Day One-Fifteen - Hot and Sweaty!

Yea!  The Olympic Opening Ceremonies are tonight.  I am so looking forward to it.  If for nothing else just because we will get hourly updates on where Will and Kate are and what Kate is wearing.  I am going over to a friends house to watch the opening ceremonies which will be a welcome relief since I am quickly losing hope of having air conditioning by then.  Maybe I should post photos of what I am wearing while I am without air conditioning.  On second thought maybe I shouldn't.

How do some celebrities look so good when they are hot and sweaty and I look the way I do.  Okay, I get that they start out pretty amazing so they can only go down so far simply because they are hot.  But I think some of them look even better when they are hot and sweaty.  What's up with that?  When I am hot the first thing that happens is I stop wearing make up since it would all just sweat back off anyway.  The world is not ready for me without make up.  My hair starts to frizz to the point that I look like the fat frizzy haired guy from Lost....

So, what do you think?  How do I look?  Heh heh....  Looks like I could use a shave... giggle, I'm cracking myself up.  But it is good to keep a sense of humor when you are hot and sweaty.  See, he is smiling, in fact he is laughing and he is hot and sweaty.  Of course, I am sure this picture was taken in Hawaii.  It is hard to be in a bad mood when you are in Hawaii.  I remember a number of occasions while I was there that I was hot and sweaty and not a single time did I want to hurt someone else.  However, I can feel the same way here in Dallas in my home and suddenly I start to imagine all of the horrible things I would like to do to the next guy that answers the phone at the home warranty company.  Is that wrong?  I think not.  It's not like I follow through.

I don't know if it is always the case since I have only been to Hawaii once, but while we were there we did this snorkel probably half a mile off shore in 60-100 feet of water and the water was pretty cold.  The water is never cold in the Caribbean so that caught me off guard.  At the time, I remember thinking that it wasn't that pleasant.  I kept thinking that I was going to end up with an ear infection.  Right now, I would pay big money to be in that water.  I'd pay even bigger money to be snorkeling in the Caribbean right now though.

I think my favorite thing is going on a Caribbean cruise in the winter time.  When I go on a cruise, I almost always go in the fall or winter.  That is the ideal time to do it.  Obviously, it is not hurricane season then, but also, most kids are in school so there are a lot fewer kids on the ship.  All of the kids on board are either home schooled Americans or kids from other countries.  European kids are pretty good.  They are usually quiet.  Australian kids are pretty much just like American kids.  But there aren't all that many Australian's on Caribbean cruise ships anyway.  It seems like the mix is usually more American and European than anything else.  But I think the best thing about going on a cruise in the winter especially if you leave out of Galveston is that when you leave it is cool, like in the 50's or 60's.  It gets dark early and you go to dinner and a show then maybe you hit the casino or something that first night.  When you head to your stateroom that night, it's pretty chilly.  Then you wake up the next morning and open the balcony door and it is 82 degrees and sunny outside.

The change isn't as dramatic if you leave from Miami or Ft Lauderdale.  When you leave from there in the winter the weather is already nice.  So, the next morning it is almost like you haven't left the port yet except that you can't see land when you walk out of the balcony door.  Last time I went on a cruise out of Galveston was a few years ago in February.  The ship got fogged in at the port.  First of all they were very late coming in because it was too foggy for the ships to come in that morning.  Then when they finally got in and let everyone off the ship and let us on it was like 2 a.m. before we finally got to leave port because the fog had gotten so bad again.  I have heard that this has happened several times on February cruises out of Galveston.  We were really worried because if we hadn't gotten out until the following day we might have had to skip one of our ports.  But leaving by 2 a.m. still meant that we could make up the time.  Even after leaving port 9 hours late, it was still in the 80's and sunny the next morning when I opened the balcony door. I love that!

Our cruise in January leaves out of Galveston.  I hope the weather here is really cold when we leave.  That will make the hot, humid weather in Jamaica seem that much better.  Once we were in Grand Cayman and it was decorated for Christmas.  I loved that trip.  It was so cool to see palm trees with Christmas lights and wreaths everywhere when it was 90 degrees outside.  I got a picture of the Turtle Farm all decorated.  It is a personal favorite.

Woohoo!!!!  While I typed this, I finally reached the perfect time of day for a person with no air conditioning.  This is the perfect moment when it is exactly the same temperature inside the house as it is outside!  It really sucks when you keep looking at the thermometer and it is hotter indoors than it is outdoors.

I think that means it is time for me to shut down so that I can get a few things done before the temperature goes above 90.  Have a good weekend!

Day One-Fourteen - Stupid Air Conditioner!

Sometimes I write my blog post at night and then reread it the following morning and then decide whether or not I am going to post it or write something else.  I do this if a thought strikes me in the evening that I think I would like to write about.  If I don't go ahead and get it in the computer, I fear that I will lay awake all night worrying about forgetting it before the morning.  I am after all, very forgetful.  I wrote a post last night.  But after getting up and rereading it this morning, I decided it was too corny and sentimental to post.

So, I began whipping up a new post.  This one included photos and everything.  I wrote on it for an hour or so and then decided I was too hot to deal with the challenges that I was facing in ever wrapping up what I wanted to say.  Then I began to think that it was very strange that I was hot at all.  After all, I just had the coil replaced in my air conditioner on July 9th.  I looked at the thermostat and it was 80 degrees in my house!!!!!  So, I went to the kitchen to see if, horror of horrors, the unit was leaking into my kitchen ceiling again and naturally it was.  I turned everything off and immediately called the home warranty company again. Amazingly enough, Victor and his apprentice, the same guys who finally diagnosed my last problem and got the work rolling on the new coil were here within 2 hours.  Victor says this time that my compressor is no longer able to push the Freon through the unit.  Basically, it is old and worn out.  So, I will need a new compressor.

While I am very happy that I will have totally new air conditioning soon, I can't help but wish that they had figured this out on July 9th.  I knew then that the compressor wasn't going to last much longer.  Didn't they?  Victor said that since they have been here so many times working on my unit he was sure they would put a rush on this.  He then optimistically said that it could be fixed by tomorrow or the next day if they could get the compressor fast enough.  In my head, I was think "TOMORROW OR THE NEXT DAY???!?!?!!? ARE YOU KIDDING??!?!!"  but I was very nice and thanked him.  I am waiting now to hear back from his office.  They, of course, have to send the paper work to the home warranty company who has to approve the replacement of the compressor.  Then they will have to figure out how much I am going to have to pay out of my pocket since the home warranty company doesn't cover disposal of the old unit, bringing things up to code and all of that stuff.  Hopefully, I will get the call with the bad news today and then they will schedule a time to actually replace it.  When they finally show up with the new compressor, I sort of hope Benito is the one to do the work.  He was nice and I will be excited to find out how his kids are doing.  After all, I have spent more time with Benito this summer than just about anyone I know.

I just wonder what will go out next....  I'm sure that as soon as it gets cold, the heater will bite the dust...  I mean that's a given.  But surly, something will go wrong before then.  My dishwasher has been making weird noises lately and the other night, the refrigerator did this really ugly groan.  Groaning noises from the kitchen appliances are practically never good.  If appliances start going out, I hope they can only be replaced by beautiful state of the art stainless steel appliances.  But somehow I doubt that will be the case.  I'll get brand spanking new ugly white utilitarian appliances that I will be stuck with for the next 15 or 20 years.

I'm too hot to sit under these stairs any longer typing so I am going to close for today.  I'm going to go open the refrigerator door and listen to it groan while I cool off.  I'll try to be a little more upbeat tomorrow.  Have a good afternoon.

Day One-Thirteen - Cars and Crayons

Yesterday I went to Staples.  I love Staples!  It is like a candy store for adults.  Office supplies make me happy.  I'm not sure why since offices make me break out in hives.  But there you have it.  I think it all stems from school supply shopping when I was a kid.  I loved shopping for school supplies.  There was nothing better than a new box of crayons.  Of course, I always got the 16 count.  While we were at the store I would eye that 64 count box.  You know, the one with the sharpener on the back.  I knew kids who always got that.  What I wouldn't have done for a 64 count box of crayons......

The kids that got the 64 count box of crayons in 2nd grade are no doubt the same kids that got a brand new Mustang for their 16th birthday.  I didn't get one of those either.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.  I think things turned out pretty well for me.  I didn't get a car of my own until after I graduated from high school and bought one myself.  Until then, I drove my mom's old Ford Granada.

I commuted with a couple of friends to Wharton County Junior College everyday.  We each took turns driving.  It was about a 20 mile drive each way.  It was fun driving with Drenda and Cassandra.  After a semester or two of commuting with them, Drenda announced that she was selling her 1974 Mustang hatchback.  I wanted a car of my own desperately and saw my chance.  I asked her how much she wanted for it.  She wasn't sure, but after checking with her dad we came to the price of $1,000.  But I must say, she warned me off of the Mustang.  She tried multiple times to tell me what a horrible car it was.  I was having none of that.  It was a car with four wheels and an engine and that was all I needed.  Besides, my dad is a genius.  He can fix anything so I was sure that in a few short days Dad would have it running like a top.

So, I bought the car.  Dad wouldn't pay cash for it, he made me finance it through the credit union.  I think this was an attempt to teach me about paying bills.  My car payment was about $65 a month.  Now that I think about it, I was probably paying nearly $65 a month for oil to keep the car running.  I probably could have poured oil into the engine and put the same oil can under the car and caught it as it ran back out, but I wasn't fast enough.

