I am about to be politically incorrect...maybe it is the cold that I have and the fever and chills that keep hitting me, but I am home sick today and I have had the television on for company, even though I am not really watching it. What the hell has happened to our world? I guess that I have missed a lot in the past few years, not having access to daytime television at work. I have to repeat my question...what the hell has happened to our world? Really? Do we not have better things to think about and debate. Honey Boo Boo....seriously????? Or am I just feverish or have I picked the one day in the year that the populace has lost its brains? I used to have a healthy respect for the journalism of Anderson Cooper. When his name came to mind, I envisioned projectile rockets, terrorism, genocide, Anderson risking his life to get behind enemy lines to show us the atrocities that we need to know about to affect change and make the world a better place. I think, today and forever more, I will have a different take on him. Did a piece of mortar shell hit him in the head? Is he experiencing post traumatic stress syndrome? I don't get it. I am going back to bed. Maybe this is just a bad dream. People peeing in bottles to save $10.00 a month on water bills, a Honey Boo Boo generator that will tell you what her made up name for yours would be, seriously? I think I am delirious...zzzzzzz

This is how my weekend went down...snow, snow and more snow. Poor little Rusty! He got buried alive in the heavy snow that we received over the weekend. Jackie couldn't resist setting up a little photo shoot to capture the weather. Last winter, we had relatively little snow and the girls and I had no trouble getting into the workshop, but I have a feeling that this winter is going to be a bit different than last! Mike is out plowing snow off the road so that we can get into work today, and I have been busy this morning cleaning the porch and floors in the house, that are covered with a host of boots, coats and mittens. I tried to swing a "snow day" today and phoned the girls to see if they really wanted to come to work, or if there was nothing pressing, could we just cancel the day due to lack of interest. It sucks to have responsible staff!!!! They decided that we really did need to work, so we are just waiting for the road to be opened. I might just pull the "boss" card and not go over. I am really trying to get this house in order. We had out of town guests for seven days and I am feeling like I need to set things straight today, to be able to get on with this week's scrapbooking work. This weekend, one of our guests from Vancouver Island (an old school friend of Mike's) had a camera lens that I would kill for! He paid over $3000.00 for the lens and I sure wished that I could have played around with it a little more. It was massive and heavy and ohhhh so lovely!! Mike, Allan and Dario spent the week driving around and taking photos, you could see the frost on the noses of the deer, one or two fields away with this lens! I want one. I want one so bad!!! So, today as I am putting away all of the stuff that the guys left laying around, cleaning floors and doing laundry, I am dreaming of warm weather and camera lenses. One day, one day, I am going to get me one of those!

This is Andrew's new mistress - he spends all of his time with her... polishing, shining the mirrors, wiping the floors. Poor Kayla has some serious competition for Andrew's attention. I knew as soon as Andrew and Mike went to the auction sale that they were going to bid on this truck and I knew that Andrew was going to dig deep into his bank account to make it happen. The very first day, he spent his time getting the previous owner's decals off of the doors and windows and ordering more chrome on line, because one can never have enough shiny chrome! As soon as he got it insured, he was loading hay bales out of our field and heading down the road. It only took a couple of days and he was hot on the trail of a flat deck hay trailer and with a little help from an observant friend, he found one down by Fort Macleod. A little more money out of the bank account and he is in business. We are benefiting from his new toy, as he is hauling our hay out to the ranch that purchased it all. On the weekend, I was standing outside the workshop with Peyton, and Andrew came up the hill, heavily loaded. As he past the workshop, he tooted on the semi's horn to surprise Peyton. She was so shocked that she almost jumped out of my arms! The sound was so eerie and haunting! It scared her to death. I had to do some sweet talking to get her to calm down and smile, but she still wasn't too sure about that loud sound, and she kept shaking her head and saying "no,no" when I would say that it was Uncle Andrew in there. We had to go in and watch Bugs Bunny to make her happy again. I love to hear the tractor loading hay and the sound of the semi going through the gears to climb the hill in our hayfield. Andrew should be very proud of himself!

