11:15; Dirty Houses and Fat Deer

Well, I'm a bit early for my appointment with you...Tonight I only slept until 11:00. I get so exhausted and to be hurting so much after a day of being up and about, that I usually crash early...like at around 8:30 or even earlier...So when I say I'm up at 11:00,you should understand that I've already had about 3 hours of sleep. Some nights this is all I'll get (most nights, I should say.)...although on some really blessed ones, I will doze off again, two or three hours after my first arousal. (And NO! get your mind out of the gutter! It means to wake up!! Look it up!!)

So now that I'm up, what shall we talk about? Well, two things are on my mind at the moment...One is that my lovely, lovely friend, who comes every two weeks to try to restore order to a home where, if I drop a glob of something on the floor, it pretty much STAYS there, because I can't bend down and wipe it up. So our kitchen gets sticky really fast. And the bathroom? Well, the floor gets filled with what my husband calls, "tumbleweed" - and that is little conglomerations of body hair which blow about in the drafts on the floor...(HIS body hair! please note). And the tub? Forget that...NO way can I bend over it to scrub it...especially considering the fact that my hands won't grip a sponge and couldn't summon enough strength to wipe off a chalk line on a chalkboard, let along hardened-on-ick. So my friend's visit is much anticipated. She USED to come once a month and work for a good 8 hours at the task...cleaning even the beams across our living room ceiling. (and she scrubs the kitchen floor ON HER HANDS AND KNEES!!! Who does THAT nowadays in the days of Redi-mops and such???) No, dirt fears the arrival of the wrath-of-Betty whose mission it is to seek-kill-and-destroy all evidences of it.

Now, when she came every month, I have to tell you, the place was really needing her attention...I mean REALLY. I mean consider: I can't vacuum and we have a maroon living room area rug and that fake-wood flooring whose name escapes me at the moment...as well as a a grey Russian Blue cat. So when she told me it was easier on her to come every two weeks for four hours each instead, I could've kissed her. (And YES, we pay her, although what she will accept is probably not in par with the market standard--That's what I love about being in a family of faith; when you need a hand, there's almost always one there waiting).

OH boy, my eyes are getting that boiled onion feeling which comes after too many days and too little sleep.

Anyway...The other thing that was on my mind was the lovely smell of the apples drying in my dehydrator here in my study. I talked my father into stopping at an orchard in upstate NY (about an hour from here), to pick some up while on the way home from a doctor appointment last week and I bought a huge box of apples (I mean HUGE, over 25 gallons of apples), for less than $4.00. They are what this place (which is one of my favorite places on earth; a family owned farm and produce/bakery/condiment store who makes the BEST almond butter anywhere around) calls: deer apples. Those are the apples that nature lovers feed the deer in the sparse winter months. Now, I have nothing against deer (okay, actually I do; they eat EVERYTHING, even inedible things in my yard...including all of my garden). We have so many deer that at any given moment you will see herds of them in my yard somewhere...You have to creep down roads, because, guaranteed, at least five of them will leap in front of the car as you are on the way to the pharmacy. So no, I don't feed the hungry deer. (They are fat enough on my peonies; should last them all winter.)

These windfall apples are FINE; might have a small bruise, but usually are too small or too large to be saleable and did not pass the strict standards of the orchard....They are the apples which are on the lineup for the cider press, until I save their sorry souls...by cooking them or slicing them, then drying all of their life juices from their tender bodies so that we may consume them in later months! Or, worse yet (for the apple, I guess) is my juicer; the terror of every fruit and veggie within miles...with teeth that could pulverize...well, that image is too gross; let's not go there.

Anyway, yesterday, I finished up the last of these not-for-the-deer apples as I made an apple crisp and stuck a huge batch into my industrial-sized dehydrator to make apple chips. They should be nice and crispy now. When I'm done here, I will take them out and put them into a container. I love the smell of them...sometimes I sprinkle a little cinnamon and stevia on them and that makes them smell even better. Yesterday, though, I was too tired, even to manage the cinnamon sprinkling after cutting up that large batch...and just let it--without.

So there you have it. A long, wordy blog about....NOTHING. Yep, welcome to my life. When you only go out twice a week maybe; to church and to a doctor appointment most likely, your life DOES tend to be pretty limited; and thus my topics of conversation can be too. So I guess this blog is really about what tidbits - hopefully of interest - I can pull from this tired 47 year old brain; a brain, I might add (okay, pride compells it), which once won me a place as a National Merit Scholar and to earn a 1587 on the SATs. But all of that; all the promise of that and the multiple talents which accompanied it, are GONE. Wasted and destroyed by many years of a brain disease which has caused my mental illness and won me over 30 psychiatric hospitalizations in as many years. (These hospital stays were confined to the first ten years of my illness and the last four when it once again flared its ugly nostrils....) (I thought that was more interesting than the cliche, "reared it's ugly head." haha.)

Sometimes when I think about what could have been, it's hard to keep from crying (as if I were a crying person...I rarely cry...unless in the throes of the confusion I have after general anesthesia; then I cry at nothing). But, as they say about spilt milk and water under the bridge and such....So the world went without another Nobel winner...no big loss; it's gone on just fine without me.

OK. I think that's enough rambling for the night. It will be hard to keep from writing more in the --ummm--seven hours or so, until the day officially gets underway. This was rather fun...felt like I had company for once. You were sitting right here with me, you know. Thanks for sticking with me through this long tangled train of thought -or twenty-four car pileup - however you'd prefer to describe it. Good night, now; it's past your bedtime!