On Beating that Bad Mood Back:

I beat the bad mood I woke with yesterday with the help of Miss Mousey from Knotty Mouse. She has a blog I read regularly.

She reminded me of our Thankfulness Tea Parties on the web every February. Maybe I should have them more often.

Being an Elder Goth can be a drag sometimes. Others (some vanilla’s I know.) keep wanting me to grow up and stop all this Goth stuff, and the younger generation of Goth’s have no use for me. ‘Old Fart’ being the kindest comment to me of late.

This leaves me without a local Goth community. So I find myself having to tone it down more often than I really want to or I find myself with no one to hang with.

And although Mountain Man tolerates my Gothiness for the most part, he would rather it was not a full tilt daily barrage of the stuff. And he is definitely not into spiders. Meaning, I can only wear my spider jewelry when he is not about. (Marriage is full of compromise on both fronts.)

Some days I don’t want to be all old lady and respectable in my black pants suit, top and shoes when I go out and about. I want to Goth it out like any Goth would. Part of being a Goth is that pushing the ‘limits’ thing.

I have lovely Victorian Mourning clothing that doesn’t see the light of day often enough. And frankly I’d love to be seen in public in it much more than I do.

I spent that vanilla six weeks taking care of that woman. I didn’t have to. But I feel that when I’m ill I don’t want to see nothing but vanilla, and that she didn’t want to see nothing but Goth. In fact she doesn’t like it at all. (But to each his or her own.)

So Miss Mousey helped me by reminding me that I am thankful for any day I have to be my Gothy silly self. Whether in my full Goth regalia or scrubbing the bathroom in some old sweats. The Goth I am can still shine (Or darkly radiate) through. And that makes me happy!

On Trying to Break a Bad Mood:

I woke up in a bad mood today. No reason I can find for it. It just happens some times. I’ve been trying to break it, but nothing so far has worked.

I know that by tomorrow it may be gone just like it came, but I want it out of the way now. I have things to do. I don’t want to be a bear to my significant other. Nor do I want to be short with the dog.

I’ve tried to laugh it off, soothing it away, eating it gone, and to exercise it out by screaming in my pillow. I’ve exercised my body, meditated and tried chocolate. I’ve even bought the makings for a new hat.

I’ve run out of things to try and wondered if you have any ideas. I’ve spent too many days of my life in depression to want to slide back there. So I don’t want to wait it out.

What do you do to help yourself out of a bad mood?

On It’s a Beautiful Potato Day:

It is a beautiful Autumn day here today. The trees are just starting to turn colors and the air is just the right temperature.

We went for a walk with the dog, who ran around so much that he seemed to be going in ten directions at once. Now he is sleeping off his hike.

It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and turn colder. So we were making the best of the day. Digging potatoes and putting them in our make shift root cellar. We have a large plastic bin almost all buried in the shed. After we fill it with potatoes we put the lid on and cover it over with bails of hay.

I just love garden fresh potatoes. Nothing like the store bought. Same with carrots and other veggies. Nothing beats that fresh garden taste. Too bad you can’t get that taste all year round living here. But I wouldn’t give up Autumn or Winter for anything.

I’ll be making a batch of potato salad tonight from the little new potatoes that are bite sized bits of goodness and I’ll be enjoying every bite. With skins so thin and fresh that you don’t need to peel them.

I’m a pinch cook. I don’t generally use recipes. I just grab a pinch of this and a dab of that so I can’t give you a recipe like you’d find in a book. But I can tell you what I put into it.

Sweet Honey-Mustard Potato Salad
Red Potatoes - garden fresh, cooked and cooled, cut into bite sized pieces (Any other potato will do, but the look of the red skins, green beans and yellow sauce looks festive.)
Green Beans - cut into inch pieces, lightly boiled to a bright green, but still crisp then quick cooled (I’ve used frozen green beans in a pinch.)
Mayonnaise of your choice
Brown Mustard
Honey
Sweet Onion - minced fine, onion powder will do in a pinch.
Salt - I use sea salt but any type of salt is fine.

I go with 2 / 3 potato to 1 / 3 green beans. I mix it all to taste and serve it as a side dish to franks and beans or burgers and fresh corn on the cob.

On Up In Smoke:

Well I guess my mom is right. I was born under a dark star. This stuff only seems to happen to me.

While watching all the coverage about the flooding around the Wyoming
Valley my computer monitor started smoking.

It was unplugged and thrown out on the lawn, just before it was ready to burst into flame! The plastic casing was melting!

I sat at home for days while we were all under a state of emergency and couldn’t be out on the road to get to the store on the other side of the river. Only one bridge was open for days and that one was for emergencies.

