oh happy happy hallowe'en, joy joy

There is an ad that just sprang up on the radio station I listen to while Im in the kitchen,  and this particular ad is geared toward Hallowe'en.   It's from a place that grows raw vegetables and then freezes and markets them that way as healthy snacks.

Their ad suggested that instead of giving out harmful candy and stuff this Hallowe'en we should all pass out little packets of fresh frozen raw vegetables to the kiddies,  carrots, celery,  parsnips,  beets...

dry leaves sound like the rain (6WS)

the wind is shaking the leaves loose
everything is in motion

Even as we speak

he's in there typing up the instructions for me on how to run his Bobcat.  Not only turn it on, but how to turn it off, too, which is not as easy as you might think.   It involves hydraulic hoses, four buttons to just power the thing up, and if anyone makes a sharp remark about "gosh that sounds like my ex..."

Good man. I think he's more worried about the BobCat than he is me at this point.

I just had a flash into the future which is as Terry Pratchett so aptly puts it, "not necessarily a light at the end of the tunnel but a flamethrower" where this very old lady has had to call 911 because she ran out of fuel while she was plowing, skidded into a snowbank, and is now trapped because the door is against a wall of snow...

to be grateful 13 times

1.  that at 70 I'm in as good condition as I am
2. we had rain yesterday, more tomorrow
3. I'm ahead of the garden, for once
4. that deer come to the apple trees to feed
5. that turkeys march across our driveway as if they owned it
6. maybe the drought is over
7. I'm no shorter than I was last year
8. whatever memory I still have is still spot on, it just takes longer to get to it
9. most of our wood is in
10.  the cats are getting along (sort of)
11. we haven't lost the power lately
12. yay it's october
13. in about 13 weeks more or less the days start getting longer =)

Thursday Thirteen

Across the lake, the loon calls (6WS)

meditations

1. across the lake, the loon calls
2. leaves rustle with a papery sound
3. morning fires are becoming evening fires
4. an extra blanket for the bed
5. warm in the sun, cool in the shade
6. look up,  the geese are leaving

Poem for An Early Autumn Morning (6WS)

THE NAMES OF STONES

I have forgotten the names of stones

and clouds, the better to admire color and form

without the burden of name

to tell me what I should be seeing.

The classifications for various sedges

and creeping vines have finally eluded me;

taxonomy can never describe the way

a particular grass tickles your skin

when you walk barelegged through a field,

or the delicate arching of seed heads

heavy and ripe along the side of a shady path.

Nor am I now able to recall 

the fifty words for snow

or sixteen words for water;

knowing the subtle differences between ivies

is less important than it was,

and while I hunt for the name

of that strange red bird

it has grown weary of posing,

and flown back to the nameless tree

in the unnamed wood, and mocks me

with its call, for the rest of the day

Bottoms Up (Thursday 13)

1 Beer for My Horses

2 Whiskey and Wimmin

3 One More for the Road

4 Days of Wine andRoses

5 Whiskey Rye Whiskey

6 Bottle of Wine

7 Little Brown Jug

8 The Parting Glass

9 Whiskey in the Jar

10 There is a Tavern in the Town

11 Drunken Sailor

12 Elderberry Wine

13 Scotch and Soda

Thursday Thirteen

Funny and scary at the same time

Just clicked on Google and oh golly there's a graphic on the homepage, of birthday cakes...I had a really strange feeling about that, and held the cursor over it and a little popup said "happy birthday Judy"

No, you don't have it.

I can't tell you how unsettling that is, it's like looking out your remote cabin window and seeing a stranger peering in the window at you.  

Thinking Out Loud (2) On 6WS

Rain, finally.  We have had no appreciable rain since March.  It sprinkled a few times, we had one thunderstorm in August,  one last week (which took out two of our kitchen light bulbs),  and even the big maples in the yard were beginning to wilt.  Rain yesterday, a good solid soaker.   We need a week of this,  and then another week, just to catch up.

Last week I noticed that frogs (not toads) were living in the woodpiles,  because it's cool and damp. So I put out a huge heavy waiter's tray beside the woodpile, filled it with water, put a few sticks around it for verisimilitude, an old footstool on top for shade, and a bunch of hay and weedy things. Ten minutes, and I heard splashing.  lol.

In the late evening, when it's nearly dark, I can once again hear whippoorwills, and early early in the morning.  Far from here, maybe down near the stream at the end of the road.  But definite and distinct.  To a forest dweller, whippoorwills are the equivalent of  loons to a lake dweller.

Thinking Out Loud (1)

Gave in about two weeks ago and bought one of those pill reminder trays with the day of the week on each one.  Hate to admit it, but it works, in two ways.  I always know what day it is,  and always know if Ive taken my pills.  
None of them are life and death meds, but life is a bit easier with them than without.


Had to have new tires on the car,  all the rubber between the treads was cracked.  The garage guy said tires now are so full of recycled materials its a wonder they last as long as they do.  Six years is about average.  So recycling things into other things is noble, and I do it automatically, but when you  reuse stuff you are also factoring in impurities that shorten the life of the new product.  It's a trade, I guess.

