joflasher | Just fake it if you're out of direction

I'm ready for this summer to be over. Its been nuts. Between work, volleyball, the house, the computer, the pony and the rats, I'm exhausted.

If you've been wonder where the art got to, its all on my kitchen walls right now. I've spent most every weekend this summer remodeling my kitchen. It went from nasty white and blue plaid to lovely gold, rust and orange. I repainted all the cupboards gold and orange and put bronze frog door handles on it. I replaced the mismatched wallpaper with rust ivy on a warm mottled background. We repainted the rest of the walls in yellow. I put neutral dragon flies and butterflies up around the border. My kitchen is now warm and sunny and matches my swamp. I'm happy. I'll put up before and after pictures later.

My new computer is finally functional and it didn't involve any more hacking of drivers. Nuff said.

The Boy and I also cut down all the scrub trees between the back yard and the stone wall. After digging out all the roots (including a bumper crop of poison ivy), we planted lots of lilacs and butterfly bushes and mulched the tar out of it. The Boy ended up in the emergency room thanks to the ivy but at least now we're good to the wall.

Volleyball kicked ass this summer. Face Biting Octopus won both sand leagues we played in. The indoor season has started and we're consistently in the top three in our co-ed league. I got to tool an obnoxious player three times last week, which still makes me smile. Yes, you can roof me. That just gives me a target. My MIT team is gearing up for the season and it should be good. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of really good players to graduation and such but there are a couple new girls who might turn out to be stompy.

On the horse front, I've passed a milestone last week. Once a month in the summer, I take a riding lesson with Dottie Morkis, an Olympic bronze medalist in dressage. I'm a good enough rider that she agrees to teach me. I'm a bad enough rider that she normally spends the hour cussing me out and ranting about my current horribleness. The woman swears like a sailor and is not a teacher for the faint hearted. She's known for occasionally sending people out of the ring in tears. Last Saturday, I got through a lesson without a single swear word aimed at me. Yes, I spent most of the time with no stirrups or only one (which makes posting a bitch) but she didn't swear. The worst I got was "your hands are ugly. Fix them." Life is good. Now if she'd just stop calling my horse fat we'd be great. (pst...she's an arab, she's not fat, she's not pregnant and I tell you that every month.) I've also been doing hunter paces off and on. We'll be at the Groton pace this weekend. I had a jumping lesson today in preparation ... mainly to see if I could still hold two point for an hour if needed. The answer is yes, I can and it hurts the knees less than 1/2 an hour with Dottie. The woman is a sadist, I tell you. Getting out of the indoor and just galloping cross country has a lot to be said for it, not the least of which is that it makes our next dressage session so much better.

Work has been kicking my ass but I've been kicking back. If my foray into being a task leader has taught me anything, its that I should avoid becoming middle management like the plague. I am not a people person. Machines are nice.

Art just hasn't been happening. Sure, I'm 90% done with that oil painting but that's pretty much all I've done this summer. This sucks and will be fixed soon (I hope).

Midori is still kicking. The cats caught and killed their first mouse today. I was good and praised their mighty hunting skills and fed them kitty treats while I threw the beaten up carcass away. I'm sure they think today is the best day ever.

But that's it. Too much to do, too little time. I need more sleep.