The car was silver and it was cute.  Those are the best two things I can say about it.  Fortunately, when I got it, the national speed limit was still 55 mph.  I say fortunately, because driving it any faster not only might have been fatal, but it would almost certainly have resulted in long stay in a rubber room.  You see when you got the speed over 55 the hatchback would start to vibrate and make this constant squeaking noise that would drown out the radio so that I ended up blowing out all of the stereo speakers except the one in the passenger door. I think that one continued to work just to drive me really insane.  It had an 8 track tape player in it that worked.  Of course, this was in 1982, so by then 8 track tapes were becoming hard to find.  But I did have a few.  Someone broke the antenna off in the parking lot at Wharton not too long after I got it.  So, I couldn't listen to the radio except the Bay City station and I was never that desperate.  I mean, it wasn't like I could hear it anyway.

The speedometer never really worked right.  It always showed that I was going about 10 mph faster than I actually was.  So, Dad taught me to calculate my speed using the tachometer.  I never got a ticket in it, so either my calculations were good or Dad had me snowed and I was driving all over the place doing 45 mph when I thought I was doing 55 mph.  I'll never know.  Each year when it was time to get the car inspected, I would drive all over town looking for the most disreputable looking gas station I could find hoping that they would just pass the car and put a sticker on it without looking at all of the stuff that didn't work.  That worked out pretty well for me.  The car got me where I wanted to go.  I only got stuck on Matagorda beach in it once.  That was my fault for getting in lose sand.  The car did it's best.  After I ran out of gas in it a few times, I discovered that the gas gauge didn't work.  So I started keeping track on paper of how far I had gone since my last fill up.

When it was time to transfer from Wharton to SFA, the Mustang got me to Nacogdoches.  Robbie had been there for a few years already.  He also had a semi-dependable car.  Between the two of us, we nearly had one good car.  At first I lived in Martinsville with the Bailey's.  They are great family friends and I loved living there except that it meant that the Mustang had to traverse Swift hill twice a day.  To get up the hill in my Mustang, I would have to floor it for about a mile before I started climbing, that would get my speed up to about 70 (I think).  Then as I climbed the hill, my speed would drop and drop and drop.  By the time I reached the scenic overlook, I was doing about 35 or 40 mph.  The worst was when there was a semi behind me.  Those guys would get mad when I would slow down like that!  Going up that hill was always the most stressful part of my day.

About midway through my first semester at SFA, Robbie introduced me to his girlfriend and her roommate who lived in a two bedroom apartment across from campus and were looking for a third roommate.  I jumped at the chance and was living on University Dr. a week later which helped to alleviate the hill climbing concern.  Another thing besides climbing hills that stressed me out when driving the Mustang was idling.  Idling was never good.  You see, if the car idled for more than a minute or two, it would start to overheat.  I learned that if I turned the heater on when I had to idle that it would help to cool the engine and keep the car from overheating.  So, I would sit in the drive thru at McDonald's with the heater running full blast while it was 95 degrees outside.  The drivers window didn't work very good, it only rolled down a few inches, so I would have to open the door to pay for and pick up my 39 cent cheeseburger.  When I opened the door and all of the heat came out of the car, the look on the persons face at McDonald's was always kind of priceless.

By winter the heater quit working.  It had naturally started blowing cold air.  It did blow hot air right up until it started to get really cold that winter.  Just before Christmas, the car had given me more trouble than normal so it went into the shop for some work.  I got it back a few days before Christmas eve.  I was working at JCP at the time, so naturally, I had to work Christmas eve and the day after Christmas.  But I did get Christmas day off.  My family lived 5 and a half hours away in Bay City.  So, the plan was to work on Christmas eve, then drive to Bay City after work.  Robbie had left the day before.  Then after Christmas, I didn't have to be at work until 5 p.m. on the day after, so I was going to drive back to Nac that morning.

Things were kind of slow at the store on Christmas eve and everybody was working, so the store manager let me leave early since I had so far to drive.  I got away from work just after lunchtime.  It was amazingly cold that Christmas.  I went home to get my stuff and got in the car to leave and the car wouldn't start.  I don't even remember what was wrong with it at that point.  I was crying when I called home to tell my parents that my car wouldn't start.  I was pretty sure I would be spending Christmas alone.  Robbie called his roommates Larry Baize and Tom Martin and Larry came over and got my car running.  He told me to drive over to his gas station so that he could do something to it over there.  So I did.  I'll never forget that day leaving Dyer's to drive to Bay City.  The temperature was in the 20's and I was wearing my coat in the car.  Tom asked if my heater worked and I told him it blew cold air and I wasn't able to turn it off.  He took his gloves off and handed them to me just before I drove away.

I left Nacogdoches that afternoon with a case of oil in the backseat and all of my dirty laundry that I was taking home to wash.  I had certain spots that I always stopped when driving between Bay City and Nacogdoches so that I could add oil to the engine.  At one of the rest stops after adding my oil, I put on my robe and fuzzy slippers because they were really warm and wrapped myself up in my afghan that my grandma had made for me.  I think the truck drivers probably thought I was a homeless crazy person.

When I finally got home, I pulled up in the driveway and I had to unwrap myself from the afghan to get out of the car so it took me a few minutes.  While I was doing that, the family came outside because I was taking so long.  So, they got to witness the layers coming off.  I was never so happy to be in Bay City in my whole life.  For Christmas, one of my gifts under the tree was a case of oil.  That was the last Christmas I had the Mustang.  When I came home for Spring Break that year, Dad said I wasn't allowed to go back to Nacogdoches until I had a new car.  So, Mom and I went to Rosenburg and that is when I got the Toyota Starlett.  I'll tell you all about that little jewel on another day.  Let's just say it wasn't a 64 count box of crayons either.

Have a good Wednesday!

Day One-Twelve - Soap Box Time!

Last week when I went to Nacogdoches for my mom's birthday, I made an observation that has had me thinking ever since.  Dad and I went to the grocery store and as we were leaving the store driving across the parking lot, a man got out of his car and started walking toward the store.  You might note that I didn't say that he got out of his car, looked both ways and started walking toward the store, or checked traffic and started walking toward the store.....  he simply started walking toward the store.  Right in front of Dad's moving Toyota pick up with no consideration as to whether or not Dad had seen him, would stop or anything else.  We had to stop and wait for this man to safely navigate his way into Brookshire Bros.  He was a man in his 40's or 50's.  Chances are that at some point his mother had taught him to look both ways before crossing a street.  But apparently that no longer applies to him.

As we waited, I made a smart alec comment as I often do about how there was a time when people didn't assume that the rest of the world would come to a complete stop simply because they had made a decision to walk across a parking lot.  We talked for a few minutes about what the man must be thinking as he casually strolled across the parking lot without looking at traffic forcing not just us, but two other cars to stop and wait so that he would not be inconvenienced by having to turn his head in either direction and use his valuable eye sight to determine if there were any cars coming before walking in front of them.  Had any of the three drivers not been paying attention and worrying more for his safety than he apparently was, the results could have been tragic.

This phenomenon is not something that occurs only in Nacogdoches, it happens practically every time I get in a car in any place I drive.  I don't know what started it.  Was it a courtesy thing?  Did people see someone walking across a parking lot with heavy bags and stop so that they could cross then the next time that person was walking across a parking lot, they just assumed that all cars would come to a screeching halt because someone else did once?  Don't get me wrong.  I don't mind letting someone cross in front of me.  I stop.  But it should be my decision to do so.  How dare they just assume that I will see them and stop?  And with all of the texting, Facebooking, calling, etc. that occurs on cell phones while people are driving, how long will it be before there are piles of dead and maimed pedestrians lying near but not quite on the sidewalks at Target?

Of course the driver will be blamed because they were using an electronic device while they were driving which they obviously shouldn't be doing.  Meanwhile the stupid pedestrian who never looked in either direction before just waltzing across the parking lot will be lying there in a heap.  Then a law will be passed that cell phones are no longer allowed in a car unless it is in the trunk or secured somewhere out of the drivers reach.  Forget that a driver can be just as distracted by speaking to another person who is physically in the car with them or by changing radio stations or songs on the Ipod.

Perhaps one day, due to the carelessness of pedestrians, we will have vehicles that only a single person can be transported in so that they are unable to talk to anyone else while they drive.  There will be a law against having anyone else in the car with you.  You also will no longer be allowed to listen to any music while you drive.  There will just be a constant recorded voice coming through a speaker into the car saying "WATCH FOR PEDESTRIANS!" over and over again.  And all of this will happen because pedestrians sometime between 1990 and 2012 decided that they should no longer be inconvenienced with having to worry about themselves, that the rest of society should be looking out for them instead.

By the way, these new laws protecting pedestrians won't be the only ones.  They are just the ones I am discussing today.  Long before your ability to listen to music in your car or to have another human in your car is taken away, you will lose your right to hunt if you are so inclined, because hunting requires a gun which will be outlawed shortly.  After all, what kind of mayhem could come about in a society where law abiding citizens are allowed the right to bear arms??!?!!?!?  That's just crazy talk.  What could our fore fathers have been thinking when they wrote that into our Constitution?  And that crazy right where we can choose and practice our own religion?  Really?!!?!?  What were they thinking????  Were they thinking that as Americans we should each be responsible for ourselves?  How can we be allowed to take care of ourselves?  We obviously need someone in Washington doing that for us.... you know, deciding what kind of healthcare, I need for myself here in Dallas.  Obviously, someone in Washington who has never met me is better equipped to make those decisions for me.  And certainly, the people who come to America from foreign lands and decide to live here undocumented should be given the chance to vote on all of this.  After all, who am I to insist that undocumented aliens be forced to obey laws they didn't agree to.

