5079 Photos!

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

I forget where I got this: "If the Islamists laid down their arms, there would be peace in the Middle East. If Israel laid down its arms, soon there would be no Jews, Christians, or any other 'infidels' left alive in the world."

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Daughter stopped by for the report.  She took some photos.  Here they are.

The red line high up on the breast is my reaction to the tape.  I always turn red along the edges of that thin transparent tape they use.
The blue spot is from where they injected the dye into the tumor to track the location of the "first-in-line" (sentinel) lymph nodes.  That spot isn't supposed to be there.  It surprised the surgeon.  It won't wash off.  It may end up as a permanent tattoo.  
The yellow is bruising.  The bruising above my hand looks worse in this photo than in real life.
Some of the fullness is swelling, but actually, not much.

A better view of the incision.  See how well the little old lady heals?  This is one week after surgery.




Sigh.  Can you see why I want a major reduction?  Nobody needs to carry that around.  By the way, I'm not lifting them here - that's their normal droop.


I rather like the way my hair looks.
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4093 Pumpkin plant

Monday, August 24, 2015

If the answer has to be now, it has to be no.

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I have another volunteer pumpkin in front of my porch.  I put the old Halloween pumpkins (painted by the Nugget, not cut) near the mailbox every fall so the squirrels can eat it, and ONE seed (why only one?) sprouts.

We've had a lot of very strong sun and little actual soaking rain, and I am amused at the way the pumpkin vine has adapted.  This is the way the first leaves looked - large and flat:

Every morning by mid-morning they were wilted and folding from too much sun.  That struck me as odd at first, since they are field plants and made for sun, but I guess in the field they shade and humidify each other.

This is what the second growth of leaves look like.  The photo looks more green than they actually are.  In life, they look mostly white with scatterings of green.

Apparently the plant decided that wasn't quite working, either.

The third set of leaves look like this, more leathery with deeper cuts in the lobes.  (Notice the white one to the right.  That's a better representation of set #2.)

I guess the plant decided, "Hey, we've got an idea here!", because the fourth and final iteration of leaf style looks like this.  Lots of wrinkles, very deep cuts between the lobes, ideal for the full hot sun and scant water conditions.

Congratulations, pumpkin!  It looks like an entirely different plant.

Now, if only it could similarly adjust the blossom situation.  Pumpkins will put out separate male blossoms and female blossoms, both on the same plant.  However, to ensure healthy cross-pollination, a particular plant will put out only all male or all female flowers on any particular day, and the blossoms last only through the morning.  So it's very difficult for a plant to self pollinate.  In a field of pumpkins, this isn't a problem, since they can pollinate each other.  For one lonely plant, it's celibacy.

Last year I checked every morning, and a few times I found like one female, or one male, in the midst of a sea of the opposite sex, and I played bumblebee myself.  I think we had two pumpkins out of it.  So far this year, the segregation has been strict.  In fact, so far it's been almost entirely male.

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I had mentioned Jasper hunting the cricket.  The cricket has disappeared, but Jasper is ever vigilant, in case it comes back.

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4069 Bloody attack by a dragon!

Sunday, July 12, 2015

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; 

it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."

--Sidney J. Harris--

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I am trying to be very careful about caring for my 1.5 kidneys, drinking lots of water, watching carbs and protein, and avoiding excesses of minerals.

This morning, as usual, when I got up I went straight to the bathroom to piddle.

I was horrified to find the toilet full of blood!  Scared me half to death!

Then I remembered that the evening before I had eaten a half a dragon fruit, the red kind.  I went straight downstairs and looked it up on the internet.  Yeah, it's known to color your urine.

So, maybe the red was a good thing.  Maybe it shows my kidneys are doing their job.

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That was my first dragon fruit.  I'd heard people rave about them.  I dunno, maybe I got a stale one or something, 'cause it didn't taste like anything, very blah.  Less flavorful even than watermelon.  I ate only half because they have a lot of calcium and potassium, which I need to be careful of, so the other half is still sitting in the refrigerator.  

Ever try dragon fruit?  Did I get a flavorless one?  Or is this blahness a usual taste reaction? 

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4063 Vent covers

Sunday, July 5, 2015

I've made smarter things than you by eating fiber.

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Remember when I had all those problems with the birds trying to build nests in my dryer and bathroom vents?  This is the vent covers I found, and Daughter installed.  I'm very happy with them.  They latch at the bottom, and are hinged at the top so you can clean lint or whatever out without removing them.



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4061 Avebury

Friday, July 3, 2015

"Actions lie louder than words."
--Carolyn Wells--

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I took a look at the blogs listed over there on the side, those I follow on Feedly.  There were 63.  I checked them all out, and many are officially dead - either private or completely gone, or haven't been updated in years.  That's sad.  Some of the dead ones were favorites, blogs I really enjoyed.  It's like old friends died, or simply moved away without leaving a forwarding address.  The ones that annoy me the most are the bloggers who built up a base of loyal readers, then turned the blog material into a book, and when the book did not become a best-seller, they quit blogging. Somethin' kinda hissy-fit about that.  Second most annoying are those who gave no indication they were quitting - just left stories unfinished and disappeared.  I don't think they realize that people really do worry about what happened.  Some people at least said goodbye.

So, I edited the list, and ended up deleting 31 -- half!  So sad.

