Maybe. I was a bit too tired to do much after I finally finished a long work day, plus it was suddenly 100° outside after a break in the weather.
Sunflower doesn’t care. Photo by Lee.
So I sat in my chair this evening and colored in my coloring book. It took me a few evenings to do this one, because I only do it when my hands get tired of crocheting.
This is the book. Note the tasteful version of the image I did.
I have a couple of other books in Sugar’s series, too. She is a very fun jewelry designer and often teaches classes. I met her in the waiting room when each of our husbands was having oral surgery. Check out the series if you like adult coloring books.
I also find the bleed-through on the back fun to look at. The book contains blank pages to blot up excess ink.
I also got a coloring book by another friend’s daughter, which has lovely Art Deco and Art Nouveaux images, with lots of space. I may try different techniques on those. Once I get the motorhome opened up again, I’ll have access to my pencils and crayons.
Another option!
I’m glad to have this throwback activity to ease my mind. I loved coloring when I was little. It’s one of the things that kept me quiet (along with reading, but I read too fast and often ran out of books). I often colored outside in my treehouse. I’m pretty much the exact same person I used to be, only less anxious.
Another Lee photo. He likes to crop them this way.
Time to conk out. Thanks for enjoying my activity.
Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.
Fine. I found an article on the worst cars of the early 1970s, the Ford Pinto, Chevrolet Vega, and AMC Gremlin. These are three small cars introduced to fight the tiny Japanese imports from Toyota, Datsun (future Nissan), Honda, etc.
Pinto, Gremlin, Vega
How does this article about bad cars of yore connect to my life? Remember now, I’m old. My first car was a 1972 Ford Pinto wagon. It was light blue with fake wood paneling. It was originally purchased for my mother, but the second I got my license, it was passed on to me to drive my brother and myself to school activities. Mom hated driving on “big roads.” My high school friends and I enjoyed blasting the little radio and cruising by the homes of cute boys.
This poor car could only hit 70 mph going downhill and had a radiator too small for its engine. But it carted me, my boyfriend (one of the cute high school boys) and our roommates back and forth through college.
It went forward and held 4-ish people. This was the car of my other male high school best friend.
The actual Pinto coupe shown above was smaller than the wagon. It was great for me, Anita, and the two guys, but add a fifth person and someone had to sit on the dreaded hump in the minuscule back seat. Of course, hormonal teens enjoyed the forced closeness. Good times.
Look, it’s Gremmy.
My second car magically appeared one day in the summer between my junior and senior years of college, after too many Pinto issues. I had high hopes for an upgrade. Nope. 1974 AMC Gremlin. Black, black interior, aftermarket air conditioner. Just perfect for a summer commute in South Florida. Sarcasm there.
Speaking of heat and humidity, these Lark Sparrows are here to say today’s humidity was awful.
But the Gremlin got me through three years or more of grad school in Illinois until it got us (me and same boyfriend) home from Florida in a blizzard and never moved again. Thus ended my time with two of the three worst cars of the 70s.
By the way, my friend Lynn’s dad had a Vega, so I got to experience it as well. Those cars rusted through amazingly quickly near the ocean.
[car photos from Motor Trend in 2001]
Mission accomplished. I related the article to my life. It was nice to think back on fun teen memories. A dear friend from that time is very ill right now, and thinking of good times when we rode in our little cars is a balm to my heart.
Tarot card of the day was The Teacher again. I drew it just before an educational talk by my horse teacher.
I’m only answering this question because I didn’t have any great topics today. So I’ll tell you about my dreamy seventh-grade crush. There are no photos of him to share since I lost my yearbook. Here’s an approximation.
Also a teen crush of mine, though it turns out David Cassidy was nicer.
Kevin Murray was a year ahead of me in school but we were in Spanish class together. I thought he was both hilarious and incredibly cool, because he owned rock and roll albums. I didn’t have a record player that would play them yet.
He picked on me a lot, but it didn’t bother me because I was a new person in junior high and was one of the popular kids in the academic track. We all picked on each other and had nicknames for each other. Man, seventh grade was GREAT. We had young, hip teachers and spent a lot of time writing plays based on Star Trek and publishing the school newsletter on mimeo paper. Mmm, that smell.