FINALLY!!! Just before the snow started falling, my water lily finally bloomed. If it would have taken a few more days to open the blossom, it would have frozen in the pond without sharing its beauty. I am still wandering around with my camera, as I am now on Day # 7 of my imposed scrapbooking layoff. My doctor and massage therapist have asked me not to sit at my scrapbook table until my neck has healed. It seems like forever!!! I don't think I have ever been without my paper cutter and adhesive for this long. Of course, everywhere I look I seem to be inspired by something that makes me want to sit down and scrapbook, and I can't. I have taken this time to photo document some of my surroundings and some everyday occurrences, getting myself into the habit of grabbing the camera, on a daily basis, as I am thinking about joining my friends with Project Life, starting 2013. I was a little concerned that the amount of work that Project Life demands would eat up my available scrapbook time and I was not willing to impact my regular scrapbooking in a negative way to be able to invest in this project. After talking to my girlfriends who have now participated in Project Life for one year, they assured me that I would not have to sacrifice one for the other. So, for now, I am trying to cultivate the habit of looking for the little things in life that make each day special. The beauty of the water lily caught my eye, as it was indeed a gift on that day. The snow came right on its heels and if not for that mid afternoon break that had me wandering around the garden, I would have missed it. One last burst of colour, before the plants turned black and died, frozen the very next day. Another season over, the blanket of snow reminding us all that very soon we will be nestled in our houses, wood fires burning, bread baking in the oven and hopefully a healed neck so that I can get to scrapbooking all of the wonderful memories of the summer and fall!

Obviously, these photos were not taken today! I awoke to six inches of snow this morning and am soooo thankful that I wandered around two days ago, with my camera in hand and captured the beauty of the few flowers that had escaped the hail this summer. My sunflowers took a real beating during the hailstorm, but most of them managed to recover enough to have a few blooms before the snow took them out. It was a melancholy day today, part of me wanted to cry about the snow, the other half of me wanted to get out the cupcake pans and mixer and celebrate the arrival of the snow. The death of the gardens, perennials and flowers earlier in the summer has meant that the final clean up of the yard was done over a month ago, so I am actually ahead of schedule - if you don't take into account the couple of rows of carrots and beets that are now nestled under a fluffy white blanket. I will just pretend that they are not out there and enjoy the smells that are coming from my kitchen. It seemed like the perfect day to bake and so I buried myself in cookbooks and flour and had a great time. No one was home, Mike had gone to Red Deer to visit his sisters and I was home alone. Gloriously so. That doesn't happen very often, so I really appreciated the peace and quiet and the calming effect that baking has on me. I am not allowed to scrapbook for the next three weeks or so, in an attempt to correct the problems that I have been having with my neck. I have a pinched nerve and spasming back muscles and after a round of anti inflammatory drugs, many, many massages, injections into my back muscles, chiropractic treatments and muscle relaxants, it was pointed out to me by my therapist and doctor that I should take it easy for a while and stop doing the repetitive stress that is causing the problem, So I have swore off scrapbooking for a month. If they knew that I was spending the time on the computer that I used to spend at my craft table, they probably would not be too happy with me!! Shhhh...don't tell on me. I just can't sit and do nothing! I think that the next three weeks is going to be hard on me!! I usually wind the day down by spending a couple of hours working on new kits for the website or completing some pages for my own albums. I can't read (don't like that one), can't do bookwork (not so sad about that!) or do anything that puts me in a hunched over position. I am getting a small taste of being cooped up already and I have only just started. They might as well have cut my hands off!! Getting old really sucks!