----------------------------------------------------

I came across a reference today to Avebury Henge.  I've been to both Avebury Henge and Stonehenge, with Jay.  They are very close together, just a few miles by car, but they are very different.  Stonehenge feels strongly masculine, in your face.  Avebury feels definitely feminine, it moves in on you quietly.  I had no reaction at Stonehenge, beyond the generic "yeah, interesting, amazing, how?, why?" bit.  I had a very powerful reaction at Avebury.

I don't know whether it was a special day, or just that it was before they roped it off, but we were allowed to walk into Stonehenge, touch the stones, stand in the center, and all that, just like at Avebury. so it wasn't due solely to propinquity.  After Stonehenge we headed over to Avebury.

In case you don't visit any websites for Avebury, I'll tell a little.  It was built in the stone age, before metal tools.  It's older than Stonehenge, something like 4500 years old.  The henge, which is the ditch and bank around the circle of stones, was dug using picks made of deer antler, and shovels made from cow shoulder bones, and it was DEEP, and HIGH, and HUGE!  The outer circle of standing stones is the largest in the world.  Inside the outer circle were two smaller separate circles.  All three circles had a center stone.

As it probably looked then:

 [Picture from http://www.celticnz.co.nz/Avebury/Avebury%201.htm]

Currently existing stones and henge, and modern roads:

[Picture from http://www.landscape-perception.com/avebury_the_henge/index.html]

Believe it or not, a modern (relatively modern) village has been built smack in the middle:

[Picture from http://sobreinglaterra.com/2008/10/07/avebury-el-mayor-circulo-de-piedra/]

When we first arrived, I was fine.  There were groups of people walking around.  They were chatting and laughing, taking pictures, it was a typical country outing.  Me, not so much.  The further into the site we got, the more frightened I got.  Strong feeling of foreboding. It got worse the longer we were there.

It was the middle of summer, but I became overwhelmed by fear of the coming winter, of not having enough food.  I was afraid of what we would have to do to ensure food.  It got worse and worse.  I didn't touch any of the stones.  I was afraid to.  It was like it was not me.  Someone else was in my head.

We got to what was the center of one of the inner smaller circles, and I had a vision.  There was a wooden post (not really, just in my vision).  It was the winter solstice, I think. It was dark, after sunset. The elder women of the tribe took a baby, a female infant, the female infant born closest to the solstice, took it from its mother, wrapped it in hides, and chanting, hung it like a papoose from the pole, and then left it there.  The mother knew it was for the survival of the tribe.  She cried, but did nothing else.  The baby was left there throughout the winter.  It cried for a while, but then was quiet.  This ensured good hunting and that the stored grains would be sufficient, and that illness would stay away.  The vision was very strong.  It was my baby.  This baby had to starve so the rest of us would not.  I heard it cry, and I could do nothing. It was tearing me apart.

If I looked around, I saw people on holiday, and grass, and the stones, and sun shining on everything, but at the same time I clearly saw, with the same eyes, like an overlay, darkness, packed dirt, no grass, the stones, older women with torches hanging a bundle on a pole.  My bundle.

It was all so strong I told Jay I couldn't stay another second, I couldn't visit the pub or the museum, I had to leave immediately.  I didn't tell him why, but I was trembling, and I think the look on my face convinced him.  He was pretty cool, didn't ask.  It all went away as soon as we were out of the henge.

It was like I was entered by a 4500-year-old woman, mourning her baby.  I didn't tell Jay about it.  All he knew was that I didn't like the atmosphere or something.  I've never told anyone.  Until now.

So, I see videos of modern-day Druids and people who define themselves as spiritual beating drums and waving arms and dancing around Avebury Henge in their white robes and floral headgear, and I am somehow disgusted by them.  I don't know what they think they're doing.  They natter on about convergence of ley lines, and powerful energies, and earth spirits, and I think they are deluded dip-shits, playing games.  They don't know.  They don't know how to know.
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4052 Catching up on photos

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

"[T]he more a person deems absolute equality among all people to be

a desirable condition, the further left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum.

The more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even desirable,

the further to the right he or she will be.

--Roderick Stackelberg, Hitler's Germany, Routledge, 1999, pp. 4–6

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I've got a backlog of photos I want to post - because I like to keep stuff here, if for no other reason.

This is a portrait of me that Nugget drew last week.  Apparently it is usual for her age group (recently turned 4) to have the arms and legs coming directly out of the head.   Kind of makes me wonder - I know she's very aware that people have torsos (she comments on my big boobies and belly often enough!), so why do they leave it out?  Is it that arms and legs and heads are so much more important?  I thought it was interesting that she very carefully drew in the fingers and toes.

This is the dandelions in my city house front yard last month.  I dragged out the vacuum cleaner and sucked up as much of the seed heads as I could, because I knew if the mower-kid mowed that mess, dandelions would take over the entire neighborhood.  Then I spread a weed killer/fertilizer mix.  It looks a little better now.

This is one of the five daffodil beds at the country house, this past spring.  Late April, I think.  There are several varieties in there.  This is looking up from the end of the driveway toward the house, which is beyond the brow of the hill.

 This is a bit of the side yard at the country house.  Pretty, isn't it?  I hate to give it up.

Snake!  He's coming down from inside the exterior siding near the front door of the country house.   I think each of those tiles is 6" square (the photo angle makes them look rectangular, but they are square), so if you straighten him out, that makes him about 36" long!  At his thickest middle, he was an inch and a half wide.  They can get up to almost 4 feet long, but I'd never seen one before as big as this one.