Back to Kevin. I thought that long (for 1971) red hair, those green eyes, and the freckles made him look like a sexy leprechaun. Or something. Anyway, he showed me he liked me by randomly showing up on my street and pretending to steal my new, very cool, red-white-and-blue Murray Eliminator bike (same name as him, so obviously it was his).
This is the general idea, but wrong color.
I showed I liked him by riding my bike around his house in case he might come outside, and drooling over his parents’ incredible blue Citröen car.
I mean, that’s as cool as my bike, right?
We had a fun summer of innocent pre-teen flirtation. My dad found us very funny, pretending to be annoyed by each other. He kept telling me “that boy likes you.”
Then I was moved to South Florida despite my protests, and that was it. No email, no texting, no Facebook, so no contact. If letters were exchanged, I don’t recall. No, I do not need to find him. I’ll just treasure my dim memories.
I pined for Kevin until the summer after ninth grade when I met the boy I’d really swoon for. That’s another story.
Weird postscript: by the time my younger son, an actual Irish boy, was a toddler, I realized who he looked like. Eww.
My son as a toddler. Red hair, green eyes, freckles.
On the other hand, I now have an idea of what adult Kevin would have looked like, though I don’t think he grew to be 6’3”.
You may have heard that Goldie left this world today, about five months after her osteosarcoma ordeal began. The good news is that she didn’t really slow down until this week, and only got really bad today, not eating, having trouble standing, etc.
The three of us here at the ranch worked together to give Goldie a good last day. after many calls, the guys found a vet who would come here so she didn’t have to be hauled in and out of cars. I sat with her for the last hour before the vet arrived, with her head on my lap or in my arms. It was very peaceful and loving.
It was important to me that she have peace. I have had too many traumatic dog passings. I don’t want more if it can be helped. We knew this was coming, so we could prepare.
Describing what a special dog Goldie was is difficult. People say all Great Danes are sweet dogs. That may be so, but this one felt like a friend, a confidant, and a guardian all rolled into one.
She was a Mighty Huntress of skunks and armadillos, she was a goofy dinosaur head when she got excited, her tail was a danger to men of a certain height, and she looked at you with those golden eyes, so full of love…
Goldie through the years
The few years we had with Goldie weren’t enough. But that’s what she had for us. We will treasure our memories.
Goldie’s memorial bonfire, next to her very deep grave. Digging big holes is a good way to process grief.
This afternoon, Lee, our friend Martha, and I drove back to our old haunt, Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church in Cedar Park. Due to some PTSD (at least on my part), it doesn’t happen often. But there we were, right where we used to be.
And there I was, doing what I used to do, singing with Bill. He asked me to join him, so I tried to remember how to sing.
A dear friend, Esther, passed away recently, and the Celebration of Life was today. This couple was a role model for our marriage, support when Lee’s dad was ill. I sang in the church choir for many years with Jim, and he brought me fish and game from time to time (I loved threatening to make squirrel stew from his bounty). He hated squirrels as much as Anita does.
Eek!
As I listened to Jim share the touching story of their long and loving marriage, followed by funny and moving stories about Esther from their children and more, it occurred to me how Esther would have enjoyed the evening. Gee, most of the family are professional writers, so anyone would have enjoyed it.
My choir and women’s group friends with Jim.
What sparked in me was a desire to let all my old friends I saw at the service know how much I appreciated them and their contributions to my life. I did a lot of extra-hard hugging of my women’s group buddies and former choir friends. And a few people were probably a bit embarrassed to hear me tell them how much they mean to me. I was sorry a couple of people had to leave early. I’d have blubbered even more.
I blubbered at Ricky because he called me “Sue-Nanna,” which is what he always called me. Then we talked about football and golf.
But, in these uncertain times, I don’t know when I’ll see some of these kind and loving souls again. If I didn’t tell them now, when would I? I just looked into their faces and wanted to savor every moment.
I see them on Facebook all the time, but their in-person faces. Ahhh.
Please, if you get a chance to see people you care deeply about, tell them. Show them. It won’t hurt to tell them multiple times. It helps counteract some of the negativity. I’m glad Lee, Martha, and I got to do it.
I’m committed to telling everyone I see that I care about how much they mean to me now, while I can.
I owe y’all a more cheerful post, so I’m glad this dreary day produced some happy thoughts.
Look at these tiny margined calligrapher wasps!
The day started out looking like a tornado was going to hit. Long after the sun theoretically rose (couldn’t see it for the clouds), it suddenly got pitch black dark outside, like it was night. Then it turned that scary pre-tornado green.
