Forty Years Later

Marvels of the Net

my sweet computer...small but powerful

Older people often speak of the progress and the changes in society and technology they've seen in their lifetimes: cell phones, fax machines, satellite television, vaccines that save millions, artificial hearts, tapes, videos, cd's, COMPUTERS, Tivo.  Hmmmm....Wait a minute.  This is interesting. My plans were to begin this post on technology with a mention of these "older people" remembering advances, to set the theme you know; then segue to today and my experience.  However, all those developments do reflect my experience.  How strange to think about that.  You'd think I was born in the dark ages. 

 Regarding communications I suppose I was.

A Day In The Life Of...

When I woke up this morning I brewed a cup of tea (always Twinings Irish Breakfast tea with lemon added) and flipped open my laptop computer to check the news on the internet.  Ever since 9/11 I peek at the top headlines each morning to make sure we're ok.  I read hurricane Kyle was going to hit Nova Scotia where my blog friend Susan  lives. I click over to her blog right away to see what she's thinking about the storm.  She's posted a link to a map of the hurricane.  But I'm not sure where in Nova Scotia her little town is located, so I just google for a map of the place and I've got her location pinned.

Later, I get Katy set up at the computer.  She's  doing a big "self directed" poster project for school.  Her topic an animal we both love, the harbor seal.  Every bit of her research has been on the internet.  She did visit the school library looking for info on the seals, but didn't find much.  Ahh!  But at home, the whole world of information on harbor seals was opened to her.  She just clicked on Ask.com  and there were dozens of web sites for her perusal.  Once she wrote the copy, she typed it on the computer.  She's just ten!  I didn't lay my hands on a typewriter (forget any computers) until I was in the seventh grade, the earliest it was offered in school.  Katy began learning to type in the third grade.  She finished up her research and writing today and she was ready to search for photos of harbor seals.  Easy peasy, just click on google images and there on the screen are hundreds and hundreds of images of harbor seals doing everything you can even begin to imagine harbor seals doing.  So, as she makes selections, I show her how to save the picture to iPhotos. After that, Katy tells the computer to tell our printer to print her pictures (we're in the dining room and the printer is a mile away in the den) and voila! in no time there's a stack of  gorgeous, full color seal photos in various sizes for her to mount on her poster. WOW!

seal pup nursing mom...a favorite image from google

After that, I snatched the computer because I need some new music. I play my music so  much I need frequent replenishments.  Enter....what else but iTunes.  I turn on my stereo in the den and tell the computer to play my music through it and tell the stereo to play the music on the speakers up in the living room where I'm going to be.  Then I go music shopping on the internet. I think of artists, do a search then listen to samples of their songs. I click, I buy.  But after buying a few new songs, I can't think of any more artists to look at.  I need to find some new artists I might like so I go to Pandora .  Pandora is sooooo cool.  You make up your own personal, commercial free radio station.  You begin by putting in some songs you love and giving a title to your station. Say, "Girl Tunes". Then Pandora adds more songs that have similar characteristics to your original songs and therefore may be songs you will also like.  As each song plays, you can reject it if you don't like it. Also, there is a list of similar songs by other artists listed under each song as it plays. Plug your computer into a little speaker set up and let her play all day if you like.  Pandora keeps pumping out the music.   All that from just a few original songs!  Pandora continues to enrich your station indefinitely.  And...you can create all the different formats and different stations that you wish. They even have a fast click button for both iTunes and Amazon if you want to buy something that's playing.  

Anyway, I get quite a few great new songs. They're on one of my iTune play lists but I want to get these new songs on my iPod (a divorce fling purchase). No problem. I just plug the iPod into the computer and they cozy up a minute or two, and when they finally part, I've got the new music in both places. Heavenly.

It's getting dark and I decide to write a post for my blog while I'm listening to my new tunes  so friends as far flung as Nova Scotia can read it in the morning.  I took a photo I want to use and it's still on my digital camera so I need to get it to the computer.  Another cord.  A chat between the camera and the computer, and I've got the picture on my iPhotos.  Perfect.  So I write my post, transferring that same photo to my page.  In the morning you'll pour a cup of coffee or brew up a cup of tea and read my post, look at my photos and maybe leave me a comment.  Lovely, isn't it?

