Random-ness, or I am a Babbling Brook.

I had been waiting until I got my thoughts in a row before I composed a post.  Frankly, those cows will NEVER come home.  So here's a long and random, stream of consciousness post for your Tuesday.

I have been thinking that it would be fun to host a Halloween party.  Then I sat down to make a list of people I could invite and realized that most of them are not around - having moved, passed on, got busy, had major life upheavals.  This was slightly depressing.  I hauled out my three holiday decorations (fake lit pumpkin bought at a major discount for no discernible reason; black cat face a friend made and I love; my adorable quilted spooky pot holders from YouKnowWho) and that's the short and tall of it.

I am still picking strawberries.  That's right.  It's almost the end of October and I am picking about a pint every other day.  Of BIG strawberries.  I will be sad to see them go - there are lots more unripe berries and even flowers, but we are entering into the freeze zone, so they are not long for this world.  My raised beds are pretty easy to maintain - I've cleaned up most of them, with the exception of raking out all the mushy little cherry tomatoes from the tomato bed.  Once that's done - if ever, the way I'm feeling - all that's left is to set up the hoops over the kale and Swiss chard beds in preparation for...snow.  There, I've said it.

After getting random whiffs of gas for quite a while (says Cleo, Queen of DeNial), I finally called the propane company that delivers my gas to ask them to take a look.  HELLO!  We went into full terrorist attack mode.  I had to leave the office and drive an hour to the house to meet the service guy.  They had padlocked my tank.  After performing a host of tests, it was determined that they were in the clear and it was a problem with my stove.  They then re-padlocked the tank and left.  WTH?  This would mean that, had I wished to have the stove serviced to fix the problem, I would have to coordinate (hahahahahaha) the repair call with the gas tech call.  Which would mean that I would have to pay two more service calls, whatever the repair bill was, and that would all have to come together in a perfect universe of schedules that does not exist on this plane.  I huffed my way to my favorite Vermont family-owned appliance store on Saturday and bought a new one.  I realized that this was the first time I had actually been in the store.  I have purchased my other two appliances (freezer, washer) over the phone.  I had the gas company on my cell and coordinated the delivery of the stove with the arrival of the gas company rep.  Easy peasy.

Not.

Old stove.

New stove.

After going from Friday to Monday morning with no stove/oven, the stove arrived but the gas company tech did not.  A call to their Customer Service Manager (who needs another job - that doesn't involve contact with the public) revealed that - Oh, lo and behold! - my appointment was actually at 1P.  I will not go into the gory details, but the delivery guys were gems, disconnected my old stove, even though they were not 'allowed', and hauled it away.  The gas company guy didn't show up until almost 4P.  Why is it that people are so fast and loose with other people's time?

Huff.  Bernie, who has, up to this point, spent most of her time in the very back room away from us, is now sharing Scrappy's sofa.  Apparently, he doesn't mind.

I swear Bernie sleeps with her eyes open.  As  you
can tell, it's been cold at night...