Where Have I Been?

I've received emails and comments from some of my readership wanting to know why I dropped off the face of the earth and haven't blogged since Wednesday a week ago.

There have actually been several reasons.

The Apple Blossom Festival continued in Winchester unabated but I couldn't get anyone in the family to go with me and the festival isn't fun unless you know someone. The local newspapers have started copyrighting their photos so I couldn't borrow any...

Our landlord finally got a backhoe operator here to dig the trench for the new water line. He came mid-morning last Friday and dug the ditch but feigned an important social function he couldn't miss and darted out of here at exactly 5 pm.

He couldn't make it Saturday (something about Apple Blossoms) and then the window of finishing the job quickly abated.

We got 2 1/2-inches of rain Saturday night and another three inches by Monday morning. Over the next three days we got an additional three inches and the ditch was now a moat. It didn't help the operator (his god-given name is Pee-Wee) cut the sump pump line and that water was flowing into the ditch too.

The landlord got the repair kit and I climbed down in the cold abyss and fixed the pipe and perhaps a flooded basement or two.

Friday afternoon, Pee-Wee returned with a pump in hand and finally got the ditch closed in.

Yesterday, the landlord got the water line connected and we are now on his 80-gpm well. No more cisterns. Yea. Oh, did I mention we had to fill the cistern Friday morning or we would have run out by that evening. Ouch. $60 to the water-hauling man.

Cha-ching.

But the really big reason I haven't blogged is that I have been trying to change what I do every day so I don't continue my rut of sitting at the 'puter and dipping SKOAL.

I had been contemplating this a long time. Sis Iggy has been quietly complaining (for an ex smoker, she's been rather nice about it). The Heirs, especially II, has been down right pissy. I made a deal with II in March that I would quit the 30-plus year habit by May 1. I had weaned the habit from a tin every day or two to one every three to four days. I purchased my last cans of the nasty tobacco on Monday, April 27 at approximately 9:45 am.

Whereupon Heir I stole said cans saying I should quit earlier. Said conversation said while he was smoking, btw.

Got cans back. Started Dipping. Finished last can about 10 pm April 30. Rinsed mouth out around midnight and haven't touched any form of tobacco now for 10 days. I know I was a bitch for the first three or four day and for that, I apologize. I hope, since then, I have mellowed.

When I first started the habit back in college, a can cost $0.17. The last cans were $3 each since I bought 2. I have paid as much as $4.57 for a can and that was before the 04/01/09 fed tax increase.

So not only will I maybe gain a few more years of living, I will save a few bucks too. And since the latter is still slim in this stinking economy...