Yikes! It's 10:15 and I need to do a little shopping on the internet before I go to bed.  This morning on my email I got a notice that Boden is offering free shipping so it's a good time to buy that cute sweater I've been coveting. After that I have to order a few supplies from the art web site Dick Blick for an art class I'm taking on the internet.  My goodness.

Do you ever just stop and think how miraculous and wonderful it all is? 

I have no idea how it works but I love it. 

Thursday Night

Making jewelry around my dining table

I love Thursdays.  Since I moved here four and a half years ago, I've spent Thursday nights with "the girls", my sweet group of friends here in the neighborhood.  We call it "knitting night", though we don't always knit.  Sometimes we just drink good wine, eat, talk and laugh. Since most of us have been bitten by the bead and jewelry bug, for the last several months we have spent the time making jewelry. And sometimes we knit. Whatever we do it's a good time.

It's an insular little group of seven, though everyone doesn't come every time but there is an inner group of four of us that seldom miss.  We joke around and say we have three rules for "members"....you can't wear a bra and you have to be able to say the word "fuck" or at least hear it without getting squeamish and what ever is said here stays here. I know. Sounds like a bunch of grade school girls. All we need is to put a pin to the finger tips and do a blood oath. But, hey! girls just wanna have fun, and we do!  Never let the age a woman looks fool you about the age the woman feels.

We have always gone to Lavonne's house because her husband goes out on Thursdays to play poker with some guys.  Since I had a husband for the last four years, that was great with me because FH  kept Katy, so it was my night to get away.  Once he left, however, I was presented with a little dilemma. Kids weren't the norm on Thursday night.  But, everyone agreed they wanted Kendall to come so I could,  saying she could play video games or watch TV upstairs.  Rather than not go, I thankfully agreed. There is a four day school week up here, so late night Thursdays aren't a problem. But, much better, we began to have it over here more and more since there is no man in my house now.  You can't have "knitting" with a man in the house. Katy and I both love this because she can close herself in the den with her toys, movies and music, and go to bed at a reasonable hour.  The door to the den is so thick, she could set dynamite off in there and we wouldn't hear it.  Better, she can't hear us either!

We sit around my dining room table to eat and frequently just stay right there through the night, especially if we're making jewelry. The weekend before FH left he kept Katy, and my friend Paula and I went to Denver and stayed for three nights for my "divorce fling". We ate and drank like pigs, and we shopped.  The first place I visited: Anthropologie. God, I love that store. I wanted to go home and put out all this Anthropologie stuff the day he left.  Sort of the feminization of my living room. I bought a new funky/girly lamp, two funky/girly pillows for the sofa, and a funky/girly table cloth to leave permanently on my dining room table.  Something about that table cloth is magical to me and it transformed a cold dining room table into a colorful hub of creativity. I feel good just looking at it. I think that's why we girls love to sit around that table for hours at a time.  It's the table cloth.  I keep a jewelry project on it always  because I can do things like that now.

Dining room table with a fall backdrop.



Detail of the magical table cloth.

 We throw a birthday party for each one of us every year, and tonight's mine! Woo Hoo!  Tonight, I'm told, we'll have lasagna, salad, cake, and lots of great wine and bread. Gifts too! All I have to do is set the table.

It's a good guess there will be no crafting tonight.

A Good Birthday After All!

Here I am on the day I've dreaded for a month and been downright depressed about for a week and...it was a darned nice day!  I guess I got all the pity-poo stuff out of my system because when I awoke this morning, I felt positive and energetic.  I knew right away this last bad spell is over! 

Katy began the day with a sweet hand made gift, a little blue heeler dog made of clay.  Then I got some nice phone calls, and an unexpected but very appreciated card.  And my son sent three books off my Amazon wish list.  Tonight we had dinner with my friend Lavonne and her husband and she made my very favorite cake.  Oh and FH called and he was quite nice too.

I think I'm going to make this my year.  To what?  I'm not sure... create the life I want to live now that I lost that last one I guess.  Not just let it happen any old way it turns out...but make it happen the way I want it to. I don't have all the details clear in my head.  I'll have to seriously consider what I actually want in order to head in the right direction.

