The Clearing is Clearer!

I slept in a hammock in the back yard last night because two of Jackie's granddaughters (my grandnieces) insisted that they wanted to sleep outside in a tent. Jackie doesn't "do" tents or hammocks, so I was their designated Mother Bear in case of attempted kidnappings, hijackings, bad dreams, raucous raccoons, odious opossums, or what-have-you.

By the time the girls were ready to come out to the tent at 10 or 10:30 (after watching the Disney Channel for an hour or so) I was already shakily ensconced on the hammock -- wondering if I'd be able to keep from rolling myself completely over in it during the night and knocking myself senseless on the ground underneath... It seemed a risky venture!

One of the girls decided not to sleep out after all; the other one still wanted to. It never even occurred to me that since one of the girls flaked on the idea, I would have fit into the tent with the other one and wouldn't have had to risk life and limb in the hammock. Oh, well... I survived!

I slept so well that I was awakened by Jackie, working away in the clearing nearby, at 8:40 a.m. I'm usually up at 6 this time of year! I missed church altogether because I didn't want Jackie out there flailing away with machetes and rakes and hatchets without someone to dial 911 if she did an oopsie.

I was a little (probably a lot) dehydrated most of the morning (from all of the work we did yesterday without drinking enough water) so it took me about three hours to bring my hydration level up to where I could sweat again and stopped feeling a wee bit dizzy. I raked small stuff and placed it into yard waste barrels until I felt ready to truly take on the world again, then I sawed down some small trees with an electric saw. By this time Jackie was tired (raking branches, vines and other detritus away from fallen logs) so she started mowing the lawn (very large lawn) with the riding mower... which kept getting plugged because the grass was still damp.

After a time I took over for her so she could set up the Slip n Slide for the girls. I, too, ended up under the tractor as often as I was on it, digging out large swaths of wet grass. At the end of this task, my hands and forearms resembled those of the Jolly Green Giant or the Incredible Hulk, so to the bathtub I went to reclaim my more characteristic skin tone (pale-or-scalded with freckles).

When I got out, Jackie was back in the clearing, clearing! I told her to knock it off; it's Sunday and she needs to have some kind of "downtime" before she goes back to work tomorrow. (She manages two bank branches. Managing one is more than a full-time job!) She listened -- eventually.

I sat down at my PC and found 25 emails. Gads!

Tomorrow I'll start writing a white paper for a client and hope to land a few more projects, too. I have six more blog articles to write for a new client, so those will probably get underway this week, too. And I just finished personal and company bios for another new client. Both of the new clients gave me a 100% positive, highest possible rating, so I'm grinning ear-to-ear. I love to get perfect ratings -- and have been blessed with a lot of them during my Elance career, I'm happy to say.

I probably won't be awake long enough to hear what I said on the STARR TALK WITH SONNY STARR radio program tonight. I'm weary. I'll catch it tomorrow in the archives -- or whenever it shows up there. Staying up past nine to hear myself talk is just not that great an incentive after two days in the briers and the brambles and the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go... (Oh, we fired our guns and the British kept a'comin'... There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago..) Sorry, I got lost in an old folk song for a moment, there... (The Battle of New Orleans, I believe.)

I have to be awake for the next radio interview, though: it's LIVE Wednesday night from 7-9pm. Links to both shows are in earlier blogs... Seek and ye shall find!