In 20 or 30 years when we look back and remember what life was like when we were allowed to make our own decisions I wonder how many people will think about what might have been different if they had just gone to vote.  It is voting season.  Pay attention for once and don't just vote for someone simply because there is a picture of an elephant or donkey next to his or her name.  I don't care what politics you believe in only that you use your brain before randomly voting for a name or symbol.  Turn on the news.  You might be surprised to find out the direction that our country is heading if we don't do something about it.

Have a good Tuesday.  I'm going to Target today.  I hope I am able to avoid the obliviates walking in front of my car.

Day One-Eleven - Fish and Cats

I have a fish tank.  I don't normally talk much about it because normally all of my attention is focused on my two cats who require all of my attention much of the time because one of them who I will not single out is a very needy and clingy cat.  (Okay, I'll point him out, it is Jingle.)  Getting back to the fish tank.  It is nothing special, just a 20 gallon rectangular fresh water tank with two fish in it.

I used to have a bigger tank, it was 35 gallons and sat on it's own stand in my breakfast room taking up lots of space but it didn't seem to require as much effort on my part.  Maybe I just have "good old days syndrome" and am not remembering correctly.  But it seemed like I hardly ever did anything to that tank.  Perhaps it is because of the fish I had in it.  There were a few little guys in there that I think may have helped to maintain the tank.  In this one, I only have the two fish because I don't want them to outgrow the tank.  You see, when I moved from the 35 gallon tank to the 20 gallon tank, it was in an effort to downsize.  Now I am able to keep the tank on the credenza that holds my TV components instead of on an individual aquarium stand that does nothing but take up space.  

I have had fish that out grew a tank before, in fact that is how I wound up with the 35 gallon monstrosity.  This whole thing started 11 years ago when Jingle was a young only kitten.  I've probably mentioned before that Jingle is a pure breed Burmese cat.  I bought him from a breeder in Rowlett.  Before I got him, I went to visit the breeder multiple times before and after he was born.  I had to make sure that the Burmese personality was one that I could deal with.  Also, Burmese come in 4 colors, Sable, Blue, Champagne and Platinum so I had to decide which color that I wanted.  I always knew that I wanted Sable, but the breeder insisted that it was something I should think about.  After a litter was born that had a Sable in it, she called and I went over to her house and met the kitten that was to become mine.  I named him Bernie. Now, you might be saying, "Who the hell is Bernie?  She doesn't have any cats named Bernie!"  You would be correct.  

The day that I was supposed to pick Bernie up, I went to Rowlett prepared to come home with my new kitten and when I arrived at the breeders house she told me that Bernie wasn't "thriving" and she didn't think it would be safe for him to leave but that she had another kitten, Jingle, who was a little spitfire that she had planned on keeping for breeding purposes who she could let me take in his place.  I wasn't too sure about this.  After all, I had held Bernie's mother in my lap before he was born and felt him moving in her belly!  But I met Jingle who was busy playing with his half sister, Belle at the time.  She was a Blue Burmese born in the litter two weeks after Jingle's and they both had the same father but different mothers.  She was the cutest little bluish gray ball of fur you have ever seen.  

With one look at Jingle, I was in love with him.  He was taller and much healthier looking than Bernie.  I held them both and knew that the breeder was correct, that Bernie was in no shape to be taken from his mother and Jingle was a ball of energy.  So, I decided on Jingle.  All along the breeder had told me that Burmese cats are very social and required a lot of attention and that if I worked, he would need companionship.  I had my eye on Belle and asked about her.  I was told that she had not been sold yet.  But I just couldn't make myself spend another $500 that day on a second kitten.  So, Jingle and I left.  As you might assume based on Jingle's name, it was a week before Christmas in 2000 when I brought him home to live with me.  That week I took off from work and Jingle and I went to my parents house for the holiday.  

By the time, I was supposed to go back to work, I knew that Jingle did indeed need companionship, so I called the breeder and asked her if Belle was still available.  She was and a week later, Jingle and I went to pick her up.  They both had so much fun together.  They played constantly and who couldn't love cats named Jingle and Belle??!?!!?  Then they both got sick.  At first they acted like they had colds.  Then they stopped eating.  So, I took them both to the vet and that is when we discovered that they both had Feline Infectious Peritonitis.  Belle, was much sicker than Jingle, but both were clearly sick.  For several weeks I had to wrap them in towels several times a day and feed them mushed up cat food through a syringe.  This meant that I was coming home from work a couple of times daily to feed kittens.  Belle wound up with major organ failure and only lived a few more weeks.  But Jingle began to thrive shortly after she died.  When he began meeting me at the door and meowing the entire time I put the food in his syringe and practically sucking it out of the syringe, the vet and I decided that he was ready to begin eating solid food again.

Once Jingle began to recover, the vet started telling me that since the disease effects the white blood cells making the cat incapable of fighting infection I would need to be very careful with him.  He had to be neutered using a local anesthetic (yikes!) because she was concerned about knocking him all the way out and he was never de-clawed which I am now happy about.  I always thought that was mean anyway. Once he understood the point behind scratching posts, it became a non-issue.  The vet also cautioned me that he still might be able to transmit the virus to other cats so that I should always keep him away from other cats.  So, I did.  That meant that I couldn't get him another cat to be his brother or sister.  So for years, he was an only cat and I tried everything to keep him entertained including getting a small 5 gallon fish tank so that he could watch the fish while I was at work.  

I originally put 3 fish in it.  I got the tank and fish the week following 9/11 so the fish were named George, Condileeza and Colin.  George and Colin were strong, tough fish and George continued to grow and grow and grow.  Eventually, I went to Dallas North Aquarium and asked exactly how big they would become.  Colin had reached his full size which was only 3 inches long but George was a Plecco.  When I got him he was about 1-1/2 inches long.  By this time he was 10 inches long.  The guy at the aquarium shop told me he would still double in size reaching about 20 inches total.  That was the day I came home with the 35 gallon tank.  When George finally died he was about 17 inches long.  I wasn't sure if I should filet him or just dispose of him.  I decided to just dispose of his body.  A few weeks later, I moved Colin, the lone surviving fish from that original 5 gallon tank out of the 35 gallon tank and  into the smaller 20 gallon tank and got two Blood Red Parrot fish to put in there with him.  The Parrot fish are still in there today.  They have both gotten pretty big.  Colin died about a year ago.  The 35 gallon tank is still out in the garage.  I am hoping to sell it this year if the HOA lets us have a garage sale.  

Jingle still sits in the evenings and watches the fish swim batting at them through the glass on occasion just to keep them moving.  Almost four years ago, I found Shiner and although I was afraid to bring him home due to the FIP that Jingle might still carry, everyone who was in Shiner, Tx. the weekend we had found him decided that it was a risk that had to be taken since Shiner would not have survived much longer on the "mean streets" of Shiner.  After all of this time, Shiner is the healthiest cat you could ever hope to see.  Jingle is doing better than ever since he finally got a little brother and all is well.  Jingle was always a scrawny undersized cat who never could put weight on because he never kept much food down.  My carpets are proof of that.  In the last three years, Jingle has come off of prescription cat food and now eats and keeps down anything that doesn't get out of his way.  He actually had to be put on a diet this year because he was getting fat!  I truly believe now that all of the stomach problems he has had for years stemmed from being lonely.  

I started this long involved story simply because I was looking at my fish tank this morning which will require cleaning today.  I hate cleaning the fish tank.  I don't think Shiner has ever even noticed the fish tank.  But as long as Jingle is even slightly entertained by it, I guess I will continue the never ending battle of keeping it semi-clean.  Have a great Monday.

Day One-Ten - Mosquitoes the Size of Seagulls!

I had big plans for this morning.  I was going to get up early, write my blog entry and then get ready for church.  After church I planned to deliver wine to my friend Jenny since our first wine club delivery from the winery we visited while in San Francisco was this week.  Then I was going to come home and do some serious cleaning around this house.

Instead, I slept until 9:15, made coffee and now I sit here loitering in front of my computer contemplating what I will write about.  I could write about the fact that I am probably getting West Nile Virus from simply walking into my powder room downstairs.  I think I have mosquitoes breeding in there and every time I walk in, I get another mosquito bite.  The most recent one is on the top of my foot.   Or I could write about something else that Ronnie did when we were kids.... that's always entertaining.  I could write about how it took me not 4 or 5 hours yesterday but a total of 9 hours to download all of my Europe pictures to Shutterfly.  That would be cool, because then I could bore you with said pictures.

Alright, you win, mosquitoes it is!  So, how in the hell did they get in my house in sufficient quantities to begin breeding in a toilet in one of my bathrooms?  And what do I do about them?  I have cleaned that bathroom and toilet multiple times thinking that mosquitoes probably don't like Clorox.  Apparently, they do.  Or at least they tolerate it well.  It's probably making them stronger.  I'm probably creating a strain of super mosquitoes that will soon take over the world once they have become totally immune to toilet bowl cleaner and Clorox.  When the world is taken over by bathroom breed mosquitoes, you will have me to thank.

I think this is happening because I happen to live in the only house in the Metroplex that has seen no rain in more than a month.  There is no water left outside, so they have come inside.  I was in McKinney last Saturday and a terrible storm came in there.  Water was running through the parking lot like a flash flood.  My friend got stuck out in it and had to run through the rain into the restaurant.  She was soaking wet from 30 seconds in it.  I thought to myself, this rain is headed straight for my house!  I will surely get some.  I think there may have even been a gleam in my eye as I had that thought.  Ummmm... not so much.  As I drove home that evening, there was water standing in every street I went through.  It was terrific!  Then I got to my neighborhood and it was bone dry.

