “Call you tomorrow, and no, I don’t actually know if this is their vet clinic, and no, I sure don’t know their last names..”

Here is a picture of the Slumber Party now. Poor Freck is so out of it, and he runs into things with his cone, and gets stuck. I am going to have to sleep down here with him, if I sleep, and make sure he is ok for the rest of tonight. Poor little guy….Cabal is SO upset and doesn’t understand why his friend smells funny and is wearing a cone.

Stay tuned to the conversation I get to have with Jane and Robert tomorrow…Not to mention Mickey the Trainer at Doggie Day Care when I get to tell her SHE is taking care of this dog while I work and the floors are re-grouted….

First things first…If you are reading this tonight (Tuesday) tomorrow is Paul’s (our own Dr. Score) Birthday!!!!! SO we need to send him some Very Many Happy Returns of the Day! If you are reading this tomorrow, Today is Paul’s Birthday! Wish him well!

(if you are reading the Thursday, long after we have moved on, Keep up or get culled from the pack, hee-hee)

Today was a Honey Extraction Day (see, you science types, I know some big words too!) There was some sort of Snaffu (another technicial Bee Term) at the extractio plant, so we decided to do it the old fashioned way. A bucket and cheese cloth.

This is the poor sad honey from the failed hive. We got the bees a new home and are totaly stealing all the honey they made. AND today I regestared for our very own X County Fair! Oh yes, blue ribbons in both our classes! I separated the dark honey and the light and combined a couple, so we can taste and figure out which is the best. It would be a lovely end to such a great hive.

This is all a very sticky business. Tomorrow I have to Moosh the buckets. (another techicial Bee Term) meaning Moosh them down so the honey gets thru. I could have done this today but I had reached the point of Done, before I got to it. Then I will take what is left after the honey is gone, called “Slumglum” and boiled it to extract the wax, and then use it to make, well things. No, don’t know what yet. Or how.

Took the Bengals out. Venus met a dog and bee-lined for the house. Mim got stuck in a tree. Took Cabal to Doggie Day Care while the Grouting was going on, and the Trainer said he was kind of sad no one would play with him. One dog his size was too old and the others too little. So his school expeirence might mirror ours…

Love and Bees and Life,
Lorraine

I thought we should have a picture tonight, since there weren’t a LOT of adventures today. I got lost twice, trying to buy Cat Litter, at a place I knew where I was going, which takes talent, I admit, but might not qualify as an Adventure.

I took both Dog and Bengals out for lovely walks, which had I done it simultaneously might well have been the Adventure to end all Adventures, but I am smarter than that.

I failed to solve the Mystery of the Missing Firefly Lights, so Hans didn’t end up on the roof, perilously perched, trying to hang them. (an Adventure I would LOVE to blog about)

I recently received a letter from the People who dug up my block last summer, making driving on it impossible for months, saying, er, Well, very sorry, but we seem to have, er done it wrong, and er, have to do it again, starting tomorrow. (If I can lay my hands on a sling shot, this will definitely be a Future Adventure.)

Anyway, since Gayle hasn’t sent me this Mystery Picture she wants to show us, I thought I’d post one of my fish, that Speacelaw took. Lovely shot. Nice fish. I call him “Fish” He used to have four friends, but they all died. Or he ate them. Not really sure. It’s a “Party Tough or Stay Home” sort of coffee table fish tank.

I leave you with a little Twisted Bonnie Raitt, which is a fine example of something one does in order to get out of actual writng…

Love, Lorraine

People are blogging, blogging ’bout people
I read their writing, you won’t believe it
I think they’re authors, kept under cover
I just ignore it, but I keep saying
I want to make you laugh
I can’t stand having nothing to say
I stare just a little too long (at the screen)
Maybe they’re seeing something I don’t, darlin’s

Just give me something to blog about
Just give me something to write about
Just give me something to blog about
How about some words on this darn screeeeennn????

I feel so foolish, Now that I’ve noticed
I am so nervous, I know your all reading me
I like the rumors, they make make great stories
Now I’m convinced I’m going under
Thinking ’bout this every day
Dreaming ’bout this every night
I’m hoping that you all feel the same way
Now that we know it, let’s really write about it, darlin’s

Just give me something to blog about
A little mystery to figure out
Just give me something to blog about
How about some words on this darn screeeeennn????

Today was almost everything a Sunday ought to be, lovely day, no serious work to be done, a little Bee Time with the Bees, where I learned yes, you can get a Bee stuck in your hair (twice) and not get stung.

