Is it summer yet?

I got up this morning to find snow melting on the roof of the portico. I got dressed and ran outside to check my plants, but they're still alive, albeit with a leaf or two missing. The green beans and peas are fine. They were out of the sharp teeth of the wind. I thought this was June, but I could be wrong. Someone told me it had actually snowed here during a parade on the 4th of July. I think I'll believe them.

Today is blustery and cold and wild with screaming wind and the sky overhead is a curdled mixture of gray and white ominous clouds where occasional eyes of blue peer thru the murk. I think I may have to go get the chain saw, put on some warmer clothes, and cut up some wood for the fire. I thought I had more time, but evidently not.

I got a call from Mexico this morning to let me know where my corn flour for tortillas and all the rest of my Mexican groceries from Mexico are. Evidently, they have ended up in Silverthorne at the UPS and they refuse to let them go until I either go get them (where is Silverthorne from here) or I give them a change of address. I just don't get it. I live in a rural area where the post office does not deliver and everyone has a P. O. Box, but companies won't deliver to P. O. Boxes unless you put down the physical address of the post office and give your box number, which they treat like an apartment number. It just doesn't make sense. If you can deliver to the post office address with a box number disguised as an apartment number, you should just be able to deliver to the P. O. Box. Doesn't that make logical sense? But, no, UPS (a friend who once worked for them called it OOPS) doesn't deliver on Saturday (unless you pay a lot more) and I will have to wait until Monday, which is one more week for something that should have been delivered by now. *stops for throat searing primal scream* Oh, well, life goes on. Thank goodness I still have some corn flour from the last order or I'd really be livid.

I have been officially no longer on the staff of R&T for more than 12 hours and yet they still keep coming to me for changes, whining and asking questions I have answered and answered and answered until my fingers are sore from beating the same answers into the keyboard to send ONCE AGAIN. I wonder if they even read the emails I send detailing issue launches and contest pages up and running or if they just ignore them so they can keep asking me stupid questions. And writers are sending me submissions for reviews and interviews and, well, submissions when it is plain I am not the editor in chief -- as I have been sharply reminded many, many, many times. And yet they still come to me because they read my work (and compliment it) and think since I'm all over the site I must actually have a more important function than whipping boy and scapegoat for the REAL EIC. Oh, well, that is behind me now. Maybe I should send a note to all subscribers and let them know. But that probably won't work as long as they are reading the website because that is where they get their ideas. At least they're reading the web site.

I woke up in such a good mood and I'm going to recapture it shortly, despite having to write six paranormal columns by Monday, one grammar column, one herbal magick column, and three more reviews. I still have to read two of the books, but I plan to veg out this weekend and garden. I doubt I will spend much time online since I end up listening to Joni Mitchell (just discovered her thanks to Love Actually) or playing games of Euchre and pyramid instead of writing or reading or doing all the things I should be doing. So off I go.

I think I have finally exhausted the frustration and griping that have been my constant companions for the last few weeks and I get can back to being simple, plain, uninteresting, and smiling me.

Oh, and I really liked talking to the gentleman from Mexico about my groceries. He also gave me a lovely little Mexican proverb: En casa del herrero, azadon de palo. In the house of the blacksmith, a wooden hoe -- which also works for writers without pens, doctors without stethoscopes, etc. Cute, and it reminds me of how I describe my family -- palos con pelo -- Sticks with hair.

I'll shut up now.