When I read my f-list in the morning, it's difficult to compose an exciting post about life on Walkabout Farm. The woodchuck has settled down for the winter and well, it's just not as adventurous here. Except for the rats. The essential lawn tractor went into the shop after years of Weatherdude maintenance and we are now $1.5k poorer as a result. But as it's in its 10th year and as a new one costs considerably more, the accountant paid up without complaint. Weatherdude is pondering cars again. This might be sensible as BOTH Volvos threw the same ignition coil at the same time (to the tune of $600 for both). Our Volvos have been part of our life for the past decade and we're very fond of them, but when we go out looking, it appears that Volvo is behind the curve in terms of car technology. As in, the salesman tried to sell me a gas-guzzling SUV version of my old car. Ummm, no.

Yesterday was one of those gorgeous fall days with almost no clouds in a brilliant blue sky and a fair amount of leaf color to boot. It seemed silly to sit inside with my hormones all day, so I drove to Leesburg to do such exciting things as buying cat food, Dunkin' k-cups, and washing the VW. Yes, I have to drive nearly 15 miles to wash a car now that they've closed the carwash in town to make way for a new strip mall we don't need.

Back in our town, I did some grocery shopping, including picking up a bottle (used to be powder) of Spic N Span, a product my parents used for cleaning (partly because my dad worked for the company that makes it). I began testing it undiluted on the tile floor in the living room and it seems to clean up the general mess in there quite well (when each tile is scrubbed with a Dobie pad). The mess is a concoction of a year's worth of cats and sticky bug stuff from the two Ficus trees. This cleaning is necessitated by Weatherdude announcing that the tree(s) will need to come back into the house a mere month after finally moving out onto the deck. (They're supposed to spend the entire summer outdoors.)

I took this photo 11 months ago when Weatherdude's plants came back inside for the winter...not much has changed except the level of crud. Which must now go. So the plants can come back in. Ahem.


Over the weekend, the family tackled Miss E's PE homework by doing the Corn Maze in the The Plains. http://www.cornmazeintheplains.com/ It took us 100 minutes (worth 10 PE blocks) to solve a maze on 5 acres and 2.5 miles of trails. Commentary was mostly Miss E complaining that she simply couldn't do it. Until, of course, she did. I've tackled their maze more than once, my last (successful) attempt was with mindseas and tcastleb three years ago. http://birdhousefrog.livejournal.com/2008/10/23/ Here's a jpg of this year's maze:


After, we visited a friend who lives nearby. Today, I shall tackle more of the tile and clean bathrooms. See? Exciting.

Frog Out