I had some Lincoln Logs here for a while, waiting for the Nugget to get old enough to be interested.  We got them out the other day.  Her Daddy built the section of barn to the right.  Nugget built the section to the left.  So far, there's no evidence of a budding architect.

Nugget's nursery school has special days, like "silly hat day", "pajama day", "funny hair day", and so on.  The next four photos are from two "funny hair" days (I wonder what boys do for funny hair....).  Daughter was very creative.

(Mouth full of peaches.)

Side view.

Another funny hair day.  She had been watching Sesame Street on TV when "the pee-pee urge" hit.  I came around the corner and found this.    Usually she uses a ring that fits in the seat of the grown-up toilet, but she didn't want to miss any of the show, so she dug out her baby potty and set up shop in front of the TV.

My lava lamp.  Sometimes when it's warming up, things get interesting.

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3788 I don't get some people's taste

Sunday, October 27, 2013

There's a bunch of women discussing the attractiveness of a Scotsman on "Cute Overload", here.

As one woman said, he's "a little long in the tooth, and portly to boot, but a full head of hair, nice smile, lovely accent", but still a candidate for the "Men of" calendar.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind meeting him.  He has potential.  And my taste in men runs to dark hair and eyes.

Then the commenters suggest who he reminds them of.  One woman suggested Mr. Bates from “Downton Abby”, and others agreed. Many women have found Mr. Bates attractive, including me.  (He's the one who went to jail on bogus charges.  I'm unsure how much of Mr. Bates' attractiveness has to do with his appearance, and how much is the character's personality and our sympathy for his situation.)

Anyway, a few other women suggested who he looks like, and here's where I lost the connection. 

Um, Benny Hill?
Johnathan Winters?
Uh, yeah, they all have squarish faces, and hair, and the proper number of eyes and noses, but the level of attractiveness is way off.  Not even close!  In fact, I have to wonder about any woman who finds either of those two attractive.

Hmmmmm.

I guess it's good that different women (and men) see and are attracted to different things.  Otherwise a lot of us would never find a mate.
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3779 Turkey

Monday, October 14, 2013

Sometimes when you look in his eyes you get the feeling that someone else is driving.

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Dear Teacher, Decorator, Baker, Designer, and anyone else planning to color a turkey:

A turkey cock is not a peacock!

A wild turkey does not have rainbow tail feathers.  No yellow, red, orange, green, purple. 

A wild turkey is a mix of black, gray, brown, dark tan, white, and russet.  The head is white or light grey with a little light blue around the eyes and throat, and the male will have a bright red wattle.  In sunlight, the feathers have some iridescence, so you might see a shimmering surface wash of gold, copper, golden green or blue.  The tail is some shade of brown, with stripes of black and white at the end of the feathers.

The tail is NOT a dime store fake native american headdress, so cut that out!

Ok, I can understand if you have small children coloring a turkey.  A palette restricted to browns is pretty boring.  Let them get creative.  Heck, they think pink horses are perfection, and that's fine.  But when an adult is coloring a turkey for adults, a multi-colored tail simply displays ignorance, and is insulting to your audience, not to mention to the bird.

A wild turkey is amazingly beautiful on its own.  It doesn't need enhancement.

He:  "Come wis me to ze Casbah."
She: "You do realize all that fluff doesn't really make you bigger, right?"

[Photo borrowed from the website for the Wild Birds Unlimited nature shop in East Lansing, Michigan, http://lansingwbu.blogspot.com/2012/11/bird-of-week-wild-turkey.html.]
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3740 Nugget is not her mother.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Democracy, n.:  A government of the masses.  Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression.  Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy. 

-- U.S.Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932), since withdrawn. --

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The Nugget is acquiring words very rapidly now.  She asks, "What's that?", and you tell her, and she repeats the word to herself, and from then on she's got it.  We're getting multi-word sentences now, and it's amazing how toddlers seem to automatically absorb sentence structure.

I am constantly reminded of her mother's toddler years.  There's a temptation to compare the two.  I'm amused when Nugget has the same reactions, does the same things.

There are some big differences, though.

Daughter was very good at physical orientation, at using her hands.  She could put things on spindles, thread cords through big wooden beads, figure out how things fit together at an early age.  Nugget is a bit of a klutz.  Instead of lining up a lid on a container, she just puts it generally on top and tries to get it to go on with sheer power.  I got her a sort of record player with plastic disks you put on a spindle and close the lid, and she's having great difficulty with the concept of spindle.  Push buttons, however, she's got down cold.  You show her once what a button does (stop, go, rewind, play, light up, eject, ring bell, etc.), and she's got it forever.

One thing that frustrates me - Nugget is not good at spatial orientation, or something....  If something goes into a slot, she ALWAYS tries to put it in 90 degrees off.  Always. Like if she's trying to put bread into the toaster, she'll try to cram it in crosswise to the toaster.  She'll try to put a coin horizontally into a vertical slot, and vice versa, and she just doesn't seem to "get it", no matter how many times you show her.  Very strange.  She now has riding toys she can steer, and she runs into everything.

Her mother, however, who was so good at stuff like that, never learned to write or print.  Her handwriting is so atrocious no one can read it (not even she herself after time passes).  I suspect Nugget will be neater, but whether or not she masters longhand, I predict that she's going to be an amazingly fast typist.

I guess she's a knowledge accumulator, not an analyzer.  Her mother analyzed everything, "figured out" everything, and that continues to give her problems today.  She over-analyzes everything.  Nugget doesn't seem to be interested in figuring things out, beyond "what does it do and how do I make it go?"

