up at 5 a.m.

Stupidly turned over and slept on my stomach at some point during the night and woke up at 5 unable to breathe. After several attempts to go back to sleep I decided to get up.

Last night we went to a big discount store to see if we wanted to join. The major lure is their yummy apple pie which I first tasted when la-sis was here a few years ago. After walking thru all the grocery section (no apple pies left), we decided that if we had about 5 teenage boys in the house, it might be worth it. So then we went to WM and bought a ton of cat fud. They eat those little containers of food - 3 a day (split between them) and they were 48 cents vs 69 cents at the grocery store!!

Ring is still off.

Cleaned my kitchen yesterday (finally!) Everything is clean in there now - even the inside of the toaster!! Floor was not done due to heavy rain and the stuff to wash it with being in the garage -

Did a lot of organizing of papers, magazines and books yesterday. Oops, one of the books I bought last week I already own. Thank goodness I still have the sales slip so I can return it. Finished reading the last book in my current series. I did not like this series as much as some of the others.

I did study French yesterday. I am working with the online site and also 2 books. OH is further along with German because he studies every day and I skip days sometimes. Plus, I know lots of French anyway and he started from scratch with German.

Rain rain rain today. Want to go see horsie even if I don't ride. I want to take his bridle apart and clean it but I'm afraid I will not put it back together the right way! I have never taken one apart and put it back together. So that has been keeping me from doing it even tho I keep meaning to.

Last week I cleaned up the piles of papers that were sitting around the study. They are now in one pile (hehe). Seriously, I plan to do something about it.

Reservations made for trip to Maryland. Two days traveling and two full days there. I will plan what I want to cook while I am there. One irritating thing is that there is no salad spinner. How did I ever make salad without a salad spinner?? I want to get her one for when I'm there but is that a little selfish? Then she will have to store it somewhere the rest of the time since I doubt if she will use it. Which reminds me, I want to steal the rasp grater from my mother! I love it and I have searched for it online diligently and cannot find one exactly like it. This time I am bringing it home with me. La-sis wants the mini cuisinart for her RV so I'm going to make her mail it to herself when we are there. I wish I could send myself the set of china that is there in storage (already given to me by my mother). It was my grandmother's which is why I want it. I don't think that all the pieces are there but it's a pretty delicate pattern with green and blue I think. Maybe I will just take it somewhere and have them pack and send it to me. All right, I would have to find a place to put it in here - I guess I could go in the bottom of the china cabinet which also belonged to my grandmother and I spent a fortune shipping here when the Narragansett house was sold.

Why do I have so many rugs? The biggest one is the one that was under the dining room table. It is 9X12 at least and too heavy to move. It is now rolled up at one end of the dining room. I wish I had vacuumed it before I rolled it up because now I have to somehow unroll it and clean it, wrap it in something and find a way to store it!! I could sell it but I'm imagining a different house someday when I would want it back. I bought that rug in Detroit and it was the only thing in our otherwise empty dining room. The other one I want to store is in the upstairs library room. It's smaller and manageable and I had it down here in the living room but now I don't want to put area rugs on top of the new carpeting. Most of my little orientals are rolled up and in a bureau drawer or on top of bureaus, chairs and sofas. I got all the little ones in Venezuela where they were super cheap. The other big ones are littering the family room and study wood floor areas.

I sent an email to the person in charge of the volunteers and the rda place saying I would organize the buddy program and have not heard back from her. I am pretty disgusted with the whole thing because they did not put us on the volunteer list for the summer and did not ask us to help with the new orientation which I had been looking forward to. It's possible that she is on vacation but I am thinking of checking out one of the other locations even tho it is a bit further away. Can they turn down an offer to take charge of the organization???? They did not have time to organize it ALL LAST YEAR!!! I offered twice last year to help the man who takes care of the horses and trains them, etc. and he never took me up on it. I mean those horse could certainly use a little extra grooming at least. But nooooooooo. There is something seriously wrong with that group.