Stormy Weather

The Long Back Yard

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Saturday. Sunny and bright and just as cold as you can want. Minus one now as I sit in the window under my heated blanket. Minus five when I got up.

I am dressed for success today in heavy sweatpants and Steve's red wool drover shirt and alpaca socks.

Breakfast was potatoes fried with onions and a side of cottage cheese. Speaking of things I need to remember, I need to remember that I really don't like Daisy cottage cheese. It's not them. It's me. WAY too creamy.

I'm intending to make black bean soup or black bean chili or something soupish for lunch today. It'll work out.

Speaking of alpaca socks! Right after Christmas, I ordered a bunch of alpaca socks from a local business and apparently hit the wrong button, saying that I would pick them up. A couple weeks went by and they called and said when are you picking up your socks? and I made arrangements to have them mailed to me which they have been. Their trail has gone from Lincolnville to Belfast to Nashua, and now they're expected by the post office to arrive. Oh Monday. Quite an adventure for a bag of socks.

Today's plan is to read Page proofs this morning, make soup, and do some taxes.

I'm looking for ways to get some rest in between all of this because I really need some rest right now but it's not being easy. Well, the snowstorm may actually help with that goal.

How's everybody doing this morning ?

Dictated to my phone
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Soup's On

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Moving right along. Biscuit baking to have with the soup -- which is kind of a black bean, mushroom, veggie, sausage thingy with a crushed tomato/veggie broth base. Smells yummy. And yes, there are going to be leftovers.

My duty to the cats has been performed. I signed up for two "courses" from the local Adult Ed -- a couple-hour Zoom discussion of Maine's Death with Dignity law, in March, and a three-hour (yeah, yeah) cruise of Messalonskee Lake, in mid-July.

After lunch, I'll stare at the taxes for awhile. This morning, the cats and I proofread two short stories from LUC6, and may I just say that "The Last Train to Clarkesville," turned out really well.

What's for lunch at your house?
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Rookie had some after-lunch advice to give me.
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And that? Is enough fun for one day.

The tax paperwork is a zoo. For last year, Steve of course was TAXPAYER, but this year, I'm TAXPAYER, which the CPA has already gotten wrong once. I foresee a serious boondoggle, if I try to use their damned online form.

Well. Another phone call in my future.

In any wise -- Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe.

I'll check in tomorrow.

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Addendum:

And I see the weatherbeans have adjusted the timing and upped the stakes of the incoming storm. Now predicted to start tomorrow evening and go through to the early hours of Tuesday, 10-18 inches for a projected total, though it looks to me that we're still looking for 10ish inches.

Which is enough, really.

Still calling for Pretty Dern Cold tomorrow, after minus 10 on the overnight.

Tomorrow may be a pillow fort day, after I cope with the various piles. Might be I'll bring the page proofs with me into the fort and finish those. At least that's a task I feel like I have a firm handle on, and which won't cause me headache inducing amounts of angst.

Well. Plenty of angst to go around. The snowmen apparently came into Maine with a quota, if not an actual shopping list. They aim to disappear 1,400 people, and they've taken to threatening observers -- following one woman home, pulled a vehicle across the bottom of the street, another at the top, and a third at the curb, rang her bell and said, "We just want you know that we know where you live."

Stopped another guy who was following a car, and told him he was "impeding" them and that they were delivering his first and only warning. If he "impeded" them again, he would be arrested.

And, because the Portland Police Chief was mean, and said they weren't behaving like real Officers of the Law, they took 50 or so people they had stolen off the streets and stashed in the Cumberland County Jail out of the Cumberland County Jail and I'm not finding that anyone knows where they are now.

Not to mention the random killing of folks in Minnesota.

They're trying to start a war, just like the bully in the schoolyard, pushing you and pushing you and pushing you until you break and launch into a fight you can't win.

God, I hate this timeline.

I do believe I'll serve up Coon Cat Happy Hour, and have a glass of wine.