Toddler Daughter was a thinker.  Toddler Nugget is a doer.

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Daughter came home from nursery school (Montessori) one day in the late '70s, and mentioned something that had happened, "...and I felt like I had a bare behind."

I asked, "Do you mean you were embarrassed?"

"Yes." she said, "But you told me not to say that word."
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3733 Back yard business

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Art is anything you can get away with. 

-- Marshall McLuhan --

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There's some kind of very small bird hunting insects just before sundown every evening.  There's dozens of them, and they form a roundish cloud above the tops of the trees, and they swoop and dive in an intricate pattern. 

Immediately after sundown, the bats come out.  They fly in more angular patterns, with their wings more forward, and tend to spread out.  They come from somewhere in the woods on the shore of the lake.  They gave me an idea for Hercules' birthday next week.  I bought him a bat house.

About every early afternoon I hear a lot of racket out back.  We have a hawk living by the lake, and the smaller birds don't like it.  When he comes around he gets dive bombed by crows, blackbirds, and sparrows.   Something thrilling about a tiny sparrow bombing a hawk, hitting him in the back with claws out.

In the late afternoon, there's a racket from the big gum tree.  There are two pairs of woodpeckers who want to claim it as their own territory.  They chase each other all around and through the tree, screaming the whole time.

The robins who collected my yarn?  The yarn and twig nest, a few feet from the side of my house:

Momma bird is there, on the nest, although you can barely see her.  Daddy bird just chased a cowbird away.  Daddy bird is a hero.
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3727 Nugget

Saturday, May 11, 2013

With capitalism man exploits man.  With communism it's the exact opposite.

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She's bringing me a mothers' day card she made for me all by herself.  When I walked in the door she ran excitedly to the dining room to get it.  It's snips of colored paper glued to the front.  Her mommy helped cut the paper, but Nugget did the color selections and placement design, and the gluing, all by herself.


She was very proud of it. I was very impressed and told her so. It's now displayed on my refrigerator.

Daughter said that at the nursery school the teachers are very grabby.  The kids make things, and then the teachers grab it and write all over it.  Nugget finds that very frustrating.  She made it very clear to Mommy that she wanted it left exactly as she made it.  ("No! Mine! Ahma! (Ahma is me))  So there's no writing inside, which is fine with me.  I don't need no freakin' writin' to get the idea.

They took me out for a Mothers' Day brunch Friday. 
As you can see, she's walking with the cast.  The cast itself is purple, but her mother is obsessed with keeping it clean, so it's covered with a white daddy-sock.



[http://youtu.be/Ajq5oLOZJV0]

The white bag the Nugget is carrying is my doggie-bag.  By the time it got to the car, the home fries, shrimp omelet, and strawberries & bananas were all mixed together.  Oh well, at least it made it to the car.

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In that first photo, note the forelock.  Then take a good look at my profile photo.  Same forelock (if you can manage to see it....).
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3718 Weird sighting!

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Boys have swag; men have style; gentlemen have class.

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Reddit folks have been examining Boston photos, and have settled on two suspicious-looking dudes, mostly on the basis of the straps on their backpacks compared to FBI photos of the bomb bag.  One reddit suspect is nicknamed "The Blue Robe Guy" (because "robe" is so much more sinister than "jacket"). 

I looked at one of the many photos of B.R.G., and about fell off my chair.

I'd swear that's my late husband Jay.  Same color and texture of hair.  In some other photos he looks very tall, like Jay.  Same body type, slope from chest to little pot belly.  Same face, in general.  Same smile.  Same rounded shoulders and neck thrust.  Same slope at the back of his head.  Jay kept his beard slightly longer, but hey!  Beard!  Jay also had that same white patch at his chin.  Same nerdy look.  He always carried a backpack in his hands, never on his back.  The only difference is that Jay always wore glasses, could not wear contacts.

This IS Jay in his early 40s.  He actually would have been 61 last month.

But I guess if you're a ghost, you don't need glasses any more.  And you don't age.
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3701 The Nugget at 23 months

Sunday, March 10, 2013

I often think it's a pity that Noah and his party didn't miss the boat.

-- Mark Twain --

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Suck it up!  I don't brag about my Nugget very often!

At school

The Nugget is growing up and becoming even more interesting.  She notices everything, and one of her favorite sentences, many times a day, is, "What's that?"  Well, actually, it comes out, "Whada?"

She's very strong, and her Daddy plays with her very roughly, which is a bit of a problem.  She bowls over other children greeting them, and she considers hitting to be a great game.  On the other hand, she's very much a girl.  She's a good mommy to her dolls, and that seems to have come naturally.  She and her mommy went clothes shopping, and Daughter allowed her to choose one outfit herself.  She chose a dress with a foofy pink ballerina tutu skirt, and insisted in sleeping in it that night.  She loves Elmo, and when she comes over to my house, she walks up to the laptop, points, and says, "Eh mo!"  And we have to watch Elmo videos.

She had been afraid of her mommy's huge upright vacuum cleaner. (Frankly, so am I.)  I bought her a plastic vacuum cleaner with lights and a vroom noise that wasn't too scary, and a few weeks ago she graduated to my little battery-powered Eureka!electric broom, that looks and sounds like a midget vacuum cleaner.  When Daughter saw her happily vacuuming my kitchen, she got her monster out and parked it in their living room.