The literary clue (most of them silly) Thursday 13

1.  The wife goes missing. The husband calls the police, and the first thing they do is ask what was she wearing.  Either he rattles off exactly what she wore ('grey slacks, wool, with a yellow silk blouse and grey wool sweater")   or they go upstairs where he flings open the fully loaded closet and says, "aha, her light green silk blouse is missing, and her dark brown cotton slacks.  I dont see her blue walking shoes anywhere, that's odd, she hated them, NEVER wore them..."

If the cops asked my husband what I was wearing I doubt if he could even remember I was clothed.  "I think she had bluejeans on, and one of those hooded thingies, maybe yellow, but it's warm, I really don't know"...

2.  The mysterious match book--definitely a clue.  The Blue Chicken Bar and Grill.

3.  A lipstick stain on a wine glass.  "That's odd, it's not her color at all. She must have had company".

4.  Advertising ashtray--track down the logo to the TaiWan Sushi Bar in Japan (never mind that the story takes place in Cleveland) and you have your killer

5.  Searching the house for clues.  (this one has me in stitches)  It assumes maids, spotless rooms, an attic so barren it only takes two hours to search, and checking every single damn book.  yep.

6. Dusting for fingerprints.  In a house that has seen innumerable parties,  sleep  over guests,  and endless visits by relatives bringing friends, and the detective will find the odd fingerprint among the welter of finger prints (assuming the maids didnt get there first and buff them away)

7.  Mysterious phone calls (in), strange unwarranted moods, behaviors, etc. well he's been terribly moody these past few weeks...

8.  The mystery pen with an advertising logo from, say, a chain of motels or an airline (but he HATED flying...)

9.  Red Herrings (1)--some writers will throw you a gentle curve, some will buffet you with red herring clues that veer off in all directions and after awhile you don't even try.

10. The hidden movie (dvd, , photographs, etc)

11.  The Mysterious Letter

12.  Unexplained jewelry in the jewelry box (hey, what's this?  I never saw this before...I wonder where she got this, it looks expensive

13.  The glance between two people that only the terribly astute and perceptive detective can interpret


Thursday Thirteen

and a moose in the woods

Moose Walking


(where the chipmunk is I have no idea. I will assume he got out through the window until my nose tells me differently.  yeuwww)

A Chipmunk in the Dining Room (6WS)

I have a chipmunk in the dining room. Yesterday afternoon I went in there for something and  heard a terrified shriek from under the small bookcase between the windows. Oh dear, I thought. We have a guest.
So I left the window up, a chipmunk sized but not cat-sized opening,  and closed the door on my way out.  He shrieked once more and was still.

This morning I went in to see how things were going and he screamed at me again.  The cat came hurrying over, surely intent on comforting his new best friend, but I put him outside the room and closed the door.  Cat food, I thought.  Little chipmunk-sized kibble.  And water. Can't have him dehydrating on me.  The kibble leads to the chair placed artfully and invitingly in front of the table that leads to the outside.

This is his last chance to figure it out. By tomorrow morning if he's still here I'm letting the cat in.  There is a limit, and I so do not want to be sharing quarters with an overfed chipmunk and all his friends...

Reprise of Morris Lessner and the FlyingBooks

I posted this once some time ago and it got taken down for some reason, but it has surfaced again and seems only fitting that I should try again. It's a lovely careful charming animation.  Enjoy.

september (Thursday 13)

13 things about September which may or may not fascinate you


1. my birthday month

2. its another of those indeterminate months--like May--that can't make up its mind

3. September begins on the same day of the week as December every year, because there are 91 days separating September and December, which is a multiple of seven (the number of days in the week).

4.No other month ends on the same day of the week as September in any year.

5.Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day

followed closely by :

6.National Chicken Month

7. National Rice Month

8. National Wild Rice Month 

9,National Potato Month

(which solves the problem of what to have for supper, eh)

10.  it's one of our busier months (not counting all the others): chimneys need cleaning, I'm stacking wood on two sides of the house short wood here on the porch-- longer wood there in the shed -- the grass will be getting its final haircut of the summer soon

11. potatoes need digging and my pitiful onions are more like fetal onions than I really had planned on. Note to self:  maybe lime, next year.

12.  time to deconstruct the garden before it gets too cold to do it. can I send anyone some lovely jonquil bulbs?

13. O joy, the tourists have gone.  At least until the leaves change color.  The beaches are now ours again, and the hiking trails.

Thursday Thirteen

From the new camera

from last night, a very suspicious 8 point buck has just discovered a strange critter in his woods

Whether its a large deer or a small cat, the body language apparently is remarkably similar. 

August twins

How they survive the winter is beyond me, they may get special attention from the rest of the herd, as to warmth and protection,  and they're still light enough on their feet to not sink in the way a heavier adult would, on crusted snow.    Pretty things, though, arent they. I couldnt get a shot of the two together,  sadly.  They are bigger than they look;  they've lost that Bambi cute part, and are now more like adolescent kids with a grown spurt.  =)

Head Shakers (Thursday13)

1. Clothesline is now being packaged and sold
in kit form, with a few clothespins, a small
length of clothesline, and (swallowing bravely)
instructions. I believe it also touts the benefits
of hanging your clothes out in the fresh air
but says nothing about 'restrictions in some areas
may apply".

