Another rip snorter blew through here last night.  Rain, wind, and noise.  I'm still coughing up goo so I took an antihistimine with a decongestant before I went to bed in hopes of not hacking all night.  It did indeed clear out my nose and stop the coughing, and kept me wide awake until around 2am enjoying the storm.  No thoughts just no shut eye.  It was still raining in the morning at 6am when I remembered it was garbage day and my cans weren't out.  Tossed on my sweats, raincoat, and my red rubber garden shoes and wheeled those two big 96 gallon cans, trash & recycling (whether you need 96 gallons or not) to the curb and discovered the storm had ripped a large branch out of my maple and tossed it on the neighbors lawn.  Oh goodie. Now I was out of breath.  I am always out of breath due to asthma and a little emphysema.  The goopy cough doesn't help.  So I leaned against my 85' plus maple catching up with the world of oxygen and staying semi-dry, looking up at the sky.  It's a beautiful tree and at least this time it didn't dent anyone's car or rip off an electric service like it did years ago.  It's been pruned of it's rotten spots and thinned for wind at no small cost to avoid that.  That branch is a nice healthy one, like the wind the ripped it off.  There are branches down all up and down the street.   I dragged mine back onto my lawn.  I decided to wait until the rain stopped then figure out what to do with it.  The guy who mows my lawn isn't coming today because of the deluge, so I call a son, "help!"  He will come and hack it up after work.

Back inside I decide to make banana bread from my favorite recipe.  Low fat, low sugar, tasty with pecans.  No pecans, no several other things either.  So I turned off the oven and jumped back into my raincoat and drove off to the grocery.   There is a lake in the Safeway lot and I have to drive around twice to park where the water won't rise over my red rubber shoes.  Inside I get bananas, apricots, pecans that should be gold plated for what I paid for them, milk, and a Lotto ticket and drive home.   Mix, chop, mix, stir, grease the pans and bake.  In one hour, voila!  Except both loaves are about an inch high, well H-E-double toothpicks.  What happened?  They taste great. Son who-works-in-the-evening appears, how did he know?  We taste test our way through most of a loaf.  I looked in the cupboard to see how old the baking powder is and when I get it down, it ain't baking powder, it's corn starch. I put corn starch in my banana bread instead of baking powder.  Lock me up now. 

Son and I visit and he leaves for work and I rainsuit up; it hasn't stopped raining, might as well get on with the tree branch.  Since He Who Must Not Be Named and I divorced over a year ago I still haven't acquired gardening tools appropriate for She Who Has Noodle Arms.  I did buy a shovel with a fiberglass handle, nice and light, but that won't help much chopping up a tree branch.  I got out my big rose pruners and lopped off all the leafy slap-you-in-the-face branches and dumped them in the garbage can.   When works-in-the-day son comes it will just be the big stuff left.  Rummaging around in the garage I see there is a small electric chain saw.  Naw, I have no idea how to use it and it's pouring rain still.  But it gives me a glimmer of hope for a sunnier day.  Stuff grows like a jungle here.

Oh, and new blogger, ack!  I guess I will have to sit down and play with it.