Ominous skies
Luckily all we got was some wind, heavy rain, and brief power outages.
Goldie and Carlton curled up with me.
It stayed drizzly all day, but I figured out ways to be outside with the animals and nature as much as I could. In the early afternoon I took a walk to the creek, where I heard a sound. I looked down at my phone and, YES! It was a bobwhite quail. Wow! That brought childhood memories back.
Deer were enjoying the rain.
When I was a girl in the 60s, I lived in Gainesville, Florida. It was a town of 25,000 surrounded by beautiful farms, cattle ranches, and lakes. Everyone my parents knew had little lake shacks or hunting cabins (not fancy) or had family out in the country. Hunting and fishing happened most weekends (except for us – dad played fast-pitch softball on weekends).
A thing that happened I guess fairly often was that guys would get together during the appropriate season and hunt quail. They wouldn’t go get a few. No. They would bring bags and bags of them home, at which point women-folk would clean them. Then they’d invite all their friends over and eat quail (I think other people brought side dishes).
My memory is dim, but I remember the bags of quail and the deep fryer they cooked them in. It was huge. You’d go get a couple of tiny birds, carefully eat them to avoid shot, then get more.
I assume beer was also involved. In any case, the couple of times we were invited were quite unusual to me and my brother, who weren’t exactly country folk (one generation removed).
Now quail are no longer even there to hunt. That’s why hearing one got me so excited. I kept hoping some of our woods edges and the pond hill might be good for quail (they need a specific habitat, which the northern Florida scrub fit). Yay, right?
About bobwhites
The other thing that took me back to childhood came later, when I went out walking at dusk, hoping to hear a nighthawk, my second-favorite nightjar. I did hear and see them, plus heard another bobwhite, so I know I wasn’t imagining it.
I also saw my cottontail friend again.
But also, I saw some fireflies! I’d lamented to Anita that I hadn’t seen any out here at the ranch, though I had in Cameron. But, there they were on the side of the road by our house. They are another childhood sight I miss.
When I was a girl in the 60s (same as above), we didn’t have fireflies at home. That meant I really looked forward to our yearly visit to my grandmother’s house in Chattanooga, because each summer her yard filled with fireflies.
My brother, my cousins, and I must have spent hours and hours chasing fireflies to put in jars, which we hoped would act as lanterns. I learned later than after we went to bed Dad let the poor creatures out. Aww. I guess that was better than cleaning up dead bugs.
I’d eat them for you, offers Henley.
My kids enjoyed them when they were little, too. I’m glad the pesticides haven’t killed them all yet.
It’s nice to see biodiversity trying to come back. I feel like I live in a hotbed of it here. Maybe there’s hope! After all, I saw or heard 48 different bird species yesterday and 44 today. I’m trying to keep as many native plants happy and healthy here as I can. And I want the fish, frogs, turtles, snakes, and mammals to have their own niches. That’s a positive goal!
Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.
Ah, I’m sitting in a clean, quiet hotel room, with mindless television and knitting. It’s a perfect time to reminisce about family traditions.
Yep, it’s a hotel room.
My current family is a bit too chaotic to have a lot of traditions. It’s always something different every day. But my family of origin had a couple I enjoyed at the time and remember fondly.
I’m not home so I can’t scan photos. Here’s our foggy morning.
One I loved was when we lived in south Florida in a family-oriented neighborhood of little cement-block houses. We had a dachshund mix dog named Pumpkin during my college and grad school years. I thought of her as my sister, because she was great to talk to and hang out with. I’m not kidding, I often forgot she was a dog.
Ha! I found a photo of Pumpkin, Dad, and two neighbors.
Anyway, it was my parents’ tradition to take a walk with Pumpkin every evening after dinner. Whenever I was home, I went along with them and my brother. The walk only went to the end of the block, because Mom couldn’t go very far (she was sick a long time, and died when I was 26).
The front of the house, on my 16th birthday. Stylish for 1974.
However, the walks were always fun. We’d talk and joke and comment on the quality of Pumpkin’s poop, which always happened at the corner. (Dad had to go clean it up once a week or so, because they we’d never heard of poop bags in the 80s.) In the winter we’d check to see if she’d produced a “steamer.” Dad loved those.
Re-enactment?
