I Could Use Some Energy

For some reason I was in a bad mood when I got home from the art studio last night. I did better as far as throwing pots went, but I was disappointed with some of the things the owner said to me. When I got out of the car, Fletcher was sitting outside in the yard talking to a friend on the phone. As I walked past him, I felt something biting my foot. I was wearing flip-flops and it was dark so I never saw what it was but it stung like a scorpion sting in spite of icing it, standing in cold water, and putting Benadryl on it. At 2 AM I took some Ibuprophen (mainly because my back was hurting from throwing pots) and went to bed.  Ten minutes later I turned the light back on because the pain made it impossible to sleep. I read some more of the Witchling book until I finally nodded off.  Then at 4 AM a car alarm went off and I heard a car driving past the house. Since I live in the middle of nowhere, I had to get up and see if my car was still in the driveway.  It was, and I was thankful that my foot wasn't hurting anymore.

This time I slept until almost 8 AM and got up right as Fletcher was off to work. Two hours later, I couldn't keep my eyes open and had to go back to bed again. It's a Saturday and I have lots to do but I just don't have the energy for it. I watered 2 of the trees. It's the desert. If you don't water things, they die rather quickly.  I worked on my weaving some. I'd like to do something more physical today. The dishes at the very least. But I can still barely keep my eyes open.

Me a few years ago.

Flesh and Fire Novel

I started reading a new fictitious novel today called Flesh and Fire (Book one of the Vineart War) by Laura Anne Gilman. I don't want to fill this post full of spoilers other than to say it is about the magic linked to grapes and wine.

A writer I met recommended I join Smashwords.com so I can e-publish short stories on the Internet. But my Broadband hasn't worked all day so I finally resorted to dial-up, which didn't want to work either. I'm not sure I can open a site and join it until I can get the wi-fi connection to work again. I'm not impressed with Virgin Broadband after 3 months of using it. It often goes out of service for hours on end. When I do call I always have to wait at least 15 minutes to talk to a tech and each time they tell me there is an outage in my area and they are working on the towers. Last month they told me they would compensate me, but so far, no refund or partial refund has been given. Lame. I'm looking for an alternative now. But I like pay-as-you-go and I don't want to be locked into any contracts that start out at one price and then jump to a higher price later on. So I have my book on my desk so I can read it as I wait and wait for dial-up to change from one web page to another. At least I'm getting some reading done.

Home Again

After the long train ride home on Monday, I was exhausted on Tuesday, so I didn't do much of anything. Today I feel much better, and have been busy ever since the moment I rolled out of bed. I'm at the library now playing blog catch up. I finished the book I was reading on the train, which is Betrayed by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast. I can't wait to read the next one in the series.

Me at Pismo Beach, CA

Libraries Pro and Con

There was a lovely pink sunset tonight. We feasted on spaghettini and broccoli in cream of celery soup. I started reading Black Dawn, one of the Morganville Vampire series. It's so good I'm already 1/3 of the way through it. In fact the library had both of the books I put on hold waiting for me when I dropped in. It's a tiny library but the librarians are super nice.

In other library news, my previous library sent me a $78 bill. Two books were destroyed when we moved, so it's time to pay up. About $50 of it is for the books, $10 is the replacement fee, and $15 is the collection agency fee. Ouch. If I can find the books on Amazon for less they are open to that, but I'll still have to buy the books and pay the $15 fee and figure a way to drive 120 miles to deliver the books. Oh well. In the long run it might be better just to send a check.

New Year New Blog

I am on a quest to blog every day of 2013.  But the Blogger URL Quest 2013 was taken by a person who titled her blog Quest 2014 and she has no posts. So I went for a name of things I love and that I was pretty sure wasn't taken. Hence Gypsy Tribal Kaleidoscope Butterscotch was born.

So what shall I write about? I taught belly dancing for twenty years, so that's the gypsy tribal part. I love kaleidoscopes and the art inspired by them.  And butterscotch is such a fun word and a yummy pudding. When I was a child I always thought of the house next door as butterscotch colored.  Maybe I will make a board on Pinterest and call it Butterscotch. That would be fun. Come to think of it, the Lifesavers on my desk are butterscotch, though originally I was going to go with hopscotch as part of the title.

This is New Year's Day and I got to see my 2 year old grandson. He's a strawberry blond bundle of pure energy and curiosity. I think in 2 days time he touched everything he could reach in my house. I was happy when he left so I could catch my breath but I was sad to see him go. So one of my big goals for 2013 is to get a car so I can drive the 300 miles to see him more often as well as my grand daughter that is due in Feb. 

The book I'm reading is a thriller called The Symbol. It makes me even more curious about the Masons. Some of my friends are Masons. One of my boyfriends was in the Order of DeMolay. I wonder if he stuck with it when he grew up. Steve Webber holler back if you see this. I've tried to find him on Facebook but it's a name many people have. I have no idea where he went after he joined the service in the 70's.

Yesterday I did some archery and realized my arrows are in sad shape. Two have fletching damage, one was cracked behind the tip, and therefore unusable, and they just look ratty. Time to make new arrows.  We got to shoot at a foam deer a friend gave us when he was downsizing his garage. That was a lot more fun than shooting at my cardboard target. We're going to make a burlap target too, as soon as we get the sewing machine set up. We just moved here so things are still a jumble. Frankly, I'm not the most organized person in the world even on a good day.

I had a great plan of renting a container for the backyard so I could do all my arts and crafts in it and free up my house for living in.  Now it's so cold in my new town, that I'd be a human popsicle if I was out there working right now. And I just read that the last day of frost is mid-May. I better buy some flannel shirts with long sleeves. It's over half full of my craft junk as it is, so I can't just tell them to take it back or I would have zero room in my tiny house. I call it Shoebox Ranch because it's so tiny, like living in a shoebox.

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I'm doing a photo study of this pile of firewood.