In the last few weeks, pop up storms have been happening practically every evening in some part of the Metroplex.  They travel for several miles before they fall apart and they almost always start breaking up within a few miles of my house.  Sometimes, on the weather radar, you can see the clouds split just before they reach my house and then I think they go back together after they pass.  I'm not sure what I did to deserve this.  I am sure that if it would rain, the mosquitoes could be coaxed out to my patio where mosquitoes belong.  Then when the mosquito fogger comes by, zap!  I'd be rid of my problems.

The mosquitoes in my house are growing so big that I am afraid I will have to start putting leashes on them and taking them for walks in the evenings.  When your mosquitoes come up and tap your shoulder so you can let them out for a little while, that is bad news.

I was watching an old episode of Dirty Jobs the other night with Mike Rowe (I love him!) and it was one from a year or so after Hurricane Katrina and he was in New Orleans helping clean up.  There was a segment in which he worked with people who were trying to get their arms around the mosquito problem.  They were catching bait fish and releasing them into unattended pools so that they would eat the mosquito larva.  Kind of ingenious.  So, if someone can come up with ways of getting rid of mosquitoes in New Orleans after the worst hurricane in history, surely they can come up with a way to get them out of my bathroom.  But I haven't figured it out yet.  Maybe I should call Mike Rowe and tell him I have a dirty job for him.  Hmmmmm.... two birds, one stone!  I could get rid of my mosquitoes AND finally catch the man of my dreams all in the same day.

Excuse me while I make some calls....  Have a great Sunday!

Day One-Oh-Nine - The Stresses of a Photobook Discount

I went to Europe four years ago.  After I got back I started working on one of those scrapbooks where you cut everything out and hand write everything in it.  I bought a ton of scrapbooking stuff and thought I would use it all for years to come.  I never finished that scrapbook.  It is big and takes up a lot of room, some of the few pictures that I managed to paste in are beginning to fall out when I pick it up to dust.  I don't like it.

About six months after returning from Europe I went to Seattle for several days.  After returning from Seattle my friend who I travel with introduced me to the brilliance of photobooks.  My first photobook was from the Seattle trip.  Since then I have become addicted.  I can do them on line, there is not cutting and pasting.  I don't have to hand write anything.  It is all done on my computer.  That first one was done on Kodak.  Since then I have also done a Key West book, one from a Celebrity Cruise we went on to the Eastern Caribbean and of course Hawaii.  Key West, the cruise and Hawaii were all done on Snapfish.  I like Snapfish because they offer discounts periodically so you can put your photobook together and then just wait for the next sale before you order it.  I completed and ordered the photobook for the San Francisco trip on Snapfish last week. It is scheduled to be delivered sometime on Monday.  I can't wait!

As I am sure you all know, Kodak sold their on line photo business to Shutterfly recently.  I had several thousand photos on my Kodak site so they are supposed to move over to Shutterfly.  They haven't yet.  But that is okay because I back all of my important photos up on flashdrives.  So this morning I am loading Europe photos from a flashdrive to Shutterfly because they are having a 50% off sale!  The sale lasts until 7/30.  I usually take a few weeks to put a photobook together, so this is going to be a tight window for me especially since I took all of these photos four years ago which could make writing the copy a challenge.

The upload is running in the background as I work on this blog.  It has another four hours to go.... just to finish uploading the pictures I took.  I still need to see if I can find the pictures that Jenny took.  She asked me to bring her a copy that she could load onto a flash drive a few weeks ago because she was having trouble locating hers.  I couldn't find her pictures.  I hope I have them somewhere.  According to Shutterfly, what I had on my Kodak site should be transferred over to Shutterfly in a "few more days" but whether or not they will be there with enough time for me to include them in the photobook that has to be completed and ordered by the 30th is a big question.

I woke up at 6 a.m. stressing out over this.  I used to endure sleepless nights because I had to find a way to hit a 38% profit number that we all knew could never be done.  I don't mind waking up at 6 a.m. due to the stress of getting a photobook completed in time to get a 50% discount on it.  Sure, soon, I will probably start  experiencing sleepless nights because money will become tight.  But at least it will be a problem that I can effect.  Like, you know.... I could get a job.  Or I could buy groceries at Kroger all the time instead of going to Central Market three times a week.  I could cut back on the number of photobooks I am buying or the number of trips I am taking..... nah!  I think getting a job will be key since I don't really want to cut back on too much other stuff.  I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will be fine with making less money if it means not having to do a job like the one I was doing before.  I always knew that I didn't enjoy my job, but I never knew how much I hated it until after I got out of it.  Who knew that more than 1/3 of my life, I was absolutely miserable!

I just went to look at the progress of my photo upload, now it says there are 5 hours and 23 minutes remaining in my upload.  How does the amount of time increase?????  Twenty minutes ago, it said 4 hours.  I don't really understand that.  It's not like I added more photos to be uploaded.  When it gave me the original 4 hour estimate was it not really looking at the number of photos but just giving me a number that wouldn't scare me too bad... you know like the kind of number that a planner gives a PAD concerning where profit will come in?  Maybe the person who wrote this program for Shutterfly previously worked for my former employer and is still under the mistaken impression that the world just wants to hear the best possible number even though chances of getting to the best possible number or slim to none and eventually you will have to deliver the bad news so why just tell the world up front that it is going to take more than 5 hours?  Ugh!

Okay, Jingle is trying to sit on the keyboard now.  So I better get busy.  I'll let you know tomorrow if the upload ever finishes.  Have a great Saturday!

Day One-Oh-Eight - No Means No

Yesterday, if you read my post, it was all about the way we were left in the car as children in the 60's if the weather wasn't too hot and Mom was only going to be in a store for a short time.  You might have read that and thought to yourself, how big of a deal would it have been to take those kids in the drugstore with you?  Let me tell you how big of a deal it might have been.....

Once when we were kids, Robbie was in school but Ronnie and I weren't yet.  So, Mom, Ronnie and I had all gone to TG&Y for something.  For those of you too young to know, TG&Y was the Dollar Store of the day.  Only back then it was called a Dime Store.... Inflation, you know.  Now, I don't know what your world was like when you were between the ages of 4 and 6, but in my world, when you went to the dime store, you headed straight for the toy department.  Even if your mom was saying in a very stern voice as you made a bee line for the toy department, "We're not getting any toys today!" you still had to go look.  It was sort of your job as a kid to always know what the latest and greatest toys were that you could get and to feel your mom out for what was too expensive and what was in her wheel house so that on the day that you rushed to the toy department and she didn't make the "no toys" statement you would know exactly what to beg for.

On this particular day, as Ronnie and I were running to the toy department, Mom threw out the "no toys" statement.  So we both knew going in that we were going to walk away with nothing.  This is something that I never questioned about my mom.  I'm not sure if this is the day that I learned not to ever question her decisions once she made them.  But I always knew that once she said something, there was not going to be any changing her mind.  I remember as I got older asking if a friend could come over and spend the night once while we were at the ballpark.  Mom said no.  So I went back and told my friend that my mom had said no and my friend said, "why don't you ask her again?"  I didn't understand this.  I don't even remember who the friend was at this point, but I do remember being puzzled that my friend would want me to get in trouble.  You see if my mom said no, you didn't ask again.  She had us trained that way.  Now that I look back at it, it was very smart.  I don't think I ever questioned it.  My mom may disagree with that statement.  But I think I always understood that it wasn't in your best interest to ask a second time.  As I grew up, I think all of my friends thought I was a freak because when my mom said no, I wouldn't just continue to beg and whine until she changed her mind.  I guess with their mom's it worked.  With my mom, here's what would happen.....

Ronnie, Mom and I were at TG&Y, as I said, the "no toys" statement had already been thrown out.  Ronnie and I were in the toy department staying out of Mom's hair so that she could get whatever it was she had gone in for.  I'm sure I was looking at Barbies.  No doubt Ronnie was looking at something that he could destroy property with.  Actually, I think it was a yo-yo that had his eye, but I am not positive.  He's the one who tells this story all the time.  I, on the other hand, have tried to block it out of my memory over the years. After a while, Mom came to the toy department to get us.  She said it was time to go and Ronnie said he wanted the yo-yo or whatever it was that he was eyeing.  (Let's just say that it was indeed a yo-yo for the purpose of this story.)  Mom said, no.  There were no explanations from her as to why he couldn't have the yo-yo.  There didn't need to be.  The only explanation necessary would have been that she was the mom and she said no.  Did I mention it was the 60's?

So, Ronnie decided for some reason that the toy department at TG&Y on a weekday afternoon was the ideal place to test Mom.  I think that if you asked Ronnie today, he would tell you that it wasn't a good decision on his part.  He didn't seem to have thoroughly planned his strategy.  His first plan of attack was to scream that he wanted it.  That didn't work.  So, then Mom took his arm and said "let's go".  He jerked out of her grasp, threw his 4 year old body on the ground in the middle of the toy aisle and proceeded to throw a fit!  Mom turned and looked at me and said, "Susan, let's go."  And we did.  We left him laying in the middle of the toy aisle and screaming at TG&Y and walked outside and started getting in the car.  I think that was about the time that Ronnie realized his mistake because he came tearing out of TG&Y like he was on fire!  He ran up to the car screaming something like, "don't leave me" or "let me in".  I don't actually remember what he was saying, but he was in a total state of panic.  He got in the car.  Mom started the car up and we were about to leave for home.  Just before leaving, Mom announced that Ronnie was getting a spanking when we got home.  Ronnie turned to me and very smugly said, "she'll forget".  Looking back, I now think that, that statement could have been his biggest mistake of the day.  She heard him and she didn't forget.

