Three's Company . . .

Fall is almost here. I love Spring, blooming flowers, the much awaited green of new grass. Yep, my favorite! Fall is a close second, with the cooling nights, cooling days and turning leaves. Beautiful! Winter is not my friend. It's far too long for this Wisconsin girl. Disproportionately long compared to the other seasons, if you ask me. Summer? Hmm, summer vacation, boating, fishing, fans in the windows bringing in any hint of a cool breeze? Still not my favorite. Heat and me just don't get along too well. I tolerate it, and can even enjoy it, though, with certain accommodations. Accommodations such as: 1. Ice cream. Ice cream in the morning, ice cream in the evening, ice cream at supper time. Yummm! 2. An air conditioning unit available for days above 90 degrees or so. Some times I don't use it, just knowing it's available is comfort enough. 3. Swimming, fishing and pontooning. Out on the river has become my preferred location. 4. Extra showers. Yes ma'am, er, sir? I like to take a good shower in the morning and hose off again in the evening, right before bed. How ever can a person sleep when they are all sticky and hot and stinky? I sleep so much better when I'm clean.

The last point brings me to the subject of this post.

I arrived home from church and settled in to check my internet and watch me some Olympics. I grabbed the bucket of ice cream from the freezer, dished up and went to the sink to rinse my sticky fingers. I looked expectantly at the sink, finally seeing the too familiar jump in the sink when I started the water. I have crickets. Nope, not the sport, I don't play cricket for Pete's sake! And no, these are not pet crickets! It seems that my new apartment building is infested. Yes, infested. Like- if I set up a camera I might get a five generation picture! I hosed the beast until it drowned and maneuvered the carcass until it went down the drain. Have I mentioned that these are no ordinary crickets? Not the little noisy black ones(thankfully) but the big brown house crickets, or were they field crickets? Doesn't matter, except that they come inside and are very big. Big enough that you'd be best to take caution if you plan on squishing one of them.

Finally getting sleepy I went into the bathroom to take a quick shower. Pulling the shower curtain aside, I saw one little critter sitting on the cool porcelain. I reached over and turned on the hot water, grabbed the fly swatter that has taken permanent residence by my bathroom garbage and batted the little beast into the stream of hot water. Down the drain it went. With a sigh of relief, I turned the water to a reasonable temperature and climbed in. I'd begun to get wet when I noticed a familiar tangled shape of legs and antennae through the interior shower curtain. Ugh! I was fine with just one. But TWO? And when another cricket dropped down with the second bugger? With the running water, they were jumping for dear life! And let me tell you friends, when there are more of THEM in the shower than me? I picked up the nearest weapon I could find . . . my comb. For some reason this didn't seem to be effective. Now- lest you're all worried about this post going X rated, imagine me wearing my swimming suit, because don't we all bathe in our swimming suit? Oh, and imagine me tall, blond and skinny, okay?

Back to the point. When I realized that two of them were not going to be as easy to drown, I leaped out to grab my fly swatter friend! Standing outside of the shower (in my swimming suit of course) I batted each of the little critters, in turn, towards the scalding water now coming out of the spigot. Hey, perhaps I was playing a form of cricket? After several hits, one went swimming down the drain, followed by his little friend (or not so little?). I was free to continue my shower in peace. Alone. Boy, events like this make me glad that I live alone! How do you explain jumping around and squealing in the bathroom in the middle of the night to a roommate or spouse?

Anyone have any tips to get rid of these little beasts? I really do prefer to shower alone!

Sleep well my friends! Hey, what do you all do to survive the heat and critters?

A

YaAAWWWNNnn . . . it took hours to finally get my wireless working and hours more to even come close to catching up on all y'alls blogs. Updating mine will wait(you're not surprised, are you??) until another day.

See you soon!

A

Ahhh, at last!

I have internet at last! The phone company came today to hook up my phone line so that I could hook up my internet! They told me that they didn't need access, when in reality they did, and so they were able to come back this morning! I haven't figured out the wireless portion yet, but that'll have to wait until Sunday! I'm off camping for the weekend at our church's yearly "all-church campout" and so I'll be seein' y'all on Sunday! Have a great weekend!

A

Hello my Darlin!

I'm so excited that I'm gettin' the internets on Wednesday I'm just about peein' myself!

See you all again soon! Real soon!

A

Alas my dear Jen friend, I am not dead, merely without internet! I am checking my email when I can before or after church and will investigate the local librarys Wi-Fi connection(rumor has it you can connect even in the parking lot! So if you don't hear from me, perhaps I'm locked up somewhere because I was stalking the library in my car late at night?) I was gone to Georgia the whole of last week, wow, is that a week ago already? Moving was and settling in is taking much of my energy.

See you all again soon . . .

