I can’t believe how long it’s been since I posted. I’ve been kind of tired lately and I also started a new blog (which I haven’t been updating as much as I would like) and this blog has kind of suffered.

Basically, I’m struggling to keep it together until vacation, which is two weeks away. We’re planning to take a trip to Missouri and Arkansas but I’m worried about the car. It’s almost 10 years old and it has been making some funny noises. Not terrible and it passed inspection and run fines, I just get paranoid.

We took a trip over to Camden State Park today to do some leaf peeping. It was pretty. It was the first time in the last three years I’ve been there when it was sunny. Here, take a look. (click to make it bigger)

Working from home today.

(At least until the B-I-L shows up with the snowplow)

I haven’t posted in a while. For the past month I haven’t been feeling very well. It’s something that happens every summer that my doctor hasn’t figured out yet. Unfortunately, it really tires me out. This year, it’s causing short-term memory problems too. Kind of forgot I had a blog, lol.

Over Labor Day weekend we went to Acadia National Park. Take my advice. Don’t go on a holiday weekend. While it probably wasn’t as busy as it is during the peak of the summer months, it was way too busy for my tastes. Everything I wanted to see, so did everyone else. No place to park. We went to the part of the island that was less populated, but there were still too many for me. I hope we can go back later in the fall so I can enjoy it because it was very pretty.

I’ll have pictures later.

This summer has been pretty good, weather-wise. We haven’t had any really hot days, and only a few sticky days. This past week we had quite a bit of rain which made my garden explode. I once again did not plan the pumpkins very well and they have already overtaken the cucumbers and are halfway through the strawberries. I just hope they don’t make it to the watermelons because the melons are doing so much better this year.

On with the pictures.

After the rain last week, we had some beautiful puffy clouds roll through.

One of my favorite new plants is my Astilbe. It flowered in the past few weeks and butterflies love it.

That’s all for tonight, kiddies. My computer is moving way too slow and it’s time for bed. Hope you enjoyed the pics!

My book is here. I will be pretty much unavailable until Monday.

Turns out there was one of those Diagon Alley parties in Portland, Maine last night. I didn’t know about it. Oh, how you’ve failed me MuggleNet! (Just kidding )

I’ve been quiet for a while. For anyone reading this…sorry about that.

The past 6 months have been rather rough. Around Thanksgiving we found out that Chris had a growth on his right kidney. In December they realized it was a tumor and on New Year’s Eve we were told it was cancer.

Happy New Year!

So, at the beginning of February, Chris had his kidney removed. The surgery went very well and the doctor said that the cancer was localized to the kidney, had not spread and the surgery had removed it completely.

Phew!

But the hospital stay almost killed him. (Yes, I’m being a little dramatic, but not by all that much.) Pain killers have never had much effect on Chris so most of the hospital staff thought he was just being a pain in the ass. He can be - believe me - but that’s not what he was doing that week he was there. 8 out of 10 nurses were utter bitches and very unwilling to him him whatsoever. I ended up doing some of their work for them.

Once we finally got home, recovery time was still slow. They couldn’t do the surgery laproscopically, meaning he had a foot long cut on his side.

When that finally started to feel better, he developed sciatica. He could barely move for two weeks. He’s much better now, but he’s still not back to normal - whatever that is. It’s been so long I think we’ve both forgotten.

So, you can see why I haven’t had much time or inclination to blog. It’s been a very dreary winter and I think that is the biggest reason I’m so eager for Spring to get here. And of course, this is the year that winter is hanging on and on and on. It’s April 11 and we still have snow out there and more on it’s way tomorrow.

And no - this is not proof that Global Warming is a myth. The term ‘Global Warming’ is the wrong term for what’s going on and I think everyone knows that by now - anyone with half a brain, anyway. The better term is ‘climate change.’ It took forever for winter to get to Maine - now it’s just taking its sweet time getting the hell out.

Last Monday afternoon, I got a stomach ache. I couldn’t really fathom why, I had had a relatively healthy lunch. But I’m not exactly a bastion of health so I didn’t think much about it. An hour later, I was telling my supervisor I needed to go home.

Thirty minutes later I was in the emergency room, crying from the pain in my lower right abdomen. I was convinced my appendix had burst.

It turned out to be another damn kidney stone (my husband and I apparently have matching sets - more on that later) but for the 20 minute ride to the emergency room in Augusta, I was honestly afraid I was dying. I was afraid I had waited too long to have Chris take me to the hospital. I was fighting not to pass out because I was afraid I would never wake up again.

