I'm Goin Back to Brooms and Dustpans

5 years ago I bought a spiffy hi-tech vacuum for a ridiculous amount of money (for me anyway) and it lasted  until the engine started to smell funny and rattle.  Sooo I took it back last Saturday and traded it in for a newer less expensive but no less hi-tech vacuum.  It lasted two days. 
The bags are crap,  the attachments are hard to put together and it no longer inhales.  (insert smart ass comments here if you must)

Today I went to Sears and picked out a lovely pumpkin colored machine that operates nicely, doesn't require earplugs,  and keeps the fussy parts to a minimum.  Even got  a service plan with it, for once.

Tomorrow I go back to the store where I bought the Royal and see if I can get my money back.  If necessary I will use The Look.

A Strange Place to Be In (6WS)

We are in the final stages of turning our property
into a land trust, one step at a time. it's incredibly
complicated, and expensive, and permanent.
The language is new, and slowly becoming familiar,
as are the rules, the boundaries, and our own sense
of what we want for the future of this place. The process
has forced us to think about what we see this place
becoming, and how we can best preserve that.

Without ever discussing it in so many words,
we have still both had the same sense of a mutual
goal. That in itself is fairly rare and kinda neat.

In the meantime we've met some good people who
have our interests and theirs at heart, since the land
is what keeps us here and the land is what connects
us to them. We have, in other words, a common
ground.  Literally.

And now that we're approaching the reality of
turning this land over to other people--even though we
will be living here (with any luck) for many years more,
we will be in a role I have always seen us in, as true caretakers
for the land, responsible for following the rules we've set
up for later users. In a way that's difficult. We've always
gone our own way;  now we have to share, and every step
will be toward a common and personal goal.

A strange place, indeed, to be in. On the inside looking
out at ourselves looking back. A kind of moebius mirror.

Hang Drum

My Life Sometines is on Rewind (6WSaturday)

My pillow won't tell me
where he has gone
the soft-footed one
who passed by alone

who took my heart whole
with a tilt of his eye
and with it my soul,
and it like to die

I twist and I turn,
my breath but a sigh
Dare I grieve? Dare I mourn?
He walks by. He walks by.

                       --Theodore Roethke*




*This is is from memory,  and I cannot find the actual piece anywhere online,  which is frustrating. 

Medusa

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved, -- a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.

When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air.

This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur.

The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.

And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.


Louise Bogan

Here we go again

Since the Internet swept us all away on an outward bound boat,  the language has been taking its own mysterious trip.   Nouns are now strange verbs: "to office'  "tweet us"  "twitter your response"  'like" this on facebook.   'I heart New York"

A new entry, I ran across this yesterday in an ad for a new and improved cleaning product:  "is your family healthing?"  "Stop just cleaning, start healthing'.  

We have long suffered catch slogans like "the soup that eats like a meal"  and "winston tastes good like a cigarette should"  and now we are enjoined to start healthing.   (puts head on table. sobs.)

I Have to Mow the Grass (6WS)

May 3rd

                                    which is a  lot more fun than 'I Have To Shovel the Snow"

                                                                         March

Silhouettes redux

Full Moon Silhouettes from Mark Gee on Vimeo.

Yes, please, I'll have another

Over last winter and recently I have become hooked on John Grisham, one novel at a time.  My  last trip to the Salvation Army netted me five count 'em five of  his, and I am in heaven.   If you must get hooked on a writer, it's nice to know you probably will never run out.  He writes well, no obvious grammatical hangups or annoying first person references that never end.

I tend to wait until all the votes are in on an author (and their  books have been turned into paperbacks and then are in the bin at the grocerystore),  and then carefully approach one from the side and a bit to the left.   Outta range, so to speak. 

28 books.  oh snoopy dance of joy.

I Think We Made It (probably)

This

                                                                

and this

and these

                                         (6WS)

The Moon Tonight

The Moon Tonight

I hate this part

She has to go back.  I thought about this all night and this morning and realized that an alpha cat of this magnitude will never be anything less.  Cuffy was that way,  and we spent three years with the house divided in half.  We did it because he was such a special critter and I felt he deserved a place here for as long as he had to llive.   With Chloe,  she's young, affectionate,  extremely accepting of any human in her path.  She needs a place with no other cats.    The greenhouse, frankly, might suit her perfectly, she could become the
Greenhouse Cat. 
Ill still take her in for her shots this morning and make sure she's healthy (my gift to the cat)  but she has to go back. 

Dammit

Chlooooo-eeeee

Her name (now) is Chloe.  I went shopping today and along with groceries I brought home two beauty bushes and  two scabiosa, (plants, not diseases), and a stray cat from the greenhouse.  She is a longhair, extremely friendly with humans,  she marches around as if she owned the joint, and has terrorized the other three cats into hiding upstairs. She even tried to beat up my 11 pound alpha female, Isabel.  Chloe could not weigh more than five pounds, but she sent that poor cat flying.

Im taking her to the vet tomorrow to see what he says about her health, have her shots,  and if she hasn't improved in a few days (with some serious effort on our part as well) then it's back to the greenhouse she goes.  Isabel and Toby can deal with her, but albert is old, and fragile,  if not frail.  And very puzzled.

Sigh.  It's never easy.

