Now where was I?

Okay, continuing with the photo update....

I've been doing a lot of runescaping lately, seemingly hell bent to finish this monster quest only to be brought up short by a lack of skills. You see, in this game, you work on specific job skills and once you reach certain levels, you get to do more things. I really want access to a food chest where I can buy large amounts of food for low costs, but I have to finish a quest first. However, in order to finish the quest, I have prerequisite quests and minimum skill levels to achieve. I have it all written down in a notebook and am trying to steadily get to those levels. *sigh* What a pain. :)


One of my goals was to get my farming levels as high as possible. However, if my crops die, I lose out on a lot of points. Shown here is the mushroom patch and for about a week I couldn't manage to get one living crop out of it (the ones shown here are alive, of course). I couldn't figure it out. I was doing all of the right steps. Then, I just happened to look out my living room window and saw the following:




This is one of three of the largest mushrooms I've ever seen in a yard. It was about 7" wide and 10" tall. (Yes, the grass was nearly that tall as well.) These had apparently grown in my yard during the week that I was unable to grow mushrooms in runescape. I decided there must be a direct correlation between the two...LOL Fortunately all of my mushroom spores have grown since that time and the mushrooms in my yard have never gotten that large again. Very strange, eh?

Okay, so you might be wondering WHY my grass was as tall as the mushrooms....well, I did a no-no and attempted to move a very bulky object by myself, throwing out my lower back in the process. *sigh* That was three weeks ago and despite days spent at home lying on the couch or in bed, as well as multiple visits to a chiropractor, my back is still not completely back to normal. Obviously I was unable to mow the grass in that condition and only managed to get the trimming done last weekend. My neighbor was very kind and assisted me with the central bulk of the yard with his riding mower. Thank goodness for neighbors!

Hmmm...so what next? Oh yes...I took one Sunday last month and did the baby rounds. I saw Alex & Lil' Abbey all in one afternoon! Alex was a featherweight compared to Zander and Lil' Abbey had grown so much! I had only seen her in pictures prior to that. I have pictures but won't post them here. Sorry!

The same day that I managed to get some mowing done, I also pulled some weeds in the flower bed. I thought they were nasturtiums that had self-seeded from the previous year but as they continued to grow taller, and not viney like nasturiums should be, they had to go. What I didn't realize is that my pseudo-jungle that had formed along the porch was hiding something...a large creepy something. One minute I was grabbing a weed, the next minute something had jumped out of the foliage onto the concrete porch and stared at me, swaying on its feet in a hypnotic dance and front legs doing weird movements. I admit it. It freaked me out and I jumped back while shouting in astonishment. I had never seen a praying mantis before. I stared at it in horror realizing that I could have grabbed that thing by mistake. It was huge! Easily 6" long, its triangular head pivoted back and forth while watching me. I could tell it was in fighting stance. Giving it a healthy distance, I continued to grab weeds so I could finish and back away. Even once I had finished with the bed, it continued to sway on the porch so I went inside for my camera. I would post a picture but blogger is suddenly having an issue and it won't load. Needless to say I was happier when it once again disappeared into the flowers.

For this week, my major accomplishment was finishing my Christmas cards -- no, not writing in them. I've started making a portion of my cards every year and this year I finished them early! Woohoo! Of course, the writing part is still to come, but that's okay. I'm feeling pretty good about what I've gotten accomplished so far.

Well, that's enough for now. Maybe more this weekend...