When the heck did July happen?

Sheesh! Not really doing anything these days but work and home stuff, along with health management (of course!). So where does time disappear to?

I have pictures to share, if blogger doesn't frustrate the life out of me while I'm trying to post them. :)

Bear and I managed to get away for a couple of days at the beginning of July. Went to the town of Gananoque, along the St Lawrence River. The 1000 Island district. What a pretty, pretty little town! It enchanted us completely, while also leaving us wondering why our town along the same river, with more waterfront area, can't be picturesque rather than blah. It's a waste of an opportunity, that's for sure!



So this is from the little waterfront park down by the marina in Gananoque-Joel Stone Park. I'd love to have a better look at some of the houses out on the islands. They must be beautiful.





The small sandy beach and swim platform that's there for all to enjoy. Especially if you're a border collie/husky who loves to fetch!




Plenty of pictures of boats and the marina...









And the house that we decided we wanted, lol!





Town hall, in its square, with gazebo, fountain and war memorial (sadly, with a recent addition-a local soldier, killed in Afghanistan).











And the reason we spent way more time in the hotel room than we thought we would. :)



Two person jetted tub. I so want one in my house now!

Finally, the new addition to the house. My daughter's girlfriend (who lives with us) broke us down-she took one of the outdoor kittens to the vet because he had an eye and respiratory infection, and then his mother wouldn't take him back, and the other cats were beating him up...so he's inside now. She calls him Asterique, but I think his name should be Dasher (or possibly Harry, after Houdini). Cute little devil. The dogs are delighted by him and want to play with him so we have to supervise the interactions for now. Dancer is way less impressed with him. She has deigned to give him few swipes of her tongue, but for the most part wants nothing to do with him.





Fingal doesn't quite know what to do with the little guy, either.







And a good size comparison:



He's not very big yet but so lively now that he's better that I'm having trouble getting a good picture of him.



or the flash washes him out.





So that's Skryker's World for now.

Time flies

...and it's not because I've been having fun!

Struggling with more health stuff plus parenting nightmares. No one needs to hear my whining about those things, so blogging has been pushed aside a bit.

One good thing with dietary changes since learning I'm diabetic-I'm no longer a sugar junkie. In fact, when I get hold of something very sweet, I end up feeling kind of sick after eating it. So the carb/sugar habit can be broken-it just takes some effort to do so.



In my quest for new experiences, I just ran smack into the sugar overload thing-I tried a bubble tea this morning. Interesting idea, I guess. It's kind of a super-creamy iced tea with tapioca pearls in it. I'm still not entirely sure if I like it or not. What I do know is that it's far too sweet for me now. After less than a quarter of it, I had to stop. Too much! Can't say I'd recommend it. I think it might be one of those things that you either love or you hate.

I'm also sure that if it were not from a mix it would be better, but that's true of so many things. Although I'm not sure I'd like milky fruit tea well chilled with tapioca in it any better if it weren't from a mix. :)

New experience: -1
Skryker: bellyache

I hope my next new thing is better.

An hour and counting.

My work-week ends in an hour. Woo hoo! Then it's home to spend a shared week-end with Bear. *sigh of contentment* Even better, I'm off the hook for making dinner tonight, as Bear has volunteered to do so. Somedays, I'm incredibly spoiled and all that sulking seems pretty self-indulgent.

On the other hand, I have to test my blood sugar at least twice a day now, as I'm a type II diabetic. That's not good news at all. (Especially for a needle-phobe.) No injections, at least, but I hate adding more health issues to the large pile I already have. Related health issues-the polycystic ovary disease put me at high risk for developing diabetes, but I still dislike feeling like my body is breaking down and giving up on me.

To amuse myself I've been terrorizing the house with blood tests. :D Well, trying to. Bear accepted it with good grace as well as a certain amount of curiosity on his part. The kid and her girlfriend? No luck there. They don't want anything to do with being poked. Teenagers! Left to their own devices they'll draw on themselves or scratch themselves with pins and stuff but no way in hell can I get near them with a nice, sterile lancet. Go figure.

I figure that if it makes me feel a little better to play mad scientist, they should play along. Nope. Uhn-uh. Not going to happen. Ever.

So I will have to content myself with being the only household pin cushion. I suppose it could be worse. Actually, it could be a lot worse.

Sulking

That's where I've been. I've been sulking.

Lots of stuff going on in Skryker's World these days but nothing to really blog about. Nothing catastrophic, either. Just run of the mill crap. I don't know, seems I don't get very much me time for the last little while, either, so it's hard to sort through all the static in my head for anything comprehensible.

Life gets that way sometimes, right? You go along feeling like you just can't deal with even one more thing- and then that one more thing gets dropped on you along with with its six inbred cousins. No more issue family reunions, OK?

I'm happy to report that none of these issues are in my marriage. That's rock solid and the foundation that keeps me from drifting away. In fact, Bear's shifts have changed so that we get more time to spend together and something approaching a real weekend. Yay!!! We're even thinking of maybe using one of these weekends to go away together. Not far (not with gas at $1.24/litre!) but away together, alone. Time where we aren't parents, homeowners, landlords or business owners. I'm really looking forward to this idea.

I also want to spend time with my camera, wandering and taking pictures. Some day, in between work and being chauffeur, cook, grocery delivery service, IT department, entertainment director, social convener, medical test subject and getting some sleep, I'm sure I'll find some time.

