Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Camping...hmmm

Here is my first entry in the fine arts photography category for the County Fair next year. I love cows. I took this picture on the way back from camping this last weekend and I.....whoa...wait a minute....CAMPING?! It's kind of akin to the dog issue. I am not a camping type person. I have never been a camper. I have never even desired to BE a camper. When I was a kid, we never, as in, not-one-time, went camping. My parents just were not into the backpacking/tent-putting-up/sleep on the ground experience. But nowww, I'm a camper. Okay, I, also, am not in favor of the tent-putting-up/sleep on the ground experience. Plus, because of scary movie residue, I am always scared to death of a huge bowie knife ripping through the canvas while I sleep. So, I bought a tiny pop-up camper. And now, I too can camp.
This does not alleviate the knife through the canvas predicament, but it does get rid of the sleeping-on-the-ground and the putting-up-a-tent. I may still lie awake at night waiting for a homicidal maniac to find the campsite, but at least I'm comfy. And, bonus, there are gadgets. Look at this cooler. Ready to have a bag of ice dumped in and beer inserted. Look at the stove and the sink. Well, the sink is a little iffy. I don't know that I actually want to drink the water that comes out of a hose that's been in there since 1985. But it's clean and pretty. I'll tote my own water thank you very much. But now I have a counter to set the water jug on and a sink to drain it once I've brushed my teeth. Each side of the pop-up folds out into full sized beds, and it has a table with booth seating that also turns into a full bed. And, the whole caboodle folds down into a neat 6'x 8' box on wheels.

I have to admit, it was an impulse buy. Sheesh. But hey, I'm not buying any clothes. It fairly old and it was fairly cheap. Along with the scary, irritating parts of camping, there are also wondrous things. There's the stars at night seen from a grassy meadow. There's the toasty campfire that pops and crackles and keeps you warm when you start to think, What in the hell am I doing outside when it's 34 degrees out?! There are breakfast burritos that taste so much better eaten in the crisp 7:00am air, along with thick, dark, camp coffee....when at home I would never be up that early on a weekend. There's the people and their kids that go along, and it's like being a in a cool little village for the weekend. There's the sound of animals, and weather, and the wind in the trees. And one of the things I love the best, which is not taking a bath for a couple days and getting all dirty and yucky and then Sunday afternoon, getting home and taking a half hour hot yummy shower.
Plus, how could one not get this camper when it has such a cool floor. And finally, it's such a great feeling to wake up in the morning at the campsite alive, and not another story on America's Most Wanted. :P

"Earth's crammed with Heaven."
Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Chapter 8, Giving

Friday, September 21, 2007

The List


Here is a list. A list of names. I was going through some drawers from my mom's old dresser and found this. I knew immediately what it was. When my mom and dad used to live at Fountain View Village (see post from Aug 19 "Whew") they would have dinner in the dining room every night. My dad made a list of the servers names because he felt it was good to call people by their names. So, at dinner, he would pull out his list and slide it halfway under his plate. When he saw a face, he could match the name from the list to it. He still occasionally got mixed up but as a general rule, he was spot on for getting the names right with his little cheat sheet. Things like that were so important to him. Someday soon I'm going to tell you his story.

A sad tale about vegetables. Okay, not too sad. We had a FREEZE two nights ago. Darn. Quite a bit of my garden was decimated. Although, most things had been harvested. I still have four eggplant, some tomatoes, a couple turnips and some bell peppers outside but most everything else either froze or had already been picked. Next year I'm building a greenhouse. And I'm going to expand the garden. Whoooaa. It's fall and I'm planing my springtime already. But I'm also living in my fall. Next week the leaves should really be turning. Tonight we're going into the woods for a fire and light-up Frisbee and a glass of wine (root beer for the under 12 crowd). Elk bugle at night and there are deer everywhere. Stars are out like crazy and I'm going to wear a sweater. Yeah, it's fall.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Oh Pooh

This is my latest hat. It has tassels. I'm filling up a sack with hats to take to a shelter or someplace like that. I might keep this one though because I think the tassles really work for me. Here's my take on hats. It's one thing you really want to get new. People put all kinds of crap in their hair, plus, some people have things in their hair that they don't even want in there. So, used clothing is fine (no, I have not bought any other items of clothing), but hats, a new, neverwornbefore one is preferable. Modeling this hat is my Winnie the Pooh. You only know that because there is a WP on his shirt. He doesn't much look like any W the P I've ever seen before. Here's the story on that....

