Damn.

That's all I can think of for a title. The last few weeks have been... off. I know you know what I mean - nothing's terribly wrong, but everything takes longer than it should, is harder to do than it should be, and I continue to fall behind. Then I collapse in a heap on the weekend and get even FURTHER behind. It doesn't help that the stuff that's looming over my head is the BIG STUFF. Finishing up dealing with the death stuff is the big ugly right now; mostly taxes and mortgage. I think it's an obvious understatement when I say that the two entities involved don't really give a fig about my personal loss or our family's collective failure to plan for a rainy day. (Additional information: what century is this? The IRS isn't even allowed to give me a fax number until I MAIL them a request in writing for the information I need. I think they go out of their way to find useless people, or maybe just to make useless policies. Soon they'll outsource THEIR customer "service" to a call center in India too. Irate much? Who, me?)

On days like these, sometimes you need purple pancakes. (Yeah, all my photos are for crap. Sue me.)


Or a beautiful sunset.


Or a goofy kid modeling the lastest in Spiderman .


(As a side note: don't you love the way a kid smiles with his whole body? You can only see one eye but you know he's grinning from ear to ear.)


What else makes me happy these days? Hmm, well, it ain't this:


It *might* be this:


For those who don't know/care, that is nearly four pounds of my beloved Sage, last seen looking like this. I sent her off to Spinderella's, and they washed her again and carded her up, and damned if I don't want to dump out that bag and roll around nekkid in her. I won't, though - I have big plans for my lady and we can't be matting her up again.

Big plans. I think that might be part of my general malaise these days. Spring is here, as Cookie is so crabby about, and I feel like things need to be happening. You know what I mean? It's the same restless feeling I get in the fall. I feel like it's downright primal sometimes - the need to Get Moving, to Do Big Things, to fix it all at once. Early spring and late fall aren't times for baby steps, but that's all I'm capable of right now. I have set some things in motion and I want to see them come to fruition NOW. Today. Not next fall, not later, but Right This Very Minute. Whatever zen I had going on before has been replaced by a petulant child with the gimmes. It's a problem. I'm working on it.

And now for something Completely Different. I have an office phone. My boss ordered it. He apparently didn't specify that it needed to work, because no one bothered to put a phone jack in my cube - they just left the phone on the desk, with the disconnected cable. But I betcha they closed that work order...

Feelin' hothothot

And it's only February.
Which means it's time to post pictures of the weather, which is our reward for living in hell for 9 months out of the year.
Taken today:


Flowering pear (I think):


Apropos of nothing, one of my Firefox tabs is showing Jessalu's blog, with the title of the post being Epic. I keep seeing it out of the corner of my eye and reading "Epic Jesus".

And that is your random for the day. I have lovely pictures of Sabino Canyon from Sunday, beautiful water and warm sun and happy children, but I can find the battery charger for my camera and the computer cable for Rick's. And while the cards are interchangeable, those other things are not. Drat. They are stuck there forever. I am also working on B-Side for my Olympic project in the WIP finishing category. I think I have put on about 3 inches, which doesn't sound like much until you realize each inch is roughly 2400 stitches. I have four soul crushing rows before I divide for the armscyes and as FSM as my witness, I shall finish those four tonight.

Lene made me

Okay, she didn't really, but the one she posted reminded me of this. Not the same sentiment, but parts of the same whole.

I am standing upon that foreshore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails in the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!" "Gone where?" "Gone from my sight, that's all." She is just as large in mast and spar and hull as ever she was when she left my side; just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at that moment when someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

(Attributed to Victor Hugo, among others. See discussion of origins here.)