But right now, I'm just headed for my soft snuggly bed to dream on it all.  So sweet dreams to me...and to you!

Looking for Cheer

I so much appreciate the sweet comments, and in Susan's case, informative comments.  I've been in a bit of a low spot again.  I did get that bad cold but thought it was finished. This week, however, every other day it has seemed I am carrying around a head of mush and  have a tendency to burst into tears at the drop of a hat...or no drop, really.  It is disconcerting  for a crying spell to hit as suddenly and spontaneously as a sneeze.  It makes me feel unstable, unsure of myself and pissed off too. Then my thinking goes round and round trying to know, is it depression or the left over of the cold making me feel like I'm walking around in deep water with ten pound weights tied around my ankles?  I woke up this morning after what seemed like hours of dreaming about FH in a surreal and painful story line. I lay there staring at the ceiling, tears streaming wondering my god, how long is this going to last. how can I get a little control? feel hope? be cheerful?  I miss feeling cheerful. I've always been a cheerful person.  Oh, I fake it for Katy and others. But I want to FEEL it.  It's only four months next week...should that be long enough? 

My birthday is tomorrow.  I'll admit, I've always been silly about my birthday.  For forty years it has  been a special day because FH made it that way.  Lovely dinner out, wonderful gift, cupcakes and candles...princess treatment all day.   I do belive this has been the underlying dread and sadness behind this current spell of depression.  Then I feel childish and self centered to care so much. 

I have had many conversations with myself today. I've got to get a grip. Make the life I want. Don't let another day drift by in a daze.  A birthday could be a catalyst for change I suppose, although I'll be surprised if I wake up tomorrow to a new Me On a Mission.  Anything could happen, though.  The only sure thing is I'll be one year older and in a radically different position than I was last year on the 22nd.  I am absolutely determined that by this time next year, my life  will be radically different once again.  Better.  No...really good.  By this time next year my life is going to be really good. 

Lemons and Dreams

Van Gogh  1887

OK! I'm getting back to normal.  I'm lucky this is a short run cold.  Katy brought home a killer cold last year that in my system lasted two weeks.  I don't know if this helped, but I've been drinking huge amounts of lemon juice in my tea since it began.  Sunday I was browsing the net looking for advice on pumping up ones immune system, because I figured if cold season is starting this early, I need to be proactive.  I found this site.  It offers a holistic approach, and it recommended copious amounts of lemon juice and raw veggies so I took said advice. I munched on raw baby red peppers stuffed with herbed goat cheese and salads, none of which tasted right, and drank the juice. For actual preventative suggestions, this site is pretty good.

List of Dreams Update

I'm actively working on this list of dreams that I mentioned in an earlier post.  It's kind of seductive, really.  Number 5 on my list is  I want to be strong with beautiful muscles.  When I was thinking of how to phrase this, I realized that I have to be careful with the wording on a dream list or it starts to sound like a "to do" list.  On a "to do" list, the same goal would be written as Start working out!  See the difference in mood in those two?  Of course to fulfill a dream, I probably would eventually have to make a "to do" list, but do that too early, and the dream just looks like work.  Lot of difference between dream language and work language.

I've had this dream drifting around in the back of my mind for at least a year, and kept it in the back of my mind with plenty of excuses: it's too far to drive to the club three times a week; I don't have any equipment at home to work with; if I went to the club I don't have any work out pants, etc. etc.  Some pretty silly, some valid enough.   Point is, I didn't take any steps to wipe out any objections.

So, segue to a couple of weeks ago after Katy decided she wants to play soccer.  I always sort of dreaded the day she might want to do soccer because (and yes, this is terribly selfish) of the huge commitment required of the adult in the partnership: pick up at 6 two nights a week, an hour round trip drive each day; games in the big town down the mountain every single Saturday, another 3 and 1/2 hours round trip.  Plus squeezing in homework, showers, etc. and the complaining that would ensue with such limited time on practice afternoons. And, big deal for us both, no two-night weekend sleepovers with her best friend till this is over.  Those heavenly weekends are my only solid stretch of alone time these days since there is no one here to fill in so I can get away.  But of course I acquiesced in only two days of negotiations. Once I asked myself why should she not lead a normal childhood just because she has a bunch of flaky and/or selfish adults in her life and she lives in the country?   That phrase right there makes the outcome of a lot of decisions clear to me, her grand mother.