When I was about ten, I wanted a Winnie the Pooh. My mom had some woman from down the block MAKE me one. I didn't want no stinkin home made W the P! I wanted the standard, orange-yellow, plush (not frickin terry cloth) W the P. So, for Christmas, I got this unofficial, FAKE Winnie the Pooh. I was stunned, to say the least, on Christmas morning when I tore off the wrapping paper and found THIS. Silence. I'm afraid I was a little ungrateful. I probably even cried. And now? Now I love this darn W the P. I cannot get rid of it. It kind of serves as, first, my humbling reminder that I should just be thankful for what I get, and second, it's different than all the other W the P. (Why is that okay now and so horrendous when I was a kid?!), and third, my mom had someone make me a W the P. She thought she was doing something special. She was.

Here is a picture of Sally Field at the Emmy's last night. I love awards shows. It was the funniest thing. I took three pictures of her and she has her eyes closed in all of them. For some reason I didn't think it was possible to take a picture of someone on television and have them close their eyes. I speak about the Emmy's now only to say that Rainn Wilson, the guy who plays Dwight on The Office, also played fish boy in the Rob Zombie film, House of a Thousand Corpses (I love scary movies). I adore The Office and it will always make me laugh. Dwight did not win the Emmy, although I was cheering madly for him.

I fed my mom two bowls of strawberry ice cream a couple nights a go. She kept wanting more and more. I think that, once you hit your eighties, no one can ever tell you you've had enough ice cream.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

One Moment

I saw my mama tonight. She's back up in her little memory unit apartment, finally out of skilled nursing. She's not doing well, as far as you and I would consider "doing well" but she is warm and clean and nestled in a nice bed. When I went up there tonight around 6:15, she was tucked in and had been given fluids. I went in her room and put my hand on her cheek (she has the softest skin of anyone I've ever met), and she opened her eyes and smiled at me and shrugged her shoulder up to kind of hug my hand with her shoulder and cheek. It was so beautiful. In the smallest gesture there was this unbelievable amount of love and history. I felt like, "wow, she knows me and she loves me." I've been working it out in my head; the whole quality-of-life thing and the the-body-is-merely-our-shell, and the she-needs-to-go-hang-out-with-my-dad-now thing. But in that moment I just wanted to holler, Don't Go! because I wanted to be able to keep that feeling going my entire wild and precious life. Because that mom love is irreplaceable. Instead of hollering, I sat her up, asked one of the nice CNA's for a health shake and a small ice cream, and I fed her. Spent an hour sitting on her bed, hanging out, with my arm around my mom. This picture is from about four years ago. She had been memory sick for a few years but was still very much alert and coherent. But, and I use a literary term here, there was a bit of fore shadowing in her face. What I like is the look in Jay's eyes and how he looks up at her. Here's what I think; I think I've been very lucky in the amount of moments I've had in my life that contained love.

The following quote is called The Cost of Living......

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own
insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable
violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.
To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty
to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or
complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never
power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand.
To never look away. And never, never, to forget.
--Arundhati Roy

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Blech


Here is a picture of the strange tadpole. It's either something completely normal and everyone but me learned about it in fourth grade, or it's severely poisonous and has leached alien blech into my glassware and kitchen. It's about an inch and a half long. Weird.

It's almost fall (yummy sigh). If I don't become a mutant cyborg after picking up that odd creature (yes, I really did hold it in my hand. eeewwwww), I'll soon be enjoying my favorite time of year. Sweaters, fires, crisp air, leaves turning into yellows and reds. Football, Halloween, plus, big things always happen to me in the fall. Coffee even tastes better in the morning. And I have to finish by saying this about coffee...I love it, but I have stopped grinding my own. Huge simplification of my life. I grind it in the store. It's still fresh and tasty, but there's no grinder on the counter, no ground coffee flying through the air, no clean-up, and the cup is in my hands that much quicker. It's sacrilege to some I suppose, but I'm still drinking rich, awesome coffee with much less work. Oh, p.s....unless someone has committed the grievous sin of grinding flavored coffee in the store grinder, in which case I either buy the already ground, or go to a different store (damnit).