If I just randomly looked at these photos, I am not sure that I could find a connection between them! The photos seem totally unrelated, and I have to admit that it was a totally random weekend. Some friends and I started out with High Tea in Waterton at the Prince of Wales Hotel and ended up skinny dipping in the creek at our summer pasture on a perfectly delicious summer day...no where to be, no deadlines to meet, nothing to do but enjoy summer at its best. I jokingly called it "high tea to hillbilly"! We dressed up for the tea and then left our fancy dresses hanging in the bushes along the creek, while we enjoyed the cool water and some cool beverages. What a wonderful, lazy and most perfect afternoon. Over the weekend, we did yoga on the veranda in the cool of the morning, (thanks to Lynn, the yoga instructor from Monster Fitness), found out how uncoordinated we could be a Zumba class one afternoon and ate WAY too much food, laughed until our sides hurt and actually did a little scrapbooking just to make it justifiable. After the bathroom renovation ate up a chunk of my summer vacation, haying season bit up another huge chunk and the hail storm completely finished my vacation off, this was certainly the highlight of my summer! A couple of days of down time was just what was needed! Thank goodness that the girls were good sports about the Zumba class. (I didn't tell them where we were going) and I took a little teasing about me being in an exercise class. Me! Can you believe that? The one that claims that if I am running, it is because something scary is chasing me. I certainly did not think that I would ever enjoy going to the gym, but I have to say that I love this dance class. We had a really good workout, and then went to the lounge for a cool one - probably undoing all of the burnt off calories, but having a blast! For the record, Megan did work up a good sweat and found out that it isn't as easy as it looks. My list of favourite things about the weekend would look like this: * Myra's salmon and couscous supper * cold Corona and Pink Palos in frosty glasses * the look of horror on the other Zumba class participants when they saw Tracey taking photos * yoga in the still of the morning * the fresh veggies that Donna brought from the greenhouses in Medicine Hat * watching Jackie trying to get back in the creek and into formation before the timer on the camera went off * the hysterical laughter when we were taking turns putting our clothes in the bushes * how funny everyone thought it was that we have a road named "Spread Eagle Road" in our area. (They made me stop so that they could take photos) * the beautiful dishes that Myra brought for me (I really did not have a hand in that one, believe me or not) * time well wasted, with the best of friends Maybe the summer of 2012 was not such a disaster after all!!!

The clean up this week has been truly a big pain in the ---! What were once pristine rock pathways and flower pots full of herbs and flowers turned into tangled, mangled and rotting piles of debris. With the help of Sam, Laressa and Kate, we tackled the yard clean up, just moments after getting the go ahead from the insurance company. It may be up to two more weeks before we can see our adjuster and his team and I just couldn't stand to look at the mess any more. What a difference a few days made, with a team of determined girls and one wicked ass industrial leaf blower. We kicked some major hail butt! My blood pressure is starting to go down, I am not twitching any more, there are still a few beer left in the fridge. And by the way, FYI. Thank you, Connie, for showing up with a cooler of beer within hours of the hail!!! May God bless you!! You know how sometimes you just don't know what to do in a situation? Or what to say? Like, after someone dies and you are trying to think of a particularly wise and comforting message to give to the family. In my case, in times of trial and disaster, just give me beer. You don't have to say a word, just hand me a cold one. This week took a few more Coronas than usual, but then again, it was an unusual week! In the middle of the night, I had a thought. Which, during the light of day, didn't quite seem as genius as it did in my dream. Maybe a leaf blower would work to "blow" out all of the drifts of apples that were strewn around the trees. I have about 30 truckloads of washed rock in my back yard and it was COVERED with crap. We (and I use that term loosely, as it was mostly Laressa and Kate) tried raking it and we raked out more rock than leaves. Enter the leaf blower. I was thinking, in my dream, that if I could get the apples rolling and the leaves flying, that the landscape rock would stay put. It worked!!! It wasn't without tribulation. Andrew stayed long enough after lunch to get the cursed leaf blower running for me, helped me strap it on my back and was still shaking his head when he left the yard. It was really heavy. And noisy. If my hearing was somewhat damaged after the hail storm, it was finished off by the leaf blower episode. Not to mention that the bulky damn thing snagged on every overhanging limb and made me sweat like a lumberjack. If someone had come along with some money, I swear I would have sold the farm, thrown in the dog and my husband for free and been down the road so fast that the leaves would still have been in the air. It did save us DAYS of time, so I guess manhandling that thing was well worth the pain and effort. Note to self...wear proper footwear when handling a big leaf blower! I thought it was optional, but I should have thought better. Andrew was long gone before I realized this mistake and I could not shut it off, knowing that I would never get it started again. We had to do one big section of the yard by hand, and I literally mean "by hand". But at the end of the week, you could tell that we were winning the battle. That was week number one of my summer vacation. It isn't even a "staycation". It is a "suckcation". Big time.