Heidi on a Harley?

Empty nesting is not as slow paced as one might think. Fact is, we can't even find time to fix my computer! I just can't focus on my thoughts using I.T.'s work laptop and I can't change my header pic to a diff picture, because they are stored on my pc, of course (right?). So it's eternal summer over here for now, even though the mid-west is glowing with pumpkins, corn stalks and a harvest moon.

Fash did get a leading role in the college's fall play, and she joined the dance team and the improv team and I don't know what all. She did very well on her first ever college writing assignment and she's coming home this Friday for fall break. I can't wait to see her. She's bringing her friend, Arizona, who is from Arizona and therefore cannot get home for a mere long weekend. Her name is not Arizona, but Fash calls her Arizona. She likes enchiladas and Mariachi, so I'm scrambling for recipes and bands to welcome her to Michigan. We will introduce her to apple picking and the corn maze at a local farm. But I might paint a big cactus on the wall, so she'll feel a little more at home.

I finished reading my latest book about four Lindas called Hometown Ties by Melody Carlson and am starting The Reluctant Prophet by Nancy Rue tonight. The words on the back cover are what caught my eye, "God Gets The Girl, The Girl Gets The Harley". In this fictional piece, newbie believer, forty-two year old, Allison Chamberlain, decides that God is calling her to buy a Harley and ride- wherever it takes her. In so doing she lives out the chance to present the reality of Christ to one of society's darkest corners.

Buying a Harley and becoming a biker is about the last thing on earth I'd ever do, simply because I am afraid to drive when enclosed let alone exposed. Wouldn't it be funny though if that is exactly how life unfolded for me at forty-seven? I could use some reinvention right about now and October 8 is just around the corner.

V-v-vroooommm!

Flies in the Buttermilk

Shoo fly, shoo!

The produce at the farmer's market is wonderful this time of year. Love the apples and squash. But I've recently, accidentally brought home a few pets- or should I say pests- that I didn't really want. Fruit flies have got to be the fastest reproducing insects alive! What to do?!

Last year, my son's girlfriend, Analisa, (I use her real name because that's her Etsy shop I promote at the top of my sidebar- check it out!) taught me to put a little apple cider vinegar, with a dot of dishwashing liquid gently swirled in, into a shallow saucer to trap fruit flies. They really go for this when Analisa sets the bait. I don't know if sucking up the soap is what kills them or if they just get stuck in the soup and drown.

I tried this yesterday. When I used a small, white corelle dish of vinegar and soap, the flies sat on the top rim and bred like rabbits while I did the dishes. A few died in the mix, but many more gave birth to many, many more. But when I moved the mix to a red milk cap, not one fly came to suck it up. I put a fresh mix into a blue juice top inside of a white plastic bag, thinking that when they gathered round, I'd quickly close up the bag and throw the whole community away in the garbage can. None dropped in.

So I sliced open some perfectly decent tomatoes and put them in a red, plastic bag opened up at the top along with the cider vinegar and soap in the juice cap. A few came. I cut open my lovely cantalope and mushed up a piece of it and added it to the bag. A few more showed up. I carved up a succulent Honey Crisp apple and put a piece in. When enough of the fruit fly population was in there feasting, I quickly closed the bag up around the whole mess and threw them out!

These flies are keeping me busy while I wait for my home computer to get fixed. (I found a library in the next town over from mine where writing on your blog is allowed). Anyway, I gotta get going- home to make dinner. Probably fruit salad sprinkled with a bit of extra- uh- protein.

Dag blog it!

Gosh darn it- my computer is fritzzed out! Caput! Fried up sir. Attacked by an army of trojans. And spaced out to the hilt!

I got my I.T. guy on it, but it's a doozy of a big daddy fry out and war and nowhere to put any more. And he has to get the pool closed for winter, so....I'm in the Q.

I'm going nuts over here without my blogging outlet, not to mention being unable to delete my e-mail spam.

So I went to the local township library. I couldn't log in, so I checked with the librarian. She said, ma'am you have $1.25 in unpaid fines. So I wrote a check. She said, ma'am we can only accept checks for $2.00 or more. So I wrote another check for $2.00- that's .75 more than what I owed. And do you know what I found out? You are not allowed to check e-mail on the library computers. They do not allow looking for postings on Craigslist either and they do not allow any blog reading on those library computers! For crying out loud, what on earth is a person supposed to use their 30 minute library login time doing? I asked the librarian. She said if I wanted to research marmots, for example, I could do that. I left with 28 minutes of login time remaining. That was my 75 cent experience for today.

I bellyached a bunch to I.T. He brought home his laptop and fixed the fried out router, so I could get online. My computer is still jammed and whammed, but life is fairly grand- if you don't count the bad haircut I got last Thursday or the tears I shed for ten hours on Sunday, because I missed my old life when kids lived here and the house wasn't so big and echo-y.

Fash loves her new four hours away college place. She loves her roommate, her dorm room, her classes, her professors, her on campus dishwashing job, the 1-1 football team and absolutely everything about it. And she was called back tonight for a second audition for a part in the fall play. She has no time to miss me, but we are in touch almost every day.

Hope to be back soon.