Monday, September 10, 2007

Mostly weird

I have never been a dog person. When I was a kid we had a German short hair hunting dog that was mostly my dad's. She stayed in the back yard except on VERY cold winter nights when he let her sleep in the garage. I now have three dogs. I have no idea how in the hell I got them. But I LOVE them. I find myself petting them for no reason. I pick them up and carry them like babies. I (eewwww) kiss their furry noggins. Archie is this Corgi with a faulty ear. It droops. He's 5 months old. Yes, I bought him at a pet shop (puppymill) because he was on sale. Helen is the deaf/blind girl (who is Archie's platonic girlfriend...they be lovin on each other all the time. Biting each other's ears and stuff...chasing around the yard). Helen is 5 years old and was quite sedentary until the Arch man came into her life. She was a rescue dog that we got about 10 month ago. And Stan is the king. He's the only one allowed to come upstairs...and that's to wake up his boy (Jay) in the morning. He's 3 years old and a bit stuffy. Another pet shop special, on sale, getting old in the tiny cubicle at Petland. He and Arch Stanton (each dog has 50 names) are now, after a month, sleeping next to each other when they're not sinking their teeth into each other's throats or fighting for supreme toy possession. No, I've never been a dog person. I always thought they were stinky and slightly stupid. I liked cats. I still do (wouldn't those three dogs LOVE a kitten?!). I used to pet dogs with just the tips of my fingers, you know, as to not get any dog yuck on me. Arms length dog petter. I must confess, I'm still a bit that way with other people's dogs. But I really love my dogs. I find it interesting when people change TRULY in a way they never thought they would. Every once in a while I check in with myself and yep, sure enough, I do love those dogs.

The following thing is a total embarrassment but I must be honest....I get so flipping happy for celebrities at times. When I found out this weekend (People magazine was in the mail!) that Halle Berry is pregnant, it was like it happened in my own family! After all those bad horrid relationships! After illness and abandonment! And here she is 41! She seems like such a nice girl. I was happy about it the whole darn weekend. Is that weird?

Then, out driving around in the outback, I came upon this tree. It was old and burned out and very tall and it had this cool heart shape in it. I always feel so lucky when I stumble on things like this. And looking at the picture, the heart shape isn't really that apparent, but it was super cool when we saw it. It was next to a really muddy pond where Jay and I found these strange alien tadpoles that have a split tail thing and a shell-type covering. Now they were bizarre. We brought two home and I did think, momentarily, that they might hop out of the jar during the night and overtakeus. Which is weirder...those creatures or that I actually let Jay bring two home? Hmmmmm.

The Farmer's market is still going (until the first weekend of October) and I went there Sunday to pick up tamales. I had plenty of veggies at home but found this succulent plant called a lithops. It looks kind of like a butt. It was so odd I had to get one.

All life is an experiment.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Goal: Have more fun

We found this tiny lizard. He's only about an inch and a half long. Jay said, "can we keep him" and I said, "no, but you can carry him around a bit in a container and then we'll let him go again" so we found a plastic utensil holder and popped him in there with some leaves and dirt. We took him with us to the fairgrounds to pick up our wins and losses and driving back, Jay said, "We shouldn't have taken him. He looks hot and we should have just left him where he was. It's my fault" I told him that of course it's not his fault and that Mr Lizard will be fine and that we'll let him go in ten minutes, but it made me think. I'm glad Jay has that ability to feel for others and to think outside himself. But he was also so serious and guilt ridden. So, as I think in my mind "It's all my fault", and as I head into my second quarter of my one year of opus, I'm making an addendum to the rules/goals, which is to have more fun with Jay. To not be so serious all the time. Feeling solely responsible for this boy, I often, okay, pretty much always, focus on the lesson, the responsibility, the serious aspect of matters. Cripes! I'm going to try and be a little more goofy, a little bit more playful in the realm of Jay. But no, I will not include that in my daily four hours.

Speaking of, it's really hard some days to get four hours of creativity in. It's hard to get one! With all the errands and chores and meetings and blah, blah, blah stuff. I'm not complaining, just noting. I am in my fourth month of OYOO. I've accomplished some things I wanted to. I'm actually being more committed and getting more done than I had envisioned. But I need to push myself a little more. This coming week...one piece of furniture assembled, advance on drawer art, and finish current hat-in-progress. Over the next couple weeks...start taking photos for unnamed and secret future coffee table book, and start painting bottles to hold the unnamed beer I'm getting ready to brew. Goals are good. It helps if I write them down.

I saw the cover of my soon-to-be-released poetry book today. Hehehe. I love it. Can't talk about it yet though. Not till it's in my hands.

My mom is back in her room in the memory unit. I don't know what else to write about that one right now except that I'm happy she's back there. Mr Lizard is also back, alive and scurrying about, occasionally napping underneath a log in the front flower garden.

Monday, September 3, 2007

The fair, part two



Sometimes it's nice to win. That's all.
It's just nice. It's a little county
fair and it's a silly ribbon, but it feels
good. I won a best of show for my mixed media
art and Jay won a blue ribbon
for his "Nappy time for Stan."







We are full of ourselves and
think we may be artists
and it's made us slightly kinder people,
but probably just for today. And I'm safe
in the knowledge that I never, ever have to ride
on the tilt-a-whirl again.