I think we both learned a lot of things that day.  We learned that if Mom said no, she probably meant no.  We learned that you couldn't embarrass Mom into giving in.  And most importantly, we learned that given the proper motivation, Mom can remember anything.  I don't believe anything like that ever happened again.  Years later, Ronnie would learn a lesson from Dad about being late for dinner and talking back to Mom that  involved a glass of milk.  But I'll save that story for another time.  Have a great day!

Day One-Oh-Seven - Kids in Cars

So during my post yesterday I mentioned that when I broke my arm Robbie and Ronnie were sentenced to the car while we were in the emergency room at Memorial Hospital.  They stayed out there the entire time.  They wouldn't have dared get out of the car and come into the hospital, because they were told to stay in the car.  There was no danger.  It was 1969 in Nacogdoches, Texas, it was a crisp fall afternoon, the windows were down, and there was no danger of them starving or dying of thirst before we got back.

I'm not sure what the crime rate was like back in Nacogdoches in 1969 but I would guess that once you got more than a block from the SFA campus it was pretty close to Mayberry's crime rate.  However, I am not absolutely sure that the fact that it was Nacogdoches was what made my parents feel that they were safe in the car that day.  I also remember waiting in the car for Mom when we had the Ford Fairlane at the drugstore in Alvin before we moved to Nacogdoches.  That would mean that I was five or younger.

You see there were three of us all within 4-1/2 years of one another in age.  We were decent kids but we were not perfect kids.  Back in the 60's you didn't look around parking lots and see a lot of portable strollers that folded up into a small thing that could fit into the back of your car with the flick of one finger.  If mom had wanted to stick us in a stroller, there would have been three of them and they would have been bigger than the car by the time they were all shoved together.  And things didn't fold with the flick of a finger back then, so she would have had to haul the strollers around town in a U-Haul hitched to the back of the car.  That wasn't an option.  So, she either took us in with her with all of us walking and tried to keep up with us, and let me tell you, Ronnie was a full time job all by himself, or she told us to wait in the car if she was going to be quick.

There were rules about waiting in the car.  We rolled the windows down, she turned the car off and took the keys with her since everyone knew that Ronnie would not just sit in his seat quietly thinking about what he would do when he got home.  He was a very hyper little kid.  My parents knew this about him.  So Mom always took the keys with her.  Then she told us all to stay in the car and she would be right back.  I guess she was concerned that one of us would get out and go play in the street - probably Ronnie.  As soon as she was gone, Ronnie would get in the drivers seat, start messing with everything and pretend he was driving the car.  Robbie and I would tell him he better stop or he was going to get in trouble.  He didn't care.

As far as I know, there were no toddler seats back then either.  When we went somewhere, Ronnie stood on the seat so that he could see everything.  When all five of us went somewhere together, Robbie, Ronnie and I all had to sit in the back seat together.  I don't remember how the person in the middle was ever decided except that we would call "hump" or "no hump" as we were getting into the car.  The hump was obviously the middle seat.  Ronnie sometimes wanted to sit there because then he could stand on the hump.  I can tell you that it was just understood that Robbie never had to sit in the middle unless Ronnie and I were fighting and Mom made him sit in the middle to separate us.  On the other hand, if Robbie and Ronnie were fighting I had to sit in the middle.  You might notice that Ronnie is involved in each of these fighting scenarios.... Not a coincidence.

Now people have to buy enormous SUV's so that each kid has their own row of seats in the car which alleviates all contact in the vehicle.  Back then three kids were crammed into the back of a Ford sedan and off the family went for a 2,000 mile trip across half of the country.  If we started complaining that one of us had touched the other, they threatened us with having to put the dreaded seat belts on!!!!  That was the worst thing that could happen in the car.  Usually, we only had to wear seat belts when we were on a family trip or driving in a big city.  If we went to Houston or Dallas, as we were starting to get close to the city, Dad would tell us to put our seat belts on.  On long trips for some reason, we would also have to wear them at times.  Once I remember we were in Colorado driving through the mountains on a two lane road with mountain on one side of the car and a shear drop off on the other side.  Ronnie was terrified that Dad was going to miss a turn and we would go off the side of the mountain.  We had all been allowed to take our seat belts off so that we could see everything and Ronnie strapped himself as tightly as he could in his seat belt on the side of the car farthest from the drop off and refused to look.  It was the only time I ever recall seeing him willingly put a seat belt on when we were kids.

I figured out pretty early on that since Ronnie was always doing something to get in trouble, I could simply imply that he had done something and he would get in trouble.  So, when we were in the car, he could just look at me and I would wail "RONNIE STOP!!!!!"  And Mom would demand that he stop right then.  He would whine that he didn't do anything and he would again be told to stop.  Bwaaaahaaaaahaaa!!!!  The car was the perfect place for this since Mom was busy driving and might have missed something that he had done (or not done) and it drove her crazy when we started fighting in the car.  I would feel bad about having done that if he hadn't always been kind of mean and there had been any other way to get back at him.  If you know Ronnie as an adult you know that he is the nicest, most laid back person in the world.  But back then he was just mean!

Going out to eat was always fun as a kid too.  We would leave our house on Nottingham Dr. and head to El Pollino's on King St.  The entire drive from our driveway to the restaurant was spent with Mom lecturing us about how we were to behave once we were in El Pollino.  You would have thought we were going to a four star resort for dinner.  We had to keep our voices down, stay in our seats, order tea or milk, NO COKE!  There were a lot of demands and we did whatever Mom and Dad said because if we didn't they had already told us what the consequences would be.  We never got empty threats.  Now as an adult, I would pay other people with small children to start them out by taking them to El Pollino and lecturing them during their drive.

I get so sick of going to a nice restaurant where I know that my meal is going to cost $50 and having it ruined by some one's three year old four tables over who is too precious to be left home with a babysitter or to be disciplined in anyway.  And the fact that he gets quieter when he is running in circles around the tables does not make running around the tables acceptable!  We all get that you don't want to ruin your meal by stopping down and taking little Johnny outside and threatening him within an inch of his life, but in the meantime, every one's meal is being ruined!  And just a little FYI if this seems uncomfortably familiar to you, when this happens, other diners hardly ever blame your kid.  We all blame YOU.  The kid is three and obviously has no reason to believe that there will be consequences for his actions because you have given him no reason to believe that there will be consequences.  I don't want anyone to beat their kids.  I just want you to TALK to them!  If that is not possible, then find a nice babysitter.  If you were willing to spend the money to take little Johnny to the expensive restaurant, you might be able to enjoy the restaurant more if you were spending that money paying a responsible babysitter to keep him at home and get him to bed at a decent time.

Sorry, about the rant, but somebody had to say it!  And things could be much worse, I could have told you to leave little Johnny in the car with the windows rolled down.  Have good day!

Day One-Oh-Six - Setting the Record Straight

I went to Nacogdoches yesterday for my Mom's 69th birthday.  We had fun.  Dad took us all to Clear Springs for dinner then we went back to my parents house for birthday cake and coffee.  Once we were back at Mom and Dad's house somehow we got on the topic of childhood injuries and a couple of times I was asked if I had told the story we were re-hashing on my blog yet.  Surprisingly, most of them have not come up yet.  So prepare yourself.....

I have come to the conclusion that while many of my injuries were a result of a confrontation with my younger brother Ronnie, they were all fairly normal injuries..... with the exception of being SHOT WITH A BB GUN!!!!   In Ronnie's defense, he did not always start the confrontation and he was never a bully.  We just knew how to push each others buttons and we were very good at it!  Ronnie's injuries were normally a result of his misguided notion of having super hero powers.  He didn't.  Robbie however, just had freaky weird injuries.

Perhaps the biggest legend in the Meyers family centers around my broken arm in the first grade.  The story was always there but wasn't really a big deal as we were growing up.  We all knew how it happened and we all knew the results.  The end results were that I spent a few months with my arm in a cast, we didn't get to go to my Uncle Jim's on the Sunday we had planned to launch one of Robbie's beloved Estes Rockets and Ronnie as far as I can remember did NOT get the clothes pin back.  This story did not become a legend until my nephew Chris who is also incidentally the middle child in his family (God bless him!) broke his arm a number of years ago on the playground at McDonald's.  That's when the story began to grow and now every time we all get together it becomes a little more legendary.  But today, I will attempt to set the record straight.

The fateful day in question was in the fall of 1969.  I was six years old and in first grade.  This means Ronnie was five and in kindergarten and Robbie was nine and in 3rd grade.  We had just moved to Nacogdoches the summer before and we were buying a house that wasn't quite finished yet.  So we were renting one on Houston St. near the old high school.  Our house was an old A-Frame house with cedar siding.  There was a garage apartment behind the house and I think some SFA students lived in it.  The garage apartment had 2 or three single garages under it and an apartment over the garages with a staircase and landing on the right side facing our backyard.

At some point a week or two prior to the incident someone had thrown an old mattress out as trash.  Some of the kids in the neighborhood had moved it over to the garage apartment under that landing and the boys had started running up the stairs and then jumping off the landing onto the mattress.  On that day some well meaning parent must have decided that this was dangerous and the mattress had been removed.  I had not jumped off onto the mattress because I thought it was too scary.  Ronnie at some point on this Sunday afternoon probably got one of Mom's dishtowels and put it around his neck as a cape in his all consuming notion that he was either Batman or Superman.  If you ever wore a dishtowel as a cape around your neck in the 60's you know that this does not work without a clothespin to hold it in place.  (I don't know what kids do these days to hold their dishtowels in place since you practically NEVER see a clothespin anymore thanks to the abundance of electric clothes dryers in the world today.)  But back then a clothespin was mandatory equipment for super heros.  For some reason, I decided that I needed that clothespin and I took it from him.  