2. In our now defunct old style hardware store they
were selling lamp oil in various 'weights', some in
designer packages with pretty colors and scents
to mask but not really hide the scent of kerosene...
I watched as a very nicely dressed lady debated
the benefits of each, and then chose the micro-
processed variety which clearly stated that it should
not be used in ceramic lamps, as it could bleed
through the pottery.  "It's safer", she said, firmly,
"than kerosene.  Less flammable."

3. City street detours that must have been  designed by
werewolves and malcontents--I was in one of these
 Moebius strip detours a few weeks ago,  and realized
the Detour sign was at the far end of a one way street
and the street itself was closed to traffic...

4. Two older people were in the dairy section of
the supermarket, debating the wisdom of buying yogurt
that was on the last "sell by' day.  "We'll never be
able to eat all that yogurt by tomorrow" the wife said,
the husband agreed, and they put it back on the shelf.

5. People in other,  more geographically organized states
who give bizarre directions to lost drivers: 'well you go
north for ten blocks and thenturn east at the first light
after that, and then south. You can't miss it."   Watch me.
First question, 'which way is north?"

6. You ask directions to a particular highway/street/etc. and
the clerk says, "see where that red truck is turning up there?
You turn there and you'll be all set."  yep.

7. On back roads with not a lot of wiggle room, you expect
the road crews to start (and most of them do) around 8 or 9
in the morning, after the school buses and commuters
have had their turn.  Now and then an over eager roadcrew
already has their gear firmly planted in the center of the
road by 7 AM, and its obvious they have been there since
dawn.  Why?

8. If you buy a loaf of fresh bread in the supermarket
and eat only half the loaf on that day, do you finish off
the loaf the next day, or do you toss it and buy another?
Isn't it now day-old bread?

9. One-a-Day multivitamins now come in Men's and Women's
bottles, the women's vitamins in pink and the men's in a
manly blue.  I thought there might be a difference in what's
in 'em, but the labels are identical.

10. People who think nothing about driving past parked cars
on a crowded city street,  but a car parked well off the highway,
clearly unoccupied,  causes people to shy like nervous horses,
pulling way out to drive around the vehicle, often  scaring
the bejebus out of oncoming traffic...

11. I can never decide if  "Road Work 1 Mile" means one mile ahead
or one miles' worth of it.

12. "Closed to through traffic" seems plain enough,  but don't you
wonder how many people pretend they're really just going down the
street, because this is where I LIVE, mister... and sneak out the
other end.

13. You are hopelessly lost. You aren't even sure what town you're in
at this stage, so  you stop at a convenience store.  "What town am I in?"
you ask, opening your map so you can backtrack....  There's a pause.
The girl behind the counter says,  "I don't know." She calls over to another
clerk and says, "What town are we in?" and neither of them has the
faintest idea.

Thursday Thirteen

Look what I found in Google Images

If you type in your blog's name, (along with maybe an image such as "ducks" or some other photo or image you have on the blog),  into google Images  I think youll see every image or graphic you've ever posted on that site (along with a few strays from other similar venues)

I tried this with Field and Fen cooking, and wow what a lot of food, lol.  Annnnd with "forest trees" and there were all my forest photos.

Liz, do NOT try this with just the name "boud' in the subject line. Trust me.

Full credit is given, but its still a bit of a jolt to see them elsewhere than where you expect them to be. The mind races...

The disappearing wood in New Hampshire (6WS)

Not what you might think, however.

One of the most appalling things I can think of to happen to a tree (I think some part of me is part Druid...) is the way they harvest them today, and demolish trees into wood chips, from whole trees to finished product in a very short time.  The trees are sucked out of the ground by huge huge machines,  roots and all, and chipped into, er, chips.  This is where your pellet stoves come in.

We have two power companies in NH, one is the one we use, New Hampshire Electric Coop. Nice folks. really into recycling, reducing costs, waste, and such.  The other company is Public Service. They announced last fall or last winter that they were converting their coal fired plants to wood pellets, in an effort to conserve our non renewable resources.  Sounds pretty good doesn't it.

All them trees, yessah. Chip, chip, chip.

Now.  People have been told for years that burning wood is almost a mortal sin, as it adds pollutants to the air. (apparently oil and gas don't, isn't that good to know) and we could be shut down at anytime by the EPA, there is even a LAW against owning or using a non-approved woodstove.  And along comes Public Service to do the very thing we are told we shouldn't be doing and isn't it SWELL?

The drawback to this dance is that most of the loggers are now heading to PSNH with their truck loads, since apparently the money is much better and no one has to spend their days bucking this stuff up,  splitting it, dealing with customers, trucks, splinters, mashed fingers, and weather.  So they take their logs to a wood chipping facility instead and then race back home for more.  It hurts the people who sell wood to home owners and it hurts the homeowners like us who depend totally on wood for fuel.  By the first of July we were scrambling to find enough individuals who have a  cord here and a cord there, to spare.

We have also been told (and it does almost make sense) that selling seasoned wood is cheaper than selling green, simply because it can be stockpiled  and sold year-round, and they can charge more for seasoned.  You takes what you can get, I guess.

But what bothers me is all the wood that will be cut down, now, "in the name of' Public Service of New Hampshire".  Once that's gone (and the amount of wood chips per hour that get used for this sort of thing is appalling) what will they use?  I don't quite know how the system works on a large scale, but I do know that anyone who uses wood chips or pellets in their pellet stove has to rely on electricity to run it.  And if PSNH is using electricity to run their giant Pellet Stove in the Sky, well...

porcupines from the wildlife camera

Now we're havin' FUN--the baby must have told his family, and they decided to see what was going on...he's on the right in both of these.  Got 27 pictures last night on the game camera, everyone of them with at least two porcupines in it, chowing down...