I guess last week the Nugget worked up enough courage to touch it. She's so proud of her new friend that when anyone comes in the house they are introduced to the "Bah boom", and shown how brave she is.   A few times a day she takes a dolly or a stuffed animal, holds their hand or paw out to touch the monster - see?  It's ok.  "Bah boom. Bah boom."   Nothing to be afraid of.

She talks a lot, and she mostly has the right number of syllables, and consonants in the right places, but they are rarely the  correct consonants, so only Mommy, Daddy, and Gramma (she calls me Mamma, Daughter is Mommy) can understand her.  "Juice" is "douche", which can be a bit awkward when she requests it in a diner.  It sounds like she's giving the waitress an impolite order.  "Bottle" is "bobby".  "Jasper" is "Bapper".  "Cheese" is "sheesh".  On the other hand, "up", "apple", "pee-pee", "potty", "baby", "eat", "NO!" and a lot of other words are quite clear.

Almost Heaven

I am anxious for sentences, and for her to start expressing thoughts.  I'd love to know what she thinks.
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3671 Inability to think? Brain dead?

Saturday, November 24, 2012

“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” 

--  Golda Meir --

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Golda makes a common mistake in the quote above.  Not all Mid-eastern folks are Arabs, like the Persians of Iran, for example, and most are insulted if you call them Arabs when they're not.  It's a history/blood/tribal thing, like a Scotsman being annoyed if you call him an Welshman, or if you call either of them an Englishman.

Unless, of course, Golda really did specifically mean Arabs.  (The title of this post does not refer to Golda.)

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Squiggy the Squirrel was back this morning, none the worst for his battles.

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Garbage is collected here twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays.  The time of day is random, anywhere from 8 am to 6 pm.

I put out one small kitchen can sized bag, often only half full, so I don't have to store anything between pickups even if I miss one.  Daughter's family makes a lot more garbage, as is expected with more home cooking and many daily diaper changes.  She often has a full regular garbage can, but sometimes puts it out only once a week.

I flat-out don't understand what's going on in the house directly across the street. 

Every pickup their two or three large cans are overflowing.  There's two adults and two early-teen kids (whom I often don't see for days at a time, so I suspect there may be some kind of shared custody arrangement).  How on earth do they make that much garbage!?  I know they don't recycle, but still....

Daughter's cans are bungee'd to the side of their house, with bungees holding the lids down.  The folks across the street have their cans alongside the side fence, with no lids!  I have often seen, late at night, the tails of racoons, opossums, or skunks waving out of the top of the cans.  When the cans are full to overflowing, the scavangers pull the stuff off the top to examine, or just tip the cans over.

What bugs the hell out of me is that the people don't seem to care, and they don't learn.  They'll go out and gather up the garbage on their property, but they ignore what has blown or been strewn out onto the street.

I'm getting very tired of collecting their paper towels, cigarette packs, potato chip bags, paper cups, and every other type of debris from my curb and lawn.

Today it has reached a crisis.  I'm very annoyed and I don't know whether I should say something or not.  Nobody else in the neighborhood has said anything, so there must be a reason for their reticence.  I'm not sure I want to find out why.

Thursday was Thanksgiving.  They must have had 15 people in the house.  Thursday was garbage day, but of course it was skipped for the holiday.  Friday morning, they put three large grossly overflowing cans plus a big black garbage bag out at the curb - OUTSIDE their fence, of course.  There was no pickup.  When I went to bed, all that stuff was still at the curb, and I thought "Raccoons will feast tonight."

Sure enough, this morning one can had been tipped, several bags torn open, and garbage and trash was strewn in the street.  Later in the morning the woman was out there picking up trash from the part of their lawn outside the fence and stuffing it back into bags.  As usual, she did not pick up what had blown into the street.

Now here's what blows my mind:  there is no hope of a pickup until Monday, but she left the overflowing cans and the black bag sitting there!  So they'll be there tonight and Sunday night.  Does she think racoons take the weekend off?  What the hell is she thinking? IS she thinking?  How can anyone repeatedly clean up trash, and NOT figure out how to avoid it? Is she incapable of learning?

Photo taken through my living room window a few minutes ago, through a screen, and severely cropped:

I don't understand.
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3670 HOTW - Sugar Ray Leonard

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and, when he grows up,

he'll never be able to merge his car onto a freeway.

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We haven't had a Honey of the Week in a very long time.  Boxer Macho Comacho's shooting and death have been in the news for a few days, and that brought to mind the only boxer whose career I had followed.

Sugar Ray Leonard.

Isn't that just the cutest face you've ever seen?  I had a terrible crush on him in the '80s.  I suspect this photo is from his Olympic days, in his late teens.  He looks about 10 years old.

In his early thirties he had surgery for a detached retina, and so he decided to retire from the ring.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  Then, the next year, he un-retired.  I yelled "No, no, don't mess up that pretty face!"  I really was upset about it.

I needn't have worried.  He was GOOD!  That pretty face rarely got touched.

He's now in his mid-50s, and he has aged well.  He's still pretty. 

He published his autobiography last year, in which he reveals for the first time that he had been sexually abused by an Olympic trainer, and the effect that keeping that secret had on his life.  The NY Times article on the book is here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/sports/in-book-sugar-ray-leonard-says-coach-sexually-abused-him.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1353772940-XYsSyQho07lvcjNeTgiACg&_r=0

Now that he has told his story, he is involved in child abuse prevention activities.  This is a video of his speech at the October 29, 2012 child sexual abuse conference at Penn State:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JKaquBpYeQ.   Skip to 5:19 to skip the intro and see how pretty he is.