Now, the way the story has grown, if you heard it today,  I was an innocent little victim who never did anything wrong and was simply playing with my clothespin minding my own business when the little red haired devil came up and attempted to take the clothespin away from me.  But in reality, I must confess, he had the clothespin first and for some reason I took it from him.  I don't know why, but there can be no doubt that I had an excellent reason.  There is a great chance that I had found an injured baby bird and was going to make a splint for it's wing using the clothespin.  No one will ever really never know.  


Anyway when I took the clothespin away from him he became crazed and started chasing me to get it back because no Batman or Superman worth his salt was any good without a cape and a dishtowel could never be a cape without a clothespin.  When Ronnie chased me, I always ran because when Ronnie was mad, he was MEAN!  There was some rope laying around that the boys had made a lasso with earlier in the day and Ronnie got that and started twirling it in a circle over his head, yelling "WHEN I CATCH YOU, I'M GOING TO HANG YOU!!!!!"  His face was red, which meant he was pretty mad which made me pretty scared.  Rather than just giving him the clothespin back, I held on to it and continued to run.  In my state of panic, I mistakenly ran up the stairs to the garage apartment and when I got to the top I realized that I was trapped.  Ronnie was hot on my heels with his rope and a look of rage on his face.  I realized that at this point that I had choices.  But I only saw two choices in my mind.  1)  Jump.  2)  Let Ronnie hang me.  Over the years Ronnie has repeatedly pointed out that there was a third choice, I could have given him back the clothespin.  That one didn't come to me at the time.  What can I say, I was in a state of panic!  I knew that I had pushed the little red haired devil too far!  As I got to the railing I noted that the mattress was no longer on the ground below the landing but I couldn't take my chances with the rope, so I jumped!


I remember it hurting a lot and I remember crying.  I remember being inside the house with my parents looking at it and deciding that we needed to go to the emergency room.  I also remember that both of my brothers were mad at me because we were supposed to go to my great Uncle Jim's house that day (he was the Czech accordion playing uncle with no running water or electricity that I have told you about before) and I had ruined that by breaking my arm.  Once we got to the hospital, Robbie and Ronnie had to sit outside in the car the entire time we were there while Mom, Dad and I sat in the emergency room.  They brought up last night how they were forced to sit in the car.  This might be a story for another time, but isn't it interesting how 40 or so years ago, parents just left their kids in the car with the windows down and nobody worried about their kids being stolen or anything horrible happening?  Now, CPS would be waiting when the parents returned if that happened today.  I'm going to shelve this topic, because I have a lot to discuss here at a later date.  Anyway, getting back to my story, my arm was put in a cast, I don't remember if there were any punishments dolled out for anyone regarding the incident.  


I suppose if there was an innocent party who suffered at all in this instance, it must have been Robbie who had nothing to do with any of it and still didn't get to go to Lovelady that day and launch one of the rockets that he was always putting together.  For my part, I did suffer....  I mean, I BROKE MY ARM!  Ronnie as far as I remember suffered in no way whatsoever except that over the years, he became the villain in this little tale...  Bwaaaahaaahaaa....  So, the record has now been set straight.  I take responsibility for taking the stupid clothespin away from him.  But I swear if he had caught me, he would have hung me with that rope.

Day One-Oh-Five - Only 26 Week Until Vacation!

Yea me!  I actually made it to the gym yesterday.  I spent 20 minutes on the treadmill never exceeding 3.2 MPH, (there's no point in over doing it on the first day) but I still went 1 full mile.  Then I did 30 minutes of circuit training.  I love Planet Fitness for the circuit training area.  It has a traffic light that goes green for 1 minute then red for 30 seconds.  When it is red, you change machines or move to an aerobic step.  Once it turns green, you either work on your machine for the next minute or do a minute of aerobic stair stepping.  There are 10 machines and 10 steps so you are doing a step between each machine.

The only problem is that there are apparently a lot of illiterates who go to Planet Fitness.  There is a barricade all the way around the circuit training area and multiple signs in the area that state that those machines are for circuit training only.  Nevertheless, some idiot always waltzes in there and skips past machines 1 thru 7 and gets right on machine 8 just as you are supposed to be getting on it.  There are at least 100 machines outside of the circuit training area.  There is at least one machine that does what machine number 8 does outside of the circuit training area and there are a total of less than 20 people in the entire gym and yet some moron has to come into the circuit training area and get in my way.  I think that given the circumstances, I should not be considered rude if I happen to ask the person if they read English and point one of the signs out.  I'm just saying.....

So this morning, I am posting very early because I am driving to Nacogdoches for my Mom's birthday.  I thought my sister-in-law and I were going to take her to lunch at Shelley's but I haven't heard back from her yet and she was supposed to let me know last night.  Anyway, tonight we are all going out for dinner.  I'm not sure where we are going since Dad is in charge of that.  So in addition to posting early today, I'll be posting late tomorrow after I get back to Dallas.

Oh here's some interesting news... apparently someone at the former employer (which shall not be named) thinks that I have moved back to Nacogdoches.  They are incorrect.  I still live in Dallas in the same house doing all of the same stuff with the exception of driving out to Legacy Dr every morning.  So, if you have been told that I have moved, you were misinformed.

I thought that today I would post of few pictures of the trip to Barcelona.  Specifically, the day we went to Park Guell which incidentally was one of my favorite places in Barcelona.  The HOHO bus dropped us off at the bottom of the hill which went up to Park Guell.  Then we were supposed to hike up there.  It was a straight but steady climb.  First we went into a little cafe for breakfast right where the bus dropped us off.  We got pastries and they were really good.  I loved the coffee in Spain.  It was delicious.  After we left the diner, we started up the hill.  We were on a semi narrow sidewalk so we were walking single file.  I was in front of Jenny and as I walked I think I was just increasing my pace not because I felt like I was all powerful and could run up the hill or because I was trying to beat Jenny up the hill.  I think it was just because as I continued the climb and looked ahead of me realizing how much further I had to go and what a small distance I had apparently come, I wanted to get it over with!  It was killing me!  After a little way up the hill, I looked back and Jenny was about 1/2 a block behind me.  We laughed a little later about how I was apparently racing up the hill and she didn't even know there was a race.  But maybe I was just anticipating how beautiful it was going to be when we got there and I couldn't wait!

Here is a picture of Jenny just inside the entrance to the park.  It is just so unlike anything you would see here.

Below I am posting a picture of a guy who was playing his guitar in the pavilion this area is inside of the area that Jenny is standing in front of in the first picture.  The acoustics inside this pavilion were unbelievable.  The medallions on the ceiling were spectacular.

Here is a picture of one of the many handmade mosaic medallions from the ceiling.

 Below is one of the mosaic crosses in the park.  The ones at the main entrance were gorgeous.  I really think that it is a place that everyone should go once if for no other reason, just to see the quality of work there.  But also, once you are in the park, the walk through the gardens is spectacular.  You never know what other work of art you might see when you turn a corner.  My nephew and his wife are going to Barcelona next summer.  If I could recommend only one stop to them, I think this would be it.  I just hope that they listen to me.  :-)

I think that I will get busy now.  I am sure that you all will thank me to stop boring you with my vacation pictures.  Sorry, but I am in vacation mode now.  Maybe you will get lucky and one of the cats will do something clever tomorrow that I can go on and on about for an entire post.  Ha!  Have a great day.

Day One-Oh-Four - Getting Ready!

It is wrong that the Hallmark channel aired Christmas movies all weekend.  It is wrong because I am a sucker for Christmas movies and sat around doing nothing all weekend long but watch the same poorly made movies that I have seen countless times.  I'm not sure why I am unable to resist a poorly made Christmas movie, but there it is.  I simply can't do it.  I turn into a worthless slug when they are on TV.

I watched one that starred Tom Arnold and the girl who played D.J. Tanner on Full House.  Sorry, I never bothered to find out her real name.  That was really the lowest point of my weekend.  When you are watching Christmas movies in July that star Tom Arnold and any of the kids from Full House, things are bad. There are a lot of productive things I could have done.  I just didn't feel like it.  I do know that it is time for me to become a productive member of society again and I think it is why I have been vegging so much for the last several days.  I'm building up my strength... or something like that.

On Saturday I went to a wine tasting that benefited TNT and LLS.  I have a friend who is preparing to run her umpteenth Half Marathon.  She is actually running one in Chicago next weekend.  Then the TNT event she is doing this time around will be in San Francisco.  You would think this would motivate me to start getting some exercise.  It didn't.  I have another friend who is losing a lot of weight and walking every evening and posting her results on FB.  You might think that this would motivate me..... not so much.  But one thing is motivating me and will result in a trip to the gym today.  If you know me well, you have probably already guessed.  I have booked a cruise!

My friend Jenny and I will be going on a Royal Caribbean cruise out of Galveston in January to Grand Cayman, Jamaica and Cozumel.  My parents are going too.  It was actually my dad's idea which makes me really happy!  Their friends, Nancy and Maurice will also be going.  I can't wait and having 6 months to get ready makes me really happy.  I am not sure how employment will effect all of this.  I hope that I'll be able to take a week off in January assuming, of course, that I have found gainful employment.  But I guess we will see.