One of these years.

Supporting your local coffee shop

Yummy!

Finally stopped at the new little coffee place a block up from the store. Got a 16oz tea and a muffin for $2.16. Score!

It's a tea blend I haven't had since moving to this smallish town eight years ago. Ahhhh, Monk's Blend! Loose tea, too. And a caramel swirl muffin. A nice way to start the day.

Plus, it's networking, so I look like a business woman. LOL!

Wednesday's woes

Not really any woes to speak of, other than majorly frizzy hair thanks to the impending rain. It's muggy. How can it be that the snow has only just melted, and it's 22C and humid? Yesterday, it was 26C at 6pm. Just wrong.

Someone at Leon's caught on, and the sign is back to being a No Money Miracle instead of a No Monkey Miracle. How ordinary.

I was just talking to my neighbour. She's a retired teacher and has been active in local government and such. I knew that teen pregnancy was a huge issue here, but I didn't realize it was so very bad. She just told me that a girl who gets preggers while in High School in this area has a less than 10% chance of finishing school at the same time as her age group, and about a 15% chance of finishing at all. Higher education? About a 5% chance. How sad, especially when so many teens manage to start a family so young.

Better sex ed in the schools? Starting earlier, so that the kids don't get the info on how to not get pregnant after it's already happened? Something needs to change, that's for sure.

Miss Bronwyn's bad weekend.

My little girl had a terrible weekend, partly my fault and partly because of her labrador desire to eat anything that seems vaguely like food.

We had nachos on Friday night and it was the undoing of both Bronny and I. She, of course, managed to get into an unguarded plate and scarf down a large amount of nachos with jalapeno peppers on them. Not to mention sour cream and guacamole, beans and onions. Not really a good set of things for a dog stomach, is it?

Anyhow, I thought she'd be OK because she didn't hang onto that food very long.

Prin, skip over this next part, OK? You don't want to read it. Really. Go on to the next paragraph. Saturday morning, I wasn't feeling well myself and had to call the kid to come over to the store so I could go home and take some Gravol. Too late, unfortunately. And the dogs got between me and the bathroom door so that I couldn't get around them fast enough....I threw up on (yes, ON!) poor Bronwyn. I felt sooooo bad! I had to spend some more time in the bathroom before I could try and clean her up, too. :( Awful! She looked so mortified and she wouldn't come over to me when I called her, either. I don't blame her for that. I got a rescue from my daughter's girlfriend, who came in and cleaned up Bronny for me. I still feel so bad that that happened.

For the rest of the silly dog's bad weekend, well, you can imagine what the nachos did for her stomach and the rest. You know when you eat really spicy food what it can do to your rear end? Yeah. That's what she had. I wasn't sure at first, and was panicking. She was yelping every time she sat down. So I checked her out-no tenderness in the belly, no signs of bloat, she didn't have any problems letting my run my hands over her, no-ahem!- signs of it being anal glands (and wasn't that fun to check out!). She's fine now after having a tender rear all weekend and some ferocious gas.

The poor girl had spice bum. Otherwise known as "the ring of fire". I'd like to think that that will teach her not to eat nachos but I know better. The goat-dog will continue to eat first, think later. Sheesh! Motherhood is not for the faint of heart, lol!

But it would be more fun WITH them....

Hee hee hee! Apparently someone had some fun with the sign out front of Leon's Furniture Store over the weekend. Too bad I didn't have my camera last night. I'll take it tonight and hope that no one else has noticed yet.

The sign currently advertises a "No Monkey Miracle!" sale going on right now.

Yep, no monkeys required to buy furniture! What an innovation, 'cause, you know, it's really tough to get the monkeys to behave while you're shopping for a new couch. They always want to run into the bedroom section and jump on the beds.

Oh, hey, thanks for sharing!

I don't know why people seem to want to overshare details with me....

Had a guy in here, looking for back issues of Hustler magazine (uh, I don't carry old magazines, especially old skin mags, thanks for asking!) because his fiancee claims to have been in the magazine 10 years ago. Oh, and she's pregnant with twins.

Do I need to know any of this? Hell no!

But I do now. And so do you, because I had to share, lol!

I was feeling better, really!

I.

hate.

tax.

time.


Some day, everything will STAY where I put it so that I can find it again when I need it. Was going through all the stuff since the tax guy is finally-FINALLY!!!-coming to pick it up today, when I remembered a couple of things that should have been with it.

Were those important pieces of paper in the safe, logical place that I left them? Of course not! What fun is that?

Well, it's all together now. Grumble. Can't wait for the phone call next week asking for the rest of the things I forgot...

And I just got a phone call from the store landlord telling me the rent check bounced. WTF? No way! There was plenty in excess of the rent...

Ha ha ha. The bank held a deposit on me, which caused not just the rent check but 3 other things to bounce, and then charged $37.50 per item. NSF fees for things that should have cleared. I love it. And it was even a cash deposit, too. Not a check that needed to clear, cash.

Why did they hold it? Because I used the machine instead of a teller, since the bank was closed by the time I got there to deposit the cash. Business hours, ya know?

Oh, this is going to be a fun one to fight out with the bank....

The engine is running...

...but I've got no gas.

At least, that's how I feel. The antibiotics have done their thing. No more kidney infection. Yay!

Now I just have to sleep for a week straight and all will be well. :)