Sigh.
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3660 Sandy - the second week

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;

it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."

-- Sidney J. Harris --

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Continuation.  From my paper notes:

Mon, 11/5

Still no power.  They keep moving the estimate out.  It's literally freezing outside, and there's a classic nor'easter predicted for Tuesday and Wednesday.   My house is COLD!  My usual body temp is 97.5 or so, and my body is very heat-conserving - when I'm cold, blood flow to my skin and extremities shuts down.  I get chilblains when I get too cold.  As of today, I've had it.  I'd feel better if we'd get some kind of hard believable estimate.

[Now, I know there are people who, as of 11/14, as I'm posting this, still have nothing.  People with small children in poorly insulated buildings with no heat and no hope of any for weeks yet.  People running out of food with no stores open near them, and no transportation.  People sleeping on floors in shelters.  I know that, and I know I should feel grateful that things worked out comparatively well here.  But that doesn't change the fact that on 11/5 I was COLD!  And miserable.]

I want a hotel room!  (I discovered that with no phone book, and no internet, and a stupid-phone, it's a bit difficult to figure out how to make calls.)  I know that refugees and utility workers have filled most of the hotels with power anywhere near here.  I started calling the most expensive hotels first, figuring they'd be the last to have filled up.  Surprise - there are no rooms available anywhere within 70 miles.

Ok.  Put another pair of socks on and take another bath.  Between the hot baths and the chilblains, my skin is going to fall off.

We finally have some gas stations open along that 4-lane road.  Odd-even rationing.   Long lines, including people with gas cans trying to get generator fuel.  Luckily, Hal has about 280 miles worth already in his belly.

Neighborhood kids are sad - no Hallowe'en this year.  The Governor had postponed Hallowe'en to today, but with no heat, nobody wants to be opening doors repeatedly.

Mail today.  Still no checks.  They are now a week late.

Tues, 11/6

Neighbor George's generator is ancient.  It makes grinding noises.  He had set it up just under my bedroom window.  Oddly, the sound doesn't bother me.  Something about the key or timbre.  It sort of doesn't register in my ears.  Except that now it has begun backfiring.  That amuses me.

Voting day.  All the polling stations have been combined, all voting will be at the township hall, where there's limited parking.  I figured there'd be cars lined up waiting to get in, and hours-long lines inside.  Big surprise.  I parked in the lot, and when I got in, there was only one person ahead of me at the booth for my district.  Kind of sad.

A few restaurants are now open, so I ate lunch out and doggie-bagged half for dinner.  I think I'll do that every day now.

I'm running out of candles, only two left.  Hit a bunch of stores.  No candles anywhere to be found.  But in Home Depot I found a battery-operated LED lamp that runs on four D-cells.  Of course, there are no D-cells left anywhere.  As I was headed to the checkout with my lamp (hoping maybe I had some D-cells in a closet somewhere), a just-arrived case of D-cells, still on the pallet, was opened right next to me.  I snagged 2 8-packs.  I'm set for life!

Estimate for power is now Saturday.

My slab is getting colder, and Jasper is still unhappy.  "Fix it, Mommy!"

Wed, 11/7

The traffic lights came back!  The intersections are now open!

Remember that nor'easter?  I think it's here.  It's quietly snowing, 2 pm.  And it's sticking.  They were predicting a lot of wind, so this is a bit of a bust, but hey, we'll take it.

We have still seen NO utility trucks in this whole neighborhood.  Not even a glimpse of one.  Wires are still down blocking some streets.  We are now the only section anywhere around here with no power.  Keyport was clobbered, as shown in the video in an earlier post, and THEY have power!  It's maddening to drive three blocks north or south and see streetlights and porch lights.  And to see people sitting in warm living rooms watching TV.  Like, why are they more deserving?  Why are we ignored?  NO FAIR!

Wow.  One can get very personal and very emotional about stuff like this.

Mail - the checks arrived!

Thurs, 11/8

Woke to a few inches of snow on the ground.

BTW, cell phone reception has been odd since the storm.  I've called Daughter, and it rings and goes to voice message, and then when I shrug and walk across the street, she says it didn't ring, AND my message isn't there.  Several of her friends said the same thing, that they called or texted her, but there's no evidence that it went anywhere.  I have also made a few calls outside, to upstate NY and Pa, and they seemed to ring at the destination, but there'd be no answer and no switch to voicemail.  But other times it'd work fine.  Someone said there were towers down and the remaining towers got overloaded, but even so, one should not have got the impression the call went through when it didn't.

Daughter and Hercules are spatting over the generator.  He wants to still restrict it to a few hours in the morning and evening to save propane.  She points out that tanks are fairly easy to find now that fewer people are on generators, not like earlier when you couldn't find propane anywhere.   She thinks it's unfair that he sits in a warm office all day, with lights and radio and everything, and then thinks he can dictate unnecessary conservation to her.  Frankly, I agree with her.

No garbage collection again.  We've had one collection since the hurricane, and that was on an unscheduled day, so no one had their garbage out.  We can usually hear the trucks on the next street over, so we can rush our stuff out, but with all the generators running, we can't hear them coming.

Speaking of generators, the exhaust is settling close to the ground, and I can feel it affecting my breathing.

Fri, 11/9

Saw the first utility truck on our street.  George ran out and flagged him down.  Guy says today, with luck.  Just in time.  It's 50 degrees F mid-day in my house, colder overnight.  I was about ready to improvise a fireplace in an unused corner of the living room.

