Hissy Fit

It's been a tough Spring.  To begin with, it was cold late into the season.  And we've had rain.  Lots of rain.  So the seasonal clean up got a late start.  Much sad for a person who loves flowers.  My iris beds will not bloom this year because they are still pissy about me digging them all up and splitting the roots because they were too crowded.  And a bunch of them flat out didn't make it - winter was hard enough that the deer ate them, which is very unusual.  The hydrangias were killed nearly to the ground - they had to be cut back to about 6 inches and there will probably be no bloom there this summer.  And my bee balm.  Well, I stared and stared and hoped and hoped at that area that has been full of bee balm for years but nary a sprout came up. Completely killed.  Sigh.

On top of the damage left by one of the most miserable winters in decades, we now have a plague that gives locust a run for the money in destructiveness.

Cankerworm.  Inchworm.  Looper.  My name for them can't be used in polite company.  Ravenous.  We have them by the millions.

And they are stripping everything they can get to: trees, bushes, flowers - they don't differentiate.

Trees that were leaf covered two weeks ago are stripped bare.  The increasing acreage of denuded trees is more and more visible on the mountain slopes as you drive from town.  It has sounded like rain 24/7 at my house for nearly two weeks now.  That would be their poop coming down in a constant patter.  They are ballooners - their webbing is everywhere and you can walk into a wall of ballooning caterpillars.  I come in from working and my hair is full of the grainy little stuff and I spend the rest of the evening picking the damned little worms off my neck and arms as they appear from wherever they hid to hitch a ride.

And somehow finding them destroying my peony flowers, buds and all, was the last straw Saturday and I found myself standing in my yard screaming "DIE DIE DIE DIE YOU MISERABLE THINGS!!!" and stomping around in a furious, frustrated frenzy.  Fortunately, the neighbors weren't home at the time to see it.

Things I Have Learned

That I hate Windows 8.

That you can be off work and still work constantly.

That you can work constantly and still not get most of the things you needed to do done.

That you can't print or save files from the Google app that came with Windows 8.  Including things like...oh...unemployment forms that you just filled out.

That you can make all those work week phone calls you had been putting off because they would cause you to spend a lot of time on personal calls and still not know anything about the things you spent all yesterday afternoon and this morning calling about.

Except that unless you can prove inheritance on grave plots bought long ago you can't do anything with them.  I did find that out.

That everybody and his brother is trying to get to our employee personal pages right now so lotsa luck with that if you are trying to pull unemployment papers together just in case.

That the instructions out at the Comcast web site do not match how the download actually works.  Either that or Windows 8 works differently.

That I hate Windows 8.  Not too fond of certain websites, either.