Anyway, last week while parked under a tree at the soccer field, reading a book, it just came to me that HEY! I'm already coming to town two days a week. Why not work out while Katy's practicing rather than sitting around reading.  The next day I called and set up two sessions a week with a trainer there.  I told him that I also want to plan a small home workout for Saturdays so I won't have to drive to town yet another day. Perhaps just some weight work and aerobic dancing or something like that. I figure that by the time soccer is over in early November, I'll already be in the habit and will switch to mornings. Winter I'll worry about when it arrives.  Yesterday was  to be the first day...I got pants and everything...but my cold was too bad to take out in public and besides I felt awful.  Tomorrow it begins.  I have had  many periods in my life when I worked out faithfully and had wonderful results.  But I've let a lot of time pass since the last period like that and I know I'll have to work hard and hurt like hell to see any results. But the time seems just right.  Post divorce, new life, and all that...

I can't wait to see those beautiful muscles. Any muscles at all will be good, Universe, my expectations are reasonable.

Just A Little Note

I have the first darned cold of the season.  It seems awfully early this year.  I never had colds. If people were talking about getting colds, I'd say Oh I don't get colds. But that changed dramatically when Katy came.  For the past two years I've had terrible colds off and on.  She will come home with the tiniest little sniffle and that disappears after a couple of days.  Then it hits me, but wow! What a difference.  It is her young strong immune system I suppose and my not so young and strong one.  I do think that high anxiety which is my frequent buddy lends a hand to it also. 

I've sat down to write a few times, but my head feels a little mushy and upon reading my words they seemed to ramble a lot so I hit delete.  I just wanted to check in lest my dear readers think I've taken a leave of absence. (hmmmm...I'd love to take one of those).

I'll check in tomorrow.

Until then, sweet dreams or have a nice day, depending upon when you are reading this.

Mountain Life

What a beautiful day today was.  I live just below a cluster of 10,000 to 12,000 foot mountains.  The land behind my house rises steeply to their crests. In a stroke of brilliance, Mother Nature, has created an atmosphere up there that regularly forms misty clouds then sends them rolling down the slopes half shrouding the landscape, leaving just a few details barely and enticingly visible.  I love when this happens. Occasionally, my house is engulfed by the clouds and everything in my normal view is obliterated by the ethereal cover of the clouds. If I stand on the deck wrapped in the whiteness I lose all perspective. It is a bit mystical.

The clouds hung just above my house most of the day and into the night, and tonight, still stalled there,  they were turned luminescent by the glow of the nearly full moon.  This is just one of the reasons it will be so painful to leave here even as I may be anticipating a new adventure in another place.  A small city place in the foothills.  When I feel panic at the idea of leaving this place I soothe myself with the thought that Katy will go to college in just seven years, and then if I am pining for the country I will come back to the high mountains. To tiny towns, simple pleasures, beautiful mountains where even an ordinary drive to town offers up one delightful sight after another.

Today, Katy and I had to drive over to see the Iron Man as he is reverently called, to look at his ideas for replacing my crumbling deck railing with a beautiful iron railing. This man is an iron artist.  He does common iron work to feed his family...his brood of lively kids and his beautiful earth mother wife. I'm not exaggerating. The first time I met her that was my first startled impression. She is the worldly incarnation of the Earth Mother. But aside from his mundane work, his heart and soul is in the art of iron. Sculptures, sinuous garden gates of great beauty, tiny dragons with their curvy tails and long necks unbelievably rendered in iron.   When we first moved here he made the arch over the entry to the lane leading up to our (my) house. I don't know why I even thought to ask him to give me a price quote on the railing. I suspected it would be far out of my budget.  It was.  Not even in the remote ball park.   Sigh....back to the drawing board. 

When we left for his studio/workshop I grabbed the camera as we rushed out of the house, nearly late for our appointment as usual!  And as I said, every drive in our neighborhood regales us with the sweetest scenery. I thought I'd put a few of the photos from our drive here for you to see.

Our neighbor ponies.



Our neighbor cow. Isn't she beautiful?



Along the road.



A dear little family.

