Today's Update. - 2 Nov 2014

Darth Molly running full tilt.  If her ears were flapping

any more she would need clearance to land.

Don't laugh. I fell in the pond. Not our pond but a friend's. I was in the middle of my daily trek of errands when I got a call. "Better hurry. We only have 2 hours before the road crew sprays the pond with Aquaherbicide."

"What?!"  I actually pulled over I was so frazzled and trying to decipher what my friend had just told me.

"They aren't spraying our side but Mr. XXX has given the road repair crew permission to spray his side where it runs into the drainage canal."

Blah, blippity, blah.

So basically what I find out was that the pond where I get the majority of my cat tails is about to be contaminated. Grrrr.  Rubber baby buggy bumpers.  I stop what I'm doing, a pain in and of itself as I'm running behind, and take off to my friends house.  But I was ill prepared.  No galoshes, no waders, nothing but the latex gloves, clippers. and trowel I always keep in my van for unexpected foraging opportunities (like the bamboo sprouts I dug out at one of our rental units after the landscape crew finally cleaned out the back corner of the lot).  Still, everything starts to go smoothly. We're even having fun.  I have almost a bushel of beautiful cattails to take home and process. Then disaster strikes.  

If anybody has ever been around a pond they know that where the water meets the land there is always some algae or other slimy junk growing.  In this case there was a lot of slimy junk growing. And I found a really nice place to skid.  I almost catch my balance. Almost.  But here is where I failed to give one very pertinent piece of information.  I had Darth Molly with me.

The lunatic dog thought I was playing a game and thought she would help by grabbing the cattails that I was using to keep my balance with.  I was after all swinging them around like pom poms in the hopes they would act like wings and give me enough lift to keep my ... er ... buggy bumper ... out of the mud.  Obviously too much temptation or my guardian angel thought I was due some pay back or something.   

So I no longer have my balance and not only did I go down I went under.  As in I came up covered in muck, duck weed, a frog under my shirt collar and a little soft shell turtle in my pocket.  And every time I try to get out Darth Molly thinks I wanted to go back in. No, I did not.  

Yes, now you can laugh. I was quite a sight that's for sure.  I even laughed ... eventually ... after I divested myself of the other frog that got caught up in my hair.  Nasty.

I would have kept on laughing if it hadn't been for the fact that when I get home to take a shower all the hot water was gone.  I didn't think a lot of it at the time. It is just one of those things you deal with when you have a large family ... someone has to be low man on the totem pole and this time it just happened to be me. The problem is that by the next day I experienced a relapse of a cold that I had had. So that is my excuse for missing two days of updates. 

Seriously, you can laugh. I did as soon as my sinuses unclogged and I wasn't in danger of choking. And since Molly had to take a cold shower too when she got home I figure fair is fair.  It took both of us most of the day to get rid of the last of the duck weed from our ears.

In the meantime I have managed to get some updates completed. You'll see that the one I added today is one of the ones that I had to drop off for a while because I got too busy. Winx is a pretty cool character but she's a little hard to keep up with as she tends to run in all different directions in my head.  Which is pretty much the way everything has been running lately so she was right at home.

Here are today's updates:

A Bunch of Wild Thyme
http://bunchofwildthyme.blogspot.com/

Enduring on the Lake
http://enduringonthelake.blogspot.com/

Life Is A Fractured Fairytale
http://lifeisafracturedfairytale.blogspot.com/

Up On Hartford Ridge
http://uponhartfordridge.blogspot.com/

When All Doors Close
http://whenalldoorsclose.blogspot.com/

Zombies Aren't Real ... Are They?!
http://zombiesarentrealarethey.blogspot.com/

For the rest of what I've been doing?  I don't know about you all but I am enjoying the lower gas prices. It is allowing me to refill all the fuel cans that we have used all summer along on landscaping equipment and other stuff.  I paid $2.82 per gallon today and that was before the discount I had from using my points from Winn-Dixie (local grocery store).  With my points I got 20 gallons for about seven cents per gallon.  Not too shabby.

My other frugal tip is that all of the holloween candy is on 50% off sale, but you better hop to it they are going fast from what I can tell.  The chocolates I will use by freezing them and then crushing them to be used in my Christmas cookies. Or I'll use them in hot chocolate.  I can use the hard candies the same way.  And when you're melting marshmallows it doesn't matter what shape they are so even the fall shaped and colored ones work when you're baking them on top of your Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole.  It may seem like pennies in difference but I have learned that the penny you don't spend today is the penny you will have when you need it. 

Speaking of sweet potatoes I need to keep an eye out for when they come on sale. I need to pick up a bunch of them - a couple of bushels anyway - so that I can can them and also so that I can make sweet potato butter. I also plan on making a bunch of sweet potato pies and freezing them this year. Before I forget there is something else that I've saved money on. Several fruit stands in stores are selling their pumpkins at a discounted price. So I have been picking up a lot of them - even the local Walgreens have some for about two dollars a piece - but boy is that going to leave me with a lot of work to do in a short period of time. But you do what you have to do.  Make hay while the sun shines.  Early bird catches the worm.  Yada, yada.

Just two videos today, both on sweet potatoes.  I included the direct links for those that can't see the embedded videos.  Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THItjDzlV1g

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6ePtgfgCw8