Electricity came back on at 6 pm, and has stayed on.

I opened the refrigerator for the first time since the hurricane started, and the smell was so bad I immediately slammed it shut again.  Not a spoiled meat smell, more a rotted vegetable smell.  I'll clean it out on Sunday evening, ready for (I hope!) Monday's garbage collection.

Lost from the freezer:

The above is just from the freezer.  Add from the refrigerator a large bunch of kale, fresh (heh, not so any more) asparagus,  carrots, celery, opened yogurt which was probably edible but had absorbed that terrible odor, boiled eggs, deli sandwich meat, opened mayonnaise, creamy horseradish sauce, grape juice, cottage cheese, cream cheese, half an onion, half a jar of three bean salad, etc.

P.S. - Yes, that's Eggo waffles.  I refuse to be embarrassed.  That's the first Eggos I've bought in like 15 years, and they're for the Nugget!

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So, today, 11/14, things are looking more normal (of course, I'm speaking only for this area).  Stores are restocking.  Most restaurants away from the waterfront are open.  Sadly, many of the most popular, the ones with ocean-front or bay-side views, may never open again.


This morning, I was awakened by birds chirping.  The little birds are finally back.  Oddly, the seagulls and terns are still missing, and no geese have flown over since the Monday of Sandy.  Yesterday I realized that part of the reason for the odd quiet the first few days after the storm was the absence of airplanes.  We are on the flight path for the NYC airports, but so far out that when the planes pass over, they are very high.  But there are never fewer than three high planes visible at any moment, so even though they aren't loud, it's a constant low sound, always present.

During those eleven days with no TV or internet, I know I should have taken advantage of  all the otherwise wasted time to get some stuff done here.  But - I was cold!  I read almost every moment.  Not moving and not exposing body parts, huddling next to candles, was much nicer.

I have about 80 books lined up on the Kindle, and was disgusted that I couldn't read them, because I couldn't recharge the darn thing.  New and lasting appreciation for paper books!   Future post - what I read.

Oh, free piece of advice - don't buy a used car for at least the next two years.
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3657 Sandy - the day after

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

"Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish."

-- Euripides  --

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Continuing the Sandy saga:

Tues, 10/30
8:00 am - I walked down to the sea wall to see what had happened.


[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrGCUtSgDYQ]

The space between the sidewalk and the access road had been sandy, with lots of plants, with little paths here and there through the plants so you could get from the road to the walkway.  You couldn't see the rocks except in a few places.  Plants and sand are now all gone.  The sidewalk, which is just two years old, has been badly undermined, and many of the slabs are cracked.

In the distance, coming in from the right, you can faintly see a spit of land sticking out into the bay.  I think that saves us from the worst of the waves.

The air would be still for about 20 minutes, and then there'd be wind gusts and rain for maybe 5 minutes, then stillness again, through most of the morning.  Hercules said it was probably the last of the outer spiral arms passing. I got soaked on my walk back from the seawall.

I'm going to do something here that isn't nice.  I'm going to copy photos from another person's blog.  Usually when I do something like that, I send you to the other blog, or at the minimum I post the photo and then link to the source.  I would like to do that here, except that he/she is very specific about the location - and I prefer to be a little more mysterious about where I live.  Deter stalkers, dontcha know.

So, I'm at least being clear that the following are not my own photos.

This is the sea wall after the storm, and gives a better picture of the height difference from the water to the walkway on top of the wall, up to the access road, and on up the bank.  The waves were well over the bank.  The clear area between the walk and the road had been full of plants.

This is at the end of the sea wall (that's the "mesa" in the middle) and where the beach starts.  You may have seen the video from this past summer of Nugget playing in the sand.  There's now no sand left.  There had been large dunes between the beach and the street that runs along here.  The dunes are gone.

To the right, what's left of the beach.  On the left, what's left of a park.  Between the posts (that used to be guard rails, but the rails washed away) is a street, now covered in sand.  All the electric/telephone poles have completely disappeared.

A closer view of the street.  In the distance is a bridge.  See that white house through the trees (under the leaning pole)?  Flooded out.

Please note that there are only three routes out of our neighborhood, and the above street and bridge is one of them.

Here's a video of the town next door.  You'll see a bridge with boats on it.  Yeah, ON it.  There is a huge marina there, and boats were washed up all over the place, huge million-dollar boats stacked on top of each other, all over the roads, yards, jammed into houses, some a quarter mile away.  That bridge?  With the boats on it?  And the leaking gas and propane tanks under it?  That's the second of the three ways out of our neighborhood. (Warning - annoying loud music. Cut the sound.)


These were our "early reports", places we could walk or bike to.  We had next to no idea what had happened elsewhere.

It's frustrating to have no TV, no radio, no internet.  You don't know what's happening out there.  But we saw enough nearby to be very grateful for that miserable little sea wall that bravely protected us from the water.  Our street had one tree down on a roof, and one tree down on the road at the very end of the street near the sea wall.  Streets to the south, east, and west of ours didn't fare so well, but still better than neighborhoods north and south of us.  Multiple trees and lines down here, but almost no damage to property.  Just messy.  All our telephone poles survived.  This gave us hope that we could get power back soon.

Yeah, sure.

1:30 pm - getting trickles of news, like looting hither and yon, don't know what to believe.  We can't get out of the immediate neighborhood.  Two routes to the highway involving bridges are blocked, the third way is open, but it isn't much help to get to the highway, because southbound and northbound are both blocked by trees, boats, and BUILDINGS! on the road.

