In one month, I’ll be making my list for Christmas cards. So, what that means to all of you, is that if you’d like a card from me, you need to let me know. You don’t have to send me one in return if you don’t want to, but if you do, let me know & I’ll send you my address. So, if you want a card, drop me an email at dyanemcsATgmailDOTcom & let me know, make sure you give me your name & mailing address & let me know if you’ll be needing my address, too.

Anyway, yeah, I know I’ve been slacking off on all of my blogs lately. I’ve just been trying so hard to get a grip on my house, my budget & my life these days that the blogging has taken a bit of a break. It’s not permanent or anything, I’m just focusing on other things right now & have restarted my control planner for the housework & myself, along with a Christmas countdown planner. I know, you’ve probably all heard me say the same things over & over again, but I really feel the need to get on top of the mess & the crap in my house.

I do have computer time scheduled into my days, I just won’t be sitting here ALL day long anymore, while nothing else ges done.

The following are some of the most banned books in the U.S. I urge everyone, in honor of banned book week, to post this list on your blog, and mark the ones you have read in bold! Then go out and read one of the other books on the list. Never take your freedom for granted.

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

So, I’m reading a book about Richard Ramirez (you know, the infamous Night Stalker). I remember when he was active, but I never really grasped the extent of what it was he was doing to people. The news wasn’t nearly as graphic in the 80s, as it might & can be nowadays, so I knew he was breaking into houses and people were dying, but not much else. He really had (probably still has) his family buffaloed, they just couldn’t accept he was the monster that was doing all of this stuff.

There were so many things in common between each of the sites and in his own personal property. He told the officers where his backpack with his gun was, plus they found another one on the route he ran they day they caught him, he claims that he never told them about the first one & that the other one wasn’t his. Everyone who knew him or “worked” with him on the streets talked about how he was always taking bodybuilding supplements or drinking high protein shakes to gain weight, and they found that type of stuff in the one backpack. Of course there were other items that linked to him in there & it’s pretty much accepted that it was his, people had seen him with it & he had it on the bus and so on.

I place a lot of blame for the animal he became on his cousin, for warping him when he was a young kid, and I can almost see how it happened, but at the same time, I still don’t get it. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how a person can turn off that switch in their brain that tells us what’s right & wrong & do that sort of thing. How do we, as human beings, become monsters & hardly seem to even look back& long for the way things used to be?

Rhi texted me today to tell me that for the first time in a very long time, she actually feels good. Hopefully, her medication is starting to work on her & she’ll just get better with each passing day. I just wish I could afford to keep her on this one, but even if I could, she falls off of our insurance on May 7 & she wouldn’t be able to afford it. I’ve been doing a lot of research in the past few days and hopefully we’ll come up with a workable solution that she’ll be able to afford on her own.

Things are starting to cool down here, finally and I’m so thankful. After a short, hot Spring followed by the long, even hotter Summer we had, Autumn is starting to look like one of those long-awaited Orlando vacations you see advertised all the time. I feel like a little kid getting excited about it at any rate!

I’m starting to get hungry, so it must be time to fix myself something to eat.

Right now, we have 4 laptops sitting here in my house. Three of them work, although one of those needs a CD/Rom. The other one is having issues letting us finish installing XP on it. I have no doubt, that given enough time, Troy will have them all running. Where did we get them all? Well, besides mine, of course, which we bought in July. The other three came from Troy’s job. The IT department was getting rid of them, because they were either outdated & being replaced, or had problems that no one wanted to deal with.

They always have that type of stuff lying around, from bits of mismatched  & very well used Cisco stuff, to laptops, hard drives and printers. It’s generally first come, first served & sometimes, we get lucky. Troy got a pocket PC this way a couple of months ago & has, in the past, brought home a couple of Palms, too. It’s fun, because I never know what he might bring home!

I’ve been in the process of getting my house put back together after a couple of years of haphazard cleaning & almost not caring. I kind of gave up while I had kids left at home, because I wasn’t really being respected for the cleaning I had been doing & it never lasted. It was very frustrating. Now that they’ve moved out (for the most part, at any rate), I want my house clean & looking nice again. I’m just about 3/4 of the way finished with the living room. I need to finish the end tables & put a few more things away & then I can start getting rid of the dog hair, vacuum & then do some covering of my furniture so it looks a little better. I plan to make matching curtains for all of the windows in here, too.

