Sorry I fell off the face of the earth

Sorry I have slacked on my posting. I am still keeping with my Doing Not Thinking challenge though. I've still been fighting my slump but its been better the last couple days. The last few days I have had wonderful experiences that have helped me stay on the up and up.

I hope everyone is doing ok with Ike and the crazy weather that flowed from Kansas through us in Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky.

The northern and central parts of Illinois have had problems with flooding but here in the southern part we had what I dubbed the Whipping Winds. Gusts up to 60mph+, we had some rain but not as much as Phelan or my parents who are still up in Decatur. Trees were blown everywhere, there are still parts of towns around here that dont have power and have been told that they might not until Wed or Thursday. Not us we lost power for all of 2 minutes thankfully and though I personally haven't seen the garden yet Bill has. He has warned me that its very trashed and I will have my hands full Tues and Wed salvaging what I can. He tried yesterday and today to get in there but it was really muddy. So I am moving to the clean up the garden phase.

But despite that like I said earlier I've been doing pretty good. Let me tell you about these things ....

Saturday Bill took me to an auction that was held a couple blocks up the street at the DeSoto community park. I've never been to an auction before and balked at the first auction that started as it moved too fast and I could not understand a thing. I stuck in though and $7 dollars later I came out pretty happy with some unexpected buys...But the score of the day would belong to Bill who accidently wound up getting a VERY nice dining room table and 5 chairs (one of the host chairs was missing) for $5. Yeah and wait til I get my camera battery charged up so I can take the pictures! He had thrown a bid on it because they had stalled at the start and started rambling (at that time the company had just started another auctioneer outside the pavillion and people had started bouncing back and forth between the two) usually when a bid gets thrown in (especially on furniture) it gets the ball rolling quickly....however, in the confusion no one realized that the bidding had started and next thing you know he was the only bidder on it. So yeah there you go. The table needs some murphys wood soap and elbow grease and the chairs need re upholstered [Something I actually know how to do!] and the other host chair needs a new back (its its a piece of scrolled wood that got splintered up) but it I mean WOW $5 bucks!

The second thing would be an email from Kathie at two frog home. She was asking how we felt about these coming hard times and what would really help and I was honest. I am very worried. We dont have any savings and there have been a lot of layoffs at Bill's work and there has been a lot of "restructuring" at my job. What I need is people to actually talk to. It's pretty much just me and Bill by ourselves at the moment, not a lot of people we know are into this way of life and its lonely. Im trying to get my household in order like I hear so many people doing. On that I think I would do well with a structured system, something almost military (yeah I know coming from me thats funny) But anyways, I got an email from Kathie and it warmed my heart.

The third thing would be that Bill has approached me on what we will plant for the next garden and mentioned we needed to get garlic put in. I really worried that the gardening problems (affectionately know as the McNelly Grass War) might sour him on gardening and the homesteading life. But that is a resounding no. He is more interested in doing seed swapping and getting away from Burpee Seeds and even went so far as finding a Local Harvest listing that was close by to possibly get seeds from for next year!

The last thing Im mentioning actually happened at work. I take orders for a vitamin company and pretty much am on the phone for 8 hrs straight lately. I talk to people all over and sometimes I have the most fascinating people and conversations. Today I talked a good while with a woman named Linda who lives in New York who I absolutely adored. She has a bermed house, loves gardening and we talked about all things we have been doing and the homesteading community and what not. I think we talked for almost an hour but it was one of the best calls I had all evening. I gave her the names of my blog and Phelan's over at A Homesteading Neophyte. So "Hi!" to Linda and I hope you enjoy what you find in our online community.