Mostly venting here

I've been in a funk the last couple of days. Various reasons, I guess. Right now one of our rent houses became vacant and we're having to deal with that. Here's after I already hauled a ton of stuff out. It was really trashed and after I got to town from watering at CMO yesterday, I worked until midnight trying to deal with the stuff. Otherwise my husband throws everything away. I gave a bunch of it away via a local Facebook group. Especially the furniture.

 Then I got stacks of clothing sorted and loaded for the thrift shop, only to find they were so overflowing they couldn't take more at this time. So it depresses me to see what a wasteful, consumeristic society we live in. And as usual, I'll have to scrub the floors with ajax and scouring pads and scrapers. My shoulder is so bad I don't know how I'll manage to do that. Not all at one time for sure. But it has to wait until Hugh finishes repairs and painting. Gonna try to hire some help if I can find anyone.

Not getting rain at CMO yet is stressful too. Had it not been for that little over half an inch almost 6 weeks ago, CMO would already be history. So I have to mentally prepare myself for that eventuality.

My son and his family are coming to CMO for a visit next week and it bothers me that things they rely on don't work there. Like the pressure pump to the house, for example. And his pickup AC doesn't work so it could be a hot ordeal. I need to get the pressure (booster) pump fixed but the valve between it and the tank won't close off the water. I don't want to chance losing my 3,000 gallons of well water, but I guess I'll figure out something. For me it isn't a problem. The faucets trickle with gravity feed, but with company it's a whole other story.

Sometime within the last several days I walked outside to our ponds and saw these Eastern Amberwings mating in the air
.

Immediately afterwards the female starting laying eggs (ovipositing) while the male hovered nearby. Notice on the photos of her ovipositing there seems to be a string hanging from her. That must be part of the process. I find that interesting.

Not visible to my naked eye.  Too bad I don't take better photos. Most of the photos from that event show that line in one form or another. These were just two examples.

Since I don't plan to do any more venting posts, I want to get a few of my pet peeves off my chest while I'm at it.

1. Wastefulness, of course.

2. Abuse of language. Young people think everything they hear is normal language. And for them it is. It's the only language they've heard all their short little lives. But language is a changing thing and at my age, I've watched it change. Big time. I'm fine with the new additions, computer jargon, and vernacular, like "Duh!" I'm even OK with texting shorthand. But mispronouncing words until the mispronunciations become the correct way, grates on me. For example, "length" is fast becoming "lenth."  And "didn't" is being replaced with "did-dunt." Guess I've lived too long. 

3. I swear, every NPR interview, regardless of the question, the first word of the answer is "so.."

4. And uptalk (that every-growing tendency to end statements with upward inflections to make them sound like questions) is the mode of the day, like it or not. Not. Here's an interesting article on that subject.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/caveman-logic/201010/the-uptalk-epidemic

OK, enough of that. I feel better already. 😉

Tanks should fill up soon!