It Tastes Better Than It Sounds (6 Word Saturday)

(alternate title :  Now You Know Why I Diet)


peanut butter, onion, and ketchup sandwich (husband)
buttered oreos (for the bad days) ( mine)
Raisin Bran/ chopped apple/ brickle bits (mine)
french toast using Fig Newtons instead (hi, Ron.)
Onion rings and vanilla ice cream (with, not combined) (mine)
peanut butter and Ritz cracker sandwiches (mine)

(feel free to post your own favorites,  please)

Poem

The Muse Named George


He says, "Look, you're having trouble here.
Let me help you work this out."
"No, no," I murmur, chewing the end of my pen,
"I'm fine. Just let me be."

"Well, you KNOW you'll need me eventually.
Why not sooner than later?"
Defeated by his logic, I sigh, put down the pen, and leave.
There are sounds from the other room
a bit like Wrapping Day at Christmas:
paper rustling, little tinkly sounds.

I go outside to mow, to pull some weeds.
Later, have a nap. He wakes me less than gently,
smiling. 'I think you'll like what we've done'
he purrs, smug and cool about it all. "come see."
And sure enough, flowing out of my pen
are words that work, that fit together almost perfectly,
in one steady arc of light that reminds me
of one of those marble fountain statues
of a little boy peeing joyously into the water.

"It's done, now," he says, "except for clean up.
I'll leave that up to you, that's where you really shine,
you know.” And as I settle in, revisions already
spinning out on the paper, he pauses at the door and says,
"Call me if you need me. You always do."

Dove YouTube Commercial

http://mashable.com/2013/04/15/dove-ad-beauty-sketches/#

it makes you rethink how you percieve yourself and how people around you are often far more accepting of the way you look than you are.

it's worth the three minutes. 

Perception vs. Reality

I have a cat that until he came here had always been housebound:  three years and he had never touched grass, or seen snow, or felt the wind rippling his fur.  He had never played Chase The Leaf, or Drink Muddy Water,. or Climb The Tree and Pretend to Get Stuck. His voice box, I am pretty sure, had been removed, since the only sound he can make is a tiny rusty "acckkkk acckkkkk".   In two years he has never voluntarily allowed us to touch him.  If you do pat him, he curls into a ball and waits for it to be over.  When he goes out, he is frightened of wind, refuses to touch snow, and despises rain and cold.

In reading around the blogs and on the net, I see something most disturbing;  women/parents  who treat their own children in just this way.  I can understand being fearful, I can understand holding your breath while your kid goes to the neighbor's, alone, for the first time.  He's scared too.  But it does seem that we have somehow become a nation of frightened people and we're teaching our kids to be the same way.   Play dates, constant supervision, cotton wool carefully placed where they might fall, emotionally or otherwise. 

I blame, partly, the media and the instant-on culture that gets its news in a stream, all day.  We hear about rapes in California, and women in Ohio lock their doors.  We see almost first hand car bombings, police stakeouts,  robberies stopped in progress.  The immediacy is numbing.  Children are abducted or abused or killed and we now hear about all of them, continually.  So we pull the drapes and keep our own kids close.

What seems to have been lost is a sense of proportion, a sense of what is appropriate in our own lives.  It also seems we are now unable to sort out what is truly dangerous and what we perceive to be dangerous.

To teach a  child caution is one thing.  To teach them to fear is to hamstring them for life, unable to function in a difficult world,  and stunned when they finally realize what's out there and how ill-pepared they are for any of it. 

Essay from the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/04/when-words-that-shouldnt-last-last.html?mobify=0

This Is What I'm Doing Now (6WS)

somewhere, sometimes,  never

somewhere the rain is falling straight down
the way it always does
dogs still bark at the wind after dark
the earth still moves in various ways
for various reasons
the wind in the pines reminds me
of the ocean on dark still nights
traveling relentlessly
up the beach           you told me once
that often in your sleep
you dreamt of that sound
only you were at the ocean
and could hear pines sighing
in the wind as the tide
hissed over the sand      the rain
still falls straight down
perhaps on you
sometimes on me
but no longer at the same time
or for the same reasons

crocuses daylilies and bare ground oh my

The first wine is the sweetest

There's nothing like that first sip,  all the piquant flavors still mixed and floating on the surface:  savored slowly,  inhaling the bouquet.  swurpswurpswurpswurp...

Damn but that was worth the wait

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers --Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops at all-

And sweetest in the gale is heard-
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea-
Yet  never-in extremity-
It asked a crumb of me.

About anonymous posts

Lately I have been receiving several 'anonymous' posts, all but one of which contains a link back to either a gaming site, an adult (hur hur hur) dating service, or something other.  Those are not accepted links, all of them being commercial and of doubtful content.  If anyone wishes to post an 'anonymous" comment  which does not require registration or signing in,  please leave a name in the post so that I know you're real.  Even something as simple as "Mary" or "Jeremy" and a brief comment  as to where you found this. 

That may seem like overthinking, but the last thing I want is to find myself overrun with gaming sites, dating services, and all the possible problems those things bring with them as baggage.

Margaret and Helen

Just found this, it's hysterical, well worth the trip to read.  >>>>>>>over there too

http://margaretandhelen.com/2012/annual-report/