I knew there was something else I forgot to mention.

Light bulbs.

I've had some burnt out light bulbs in my house for a couple of months now -- kitchen, laundry room, hallway. At first, I didn't change them because I was lazy. Then I didn't change them because I didn't have replacements. And then, I didn't change them because I had this paranoid fear. The paranoid fear was that I would be up on my little step ladder changing the light bulbs by stretching waaaaay up the way I have to and I would fall. And hurt myself. And, because I'd been cutting myself off from everyone, I was afraid that I would just lay there until someone came over to investigate the smell, if you know what I mean. I could think of no one who would miss me or, rather, no one who would be unduly alarmed if I missed one or more services at church or other scheduled events. That's not so much a condemnation of anyone out there but of myself -- I had made my absence too common.

Well, I changed my light bulbs recently. I didn't fall. I have light in those places again. And that's cheery.

Although the restoration of light DOES mean I can see all the cobwebs and dust which was hidden in the shadows.

In other news, I vacuumed part of the floor in the back room. The dogs often leave fur lying about and I often don't notice it. However, with the fan on -- back when it was warm not cool like today -- all the little bits of fur had been blown to one end of the room. It was just too much, even for me. So I spent some time with the sweeper sucking up critter fur. There was A LOT. Then I used the broom to sweep up more fur from the bathroom, laundry room and kitchen. There was a lot there too.

I'm experimenting with bleach water and stained carpet.

There's a chance I will wash some dishes later today. I am doing a load of laundry currently.

Oh, and I signed up for some more emergency management/emergency services training. This one is called: Operational Response to the Active Shooter. :-)

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Addendum:

So I have a zillion things to do. I have several creative writing outlets available to me. And what do I want to do?

PAINT.

Out come the paints (not oils, but acrylics), out come the brushes, out comes the palette tray, out comes the canvas. I think I'll maybe paint an idealized version of my backyard -- pretty sky, big trees, tall grass, flowers peeking out in a few places. I end up with, well, there are these red rock cliffs in the foreground, a deeply wooded valley in the midground, and a series of smallish mountains in the background. The sky features these two ... cloud masses and what might be rising or setting sun. And the center of the picture has a black, almost silhouette, tree that is clinging to the top of one cliff and leaning across into the space between the two cliffs.

Can someone please explain my brain to me?

Thank you all for your words of support. You are awesome. :-)

My family (brother, sister, BIL) are coming up on Saturday morning to mow my yard, fix my lawnmowers, repair my car windows, and get a piece of furniture. With any luck, I'll also get some canned vegetables and the like. And, since they are going to be here, I may ask them to move some furniture around for me.

Also on Saturday morning, I have a Skype call on the hymnal. Hopefully my sibs will let me take the call.

I just submitted a sample lesson plan to The Master's Study. I chose the Constitution as my topic and got much help and advice from Meghan. We'll see whether they like my style of ... organizing stuff. To me, it sounds like a pretty good class. In fact, I may need to go read the Federalist Papers now. And the minutes of the Constitutional Congress.

I'm still on track to take my two skills tests for being a 911 operator. That's (gulp) next week.

I've also put my name in for some factfinding/judge-like work. If I'm selected, there will be some training in August/September with the actual work taking place on a compressed time schedule in November or December at various locations in the state. Should be interesting.

More judge stuff: I attended a meeting for a professional association I belong to, the Indiana Association of Administrative Law Judiciary. Sounds exciting, right? I was able to chat with one of the ALJs about a case I'm working on and that was helpful. And during the meeting, I volunteered to be on a committee which is putting together the national mid-year conference which will be in Indianapolis in 2014. :-)

I have officially volunteered for the airport disaster drill. I like the person I corresponded with on that; she's cool.

I'm also now working with someone from CERT on a video introducing the contents of our backpacks. I'm inclined to be funny; we'll see how that shakes out. I call it "Meet Your Backpack."

What else?

In preparation for my brother retrieving a piece of furniture, I had to clean out said piece of furniture. It mostly contained ... FABRIC! Bolts of it. As in over a dozen bolts of fabric. There's some awfully pretty fabric there, just begging to be made into ... something. :-)

And that's where I is.

My regular readers will have noticed a decided uptick in my mood of late. There was even a suggestion that I had been hacked. (insert angelic smile) Many things have contributed to that (the positive mood, not the hacking). And many of those things are still in place. It's a bit of precarious balance at times.

But this, this I did not need.

Wait, let me back up.

