So I woke up this morning in incredible pain.  I had ended up sleeping on my right side, and couldn’t get up out of bed.  It took several small movements, but I turned myself onto my left and waited until the pain had subsided enough to lift myself up.  This new chiropractor I’m seeing today is going to earn his money, for sure.  While I was lying there waiting, I was listening to the birds.  They crack me up.  Gayle says this is not what their songs say, officially, to birders, but I swear we have one that says “cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheap!”  There’s another that sounds like “chirpy, chirpy, chirpy, chirpy!”  and another that says “furNIture!  furNiture!”

Carolyn had to be driven to school today, because she had a huge display board and a model of the Tower of London to take with her to school.  I stopped by the middle school, right next door, and made sure Audrey had dropped off her sister’s form for joining the Pinnacle program next year, and she had.  Thank goodness she’s got a better memory than her mother.  Thank you, Audrey.

When I got back, it was time to do some stuff – load the dishwasher, water the law, and skim the bubbles off the surface of the pond.  Google last night led me to a site, http://www.fishpondinfo.com/ and I got good information from them.  Rather than put more chemicals in or re-engineer the pond so I could install a skimmer, the site owner said to just skim it off with a fine mesh or a bucket.  No luck with fine mesh, but the bucket worked great, and I had nice fishy water for the plants.  The fish weren’t scared of it, either, since I had just fed them grapes, and now I’m their bestest friend in the world.  Hubby picked up a book on koi from the library last night, and while it was badly written and poorly edited, it had some good information – like, that koi love grapes, apples, and bananas.  Well, mine kind of like the bananas, but the shubunkins were clearly pissed that I was tossing in stuff that only masqueraded as real food.  The grapes, however (cut into teeny pieces) were a big hit with all of them.  Who’d’a thunk it?

Now I have to call the inadequate chiropractor and ask to pick up my x-rays so I don’t have to have new ones.  Then I have to call the vet, because Toby has found a different place to start losing huge chunks of fur.  And. . .write up resume, cover letter, and application.  Gotta do that.

My brain is blanking.  I’ve been running around doing errands and stuff around the house, and it seems like nothing has actually been accomplished.  This might be due, in part, to the pond vacuum finally arriving, and the particulate it was supposed to remove having become too small to be vacuumed out.  It’s a metaphor.

I arranged for my Oral Proficiency Test to be proctored in Toms River.  Not only can I take it earlier, but I don’t have to go to Yonkers.  Got the dog groomed.  Petco diplomatically expressed that they don’t want her to come back.  Dropped off towels and bleach at the animal shelter, and brought no new animals home.  Grocery shopping.  Manicure.  Washed forty million loads of laundry.  Took the kids out to buy books.  Reseeded the front lawn.  Blew all the tree debris off the patio.  As dull as it is, I’m wondering how I’ll get as much done once I’m employed.  Eh, I know how – I’ll spend less time doing nothing.  Depending on the cash flow, maybe hire people to do a few things.  Teach the dog how to mow the lawn and vacuum.

So. . .we finally got around to organizing the stuff in the Garage on Saturday.  Considering how much crap we’ve accumulated, and what it looked like before, it’s pretty darned good.  All the boxes of stuff (both stuff that belongs in the garage and stuff that doesn’t) is stacked neatly, together by where it’s supposed to end up, and now you can walk through it without being a circus acrobat.  Big props to hubby, who did the bulk of it!

Sunday, we headed up to Bloomfield (after working on Carolyn’s Tower of London Rollercoaster project).  Parties at Gayle and Barry and Sophie’s house are always relaxing and fun, and we and the kids all enjoyed ourselves.  We also got to pop in on some of the old neighbors.  We feel only a tiny bit guilty for leaving you all. . .heh.  We miss you, but there are other people we don’t, and it’s so quiet here. . .Gayle had to remind me that my old house is just that.  I looked at the front garden, overgrown, with the Joseph’s Coat rose blooming furiously, even though it had fallen over and laid flat on the ground.  The pond that I’d put so much love and care into was a mess of string algae, the poor water lily clinging to life.  The lawn, which we had spent a huge amount of money to be regraded, seeded, and maintained, was three feet tall.  I had to step back and realize that the things that had been precious to me were just that – precious to me.

One of the side trips we made yesterday was to Fairfield Garden Center.  There are a lot of places here that sell pond stuff, but none of them have everything I want the way Fairfield does.  So, I had plopped the plants into the pond in the dark when we got home, but I rearranged them this morning.  Later, I dug up some more moss and put it on the rocks, since I love the way it looks.  We also tore painter’s tape into thin strips and used it to mask out mortar lines on Carolyn’s Tower of London, then spray painted it with rock texture paint.  It looks quite cool.  We tried hitting the beach, but could stand it for only about an hour because it was wicked cold.  How wonderful, though, to be able to live close enough to not feel bad about getting only an hour on the beach!  If we’d had to drive an hour to get there, and then paid almost $30 to get on, we would have felt horribly ripped off.  As it is now, we have our season badges, and we’ll pop out there on weekday afternoons for a bit most days of the week.  Woohoo!

Oh, and did I mention yet that I love bittorrent, and I love David Tennant as Doctor Who?  Probably not.  But I do.