If you've never seen what a wildlife camera does, it operates with infrared light, which accounts for the "bug eyed monster" syndrome in these.  It also allows easier spotting of dark animals, you just look for the little white dot

Book titles

"Paws"   the real story of what happens Out There in the dark

"Lord of the Rungs"  Ladder dancers. Illustrated. 

"Stranger in a Strange Band"

"Lord of the Fries"  never touch my fryolater

"Withering Heights"  One woman's struggle with Osteoporosis 

"Thirty Nine Stops"    A bus driver's life  "as told to..."

"Lady Chatterley's Loser"

"A Rivet Runs Through It"  Shipbuilding , the Basics

"20,000 Legumes Under the Sea"  Hydroponics at Work For You

"The Tide Machine" one setting, one detergent 

"The Quiche and the Dead"-- The Cook's Confession

"A Brief History of Lime" --there's  just so much one can say about lime...

"Oliver Twit"


Thursday Thirteen

Baby Porcupine and Pear Branch--(still life with fruit)

We have an old pear tree in the yard, and due to this year's bumper crop of fruit one or two branches just peeled off the tree.  Last night this little guy, no bigger than a  softball,  showed up for his own private feast.   When they eat fruit, they spit out the icky skin, and rotate the piece of fruit in their paws the way we do corn on the cob.  And they eat all of it. Not just bits.  In the bottom picture he  has finally found the branch, and a pear nearly the size of his head.  Happy porcupine. 

What are you reading these days

Started up reading after I quit the RailNation game, and haven't let down yet. Plowed my way through Lee Child (who seems to be a successor to Robert Parker) , several of John Grisham's huge and extremely gory novels (guttural screams in the night seem to be a favorite of his)  and Neil Gaiman first novel, "Neverwhere" which is the most satisfying of his books that I've read so far, since
it trusts the reader to understand where he is, if not where the book is heading, and the ending works. I found his other books sort of left you hanging three feet off the ground at the end, with nowhere soft to land.  This is the first I've ventured to take on in a long time.

And never one for much biography,  I finally finished John Matteson's "Eden's Outcasts", which is basically the life stories of Louisa May Alcott and her father Bronson.  Not a book to sail through on a slow Sunday afternoon, and it took me over three weeks to finally sit down and finish it.  Funny, and sad, and extremely well put together, two complicated people in a complicated family.   If you like biography this is the one to dig into.

I find when I revisit books (especially the series books like LOTR and the Discworld series) they are slightly different each time I read them.  LOTR I first read when it first came to this country in the 1960s.  I've read it several times since, and this last time, after a hiatus of maybe 20 years, picked it up last summer, read all four books in the trilogy, without stopping.   The books haven't changed, but I have, so what I bring to them and what I take from them are quite different now.

Same for the DiscWorld series. I read that as an ongoing project for the better part of the year, and each time I find new things to wonder at, and be amused or moved by.

Internationale

English muffin
French toast
Dutch courage
Irish stew
Chinese Pie
Scotch Whiskey
English Ivy
Welsh Rabbit
Tasmanian Devil
Hungarian Goulash
Brazil nut
California raisin
Canadian bacon


Thursday Thirteen

Winter Poem for A Summer Saturday (6WS)

Untitled

Having fallen off the edge
of winter I have become
the unraveled rim of a basket,
the moonstone missing
from a favored ring.

 
The earth fills up with snow,
edge to edge, level as a knife
across a cup of flour,
featureless as death.

There is no here, no there,
no past beyond my own construction.
Hindsight is a greedy crow
and every time it flaps its wings
I remember what I've missed

 
Small pieces sliding into place
make sense at last, connected
like dried leaves trapped
in a thawing stream
as silent as the possibility
of what comes next

s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g a bit for this one

bluebird

red-headed woodpecker

yellow goldfinch

scarlet tanager

black capped chickadee

white dove

grey goose

purple finch

lemon meringue pie

pink flamingo

black and white warbler

indigo bunting

ruby throated hummingbird

Thursday Thirteen

Right time, right place, no regrets (6WS)

My mother was a city woman, and the city held no terrors for her:  (this was also the 1950s, a very different animal)  when we moved there the year I was 9, I was stunned to realize that I was given almost complete physical freedom without the annoying mummy-daddy thing going on.

In the country,  where I started out, I was kept on a really tight lead:  my folks bought into the idea of lecherous truckers with candy and cute little girls at risk--it was drummed into me that you never never talked to strangers.   If I went anywhere, it was in the company of an adult.

The transition for a soon to be 9 year old girl was incredible. I must admit, I spent half my time lost in a school that had 1000 kids (four times as many kids as the pop. of the town I came from) or trying to find the Principal's office, or  learning city rules vs. country rules, but still...