After that, I plan to  start on my bedroom & the first thing I’m going to do in there is go through my clothes. I need to get rid of a bunch of stuff I never wear, like company logo shirts that don’t fit, dresses I’m never going to wear, pants that are too short& anything that I just don’t like or don’t wear. I’m changing the color scheme in there and when it’s done, I’ll redo the bathroom to match it. I’ve been managing to keep the kitchen pretty clean since I finished it, but I plan to go through in the morning & wash all of the counter tops & the stove & such and then I’ll probably mop again. It’s nice to know that’s all that really needs to be done to “clean” it now.

I guess, being a person who rarely ever goes to the doctor, I never really realized how much it all costs. I know what it costs to get all of Troy’s stuff done every year, and I’m able to plan ahead for it, because it has to be done every year, without fail. The thing that’s throwing me off is this hospital bill of Rhi’s. I haven’t seen one of those in 10 years or more. They charged her for so many things, I’m surprised that they didn’t charge her for the time spent on the pulse oximeter, quite frankly.

I have no idea how many drug screenings they gave her, but it seemed like it was every two or three hours, at about $100 each time. Then all of the stuff they had to do to save her life, all of the nursing staff, the medications, the IVs, and everything else. I’m just thankful that I’m not having to pay for it, since she’s an adult. Our insurance did pay most of the bill, but she still has about $1300 left on it. I’m not saying that saving her life wasn’t worth the cost, I’m just hoping that with her being the responsible party that maybe she’ll learn something from it.

I really love spending time with my parents, especially my mom. We’ve always been pretty close & just seem to get closer the older we get. I love to shop with her, I know her style so well & can choose things to show her that I know she’ll love & she’s the same way with me. We went shopping for shoes the other day & she picked out a really cute pair of wedges, was pretty convinced to get them, until she saw another pair that was just as cute. She tried them on & looked at them both, asked my opinion & we both liked the second pair best. I found a pair of gray & lavender Crocs that I wanted & told her that she needed to try a pair on, just to see why I like them, so she did and loved the way they feel. So, we both got shoes, they weren’t Manolo Blahniks, but we each loved ours & had fun picking them out.

She bought me a new shirt & several for herself, and both of us got new comforter sets. I bought myself a couple ofbooks and she got one for herself & a math book for my niece, Jaycie. It was a good day, one that just started out as me keeping her company while dad had a cancer treatment, but any time spent together is a good investment in our relationship, I believe.

The other day, Troy was listening to our local radio station. They have a program on it every morning (but not on Sunday) where locals can call in and offer items for sale or request items. A man called in selling a 4-horse trailer for $200. After he described it, he also said that he’d throw in the horses for free if anyone was interested. I think it’s really sad that people are pretty much giving their horses away because they can’t afford the hay to feed them anymore. If we had land & the money for all of the needed horse supplies, we’d have called & taken them & the trailer.

I’ve always wanted horses and I don’t think I’d be so quick to give mine away if I had them, but I understand that they’re expensive to keep if you don’t ride them and such. I’d definitely be out riding them and enjoying them,

It’s that time of year again, when people all over my state run to the sporting goods stores & come out with entire wardrobes of day-glo orange and camouflage. They spend money on things like elk calls and Nikon rifle scopes, one-man tents & thermal underwear. Ammunition and rifles. Bows, arrows, boots, gloves and hats. What season am I talking about? Why, hunting season, of course.

I don’t mind the hunters, really. Most of them are just trying to put some more meat in the freezer to feed their families. The ones I don’t care for are those who think they have a god-given right to hunt where ever they please, including on the grounds of the plant where Troy works. They actually argue with him when he goes down to tell them that they can’t, which can be pretty intimidating to him. They have guns, he doesn’t. They’re pumped up on testosterone, he’s just doing him job. I worry about him out there this time of year, but I know that he can diffuse the situation pretty quickly most of the time.

It’ll soon be past & autumn will be fully upon us then, I can hardly wait for the wonderful smells & crisp, cool air!