I forgot to mention that last weekend one of our hives had to be, I am not sure if there is a Bee Term for it, let’s just call it “Cancelled Mid-season” The Queen had died, we re-Queened, she did not survive, the workers made two new Queens, they never hatched….

It was time to give up. There was no way they could come back and make enough honey for winter. Rather than let the workers die off, we decided to try and introduce them to the Kitty Hive. You can’t just tell them, “Ok, gals, why don’t you just nip on over to Kitty and just pitch on in”

The way we did it was we put the Brood Box from the Dead Olga Hive, in the middle of Kitties Brood Boxes, and put a sheet of newspaper on the bottom and the top, and it is hoped that by the time they eat thru the paper their little Bee Thoughts are more “HEY Here we are, we have rescued you! We must be together and the hive will be strong” And no one will notice that all these new bees, are, well, new bees.

This seems to have worked, we found out today, the Birdchick and I. I only got into trouble when we went to the other hives, the Mimko and Bickman hives, they are such nice bees, and we have tended to get a little lackadaisical, shall we say, about how far away we are from the hives when we take the suits off. Like, say, three steps.

(Note: Bee suits are HOT when it is over 80 in the summer)

We were standing by the Bee Table talking and all of a sudden I heard the one sound you DO Not want to hear when tending bees, a buzzing in your hair and the FEEL, which leaves nothing in doubt of what is about to occur, of a Bee digging in for a sting!

I have really long thick hair (which rather than grow myself, I pay a lot of money and spend a lot of time to get) and it was in a scruntchie bun. (Either you know what that is or you don’t) and here is this Bee caught up in it. Cut to screaming, and me desparatly trying to recall everything that happened last year when Sharon was the victim and I the rescuer. I did not touch my hair and tried to stay still, and Sharon smoked me frantically, saying “RUN RUN RUN!!!!!!!!!!” Get out of it’s territory. Fast.

I ran, she said, “It’s Out! I saw it fly!” Great, thinks I. And then it came BACK. (Insert word of your choice here) I am SO stung now. RUN said Sharon, running after me with the smoker. I found out I can run Very Fast when there is an angry bee stuck in my hair. (you would be surprised how very fast you can run)

Thank Fod, and I do, it left. I truly believe it was nothing short of miraculous that I didn’t get stun. And that I have just used my Get Out Of Jail Free card in regards to the Bees. Still, the Birdchick and I did better than when it happened to her, she not only got stung, but I stomped on her head trying to kill it.

Not to get too poetic here, but I am typing this on my deck, and looking at the sky, which is full of flying Bats, and my woods, which are full of Fireflies.

A perfect Sunday, if you ask me.

Love and Stingers,
Lorraine

Loved all the comments last post and all the new Friends! 102 comments???? Wonderfully done!!!!!!!! I’ll let you know what Kitty thinks, but I already know she is going to feel so loved. I liked all the places our chatting went too, gave me a lot of things to look up, as in -I- had never heard of a lot of those forms of poetry and different literature styles. SO much to learn…

Speaking of which, you asked for the story of My Weird Education, so we will start with that and leave Bonnie Raitt for another day….

Just before I started Kindergarten, my parents told me the school had sent a letter saying they were going to teach me to read using a wonderful new method. I mentioned, somewhat indigently, as I recall, that I could already read. We know, they told me but they are doing it this way now…(And so begins a public education saga that does not spiral upward)

What They had developed was something called ITA, which meant that They used a sort of different alphabet aand symblos and everything was spelled phonetically. (This is a real thing, click Here to see it..) This would mess anyone up, but for a kid who could already read it was disastrous. Boss once saw one of my early papers and remarked that the wonder wasn’t that I could not (to this day) spell well, but that I could at all. Here is an example sentence….And remember a lot of these letters, were symbols, like AE, TH, UE, SH etc….

“An inishul teeching alfubet maeks thu task uv lerning tue reed eezeeer and mor enjjoiubul”

(No, sadly, I am not making this up, taken from the ITA website)

They abandoned it the next year. For somewhat obvious reasons. I remember being incredibly bored all thru elementary school, except for music. That teacher was great, music class was the best, and he collected fossils, same as me. (I was nuts for fossils, still am)

The school decided what would be best was for me to skip a grade, go from 3rd to 5th, which my parents told me, they had declined, saying it would be better to stay with my age group. Right. When I did get to 5th grade, I thought things were getting exciting, as NOW one could learn to play an instrument. Except my parents said no, and told me that we had taken a Music Aptitude Test on 4th grade, and the school had sent a letter home saying I was not Apt and should not be encouraged to play music.

