i've inherited a pair of reading glasses...hurray! now, when it's dark or when I want to thread a needle, it won't be hit or miss...

now  know all the reasons for my procrastination...fear of failure, fear of success, perfectionism, indecision because of fear...and probably a couple of other reasons...it's not simply that I'm lazy, you see...but still I'd rather be skating than doing my homework or cleaning the house....I'm not supposed to reward myself w/skating until I've done something productive...so I rationalized that doing 2 loads of laundry was certainly worthy of a reward...so I went skating this morning...now i'm going to clean the bathroom...so I like my dessert first...

I have decided to treat myself to as much skating as I like. I say treat because ice time is pretty costly these days. During the winter, I have access to a rink where I don't have to pay for ice time and it's great. I can double or triple my weekly skating without adding any additional cost. So, I am choosing to average out my skating costs over the course of a year, rather than by the week, so that over the course of the year, my per hour ice time isn't so bad. But, there's one rink that raised the rate for a 40 minute session to $18.  My friend, Alex, once dreamed that I had a skating rink right out my back door. I really do wish that were true. It would be awesome. I try to get my kids to promise to build me a rink whenever they hit the big time -- you know, when they are rich and famous billionaires...but in the meantime, you know, I'm going to use the "quality of life" argument to avoid responsible saving plans, etc. 

this is a picture of me skating away from my responsibilities. yippee!

i went to have my oil changed today. and decided to have my a.c. recharged...but, to do this effectively, apparently, the old freeon (sp?)  is vacuumed out of the system in preparation for the new freeon, which would bring the a.c. back to life, unless of course, during the course of draining the old freeon it was discovered that there was a hole in the compressor. this moves the condition of the a.c. from failing into non-existent.  not the desired outcome for a 95 degree day....
bitter and hot...well, definitely overheated.

so some things slide...i've got so much to do that I don't have an extra minute to myself at all--and then eventually some things move to the bottom of the list and are determined to be "unnecessary" heartworm medicine--necessary--I had a dog with heartworms and it wasn't a pretty picture...., frontline...not so necessary. I've never seen a tick or flea on my dog...unfortunately, we now live near a woods, a nice woods where everyone takes their dogs for walks...wouldn't we be remiss if we kept our dog away from such doggy wooded,, tick-infested bliss...well, now that it's summer, something had to give, right...or maybe it was just time for me to overcome my tick phobia...i tried to keep it going, but Elderzen came to the rescue, with tweezers and so much bravery that I had to jump in and maintain the Mom Can Do Anything myth.

now, i've got more to do than simply applying frontline...i've got to have a slumber party with YZ in the living room because she's afraid of tick-infested bedding...now, i've overcome lice infestation, I can definitely handle a tick or two....

I just read one of the blog entries of one of my co-workers and found that he's looking for someone...someone who write/wrote Haiku and was a japanophine of sorts and so, here's the link in case anyone knows this guy...
http://www.yunchtime.net/?p=24#more-24 and can help direct him back to his friend....

For me, the fog is lifting....I was able to clean the living room. I grew up in a house which was kept like a Museum...everything in it's place, nothing to be touched, and everything spotless...and, not understanding the more complicated reasons for things in the world, I determined that people who kept their houses messy were more interesting and well-adjusted than those (my mom) who kept their houses like museums. Well, I've had a chance to rethink that and maybe I was wrong, or maybe some interesting messy people hire people to clean their houses. In either case, I couldn't take the level of messiness anymore and have adopted a one-room-at-a-time mantra...if I can keep one room clean, perhaps the clean disease will spread to other rooms and soon, I'll have a clean house....don't worry, I'm not holding my breath... 

Here's a photograph from one part of the Forbidden City, half of which is under wraps, undergoing an Olympic style rehab ....

Another which shows the work site

So, yesterday, we had some excitement. YZ fell off a very big, very angry horse. For some reason, Henri, whose name hasn't been changed to protect the innocent, just decided he'd had enough. So, despite her great legwork and control, YZ's legs gave out and off she flew. Everything is fine, of course. Her instructors helped YZ climb right back onto Henri, that is, once it was determined that she didn't have a concussion. 
 

This is really for

asakiyume

. I was going to upload a picture from the Snow Patrol concert I went to last night--more on that later--but instead I went to Youtube and joined the Youtube nation and uploaded a video.  Here it is:

saving the earth from our destruction is all the zenkotachi are talking about these days....myfootprint.org told me that if everyone on the planet lived like I do, we'd need three earths to support us...on my way to the podiatrist there were 2 people arguing about "downsizing" the way us good ole americans live, and I was just looking at a website that pointed me a link for living car-free --that is, bikes only . . http://www.dbr.nu/