The walks were often long in time, compared to their length. That’s because we often stopped to talk to the neighbors. My dad and brother were very social. I enjoyed listening to them. It felt so comfortable and convivial. They could talk about all topics, drink beer, tell stories, and get along. They were just nice, hard-working folks. I miss those times.
I realize that hanging out with my family and watching the dog poop is probably a weird tradition, but we all enjoyed it. It was something Mom could do with us, which was so nice. And my Dad and brother were so funny. I’ll treasure our quirky family togetherness time.
Before I left for my 6.5-hour drive to Arkansas, I did get in a little bird watching during the foggy morning. (I haven’t seen the sun since last Saturday.) I’m going to declare our resident loggerhead shrike the Daily Bird, because it matches the sky and trees. Plus, I love watching them grab bugs.
Gray bird in fog.
I’m sure the shrike is wishful for the grasshopper season to start! They go into overdrive then.
It rained and rained and I worked and worked today, so I didn’t have any “adventures” to write about. I was glad to see the blog prompt for today, since it fit in with my day’s activities.
Still rainy
Have you guessed my favorite subject in school? It’s pretty obvious, though after sixth grade there were really two.
Since I have the condition where I’m just driven to write (hypergraphia, self diagnosed), it’s no surprise that I loved English grammar and composition. I still do, though I’ve cut out all the convoluted sentences and polysyllabic vocabulary of my youth, at least in public.
I don’t have any photos from today, so consider these old collages as writing prompts.
There’s nothing I liked better than to be assigned to diagram me some sentences or write a nice, juicy composition. Term papers with lots o’ footnotes were also my idea of fun. In high school the only way I got a boyfriend was to find the guy who liked fancy sentences as much as I did (he’s an English/film studies professor now).
How do you see yourself as a writer?
But I did have another passion, which, probably not coincidentally, involved arranging words in certain ways. It was my second love, choral music. I loved how chords worked, harmonies intertwined, and crescendos followed decrescendos. While writing was a solo activity, chorus involved working with others, blending and matching in tone.
I’m the red dress in the tenor section.
I learned a lot about discipline, learning rules so you can later break them, cooperation, and vulnerability through these activities. Sharing your writing and performing in public are not easy until you get a lot of practice and learn to take feedback constructively. (My high school chorus teacher and grad school advisor are still alive and could tell you how much I had to learn in that area.) (Note that there’s still work to be done.)
I feel like the kid in this one.
Thanks for being an audience for my blog. It’s a nice break from job aids and meeting minutes, which I wrote all day today. I’m lucky to have a place to be a “real,” person, not an influencer or manufactured celebrity.
These SoulCollage cards can make you think.
Go out and read some other great blogs by real people! I love learning what I have in common with others, as well as our differences. I learn a lot, and you can, too.
We learn more if we look. Right now looking can be hard.
I have a healthy amount of Imposter Syndrome going on, stemming mainly from feeling so horribly untalented at what I went to grad school for, even though I loved it. But mostly I’ve been able to blend in, make conversation, or at least get by in whatever situation I get thrown in.
It’s because I meditate.
I admit I felt uncomfortable during the years we were studying real estate renovations and investment, especially when we got labeled as “big investors” and getting invited to special receptions and events (like a sky box at a football game—I couldn’t do rich people small talk so I sat in the seats and watched the game. I’m good at football watching. I grew up working class or barely middle class, so I missed out on rich people issues and topics. They talked a lot about taxes when just a year or two before mine were easily done by Turbo Tax.
Now, though, I understand horse expenses.
But the time I felt most out of place was the 1971-72 school year, when I was removed from a junior high school where I fit in, had my advanced classes, and was popular among the smart hippie kids. I was placed in a new town, which was a kinda snobby suburb. That was ok. But the school was an “open classroom.” Three grades, 6-8, were all in a giant room with lockers delineating learning areas. Black kids were bussed in from miles away and not thrilled about it. All abilities were in the same classroom, which was supposed to be just fine for learners and teachers, because we were supposed to teach ourselves, each at our own pace.
It was hell. Science class was good, because we all learned at the same time, mainly how to hurt each other with lab equipment. Much of the year, the white kids would have nothing to do with a hippie kid. The black girls were more friendly. Eventually I had friends.
But this whole system was chaos. By halfway through the year I’d finished English and social studies, so three of us would go to the open air library and crawl under a table to read plays to each other. Shakespeare was quite naughty, we thought. Probably it’s banned today.