I’ve never been the most cheerful person around and I was glad to find that when I believed I might be dying (yes, a gross over-reaction, but I believed it at the time) I found that I honestly did not want to die. My first thought was that I did not want to leave Chris alone. My second thought was that I wanted to be there to see what happened next, no matter how mundane it might be.

It took 2 hours for the doctor to see me at the ER. I chose a bad day to have a kidney stone - it was Columbus Day AND it was a full moon. I had a cat scan done and lo and behold, another freakin’ kidney stone. Just hope the insurance covers the cat scan - it might be one of those procedures I’m supposed to call and ‘ask permission’ about. Insurance - they seem more and more like protection rackets every day.

After seeing my doctor on Friday I found out that the kidney stone wasn’t alone. I have a tiny one in my right kidney and another one in my left kidney. Just waiting. Assholes. (Chris also has one in one of his kidneys just waiting. Jerk.)

Oh, and bonus! I have an ovarian cyst and another condition I don’t feel like airing to the world, but that normally only inflicts women in their 50’s or 60’s. Bugger!

The worst thing, though, was that the kidney stone that started all the trouble last Monday took 4 days to get through my system. I went in to work on Thursday morning, but by noon I was in pain yet again so I had to go back home and zonk out on percocet. That stuff works great!

So, more changes are needed. I’ve been cutting back on caffeine but I’m cutting back even more. No more soda except on D&D days and only one. I’ll still drink coffee, but not everyday. I’m already drinking a lot more water and I find the more I drink it, the more I crave it so that’s a big help. I’m also trying to eat more vegetables, more fiber and less nuts and popcorn.

Giving up popcorn is never going to happen but even cutting back is going to be painful. *pout*

At least no one has told me I can never eat cheese again. If they ever tell me that I’ll just stick my fingers in my ears and start yelling ‘I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!’

On the upside of everything, Autumn peaked in this area these past two week and I got some good pictures. I wanted to go to Camden for some peak pictures but never made it there. Oh well. There’s always next year.

I’ll leave you with a few samples of the views in Maine this past month (click to enlarge):

Last night we went to Portland just to get away for a bit. It’s only an hour away, but it feels like a different world. There are things to do and places to go in Portland. Here in Belgrade, you have to make your own entertainment.

Sometimes, I miss living in a more metropolitan area, but not often. I had fun last night, but after a few hours I began to get nervous. Too  many people, bad driving, badly laid out streets. (The downtown area is beautiful, but not always logical in it’s layout.) I was glad to get home and relax.

Don’t get me wrong, Portland is a great place to visit. I look forward to finally being able to take a long walk around the downtown area. Several factors keep us from doing this right now, mainly health issues but we’re working on that. Also, the few times we’ve gone to Portland just to walk around, it has always started raining.

In many ways, Maine lives up to its motto ‘a great place to live.’ It’s a place where you can be seemingly out in the middle of nowhere, but after only an hour’s drive be in a heavy populated place with plenty of activities and excitement.

If anyone has been visiting this blog, you may have noticed that the header seems to change every once in a while. It’s always those same two pumpkins, but they seem to look a little different.

I’ve been taking pictures of the progress of my pumpkins and those two are my favorites. (Shh, don’t tell the others ). They’re turning orange the fastest and I find it a little fascinating to watch them change so quickly.

Here are a few pictures of their progress so you can get a better idea of how much they’ve changed in just the past 30 days.

August 10th:

August 23rd:

August 27th:

Nifty huh?

In other gardening news, I actually had some Gladiolus bloomed. Earlier this summer, my sister-in-law gave me a box of 75 glad bulbs for my birthday. I planted every one of them. Problem was, the wildflowers bloomed first and crowded the glads so badly that the only thing they did was grow the long, green leaves. I never saw any flower buds.

Until last week. Three on the end did bloom. What I find very interesting and quite bittersweet is that the ones that bloomed were the ones I bought last year and re-planted this year. The only glads that bloomed were the ones I bought in memory of my grandmother. Not all of them bloomed, because I bought pink ones last year as well and the only ones that bloomed this year are orange. Of course, I prefer orange over pink so there’s something else to think about.

And to close out this post of pictures, something happened yesterday that would never have happened if we were living in Florida. I was sitting in my office when I thought I saw two large dogs running in our back field. I looked closer to see if I knew the dogs when I realized they were a doe and her fawn. The fawn was still small but old enough to have lost it’s spots. They stood near the camp road for a bit, then continued on into the woods. I’ve seen a deer before, but never a fawn.

Sorry for the fuzziness. I was taking the pictures through a screened window.

Well, that’s all for today. Hoped you enjoyed the pictures!