Thwarted.

In middle school, I got excited again, as one could take French and German and Spanish. Sign me the heck UP says I!!! I will speak them all! (I already had a private tutor in Swedish, due to an ABBA obsession, and the fact that all their early music was in Swedish) No, said the school. ONE language. You can’t learn more than one at a time. You will fail. It’s too hard. And if you took more than one, you would miss pottery class.

Now, I am NOT dissing pottery, at all, my sister is a potter, but we do not share this talent. The only time I felt good about anything in art class was this hooked rug thing we had to design and , uh, hook. I worked SO long and hard, it was going to be the best rug ever and hang on my wall! I painstakingly drew out my design, a skating blade (I was a figure skater) suffered thru the hooking of it and proudly turned it in.

Only to be hauled up and in front of the whole class told how bad it was. (I am sure it was, but that is not the point) We don’t forget these things that happen when we are young.

Re-visiting the topic of two languages the next semester, I was told again NO. I would miss Gym and fitness was important. I explained that I was a competitive figure skater who rose at 5:30 every morning for practice 5 days a week, and often went back after school. That’s nice, they said, but you need to learn gymnastics. Being 5′5 and 130 pounds of solid muscle one does not excel at gymnastics, as you can imagine. I actually FAILED the class. My first F. The un-even parallel bars scared the HECK out of me. And any of the kids who were still un-developed and twigs could manage it, and you know what girls can be like. Total public humiliation.

I did discover Shakespeare, which everyone else in 7th grade hated, and found a lifelong love. I learned to hate Dickens. I learned you could skip classes and hide in the library and that the notices sent home could easily be nabbed from the mailbox and I learned how to forge the Parents signature on the reply form.

( I may be getting more good out of this re-telling than I ever did with either of the Therapists I tried to go to, they seemed to think if only I would journal, everything would be fine, and then move onto how exciting my job must be and did I actually get on stage and play music???)

Tomorrow you will get the exciting tale of my Non-High School experience, and my attempt to go to college, and where it all ended up. Well, you kind of KNOW that, but it’s a fine look at the American educational system and how badly it deals with students who are not, for lack of a better word, the norm.

That is my Story. So Far.

And THANK YOU for all the comments, you are truly the best. I love it here.

Love and not so much school,
Lorraine

Too hot, too Tired.
How ’bout Haiku For Kitty?
You Can do Better…

I’ll collect them and e-mail them to her, she can get them on her Blackberry, and read them to the Jonas Brothers as Bedtime Stories…Danguy, can you make yours truly Evil??? In a Take Over The Workd sort of way? No limits on the numbers submitted. There will be a Grand Prize awarded the best. Second place, two Grand Prizes!

Love, Lorraine
(who is again wearing her skirt as a dress….)

I think Weather Girl is going to be happy this week. I have been watching the Weather Channel, (hey, I am REALLY tired tonight, anything deeper is beyond me) and it seems we are going to have storms every day for a week, with the word “Severe” popping up a lot for tomorrow.

Excellent, we really need the rain. It’s so hot here, I am wearing my skirt as a dress. A Fashion Moment that is best not remembered in pictures.

I think the strangest thing that happened today, besides the Pack of 100 tee-shirts manifesting themselves in the kitchen was that earlier today, remember when Phiala was grumbling that she couldn’t get the dog to vacuum?

(what the heck kind of sentence WAS that??)

Well, when I got home tonight, I found that Venus had decided to help with the laundry. As in she had BROUGHT UP from the basement 4 hand towels and a pair of PJ pants. No mean feat that, the laundry is DOWN there because I can’t motivate myself to bring it all up and it is easier just to KEEP it there and get things as I need them.

She hadn’t folded it, or put it away, but I have hopes. And yes, I do know it was Venus, Mim is sweet and lovely and adventuresome but hasn’t the brains Fod gave a goat. But she is young yet. Venus is the one who comes up with this stuff.

(I might be miss-saying Mim tho, remember she did get out the window WITH a toy..)

I read Diablo Cody’s book this week, wonderful. Talk about a way to seriously change your life! Spending a year as a stripper may not work for everyone, but it seems to have worked out just fine for her. The more I see of her work, and read her in interviews, the more I like this women. She can write, and has a great sense of humour.

I’ll leave you with a picture of Miss Kitty, on one of our shopping trips. Remember, we are sending her LOTS of love for the next 5 weeks or so.

Love and Laundry,
Lorraine