I started the day fairly well -- I was up before 8 a.m. without an alarm. I arranged to be downtown to drop off some judge orders at about 10. I received an email reminder about something I'd planned to do but hadn't so that went on the list. I remembered something else i needed to do and that went on the list. Then I went downtown, had no problems getting into the state employee parking garage, bought a Diet Dr. Pepper and a Otis Spunkwhatever turtle cookie, and arrived at my destination in a timely manner.

Then I signed orders and chatted for about an hour and a half. This included a delightful conversation with the receptionist who is unduly appreciative of my talents and personality. She mentioned more than once that she loved that I was humble despite my accomplishments. She also views me as a terribly busy, terribly active, terribly diverse person. And she thinks I'm funny -- although she says I can't go into stand-up comedy because I already have too many other things going on.

While we were talking, another employee came up and reported that the cancer she has is terminal. She retires in a little over a month and plans to spend however much time she has left in the pool with her grandkids. Sounds like a plan to me. I laid my hand on her shoulder when she announced her prognosis; I think it was appreciated as the caring gesture I meant it to be.

After I chatted with the receptionist and the board secretary some more, I went on back home. So far, so good.

My backyard is, well, a bit of a mess. The grass has not been mowed yet this year, in part because both of my lawnmowers are on the fritz. Since I know it is a problem, uh-hum, I have been cutting it with the weed eater. It's a cheap, electric-powered implement with some years on it. That means I can use it for 15-20 minutes tops before it needs to recharge for three or four or more hours. So, I do what I can each day. I'm about two-thirds of the way done with the backyard. I do have someone who is supposed to come over and scalp it for me but the rain, his work schedule, and now necessary oral surgery have delayed it. I have expected to receive a 'weed notice' letter from the city for some time and, today, I finally received it in the mail. Basically, I have a week to abate the issue. Which fits in with my timeline reasonably well.

I discovered last year or the year before that I could go online and look up the citation, and learn things like when the inspector was here, what he measured the growth as, how the investigation started. This includes the verbatim complaint which started the investigation. This year's complaint was particularly vicious, directed toward me personally and not just the weeds. And it has made me angry.

Then my sister called. I vented to her about the weeds. She listened sympathetically. (She can be a good sister at times.) Then she told me why she called.

Mom's not doing so well. Her ammonia levels are up again. Susan broached the topic by asking, "When Mom's ammonia levels are up, she's mean, isn't she?" I agreed that she can be willful, noncompliant and unpleasant but not vicious. Susan thought Mom's eyes looked a little bit yellow, indicating jaundice is setting in. According to the nurse, when that starts it doesn't get better. I asked Susan how long she thought Mom had and she said three months. She suggested I sock away a little bit of cash so that I would always have gas money available. So that I could make the trip down more easily when Susan calls to tell me it's time.

Cheery phone call, no?

Susan surmised if part of it wasn't because my mom wants the cornerstone of the house she grew up in. Which confused me. Turns out our grandparent's house is being torn down to make way for the coal company. My grandparents have been gone ... wow ... fifteen years so it's a matter of sentiment. There are pictures of us grandkids sitting in front of the fireplace when the house turned 100 years old -- and that was over 35 years ago. There are a lot of memories in that house. And there was a time when my dad and I were making plans to renovate the house and move into it (when my grandmother was dying). It's an old two-story brick home with breezeways, porches, a cellar, pocket attics and one-foot thick walls. I love that house.

And, it's gonna be knocked down just.like.that. Not sure when that'll be, not sure I'll get to see the old home place before it's torn down. My brother did take Mom over to see it again, so that's good. But it's still a bitter pill to take.

So, I'm on a bit of a downer. Maybe I'll just go to bed and work puzzles until I can't see straight....

So, the other day I got home and turned on my laptop. I heard this ... noise ... which was clearly electronic in nature. It was a medium-pitched hum. I wasn't sure what it was but assumed it was related to some electronic thing I had on. Well, several hours later when I turned off the electronics, the hum remained. I headed for the bedroom and the hum got louder. I was beginning to wonder what was going on, what alarm could be going off. When turned my head it became louder or softer but I couldn't exactly locate it. I took my phone out of my pocket and headed back to the other room to hustle the dogs toward the bedroom, planning to investigate the noise. The sound began to fade.

I looked at my phone.

Apparently the * key had been pressed and stuck -- for about four hours. Resulting in the noise that had annoyed me -- for about four hours.

Yeah, okay, so it happens.