A List of Dreams

My friend Paula called last week and said she was reading a book that reminded her of me so much she couldn't stop laughing. She's got a garage just like yours. You have to read it! she said.  Of course I did after that introduction. The book is called Sunday's List of Dreams by Kris Radish, and I ordered a copy from Amazon right away.  It's about a 58 year old woman, about to retire, and she's been writing and re-writing her "list of dreams" for 20 years or so.  The dreams change over the years reflecting the various stages of her life. But now, with her life freed up, so to speak, to make of it what she will in the next chapter, she's realizing that she needs to quit writing and editing the list and start to actually do the things she's written down.  The dreams.

The first item on her list is Quit being afraid.  That got my attention right away because if I was writing a formal list of dreams, that would be a perfect #1 item for me too. Item #2 also hit home, Let go. Stop holding on to things so tightly.  Loosen your grip.  How can any of us make room for a new life if we're holding on to the old one like it's a life raft. We need to consider the possibility that it might be the sinking ship instead.  That new life has got to have some room to move around in, test its mettle, and not have to butt heads with some old worn out life that's had it's run already.

The third item on the list must be the one that had Paula laughing: Get rid of SHIT. Start with the garage.  Now, that one has been on my list for at least four years.   I have a garage (and a barn) out there that is crammed to the gills with, well...shit. My problem is that it is mostly good shit, and a lot of it is really good shit.  That makes me feel that I need to get some money for it, but to do that I have to sell the shit and that just isn't easy.  But I'm not going to write about that blasted garage tonight.

No, what I'm thinking of tonight, is the idea of making a list of dreams. A real one, with the dreams all written down in one place to easily be perused and contemplated.  I imagine every woman has a list of dreams whether she's written them down in black and white or stored them in an amorphous state at the edge of her consciousness.   I began loosely listing some dreams when I suspected FH would be leaving. That was a period of slight euphoria during which I often visualized with anticipation the day he would leave dragging the negativity in our house right along behind him and his pickup truck. I was thinking heady thoughts about all the new possibilities that might open up for me, and the interesting things I might do, and I wrote a few dreams down in different journals, on a scrap of paper, in a sketch pad.  Just off the top of my head, I can only remember one dream I wrote down:

 Buy a pair of Frye boots and wear them with flirty, airy skirts.

And yes, I actually did say flirty and airy.  Not nearly as life altering a dream as Quit being afraid, but now that I remember it, it still sounds appealing. But, I don't think I should spend the money for those boots- Frye is a very expensive brand, and then what do I wear on top of the skirt (and will I look fat), and where around here would  I actually wear that get up.....Well, thinking like that is exactly what sucks the life out of a dream. Bad practice! I am pledging to myself right here that I won't counter every dream I write down with boring, practical, objections. Actually, I could impress the fifth graders with that get up and wear it when I work the Halloween party and not a one of them would notice if I looked a little plump in the flirty skirt. (You've got to love that about kids. If they like you, you always look good to them.)

Sunday's List of Dreams is surely not meant to be a self help book, it's just a humorous little novel, but I think I'm onto something here. If a dream is written down with an expectation of possibility, I think it is more likely to come true because by the simple act of writing it down with intention, I will begin to put the wheels into motion, and that's all the Universe needs to lend a helping hand.  

#4...Have some fun!

Strange Times

This "getting over" a divorce, "moving on" as people say isn't progressing quite as smoothly as I originally thought.  I should never have kidded myself that I could go through an old marriage divorce, or for that matter any divorce without plenty of negative side effects. But I may have fooled myself into thinking just that.  When FH first left I was so enchanted by my new "lightness of being" that although I was injured deeply I was glad he was gone.  I could breathe. I relished a quietness in my home and in myself that the retreat of anxiety had left in its place.

Then I did what any self respecting girl with the means to do so would do: I ran away from home for almost a month and a half.  Not much time to explore the world of reality then.  And when I returned the lulling effect of summer was still upon me and though I noticed I wasn't getting anything done to forward my plans, I brushed off the nagging voice in my head saying, "I'll begin when school starts. In September." I think I wrote a comment at someone's blog recently saying I always feel I can do anything in September.  So I was waiting for that September magic to charge in, swoop me up and fill me with the energetic frenzy of motivation needed to conquer mountains of plans, chores, and creative projects. 