In the city I acquired two bands of girlfriends, and I became a marauding, wide ranging kid, all over the streets, I had shortcuts to the library, the church, the school...god help people's lawns, lol--on Saturday I would disappear after breakfast and not surface until nearly supper time, just in time for Roy Rogers.  Never once did my mother quiz me (and a good thing too) about my day, she seemed blithely unconcerned.  Not speak to strangers?  my GFs and I spent all one summer making and selling potholders, door to door, 2 for a quarter.  We cleaned up.  If we'd had baby sisters or brothers we'd have peddled them too.

That was where I learned to ride a bike, and that, surprisingly, was limited to our parking lot (we lived in an apartment) and never on the street.

When we returned to NH the clamp came down again, but now I could ride the bike anywhere I wanted, even to school, 8 miles away.  Go figure.

I never had another bike and by the time I was 15 or 16 it was just too much effort to haul me and the bike up our steep hills so I became a walker. But the difference in attitude was stunning.

Those two years in the city were, as a kid, two of the happiest and scariest  years of my growing up. I wept when we moved back here...=)  sometimes I wonder what might have happened if we had stayed:  obviously there's no way of knowing,  or even guessing, but I would not be the me I am now. That much is clear.  What is also clear,  I have no regrets.  Right time, right place.  No regrets

13 good things I remember as a kid [Thursday Thirteen]

1. Going to the beach and building sand castles
2. The Christmas I got the windup train and the track
3. Living for two years in a city environment
4. My first and only bike when I was 9
5. spending two weeks with my best friend and her folks at their summer camp in Maine
6. going to the library
7. endless cardgames with my mother on snowy winter days (no school today, yay)
8. learning to play cribbage
9. the Red Sox on the radio with Curt Gowdy announcing
10. Our first television (big old cabinet Dumont)
11. Reading and collecting "the Bobbsey Twins" series
12. My first job at 17
13.learning to write cursive

Thursday Thirteen

Book Talk redux

One of the dubious glories of being a voracious reader is discovering books that you read years ago (or maybe, these days,  year) as old dimly remembered events; usually half way through 600 pages, when you begin to feel familiar with the plot line, and the character;  too far along to let it go,  not far enough along to remember how it ends.

 Luckily when I buy most books I buy them used,  from a thrift shop or used book store or a church sale, so the outlay is generally less than 50 cents a book, sometimes 3 for a quarter.   I'm not shy about rereading a book. If I liked it the first time, chances are I still do, although some are one-time reads, good enough in their own right but not something to be repeated anytime soon.


But now, with the proliferation of 'blockbuster'  novels with similar theme names ("The Bourne Ultimatum", "The Bourne Identity", etc)  and six or seven hundred page reads,  by the time I've reached the end of one I am so overwhelmed with plot lines and red herrings and possiblities that the brain just  quits.  It's like being on a fast moving train.  You can no longer appreciate the scenery, there's just too much to take in.

One of the other dubious glories of being a older voracious reader is, like meeting old classmates after 45 or 50years,  you spend half your time trying to figure out where you've seen them before, and the rest catching up on people neither of you can recall clearly or perfectly.

In my last swoop through the thrift shop a few weeks back I managed to find at least a dozen very large novels by Kellerman, Michael Crichton,  Robert Ludlum.  John Grisham.  It turns out that I actually had bought some  of the books earlier in the summer and ten pages in realized they were books  I had reread a few years back. sigh.  The only one in the current  pack that I can deal with is Grisham. The others are either too bloody or too complex or too plot heavy and they will go to book heaven come winter.

Why

Because:

1.  it's snowing
2.  the river is about to flood
3.  it's too hot to do more
4.  you're stuck in traffic and the A/C quit
5.  your best friend just called with good news
6.  your ex called to invite you to the wedding
7.  an old boyfriend took the time to look you up
8.  you just learned that it's not always about you
9.  you just got downsized out of a job and you dont care
10. you went to your 35th class reunion and no one knew you
11. the light is better over there
12. I said so
13. your 40 yr old daughter called from Arkansas, she's coming back home to live with you

Thursday Thirteen

Dreaming the book

I've mentioned before that now and then I will have a dream that is solid reportage,  starting with me reading (in the dream state) a newspaper article, which then turns to hearing a narration and then to a careful segue into being the article itself.

Lately, coming down off of that game intensive year of no reading at all beyond cereal boxes and soup can labels,  I've been reading a stack of 600 page monster novels from people like Michael Crichton, Lee Child, John Grisham--one every other day, cover to cover.  and now I've found that when I dream I dream as a narrator/writer of very similar novels, long winded, plain speech, in that very similar voice...

I keep thinking, if it were only possible to  type and dream at the same time, by now Id have at least the better part of a lawyer driven-deep south-highly complicated novel of murder and mess, written out and ready to be proofed.  I wake up drenched in sweat, and exhausted.

Maybe it would work with poetry. Hrm..

Don't try this at home

This computer (Win 7) has a nice System Restore function, gives me a new restore point every day, for the days when Bone and Headed meet on the keyboard.

There is also  a nifty little tool called "Snip".  You can take the part of any image on the screen and plunk it in a photo managing setting.  a face, a bit of text,  anything.  

I've never been much of a fan of it,  but today I was messing around on the desktop with it and
suddenly I hit the wrong button and my entire screen image was upside down.

trying to read a computer screen upside down is hard enough, trying to work the cursor from a mirror-upside-down position  is an excercise in insanity.  I rebooted, back into the same upside down image and then opened a program to see if it just affected the wall paper.   no.....it was all over everything.  

oh. my. god.