But I couldn’t teach myself algebra, even with a friend trying with me. She was brilliant. But we needed a teacher, and Mr. Schecter had no interest in teaching, just grading papers. So my friend and I crocheted purses. Hmm. I did a lot of extra-curricular stuff.
Anyway, that was the year I fainted in volleyball and took a golf club to my head. Only chorus was fun. Made lifelong friends there!
I was a square peg in that giant round hole of a school building. I lost a year of math, too. I had to do Algebra I again, so I was behind many of my friends.
I had no deep pool to hide in.
I’m sure I drove my parents up a wall, as we used to say, that year. I felt like a complete misfit, but these memories reminded me there was plenty of fun. Change was just hard for an adolescent with severe anxiety. I didn’t even know what anxiety was. I was just “too sensitive.”
I’m glad I have my circle of human and animal friends to support me now!
The morning didn’t start out as well as I’d hoped, though I had an inkling I might make a sad discovery this morning. And yes, I was correct that my buddy Bruce, the best rooster ever to crow, had passed away overnight. He was only 2.5 years old, so I’d hoped we’d have many more years with him.
He was in his glory last fall, when is comb looked cool and all his green feathers were shining.
Bruce was an “Easter egger,” who I’d gotten for free when I got a bunch of other hens from Bird and Bee Farm that I named after Bruce Springsteen’s family and band. I’d hoped he’d father some babies that laid olive green eggs. That was a great plan, but my luck with baby chicks has been very bad. One (Peeper) made it to adulthood, but Bruce did him in. He was a one rooster per flock kinda guy. He was mean to poor Peeper and was a bit rough with some of the hens when he was doing his duty, but good to humans. He was very gentle and quite funny.
Peeper, son of Bruce, who thinks his dad was jealous.
Bruce did crow a lot, but no one around here minded. It was really loud, though, if he happened to do it right next to you! There was much flapping and jumping onto high branches involved as well. In fact, that’s how I realized he was sick a few days ago. There was no crowing, and he was not on his branch.
Headed for the branch to crow.
I guess I’m just bummed that I couldn’t help him and that I won’t get to enjoy those beautiful green tail feathers anymore. I did save some from when he lost them in a fight recently, which is probably what led to his decline. He was a good protector.
I’ll take care of my gals. Henly over there is still with us, even!
When I first had him, he was not an attractive young man, in the middle of a gangly adolescence. I’m glad he grew out of that!
I was an awkward child.
Soon after he got big enough to be a dude, we took on a second rooster, but that did not go well. Clarence was not like Bruce at all. He was mean to humans, tried to kill my sister, and gave me huge bruises. So, he didn’t get to stay all that long. That made Bruce happy. Like I said, he preferred to be the solo chick daddy.
Stay away from me, Clarence.
I had to do write an ode to a rooster once before, in 2019, when the late, great Buckbeak passed away. He was the previous greatest rooster ever. That didn’t make things any easier. Buckbeak was even nice to other roosters, and took care of a huge flock that I got put in charge of when their owners had a disagreement and no one wanted to take care of all the dead ones (there was an owl and an insecure hen house). Now you know why we take so much time and effort trying to protect the chickens here!
He was nothing fancy, but a gentleman, our Buckbeak.
I’ve gotten a bit weepy here, even though I still don’t cry very much these days. I was enjoying a period of fewer chicken deaths, to be honest. I think dealing with poultry has helped me be a bit more of a rancher now, and I’ve tried hard to not get attached to my current hens. One, Buttercup, is from my early bunch (only Bertie Lee is older), and she has stopped laying eggs. I swear she thinks she’s the rooster now.
What??? I’d tell her to stop that if I were still here.
Bruce and I had a good couple of years together, and he sure went through a lot. I think the cold weather this winter wasn’t good for him at all. He lots much of his comb to the cold, which had to be hard. And he had to fight off a lot of skunks and snakes and so on. It’s hard being the biggest of the bunch.
I was always ready, though!
I’ll try to buck up and think about adding to the flock again. At least I still have dear striped Bertie Lee, who’s over three years old and refuses to lay eggs in the new nest boxes, but she’s as bright and perky as ever.
These are all eight of my current hens with Bruce. I bet they miss him. Buttercup, Star, Betsy, Bruce, Henley, Bertie Lee, Blanca, and Blondie.
The Hermits' Rest 