Sunday, September 2, 2007

The fair, part one

You know how when you're really young, life is filled with "first" things. For instance; first bike, first letter you ever got in the mail, first time driving a car, first sushi experience, on and on, almost every day had a first. Today I had a "last." It was my last time riding the tilt-a-whirl. I was at the fair with my boy and we were cruising through the midway. I saw the tilt-a-whirl and, after talking my son into it (oh, come on. It's so fun. I laugh SO hard on this ride), there I was, waist bar across my lap, grinning like a fool, bring it ON! I spent the next 5 minutes, which felt like an hour, thinking, "Don't throw up. Just do not throw up" in-between saying "isn't this fun!?" to Jay. Wah-hoo! My fair mantra...do-not-throw-up do-not-throw-up do-not-throw-up. And to think I used to lean into the tilt to make the car spin faster. ugh. No more tilt-A-whirl. Ever. Done. Move on. Even the Ferris wheel seemed a little edgy. I kept thinking, "I would most definitely die if I fell from this height" and "this fair is only in town for 4 days, I bet they slap these things up in a hurry." Obviously my LIVE NOW theory does not apply to risk taking, extreme sports or county fairs.

After the rides, we hit the games. I love the carnies and yet I'm slightly afraid of them. We played that game where you have a squirt gun and you aim at a small circle with the stream of water, which makes a little monkey climb a tree. The first monkey to the top wins. I had flashbacks at that point because, at one of the same carnivals where I loved the tilt-a-whirl, I also played this same game with my niece, Suzy. When the nice carny said "go", Suzy turned her squirt gun on the nice carny and just doused the guy. We ended up leaving in quite a hurry. Thank god I'd already experienced my favorite, the tilt-a-whirl.

Today, I also became the person carrying around the huge mutant stuffed animal. Yes, it is possible to get that little ring over the neck of the glass milk bottle. And you have to love the inflatable AK-47 assault rifle. Tomorrow - The fair, part two...the awarding of the ribbons.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

It's just a melon

The Garden Princess is equally overjoyed and embarrassed. What she assumed was a watermelon is, in fact, a cantaloupe. So, taking in other recent developments, she thought pumpkins were cantaloupes, and cantaloupes were watermelons. Either the Walmart garden crew was terribly remiss when marking their product, or Garden Princess had an extra glass of wine while planting her garden. Hmmm-m-m. Oh whatever. But...the great part is that Garden Princess now gets to see that brown vegetal mesh grow itself around the cantaloupe. Right now it's still mostly green and smooth but around the bottom there's this texture thing going on. A little bit more every day. (At this point I'll stop talking about myself in third person, which is really creepy, with the possible exception of Seinfeld episode #216). And It's only September first (Holy schmoly, it's September first!?). Plenty of time.
I think even this cute little eggplant will have time to get fat and ripe. Garden count as of today (including "picked" and "still growing"); 42 tomatoes, 9 yellow squash (squarsh if you're from Kansas. Go Chiefs!), 11 zucchini, 2 cantaloupe, 4 pumpkins, 2 banana peppers, 14 bell peppers, 7 turnips, 3 carrots, 2 beets, 3 eggplant and 9 okra.

Can I talk about my mother? She's going to go back to the memory unit on Tuesday. That's her real home. Now. It's on the third floor or the same building where she's been in skilled nursing. She's walking with a walker. She still cannot take direction or feed herself. She will never be able to do those things. Okay, she hasn't even done these things for the last year. The broken hip can heal, the other stuff is constant. But the memory unit is good. There are all this wonderful old people with no minds to speak of. I think of it as this alternate universe where these folks just mill about, with some of them back in their twenties, holding babies and getting ready to make pies, some of them in their forties, lives filled with spouses and kids and rotary meetings, and some angry or lost or only able to repeat the same word over and over. But really, they're all lovely grandmas and grandpas who just can't think well enough to still be in a house, crocheting or gardening or watching tv, like they should be. These are the people who might be surrounded by grandkids, and be bickering with the one person they were able to grow old with, if not for the strange little plaques invading the thought paths of the brain. (Was I the one who listed "optimistic" in my profile?) Moving on...

And speaking of pathways and brains, I started an African dance class (counts for 1.5 of my 4 hours, mind you) on Fridays. It is so fun and yet I felt like a total dork. The dance steps are just not that complicated but my brain (my melon) would not get it. First there's the feet, then you add in the arms, and then even your head is supposed to do it's own thing. And I am the absolute anti-exercise girl so there I was misstepping all over the place, arms flailing, out of breath, sweating like a pig. Too bad I don't have a picture of that :P I loved it.