My whole computer.

I KNOW where the sys. restore function is, but trying to find it while reading upside down and the cursor seems to want to hide in the wrong corner, and then locating the right line...luckily I only lost a few hours of the day, and I have whipped the Snip tool soundly and put it to bed without its supper.  

6 things that made a difference (6WS)

1. Learning to read (mother said, anything on the bookshelves. if you can reach it, you can read it)
2. Living for two years in the city (oy, the freedom)
3. A neighbor brought me my first kitten when I was twelve.  I told Mother, it could have been worse.     It could have been a pony.
4. Marrying the right guy
5. Seeing this house for the first time
6. Learning to drive (oy, the freedom)


[make your own list, public or private. It's funny, the things that really mattered, really changed you from who you were into who you are. ]

Shhhhh

1. Harry Langdon
2. Ben Turpin
3. Harold Lloyd
4. Charlie Chaplin
5. Marie Dressler
6. Francis X. Bushman
7. Lillian Gish
8. Rudolph Valentino
9. Greta Garbo
10. Clara Bow
11. Norma Talmadge
12. Lionel Barrymore
13. Lon Chaney


Thursday Thirteen

I just saw him...

through the front door
over the back porch
out the window
beneath the window sill
up the chimney
around the corner
inside the cellar
under the stairs
behind the curtains
in back of the bureau
beyond the fence
up in the attic
out on the roof


Thursday 13

Oh, please

It is nearly the 4th of July, and it is 57 degrees out and rainy.  I have a spirited fire in the kitchen stove.   The plants, of course love it,  and the two inches of rain we're getting tells me we might just have a good summer,  just not when

addendum:  it is now 47 degrees, and I am seriously considering a fire in the dining room stove.  The cat has been out once, looked at me as if  I were insane, and came back in, wind whipped and soggy.   =)

Not a Trick of the Light (6WS)

In the winter, Charlie is a medium long haired grey/white/black leggings cat

In the summer, he is a medium short haired dark brown/medium brown. black leggings cat

I have  no idea why, except that he may have an 'overcoat' of white/grey that replaces the brown.

In Brief

1. Dylan
2. Shakespeare
3. Cher
4. Marilyn
5. Garbo
6. Kennedy
7. Einstein
8. Gable
9. Lennon
10  Lincoln
11. Capote
12. Liberace
13. Streisand



New Thursday 13

The Dark of the Moon Blues (6WS)

Spring Tides

when the light goes out up there

for a day or two, 

I feel the tug of nothing

like trying to sing in a vacuum

and no sounds come out

no song satisfies 

unless it's in a minor key

with that heavy beat behind it

like a steady blow

between the shoulder blades

and I begin to slosh in and out

like the spring tide,

retreating further and further from shore

exposing rocks and broken shells

that won't be seen again

for another year

Color Spectrum Test

color spectrum test

aha I found it  

color is in the eye of the beholder

Red
Green
Yellow
Orange
Grey
Brown
Black
Purple
Fuchsia
White
Blue
Pink
Blue Green



more lucky 13s at: Thursday 13

Recovered from the old "6 sentences" site, now defunct

Oh, Let Me Count the Ways

After 30 years of longing and self-imposed madness, still gifted with a sixth sense about her, Jack took to counting pickup trucks; no idea why that particular item, except they were handy, numerous, and ubiquitous.  The goal was ten thousand even, but with an added handicap of no red or white ones, and no extended cabs.  When he added the last truck on I-81, he stopped for coffee in the next town as a kind of 'seal the deal' event, wondering with rock-solid certainty not "if" but "when"  'it' would happen.

As he was getting up to leave the door jangled open and three stout blowsy middle-aged women walked in,  brushing by as he shrugged awkwardly into his jacket.   One of the voices reached him, resonating for a very long moment before he threw down the tip with a clatter, getting just a glimpse of her as he passed their table--nahh,  he thought,  it couldn't be.  Back in the car again, he looked around the parking lot.  "One", he said, "two, three, four..."

about the nature of game addiction (6WS)

I have an addictive personality--I am also highly competitive. This is a dynamite and dangerous combination when it comes to games in which you pit yourself against opponents, obstacles, or both. When the opponents are not computer generated, there is also a sense of community that springs up among people on one 'side' vs. the other 'side'.

You may maintain your "I"ness, your persona, but it gets subverted into a kind of group mode in order to succeed in quests, adventures, or goals that are group oriented.  The "I" is there, but it's now  involved in making decisions that affect the entire group, and the more independent you are, it is both harder and easier at the same time to devote your energies to that group and that goal.

I have just finished a year long stint with a game called RailNation.  There were four separate games played,  each lasting 12 weeks, with a slight space between each one.  It was played out on a map of the United States, and you settled (with your association) in one city and 'owned' it.  It is,  frankly, maddeningly, one of the best, hardest, and most interesting games I have ever played, one of the most addictive, and it required attention on a daily/hourly basis. Unlike many games, WoW most notably,  it continued on whether you were logged on or not.  That meant you were more or less forced to show up fairly regularly in order to be productive and useful to your Association.

I loved it, and hated it by the end of the last round, which ended last week.

 I'm gone.  The new game started today,  I went over and saw that I could log in,  and I fled. Seriously.  Took down the shortcut and the references to it.

