Fingernails down a blackboard

Wednesday, 11:40 am

By Kate

Jan

02

2008

If I never hear the word surge again, it would still be too soon. What an overused word that has become. Every darn time I read an article about anything, there seems to be some sort of surge going on. How did people express themselves before surge became the word of the hour? This has been grating on me for quite a while. Every time I run across it, I want to shriek in pain—a daily occurrence, now.

Evidently, I’m not the only one. Reuters reports that the word is included in a U.S. university’s annual list of words and phrases that deserve to be banned. I hope journalists pay attention. The article is entitled “Perfect Storm” of cliches make bad English list.

Exercised in more ways than one

Wednesday, 10:46 am

By Kate

Jan

02

2008

I’ve had my invigorating walk for the day. After dropping my car off at the mechanic’s shop, I set out to take the short way home and ended up taking a much longer route because NO ONE shovels their sidewalks any more. Being a very old town, many of our streets are extremely narrow and it’s all your life is worth to walk down one that is narrower than usual, owing to the snow. So, I stuck to the main roads and walked close to two miles rather than one. People were kind enough to avoid splashing me with road slush. Thank you, people. I do appreciate it.

So. Now I am waiting for the lad to wake up. Probably won’t be for a couple of hours. We arrived back home rather late last night. His flight didn’t get in until almost midnight, after sitting on the runway at O’Hare for over an hour. When we got home, he rearranged his room to his liking and even packed his stuff away in the closet. That pleased me to no end.

However, this morning, when I walked into his room, his television, DVD player, and Playstation 2 were all on. That did not please me. We will have words about that today and it won’t happen again. He knows the drill. His little oversight cost me an extra kilowatt hour, according to this morning’s meter reading, and that makes me very unhappy. A good rule to live by is “Don’t give Mom an excuse to unplug stuff, ‘cuz she will.”

I have also done the carpet sweeping, regular sweeping, rug shaking, and cat feeding. I think I’m all set. Except for that pile of laundry that mysteriously appeared on the kitchen floor.... huh. Wonder where that came from.

Not the day I had in mind

Tuesday, 6:09 pm

By Kate

Jan

01

2008

Well, I did say that I was going to hop back in the saddle again and start posting normally on this blog again today. Reality didn’t quite cooperate with my intentions. It snowed again. More like still snowing since Friday. The storm today, though, meant business. The snow shovel and I spent a lot of quality time together. There’s more forecast for tonight.

And then it was time to drag some wood in the house. I made a heart-drops-to-my-toes discovery. The tarp sprung a leak from the sharp ice that formed on top of it and the first three layers of the woodpile were wet and frozen solid. Damn, damn, damn. Not only did I have to chisel the woodpile apart and readjust it, I spent considerable time dragging in extra wood to start drying it out. I’ve been rotating wood on top of, beside, and behind the stove all day long. It’s going to take a few days to dry the wood out. And there’s a whole lot more outside where that came from. I simply hate (formerly dry) wet wood. It is the bane of winter.

I suppose this means I’ll have to replace the tarp. And this was a heavy-duty tarp, too.

And, meanwhile, the lad returns from Alabama tonight, I think. I was toying with the idea of going down to fetch him tonight since I have to drop my car off at the mechanic’s shop tomorrow morning. If I don’t go get him tonight, he probably won’t be back home until the weekend. He wants to come home soonest. But, as far as I know, they haven’t arrived at the airport yet. They were trying to get an earlier flight today, but there was still some thought that they might not be able to get in until eleven o’clock-ish (providing nothing is canceled or delayed)....just about the time the next snow is supposed to start vigorously falling. I don’t really want to drive in a snowstorm. So that whole situation is still up in the air. Much just...depends.

Well, since I will be grounded beyond where my two legs and feet can carry me for the next couple of days, I’ll probably be around here a whole lot more. Keep your fingers crossed that things sort themselves out tonight before I go bonkers from pacing and that my car doesn’t cost the earth to repair. I don’t know what’s wrong with it...nothing seems to be overtly wrong...but the engine light won’t go off and I just know that a simple little thing like that will devolve into a costly saga all of its own. It’s totally inevitable.