I do know that I have to get very serious about a diet and tons of exercise.  I am hoping that this could lead to a query for a magazine article on dieting for vacation.  God knows, if anybody knows about the perils and pitfalls of vacation dieting, it is me!  I can usually think about it right up until the final week and then start dieting 3 days before I leave.  Then I get on my trip and whine about how I didn't lose any weight before leaving after all of my good intentions.  That is sort of my specialty.

With the trip to San Francisco, my excuse was that we didn't plan the trip until just about a month before we were leaving, so there was no time to lose weight.  Although, I did start going to the gym 2 weeks before we left.  On other trips, like Europe for instance, I have had more than 6 months to get ready.  With Europe, I lost weight and got in much better shape before we left.  Then Jenny and I both lost additional weight during the trip because we seriously limited our food while on land and we walked all over Barcelona for five days.  Then while in Florence and Rome, our excursions were nothing but walking.  This was much more exercise than we generally get on a cruise.

Once when we went on a cruise that stopped in Roatan we decided to do this Eco-Hike thing for one of our excursions.  It was up a mountain.  That should have been the first clue that the diagram indicating moderate exercise was highly under exaggerated!  I'll just go ahead and put it out there because I have very little pride when it comes to endurance.... the Hondurans are much tougher than us.  There was about a 12 year old boy leading our hike up the mountain with a machete.  The main tour guide was a tiny little creole woman who if I remember correctly, may have been pregnant.  She brought up the rear and made sure their were no escapees from this excursion in Hell.  It was about 90 degrees and in a jungle, so I am sure that you can imagine how it felt with about 150% humidity.

We had to hike up the mountain single file because that was all the trail would allow.  Jenny and I were close to the front.  There was just an elderly couple and the little boy / guide in front of us.  The elderly couple apparently saw the same "moderate exercise" diagram next to this excursion in their guide that we did because the man was not happy at all!  Both the husband and wife were struggling but the man kept stopping and threatening to turn back around and wait for us at the bottom of the mountain.  The little boy / guide had apparently figured out long ago that the more groups he could take up the mountain, the more tips he would receive, so he seemed to be going for the land speed record on scaling the trail during our trip so as to get back down quickly and herd another group of unsuspecting tourists into Hell.  Here is a picture of me after we had been hiking for about 45 minutes....  Just before we reached this sign, I thought we were almost done.  I didn't realize that we still hadn't reached the Mountain Trail.  So, you might be able to detect a little bit of despair in my expression.

The picture to the right is the little boy / guide.  It isn't out of focus, it is just that he is moving so fast that he is a little bit of a blur.  This picture was taken just after the elderly couple in front of us moved to the back of the line to prevent the man from strangling the little boy and also possibly so that the older female tour guide could administer CPR if the need arose.  Quite frankly, the little boy didn't seem to understand that tips are only passed out if a majority of the participants survive the trek.  You can see the butt of his machete in his right hand.  You also may note that his left hand is draped casually in his pocket and he is wearing flip flops so as to indicate that for him, this wasn't even moderate exercise.  Apparently, his mother had not yet taught him that most Americans hate smart alec kids.

Below I am posting a picture of myself after we had reached the top of the mountain.  As you can see, this is no Pike's Peak, but again, we did run up it.  So I still consider this to have been a major feat.  They gave us about a half hour at the top to look around and take pictures.  There were a ton of pretty flowers and the water below was beautiful.  The area in the left bottom of the picture where the water is surrounded by piers is one of those places where you go to swim with captive dolphins.  I don't think I could ever do a captive dolphin swim.  It just seems mean to me.  But I will try again to swim with them in the wild.  I read on Trip Advisor over the weekend that there is a male dolphin right now at Rum Point in Grand Cayman who keeps coming up to snorkelers and swimming with them.  I hope he is still doing it in January!

Apparently, the newspaper there was warning that he was aggressive so swimmers should get out of the water when he came near.  But all of the posters were saying that he was wonderful and just swam along side them and interacted but never made any aggressive moves.

On that particular cruise, the Eco-Hike was the toughest day we had.  We also did a Zip Line excursion in Costa Maya.  It was fun.  I went back and did it again with my nephew last year during his graduation cruise.  It turns out that zip lining is more fun the first time when you don't know what to expect than it is the second time when you have already experienced all of it before.  I don't think I will waste time zip lining again.

Getting back to my original topic, I was by no means skinny in these pictures.  But I was much lighter than I am now.  I think I have to get back to at least this weight in order to enjoy the January cruise.  I was miserable in San Francisco just from walking.  I don't want to be that uncomfortable on a vacation ever again.  So, I am going to get a few things done around this house and then I am heading to the gym.  I'll post on FB once I get to the gym so that you will know that I made it.  If I don't post from the gym, you have my permission to harass me!

Tomorrow, I am making a quick trip to Nacogdoches since it is my Mom's birthday.  I'll try to run to the gym in the morning before I leave, but anyone who knows me, knows that I am not an early morning gym rat.... so we will see how that goes.  Have a great day and I will be posting a lot about past trips in the next few days so that I can get myself motivated.  Hope you can take all of it!

Day One-Oh-Two - Sewing 101?

I am very excited.  I took my sewing machine to Hancock's on Thursday for this tune up thing and the guy called yesterday afternoon to let me know that it was ready and running very smoothly now.  I have wanted to learn to sew for a long time so that is why I am excited.  Now there is nothing standing in my way.... except threading the machine.

What do you do if you don't even know the most basic of things like threading the sewing machine?  I mean, I have done that before, but it was at least 20 years ago and I remember it being very difficult.  I could be in a near state of panic over nothing at all.  Maybe I will go pick it up in a few hours, bring it home, put it back in the cabinet and it will just all come to me.

I tried cutting a pattern out once when I was in high school.  I think that attempt ended in me throwing away the pattern, material and all.  It was hard to understand and I had no patience.  Hopefully my patience is a little better now than it was when I was a teenager.  My mom is a great seamstress.  I asked her to teach me to sew once just about the same time that I threw away that pattern.  She said that I never listened to anything she said, so why would I listen to her telling me how to sew?  She had a point.  I do think I am teachable now, but I probably wasn't then.

So assuming I can figure out how to thread the machine, I really want to make a quilt.  I mean realistically I would just be piecing it together.  I would take it to someone else for the actual quilting part.  The other day when Mom and I were at Joann's, they had these quilt kits and I wanted to get one so badly.  But it seemed stupid to buy one when I didn't even have a working sewing machine.  It still seems stupid to buy one until I have successfully threaded my sewing machine.  But I think I am getting closer to getting one of those quilt kits.

When I was a kid my mom and grandmother made all of my clothes.  I was always so jealous of all the other kids at Fredonia Elementary who got to wear blue jeans and tee shirts to school.  I was forced to wear beautiful handmade dresses everyday!  Ugh!  It was awful!  Why would anybody want to wear a gorgeous handmade dress when she could put on some blue jeans and a tee shirt and look like everyone else?  Mom also made me these cute little short sets in the summer with tops that had cutout backs.  They were so cute.  I hated them.  I just wanted to wear blue jean shorts and tee shirts.  I would go through my brothers old blue jeans that didn't fit them anymore and try them on to see if they would fit me and then go beg my mom to let me cut them off.  I was a tomboy and there was no room in my life for cute short sets.

About 20 years ago, I bought a pattern and some fabric one day when my mom and I went shopping in Beaumont.  Mom made me this terrific circle skirt and top out of it.  I loved that skirt and top.  I totally wore it out.  If I can learn how to thread this sewing machine and then how to cut out a pattern, maybe I will make something like that.  Maybe I am getting ahead of myself.  For now, I should probably stick with just trying to figure out where the thread goes.

Day One-Oh-One - The Wonder of Air Conditioning!

I can tell you without a doubt that the world is a better place with air conditioning.  Mine was repaired on Tuesday and I have been marveling over it ever since.  Not only is it working properly, it is working better than I personally have ever experienced.

I never knew that people had air conditioners that came on and then went back off 4 minutes later while it was in the mid 90's outside.  I thought they were just supposed to come on at 8 a.m. each day and shut back off around midnight running continuously the entire time.  I also didn't know that if you set your thermostat at 78 that there was any chance of it actually being 78 degrees in your house at any given time.  I thought that a 78 degree thermostat setting guarantied that the temperature in your house would be in the low to mid 80's.  Apparently, this is why other people don't have to drink a couple of glasses of wine before opening their electric bill.  I always just thought the rest of the world was tougher than me.

I have ceiling fans in each bedroom and one in the living room.  Beyond that, I have an oscillating fan in each room in the house.  In the past I have kept all of these fans running on the high setting at all times when I am at home in order to help keep the temp in the house in the low 80's during the summer.  The ceiling fans have always stayed on at all times, it is the oscillating fans that I have always turned off when I left.  Because of this, my house has always sounded a little like a wind tunnel.  I don't mind telling you that when you speak and your voice vibrates as though you are speaking directly into a fan, you have a problem.  Additionally, each year my air conditioner would break down a minimum of two times and I would have to call the home warranty company to send someone out who would always put some little band aid on it and leave.

Then the following month, my electric bill would come in an I would take a couple of belts, open it up and start crying.  You see, when you live in a two bedroom condo, your electric bill should NEVER be over $600 in a single month.  Last year, my electric bills for June - August added up to almost $2,000.  Now granted, the siding was off of my house for several weeks in July which contributed to my record breaking July bill.  You see, the condos in their infinite wisdom decided that the best time of year to take the siding off and replace the insulation and replace the siding would be during the hottest month of a record breaking hot year.  And since they were doing the entire complex, they didn't just take the siding off of a unit, replace the insulation and then re-side it.  They took the siding off of several buildings which took a week or so, then they brought the insulation guys in, who took a week or so to replace all of the 40 year old insulation with new.  Then they took another week or so to put the new siding up.    So there was a period of time when I was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean and my electric bill should have been going down because no one was even in the house so the thermostat had been turned up several degrees when I was air conditioning the out of doors.  That was really a highlight for me.