It's 68 degrees F in the house, and I already feel cold.

1:55 pm - I am confirmed as an idiot.  I just discovered I have hot water.  I didn't know my gas water heater has some kind of non-electric non-pilot-light thingamabob starter.

People are starting up generators.  The big box hardware store has them coming in by the truckload and if you wait in line for enough hours you might be able to get one.  Unfortunately, propane and gasoline is almost impossible to find.  Daughter and Hercules have a very small propane generator which they plan to run only a few hours a day.

I have candles and the gas stove, hot water, some non-perishable food, and lots of books.  I figure I'll be ok for up to maybe four days.

The fates laugh.  It gets worse.

To be continued.
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3643 More schnork, and an oof.

Monday, October 15, 2012

People have a way of getting away with exactly what you let them get away with.

--------------------------------------------------------------

So, I got dressed and went out to buy some decongestants, and discovered another symptom.  My legs are weak.  I was walking like I was drunk.

Speaking of drunk, I think I've had two hangovers in my entire life, and in both cases I wasn't even inebriated.  Both hangovers were from drinking home-brewed mead.  Man, that stuff is EVIL!  Tastes good, but evil evil evil.

This headache I have feels just like a mead hangover.  It was overcast today, but every once in a while a beam of sun would break through, and when it did, it split my head.  Somebody two houses away was running a wood chipper, and every time a branch went through it felt like my head was going through the chipper.  (Yeah, I saw "Fargo".  Just like that.)

So, I bought a box of pills for runny nose to take now, and a box of pills for breaking up nose and sinus congestion (I figure that's where this is headed next) and some menthol lozenges for zinging the old membranes.  In each case I got the smallest packages.  It came to $27!  Not counting the lozenges, that's almost $.75 per pill!  I about fell over.

When did that stuff get so expensive?

I'll be sleeping in Vicks Vaporub tonight.  I love that stuff.  I like the way it smells and the warm glow on my chest.  (No expiration date on vaporub, so it's one of the few things spared from Daughter's purges.)

-------------------------------

The other nickname for the Nugget is Monster Truck - acquired in utero when she ran all over her mother's insides, and that's her geocaching "handle".  The teachers at her nursery school call her Muscles.  She's almost 18 months old, 32" tall, and weighs maybe 27 lbs.  Powerful chubby short legs.

She really is incredibly strong for her size.

When I got back from the grocery store yesterday, I put away the refrigerator and freezer stuff, but left everything else in the bags in the hall near the front door.  Daughter and Nugget came over this evening.  Daughter picked up all the bags and carried them into the kitchen, but left the laundry detergent in the hall because it goes in the laundry room under the stairs.

When Daughter brought the bags to the kitchen, I looked up and then past her, and here comes Nugget trotting around the corner carrying the laundry detergent jug by the handle, high against her chest.  The jug weighs just under 8 lbs.  That's almost 1/3 of her own weight.  It was as big as her chest and belly.  I need two hands to lift it comfortably.

She's amazing. 

[Photo at the nursery school.  Interesting the way her shirt matches the floor, wall, and door.]
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3617 Buttons

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Weak desires produce weak results, just as a small fire produces little heat.

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I went to the country house this past weekend, and again was overwhelmed.  I took Hal, the little car, so I couldn't bring back much, mostly kitchen stuff, like my electric wok, a large and a small electric grill, the huge electric griddle, a few dishes.  I also brought back two large jars of buttons:

Yeah, I collect buttons.

I put a regular teacup there to show scale. The larger jar is 11 inches tall and 10 inches in diameter. There are three or four more jars about the size of the smaller one still upriver.

Looking into the larger jar:

My grandmother used to keep me busy when I was a toddler by having me sort her buttons. She had about two shoeboxes worth, in a drawer in her treadle sewing machine (the machine I learned to sew on). She'd dump the buttons out on the kitchen table and have me sort them into bowls by color. Next time, she'd want them sorted by material (wood, metal, plastic, leather, pearl, etc.). Next time by shape (round, square, animal, oval, toggle, etc.).   Next time by number of holes (one, two, four).  When I was all done, she'd pick out one button ("There it is, that's the one I was looking for.  Thank you.") and then dump all the bowls together into the drawer.

I LOVED LOVED LOVED sorting buttons.   I'd be quiet and happy for hours!  Some were so beautiful.  Every time I sorted buttons, she'd let me keep the one I liked best to add to my own collection.  Those buttons were the start of my adult collection, planning toward my own grandchild.

I think my collecting got out of hand because I was disappointed in the button pickings these days.  Gramma's buttons were so diverse.  Many shapes, many materials.  These days, you get a choice of round or round, plastic or plastic.  So I search auctions and yard sales for buttons, and have to buy a bag of fifty plain ones ($3) to get the two duck-shaped ones and the one metal one.  I never throw out old clothing without cutting off the buttons.  One of the things I like about Coldwater Creek is that they use nice buttons, and always include extras - which go straight into the jar.  I've been known to pay a dollar for a tattered vintage dress or jacket at Goodwill just for the nifty buttons on it.

Ok, so maybe I'm a hoarder?  But my collections are in categories!  And they're sorted!  And neatly stored! It's just that there's so darn many....
books
buttons
teapots
haoris
porcelain owls
Staffordshire dogs
stone balls
paperweights
necklaces
saris
... oh dear.
I guess there's a lot of categories, too.
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