Then I went out and mowed the lawn.

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

                  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
             Two Happy People...
                 Three Men in a Boat
                                 Four Door Sedan
                 Five Finger Exercise
                      Sixpence
           Seven Days in May
                               Eight is Enough
                Nine Men's Morris
                    Ten Little Fingers Ten Little Toes
           Ocean's Eleven
                    Twelve O'clock and All's Well
                              THURSDAY THIRTEEN

sleeping beauty

I've always had trouble falling asleep.

For as long as I can remember, it's been a tussle to 'get there' no matter how tired, how dark, how late, the brain just kept on humming.  I lay a lot of the blame to being put to bed way too early as a kid, and in the summer being in bed while it was still light out.
Being a night person by nature, I hadnt shut down yet enough and spent probably an hour or more trying to get into sleep mode.

I used to count, sometimes into the tens of thousands, to bore myself to sleep.  As an adult I just waited it out.

Even after I got married, even after we came up here to live,  it was always a struggle to drift off, especially being married to a man who fell asleep almost instantly. That is SO annoying.

Then something magical happened, and Im still not sure what it was, but it worked.  One day I was rearranging the bedroom, and happened to place the bed on the west wall, covering an old bedroom fireplace that we didnt use and had sealed off.  That night I got into bed and the next thing I knew it was morning.

Whoa, I thought. That was amazing. Next night, same thing.  Every night.  No more toss-and-turn, no more waiting for the brain to stop stravaging through my entire life history,  I would lie down, toss and turn once, and wake up the next morning.

It may be part of the Feng Shui thing the Chinese use, where furniture placement is supposed to help or hinder your mood and temperament.  I've lived in many places, some of them with the bed facing east, but never facing a window that way. Always a wall.  It's been over 20 years since I moved that bed and only rarely do I have trouble sleeping, maybe once a year.

To anyone who has trouble sleeping, or falling asleep, this is a miracle every night.  However, Ill never be able to move the bed again  =)

A Poem for Six Word Saturday (6WS)

LOVE SONG TO MY  WIFE

          (by J. Sprat)

Last week we fixed the door.

Today you broke the floor.

Every time you take a bath

I fear for every lath

and every beam and timber.

I am no longer young or limber

and it’s really getting harder

to avoid your mammoth ardor--

I think we need to talk.

You can no longer safely walk

without causing mass destruction

to the sturdiest construction

from the kitchen to the basement.

This will be the fifth replacement

of the stairs.  When you cannot make it

through a door without a jimmy

then I can no longer take it.

I’ve seen you in your shimmy.

I’d love you more, turtledove,

if there were just a little less of you to love.

                                       (published, Melic Review, long ago)

Thursday 13 the hard way (built 'em myself)

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

Animators beware

                                    what happens when the gremlins take over
                              (you  can also run this full screen, it shows up better)

When I got up this morning (6WS)

It was 31 degrees
This is not necessary
I have filed a letter of complaint
with the proper authorities

Can anyone read here today

Is anyone else having trouble reading here?  Someone just emailed me to say they were having trouble with the RSS feed (of which i know nothing)...and if you can read here, just let me know...

Color Me 13

yellow
yellow orange
orange red
red
reddish purple
purple
purple blue
blue
bluish green
greenish blue
green
greenish yellow
yellow

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

never count the old tree out--part 2

a year ago last october I posted  pictures of our old apple tree in the back field:

the tree had rescued itself from firewood status by suddenly sprouting leaves--and eventually produced two apples.

today I went out to take a look at the tree, and found this:

I'd say, by and large, it's doing quite well for an old lady tree,
in spite of the sags and wrinkles and bits falling off here and there,
And maybe, come this October, there will be apples again.

how to spend a winter day (6WS)

If I had to go to that desert island...boom box in hand...

1. Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam)
2. Willie Nelson
3. The Be Good Tanyas
4. Iris Dement
5. Richard Thompson
6. Dire Straits
7. David Gray
8, James Taylor
9. Bonnie Raitt
10. Highwaymen
11. Bob Seger
12. Joan Baez
13. Joni Mitchell


THURSDAY THIRTEEN

Day late, as usual

13 ways to start the season


1. find the mower
2. find the book that tells you how to start it
3. find the gas can
4. scour the lawn for last years tools
5. prune apple trees
6. build compost bins
7. move compost
8. mow
9. mulch
10. prune what should have been pruned in March
11. hook up outside hose (yessss!)
12. apologize to the cat for the bath
13. admire



Thursday Thirteen

Spring poem

Green

While you were away

the seasons passed

from dark to light:

leaves fell, snow fell.

Now the fruit trees

bloom with rare abundance

as if they knew

of your return

and so rejoice.

More than once your shadow

fell across my dreams:

this was, after all,

the place you started from.

The seasons changed.

Now green again

and fruitful

I, too, rejoice.     

spelling--ruminations and an apology

The English language is filled with spelling traps (I often wonder about other languages, but I KNOW this one for sure) that we spend most of our lives navigating like mine fields.  It doesn't help that we now have elf-sized keyboards to turn even decent spellers into typo kings.

Some words are spelled the way they sound, and some are spelled very very strangely: brougham, trough, Worcestershire,  sough,  Wednesday...