So after some creative math I was able to get a replacement only because I found a clearance sale. A twenty inch screen for $49.00.

So, I am here to say, ‘I’m back again.’ I seem to be saying that a lot lately. Are the planets trying to tell me something?

On If You Can’t Say Something Nice:

My silence was brought about by lack of good things to say. And not wanting to be a total Gloomy Gus, I just didn’t blog.

So now, the dog is doing much better after a very bad illness from what, we think, was something he found and ate after the lights went out in the Irene storm.

Most of the canning of the crops that were felled from the vine in storm Irene have been dealt with.

Rain, rain go away! We have managed to stop most of the leaks in the roof. When the rain finally stops we will be able to get to the others.

And now we await news of the flooding, brought about by the storms named Lee and Katia, of the Wyoming Valley and surrounding areas. Even if the Susquehanna River stays within the levee system of the Wilkes-Barre/Kingston area, towns up and down both the north and west branches of the river are getting flooded and all the streams and rivers running into it are over their banks. There are of course other rivers flooding, but none as close to my neck of the woods.

Once the river reaches a certain point only pumping stations will be keeping the water on the other side of the levees. Projected level is 39.6 feet. And if the water comes higher than the levees, some 40.7 feet high as it is projected to come very near to, it will over top the levee system flooding miles of residential areas. So the people of the valley are being evacuated as I write this.

The added flood walls and sand bagging are being placed and we all wait it out. Hoping and praying for friends and loved ones to be safe, helpless to do anything to stop what may become the worst flooding in recorded history here in this part of Pennsylvania.

I broke my self imposed silence because if the flooding does happen I will be far too busy helping with the flooded out homeless to write for a while. And I had wanted to let you know that we will be okay where we are, living on top of the mountain.

For those interested here is a link to a local TV News channel with the coverage.

On Irene, Unwelcome Guest 2:

I did try to blog yesterday. So busy I didn’t even have the time to whip up something chocolate. (I am soooo jonesing for chocolate!)

We have yet to get off of the property to see the damage elsewhere. But the damage here is enough to be getting on with at the moment.

Today’s pictures - Trees: I’ll post just a few. So many out there these days on the web.















Some just came down taking out others. They left craters as the roots were pulled out of the ground.














Some snapped. Limbs and whole trees.















Others lost most of the branches on one side. (Picture taken during clean up of yard. A lot of the branches from our Ash trees had already been removed from the ground just to get in and out of the house.)

We are still canning what we could save of the garden. Food will be short here this winter. But we will muddle on as we always do and make the best of things.

I have only seen a group of 7 crows winging their way through to parts unknown and I haven’t heard a bird, but that one time since Irene started to blow. It would seem desolate here if not for the over abundance of bug all of a sudden.

I had wanted to join in with the Boots - Fashion Theme for the first of the month from the Sophistique Noir blog. But I just don’t have to time to play fashion plate right now. And Mountain Man is out with his chain saw turning downed trees into fire wood for the winter not doing the photographer.

Things will get back to normal and I will have time again to do those jigsaw puzzles and that knitting I haven’t touched since Irene came to call.

On Irene, Unwelcome Guest:

The flooding rain wasn’t bad enough. The high winds took an additional toll. The storm damage came further inland than first thought.

First, I am thankful that we are safe and unharmed. (At last count forty dead and countless injured.)

Second, We now have electricity after over a day and a half of none. And the phone is back now too. (Many others will have no electric for days to come. And then there are the ones who lost their homes.)

Third, Not one of all the trees that came down hit our house or car.

Fourth, the large pumpkins themselves are undamaged, but they will not be growing any further as their vines and leaves have been.

As to the over all damage:

We lost most of the garden. The corn is flat, the tomatoes all dropped from the plants. More than half of the apples and pears have dropped from the trees. A lot of the leaves left on the plants still alive, like the lettuce, have been shredded.















One of the two flattened corn crops.















Some of the many tomatoes we picked up off of the ground.

Most of the food that was in the refrigerator needed to be thrown out. In our 20+ cubic foot chest freezer, the top third of all in it started to thaw out. And some of that completely thawed.

It took almost two days for the birds to come back, but the amount of dead ones found after it was all over was a bit unsettling. (Broken necks, wings or both.) There were also an amount of drowned rodents. Pockets of the smell of death hang about in spots in the woods presumably drowned in their dens underground.

The house lost some shingles from the roof. The wind driven rain came in, under and around through the cracks around the windows and doors. The gutters and down spouts will have to be re-hung.

We are spending every moment we can processing and canning as much of the garden goods as possible to recoup what we can.

After that we have a lot of outside clean up to do.