A

Confessions of an internet junky

Forgive me Blogger for I have sinned! It has been . . . WHAT? SERIOUSLY? IT'S BEEN THAT LONG? HOLY - Smokes. Holy Smokes. Yeah, holy smokes. Wow, it has been a while, eh? I've been just a little busy, I guess. I'm all moved over to my new apartment in my new town. Still surrounded by boxes, of course. I'm leaving in 2 days(um, less than 2 now!) for a mission trip to Georgia for a week. The boxes will have to wait . . . sigh. It's been a challenge to pack when you can't find anything you own! I know I have a little travel kit with 3 ounce bottles, but can I find them? No, of course not, don't be ridiculous! And so, I'm off to Shopko for the second time in 3 days to buy a new one, so that I can fill it with hair goo, then jaunt off to Walmart to price check the item or items that won't fit neatly into my one quart sized bag so that I can get the info to the one person who is purchasing such items for the team upon our arrival to Georgia! While Shopko is local, Walmart will take a little longer(20 minutes). Gee, I wish I could have been organized enough to have dealt with this at Walmart yesterday . . . Awww well! What else would I be doing with my time?

By the way- I'm hoping to get internet set up upon my return. For this internet junky, checking email every few days from a random computer will not do. I've spent the last 1 1/2 hours just catching up on blogs and emails. Who has time to spend that long in one sitting on the computer? I'd much rather check back every half hour or so . . .

Have a fantastic week . . .

Amanda

It was summer? Did I miss it?

A quick snippet to update those of you who have bore with me this long! I've been on a bit of a blogging hiatus as of late. I've managed to keep up on blogs of those I know personally, and have managed to take fairly regular glimpses into the lives of those I know from the blog-o-sphere! I appreciate your patience with me!

I've been working strenuously this summer! I've been working at summer school helping in a fishing class. Seriously THE. BEST. JOB. ON. EARTH. God really knew what he was doing! I've been in the sun, fishing, untangling line, baiting hooks and helping remove fishes from hooks. I've been able to get over my intense dislike and squirminess in regards to worms and fish. I've been able to touch the pan fish, and keep my teacher-cool doing it! Shoot, one of us has to look like the grown up! When the kid is squirming and whining, I guess it'll have to be me! I even took my one lonely bluegill home yesterday and tried my hand at the art of filleting fish! It was a dull kitchen knife, a little fish, and an unsupervised trial from memory, but it went well, I think! I think I could do it with a better knife perhaps! I'll be a fishing maniac by the end of our last week in class! It's almost like God knew that learning to fish and getting over the fish/worm squirminess was something I hoped to do this summer or something! Who told???

I have finally, really, truly signed a lease today on my new apartment. I wrote out a check (perhaps the biggest I've ever written!) to prove it! My rent is paid, and a hefty matching amount on deposit! This is the most I've ever paid for rent, and I'm a bit nervous! The good news is that it's month to month so that I could move into a little studio if I freak out and need to! I hope that once I get into the school year and we work out our car pool situation, I'll have a better grip on it. But for now, I've missed some details . . . I've spent the last 9 months with plans in my head to move to one of the towns en route from work to church. I will be at work 5 days a week and church at least 3 days/nights each week. I couldn't work out how it would work to pay more rent than I was paying for rent, and an almost equal amount for my commuter bill. I finally, about 2 weeks ago, settled on finding a home in a town about 15 minutes out of my way. Some church friends live there, and one of them works at the same school district that I do! A third teacher from our district also lives in this town, opening up exciting commuting possibilities! And- drum roll please- I'll be 15 minutes away from my parents, sisters, and their families! This will be the closest that I've lived to them, without being in the same house! (The drama has already begun!) Since her aneurysm in 2000, my Mom has had some issues, and it'll be good for me to be closer to her and my family so that I can help out! It should be great because she'll eventually be able to find this apartment and be able to drive there independently! This isn't the case with my current apartment, unfortunately. She graduated from the high school in this town, so she's comfortable driving there.

After signing the lease, the pressure was lessened, a schedule was established, the unknown revealed, and summer began! Whoo hoo! My dear friend Lori took me and Ang and the manchild to a little known swimming beach about 15 minutes from my new house. I'd grown up within 25 minutes of it and had no idea of it's existence! A beautiful little beach on the St. Croix River, a real gem! Lori was as excited to show it to us as we were to go! In the 10 hours we spent together, we garage saled, drove, drummed, signed, swam, floated, laughed, ate McDonalds, ate pizza, ate ice cream, dropped in on our friends, and went to the Wal-mart! Boy did we have a blast!

Tomorrow has been declared a day of rest. Packing will wait! My only commitment is to a mission trip meeting in the evening and making some amaz-azing spinach and artichoke heart dip at Ang's before hand (because we packed most of my kitchen yesterday!). A whole day to stay home and just vegetate! I'm trembling in excitement!

Feel free to give me a holler to see how the day's going, but keep in mind- my day will not be starting before 10 or so! It's my day of rest!

A