The root of the problem is genetic: we are born with the spelling gene either intact, or with it just wandering around out there making cute typos and errors that the good spellers pounce on, endlessly.  I am cursed (some would say) with the Good Spelling Gene.  It's not pretty, trust me.

Sometimes I think we exist just to annoy the rest of the world,  and our penance is to always come in first in those horrible Spelling Bees (do they even have those now?) and sometimes make it all the way to the semi finals and the final finals, only to be defeated by some snip called Marcy who rips out the proper spelling for "discotheque" and you, who have never seen it in print, spell it as 'discoteque" and the audience "awwww" resonates in your ears for the next hour...

Our life long curse is to see words spelled (spelt) badly and wildly, and are unable or unwilling to correct what we see.  Ugly, I tell ya. Ugly.  With the advent of Tablets, teeny keyboards,  people who think they can touch type but can't,  people who touch type and shouldn't, and a new wave of phonitic speling (as someone said, "you can figure it out, right?") and Spell-Check that threatens to undermine even the Spelling Bee proponents, and I do begin to wonder, why bother.  I can figure it out, right?





(but I don't want to...)

The Gentle Slap in the Face (6WS)

When you go into a store--thrift shop, used furniture,  etc--and discover that the mixer/serving dishes/utensils you bought as a bride have now been upgraded to "Vintage".

When an old classmate recognizes you and you not only have no idea who he/she is (even when they introduce themselves) and you realize that  he/she thinks you're someone else...even when you introduce yourself back, and they say, "no you're not"--and now you are suddenly in a world of alternate universes

The books you loved as a child are now in the category online of  "collector's items"

Everyone you went to school with, were a bridesmaid for, or you threw baby showers for, is a grandparent.  They are suddenly old.   Too.

This is charming

The new memory

As we get older our memory becomes a strange and wondrous experience. Today I was once more confronted, for some reason, with what appears to be a periodic 'cleansing" by Google to make sure we are all where we should be and not someone else.  When this happens I quietly go to pieces, because I know a terrible thing is going to happen.

You see, I have about 80 skillion email addies at Yahoo, and have over the years been adding and removing them as the tides turn and the weather changes.

One of them I use in here.

Easy, right?  heh

I also have two email addresses for Google.  One of them I use in here.

When I am asked, on occasion, to sign in rather than just hit the button and begin posting,  the panic starts to prickle down my spine.  Which one oh my which one is it...

So I dab at one, and it says, 'your  password was changed three months ago. is this true?" and they ask me to verify it. [see paragraph 2.]  If you hit the wrong one you are asked to reset your password and the first time it went swimmingly until I was asked to sign in here with it and  realized that I had forgotten to write it down...

Finally I found one that would work, after being told repeatedly that Google now keeps track of your passwords and you cannot, simply cannot use that again, its already in use on another account.   It gets better.

After carefully writing this down and having it approved you are asked to present a verification email address in case of lord alone knows what,  which means another search for another yahoo address and another password and finally, an hour later and (should have been a five minute event) i have a new password, and this time I took a screen shot and saved it in my photo program...

I just hope I can remember what name I used to save it under.

Frozen Lakes

   The first heavy autumn rain soon became a week-long torrent, and then two more unexpected weeks of it; a steady numbing downpour that invaded their souls, filling the otherwise silent rooms with the sound of  a river rushing through a ravine.  Leaving the house was nearly impossible--Katy said it was like swimming through a waterfall, the radio reminding anyone listening to head for higher ground, as the autumn floods were rampant and getting worse as streams further north began to rise and join the swollen rivers in the valleys that surrounded them.   

   After the power went out on the first weekend they slowly began to revert to a rhythm much like that of their not so distant ancestors--eat, tend the fireplaces, sleep, read; turn on the generator just long enough to keep the freezer and refrigerator cold.  The radio stopped working, and they finally understood that the stations were no longer broadcasting. 

   Long unused board games and dusty decks of cards were unearthed and the days were filled with Monopoly, Parcheesi, Gin Rummy, and Chess.  There was plenty of food and fuel for the present but, aware of long term possibilities, they instinctively meted out their supplies carefully--"good time to go on a diet" they agreed, laughing a bit too hard...

   After the rains stopped and the sun reluctantly came out they waited, like Noah's Ark inhabitants, until  the waters abated a bit and the road became a passable if not driveable road again;  living on the highest point of land meant flooding was ordinarily from the ground up, and as Peter said more than once, if we flood, the rest of the world is in trouble.

   The road of course was impassable in a vehicle, so they ventured out on foot to see what had happened to the valley; without even a telephone for communication they had been utterly isolated for almost the entire three weeks--even the cell phones had stopped working, and they were simply unprepared for what met them halfway to the end of the long steep driveway.

   They saw trees bent and broken, uprooted, floating in a glistening lake of brown water that glowed serenely in the sunlight. Houses along where the main road had been were gone,  although here and there stubborn chimneys were still showing above the stinking water, and debris still contained dead animals, floating bodies, household possessions buoyant enough to float. 

   The silence was complete, except for the sound of water moving steadily and firmly past them, and now and then a tree giving up its muddy struggle with gravity;   no one spoke--they finally turned, stunned, and struggled up the devastated road toward the house and warmth and the reality of a shrinking food supply, dwindling fuel, and a winter, if they survived that long, of frozen lakes.