Life is filled with frustrations lately.

We’ve been having problems with our internet going out for almost a month now. It gets into streaks where it goes out every 10 minutes. Thanks, Windstream Communications, for buying our telephone company and screwing things up. I’ve called multiple times over the past 3 weeks, and I just get the same-old, same-old, ‘we’re having intermittent outages in the state of Minnesota.’ They shouldn’t be buying up smaller telephone companies if they don’t have the infrastructure to handle it. It’s such a laugh to listen to their messages when I’m on hold, ‘lightning fast internet speeds,’ hah! We’re supposed to be getting 3mbps, we get half that. I tried complaining to the Public Utilities Commission, but they don’t handle internet services. They suggested that I contact the Attorney General. That’ll be my next step.

Winter just won’t let go here. It was snowing again this morning, and our birds have all left. I still get a chickadee occasionally. I can just feel the lack of sun stripping everything away. I want to be outside in the warm sunshine, digging in the dirt, planting seeds.

I have to take the truck in, something’s wrong with the steering or something. It shimmies and shakes when you get over 45mph. More money down the drain.

My back and shoulder hurt! I have arthritis in my spine, and something’s wrong with my rotator cuff. I don’t know what, the doctor didn’t say, just that there’s nothing that can be done for it. Except pop more pills, which makes my stomach hurt.

Glass! When I first bought Amy’s storm tutorial, I made a green stringer and didn’t write down what glasses I used in it. People have been snapping them up, the stringer is all gone now, and I can’t duplicate it.

 I tried 4 different combinations this morning, and none of them are like the original. It seems like half the beads I make are just so un-inspiring. The colors don’t come out the way I expected them to, the dots are off, the beads are lopsided.


End of whining.

A couple of beads that did turn out,


I think what I need to do is discipline myself to making more beads that I know I like, and less time on experimenting with color combinations and stringer combinations.

And talking about glass, what do I do but buy more glass!! Like I really need more.

 What I really need to do is clean all of the beads that I've got stashed in my drawer and get them listed.

Well, at least I’ve still got flowers blooming. Here’s one of my amaryllis,

I lost some orchids this winter, so when I was down in the cities last week, I had to buy some more,


Next year if I have all of my ducks in a row, I’m going to have my greenhouse and back deck torn down, and put in a new deck with a bigger greenhouse, with real glass/plexiglass instead of plastic. It’ll be big enough that I can go out and sit in a chair and soak up the sun even if it’s too cold to go outside.

Oh, and here's my little puppy, growing way too fast:

He's still a big baby, though, no matter how big he is. Christian accidentally stepped on his foot the other day, and Suka pee'd himself.