The second week of September begins tomorrow and I'm still waiting.  I don't think it's going to charge in at all.  Instead I seem to be dealing with the "negative side effects" I mentioned above  frequently and unexpectedly.  I went to Western Days last Saturday and came home feeling like a million after my true first single outing.  On Sunday, I wrote in a blog comment or perhaps it was on my own blog that I felt invincible and you know, I did.  Right up until the moment I crawled into bed Sunday night, sleepy and content and began to weep. Just like that! Bam! One minute I'm fine, the next I'm soaking the pillow. I had no conscious thought or conversation in my head to prompt that behavoiur. I thought I felt great.  It was alarming and throughout this past week, I've realized that unfortunately it wasn't just a fluke.  I told my friend day before yesterday that though I am not one, I feel  like a manic depressive,  Up and down. Down. Up and down. 

So I haven't written my blog and I haven't accomplished a thing. On two days I gave up around eleven and just plopped down in my chair with my book and read until time to pick Katy up after school.  I never do that.  Well...I never did that.

The low point of this week was the day the low tire warning light appeared on the dashboard of my car. Naturally, I had to pore through the car manual to see what that little foreboding symbol meant. Great, I thought.  I have never put air in the tires.  The cars were FH's department.  My heart sank because I knew I'd have to go to the barn and deal with the air compressor.  I've never used it. It sounds like a hurricane.  FH showed me what to do with it in a five minute talk, five months ago.  Though I couldn't find my air guage anywhere, I drove to the barn to examine the thing.  Honestly I might as well have been staring down at some object that fell from outer space.  I remembered nothing of what he had told me.  So, back to the house.

Perhaps if earlier in the week I hadn't asked Linda's husband to go over with me changing out the propane tank on the grill. And perhaps if I hadn't had to ask Charlie, Lavonne's husband,  to come over last week and start my tractor, I wouldn't have thought twice about asking for help. But a deep resistance to asking for help was building in me causing my stomach to churn.  I buried my head in my arms, I cried, I yelled. I know it sounds utterly ridiculous, but I was in the grip of an outrageous, self created drama.   Finally though, I realized that the thing I most didn't want to do was to drive the seventeen miles to town, seven of them on gravel, on possibly a very low tire; so I made the call for help.  Lavonne again.  Charlie again. To make a long story short. I drove up the mountain, we checked the tires, and he aired them up with his unfathomable air compressor. He hugged me and said not to ever be reluctant to ask him for help, and he promised to show me how to work my air compressor.

My air compressor.   I never ever wanted my own air compressor.

What turned my whole week around and perhaps even my current slump was the long talk over tea with my dear friend Lavonne after the tire ordeal. (In the throes of this thing I'm going through, the simplest thing becomes an ordeal.)  We talked about loss and grief, and the happiness of memories and the sadness of memories.  And I was able to say things I have not before. What an awe inspiring thing this kind of friendship is. 

After a long, rehabilitating hour, I drove back down the mountain on plump, airy tires, feeling ever so slightly pumped myself.  Who knows how long the feeling will last (the manic depressive thing, you know) but as of this moment, I say....

Bring on September. 

A Good Sighting

Katy and I pulled up to the bus stop at the end of our lane this morning and there just across the road was a mountain lion.   We got a good, long look at him as he sauntered down a hill to the creek for his morning drink of water.  That was lucky! They roam all over these mountains, but they can be elusive so it's always a treat to see one and even better to get to watch him a few minutes.  We see the bobcats more often.  Katy and I call them all "Bobby". And we hear the coyotes singing almost every day and see them frequently, but a lion is a good sighting indeed.

The rest of the day was taken up with being on the phone with my computer guy or waiting for my computer guy to call back.  I was on the phone nearly three hours today and there is still a problem.  I was on the phone with him for two hours on Friday. Finally today he was able to determine that the problem is with the web hosting service through which I have my email; but upon his calling them on my behalf, he got the brush off. After that he said I was already in for a good bit of money and they could pursue the issue, but I could get into serious time and therefore serious money.  I told him I just didn't want to spend any more money today.  I've got to think this through. 

The only reason I mention that really is that because of working with them all day, I'm kind of spent tonight so I believe I'll just crawl into bed with The Life of Edgar Sawtelle, the book I'm reading.  That sounds really good!   My friend Susan asked me today to tell her about the online art classes I've signed up for. I think I will talk about those on the blog so I can kind of track any art progress I may make through my posts.  I'll do that tomorrow.  I'm considering  posting in the mornings after I return from the bus stop rather than evenings. In the summer I don't care how late I stay up writing; but with my early school night bedtime I'm often late to bed or too tired to write

TaTa! 

Hummingbirds and Cornbread

I love Sundays. On Sunday I don't feel compelled to do anything I don't want to do.  If I catch myself doing something resembling work, say putting clothes in the wash, I quickly remind myself that, "I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. For heaven's sake, it's Sunday!"  And I don't continue.  So, right off the bat I have a good attitude on Sunday mornings. Today was delightful.

I had an enjoyable close encounter with a hummingbird this morning.

 From the minute the weather warms slightly in spring until the day it's too cold to bear I leave my living room and kitchen doors wide opened all day and into the night.  I don't have screens because I don't like them. They distort the view and lessen the feeling of being in nature. That's the most important feature I will have to look for in a new house. That it would be opened to nature.  It's kind of a visceral need, and I suspect I was an animal or a nomad in another life.  Since there are no screens, hummingbirds flock into the house daily. Anywhere from a couple to seven which is the record for one day. The little guys aren't all that smart because they head straight into a closed  window and fly around in the frame of it until they are exhausted and I rescue them.  When they get into the tall windows that I can't reach I get out the long handled feather duster.  I stick it up under them and twirl it thoroughly catching the hummingbird in the feathers.  Then I quickly stick it out the window I've opened, give it a little shake, and off they fly.  I'm a hummingbird wrangler.

I also made cornbread today for my neighbor. I showed my tractor to some guy last week and when I went to get the directions FH (former husband) wrote on how to start the tractor I couldn't find them. Yikes! Panic! But, then I calmed down because of course a guy who wanted to buy  a tractor could surely start a tractor. But not this guy.  He hadn't the slightest idea.  I actually had my on little John Deere tractor for gardening when we had a ranch, but that was a long time ago so I hadn't the slightest idea of how to start it either. (I only remember information I think I may need again in the future.) I rushed up to the house and called Charlie, one of my best friend's husband, and he came right over and started it for me.  My prospect didn't buy it. He offered me $10,000 less than my asking price!  Geez. These guys. The tractor is a bargain at the price I'm asking and I'm still willing to go down a lot, but not $10,000.  I hate trying to sell this tractor. I hate dealing with these men who I can tell, especially when they find out it's a divorce sale, think that I'm an easy mark. If that's all they wanted to pay they shouldn't have wasted my time.  I can't get around saying it's a divorce sale because it obviously was never my tractor.  I had an offer before I went to Oregon that upon looking back I realize was a good offer but one I refused, thinking I'd wait for a better price.  This is where the adage "a bird in the hand" really hits home because I fervently wish I'd said yes.

But, back to the cornbread. Charlie loves my cornbread because it is an old southern family recipe from my Aunt Ida's family and Charlie is southern.  I cook it in one of two perfectly seasoned iron skillets that my mother actually gave me when I got married. I can't imagine why she did that. They were her mother's.  They cook the most perfect cornbread you've ever seen, and a peach cobbler cooked in the larger skillet looks like a county fair first prize winner. In a family where there are few pieces of heritage that have been handed down, these skillets are treasures. The large one was one of the few things FH wanted when he left. I just couldn't part with it though.  Thank goodness. Wouldn't I be perpetually angry to know some other woman was cooking in my skillet!

That cornbread photo didn't live up to my expectations. My pictures never do.  Taking better pictures is high on my agenda because I love seeing wonderful photos on a blog.  My friend Susan puts the most beautiful pictures, her own, on her blog, and I want that for my blog. I need to read the manual from cover to cover and then if I can't improve, get a book about getting good pictures, and if I still don't improve perhaps I need a new camera. 

I am signing off feeling quite tickled with myself.  That link to Susan's blog is a live link. My first!  I finally figured it out. Yea for me!