Four years ago, they replaced my roof in August.  I really enjoyed having the roof off in August.  At the same time, they took the skylights out and resealed them which is great except that you could almost see the dollar bills flying out through the hole in the ceiling while they were doing it.  They also resealed all of the dormer windows.  Don't get me wrong, I love that my extraordinary HOA fee covers all of the maintenance and repairs on the outside of the house.  I just wish that they used a little more common sense when they were deciding on the time period in which they would perform these services.

But now I have a new air conditioning unit inside and it has made a world of difference.  Did you know that when your air conditioner works properly you can do crazy things like cook meals and dry clothes without the temperature in your home going up to 90 degrees???!?!?!?!  Crazy, huh?  Now, my gas bill could go up slightly since I am now taking showers that use some hot water.  I don't know if I would ever be able to get used to an actual hot shower again, but for a long time, I used no hot water in this house between late May and early September except for washing clothes and dishes.  


At some point I will still have to get a new compressor, but Benito told me that my new coil is larger than the old one and will be able to handle whatever I replace the old compressor with.  He said it will be an easy switch.  I had already priced compressors last winter when I was planning on buying a new unit in the spring.  You see the plan had been to wait until April when I would get my income tax refund and add it to the money I had been saving for a new air conditioner and replace it.  Then the company (who shall not be named) laid me off and I decided that I should hang on to that money in case I needed it to live on.  So, I guess everything worked out, except that I was pretty hot and whiney for two weeks.  But it gave me a greater appreciation for the wonder that is air conditioning.  


My friend, Jenny's air conditioner went out overnight last night.  I hope that her home warranty company is quicker about getting things done than mine was.  Keep a good thought for her!

Day Ninety-Nine - Knitting, Spinning and Sewing - Oh My!

Sorry, I am so late today.  Mom and Dad just left.  This morning Mom and I hit some of the fabric stores around Plano since she wanted to make some curtains and start a new quilt.  It really makes me wish that I could sew.  It looks like such fun but I never figured it out.  Mom gave me one of her old sewing machines years ago, but it has never worked well enough to actually attempt making anything on.  Since I am not sure what I am doing I always assumed that the problem was with my ability.  But then several years ago, Mom tried to sew something on it and she couldn't use it either.  She ended up taking the fabric home, sewing it there and then bringing it back here for me.

Today at Hancock's, while Mom looked at fabric, I looked at the sewing machines.  I could get a cheap one there and figure out this sewing thing.  But I hate to do that when I have this big old sewing machine in a cabinet in my guest room just taking up space.  At the cash register there was a flier for a guy who comes to the store 3 days a week and does tune-ups on sewing machines.  So, I picked one up.  When we got home I asked Dad to take my machine out of the cabinet for me and I am going to take it to Hancock's on Friday to see if this guy can fix it.  If he can and I can figure out this sewing thing, maybe I'll have two hobbies that will take up time and cause me to spend countless dollars on supplies that can then pile up in my closets because let's face it, planning the project is always the most exciting part!

After Hancock's, we went to Joann's.  While Mom waited for her fabric to be cut, I meandered over the the yarn section.  Yarn is my Achilles heel.  I can never pass a yarn section in any store without browsing.  I love it!  Be it, wool, acrylic, cotton, heavy weight, finger weight or sock yarn, I can always think of a project that I need yarn for.  I began my passion for yarn years ago when I was transferred to Tyler for the shortest 6 months of my life.  My cousin, Midge lives in Tyler and as soon as I found out I was moving there I contacted her.  After my first or second day at work there she and I decided to meet for dinner.  During dinner she said something about knitting and I think I said something to the effect of, "I have always wanted to learn to knit".  Those were my famous last words.  It was as though she had thrown a perfectly tied fly into the water and I immediately went for the bait.  I was hooked and she never let go.

Within 6 months, not only was I knitting everything I could, but I was also learning to spin my own yarn out of raw fiber.  Spinning is without a doubt the most soothing past time I can imagine.  It is best if done on a cold winter day in front of a fire while wearing hand knitted socks while the cat sits by and watches.  Doesn't that sound cozy?  That's not how it happens at my house.  At my house, I either have to sneak out onto the patio with the spinning wheel, lock myself away in the guest room or lock the cats up in my bedroom in order to spin.  All of those involve constant meowing at the door while I attempt to spin.  You see the problem is that cats have a natural attraction to wool which is the easiest and cheapest fiber to spin with.  It is like catnip for my cats.  When they get hold of it, they go nuts and you can't get it away from them.  They want to eat it.  But if they do, it will kill them since when wool gets hot and is agitated it felts.  A cats digestive system like their body temperature is hot and agitates whatever is in it to facilitate digestion.  So, wool is lethal to cats.

Those sweet little pictures you see of kittens playing with a ball of yarn aren't so sweet if the cat actually ingests any of the yarn.  And my cats will eat it if given any opportunity.  I have sat on the patio many times in the fall and spring spinning.  It is really nice.  But this time of year, that is not really much of an option.  I used to try to wait until Jingle was sleeping and then try to sneak my spinning wheel downstairs, but he always caught onto me before I could even get started.  I don't think I have even had the spinning wheel out since I got Shiner although he has gotten into some raw fiber in the garage before that made him pretty sick.

Now that my air conditioner is fixed, it is the perfect time of year to knit when it is too hot to do much outside.  With the AC running, you can sit inside with whatever sweater or blanket you are working on piled up on top of you and knit away.  I have yarn sitting in a closet that I have bought over the last few years along with patterns just waiting to be knitted into something wonderful.  Maybe I will start something today.  Perhaps that will distract me and keep me from doing anything about this sewing bug that bit me earlier today.

Knitting and spinning are great because they are very quiet hobbies.  If you are knitting something simple that doesn't require much counting, it is perfect for doing while you talk to someone or watch TV.  When I lived in Tyler and Midge was teaching me to knit, she would invite a group of her friends over every week and we would all sit in her family room with music playing drinking tea and knitting while we chatted.  It was so much fun!  When I did it, I always felt like a pioneer woman after the "young'uns" went to bed.    I know it sounds pretty lame and boring.  But it really is fun and it is so nice to talk to the variety of people that come together when knitting is involved.  And don't even get me started on spinning.  My cousin and her spinning guild in Tyler host a fiber retreat there every year.  It takes place on a small lake and is called the Wildflower Fiber Retreat.  I have been many times, although I haven't been once in the last 8 years.

At Wildflower, about 60 to 70 women gather for a weekend each spring and the weekend is filled with nothing but spinning, craft making, eating and talking.  It is wonderful!  People come from all over the US to attend and a few from Europe and Australia have been known to arrive.  It starts on a Friday evening with check in which is followed by a pot luck dinner.  The people from Texas (which is the majority of the group) usually bring a dish.  There is a big lodge hall where all of the spinning and meals take place.  I used to help out in the kitchen and only had to pay part of the fee for attending in exchange.  After dinner on Friday, there is always a beginner spinning class for all of the newbies.  The nice thing about spinning is it only takes a short time to learn and then the rest of your life to perfect.  A new spinner's first yarn is always amazing because it is rough and has lots of knobs in it.  It gives it character and regardless of what you end up making with it, you can always look back at the knobs and say, "this was my first homespun"!  The funny thing is that after you have become a good spinner and go back and try to make a knobby yarn, it is hard to do!

All of the other spinners have the entire evening to do nothing but spin and catch up with people you haven't seen in a year or to meet new friends.  I can remember many Friday nights at Wildflower when I was in the lodge spinning until 2 or 3 a.m.  It is just so nice because there are no interruptions, and there is nothing else that needs to be done except spinning.  One year, I was helping to set up a flax workshop for Saturday in a barn on Friday evening, (we were going to take raw flax and process it and then spin it into linen) when a storm came up.  We had to run to the lodge through the pouring rain.  Once we were inside, the electricity went out.  Several of us ended up spinning in the lodge until well after midnight by flashlight.  And we had the best time ever!

Saturday's are always workshop intensive.  I think I would enjoy it best if I could just spin all day, but I know that most people really enjoy the workshops.  I enjoy them too, but with my spinning time being so limited at home, I always just wanted to keep spinning.  But I can tell you that I have learned many remarkable things at Wildflower on a Saturday.  I have learned everything from different spinning and knitting techniques to soap making and pine needle weaving to go around the mouth of a gourd.  The year that we did that flax workshop, we started by taking flax plants that had been cut and beating them to get the fiber out of the stalk, then we got it wet which increased the pulp of the fiber so that it could be spun and hung it to dry.  Later we made distaffs for our spinning wheels since spinning flax require a distaff and finally we spun it into linen.  I gave up sometime during the distaff making class.  It was just too much for me.  But I did develop a strong appreciation for our female ancestors who went through this on a regular basis in order to make fabric and then sew it into clothing.  I can't imagine what life must have been like when you lived on a prairie somewhere and couldn't just run to the store and buy a new dress... or at least fabric to make a dress with!

Finally, Sunday there is one more workshop and at noon a final meal before everyone packs up and leaves for another year.  I think for me one of the best parts of Wildflower was always seeing what everyone brought with them on Friday evening.  People always came in with tubs of fiber, at least one wheel and sometimes multiple wheels, examples of some of the amazing things they had crafted in the last year, all different types of chairs, tables and lights to make their spinning experience optimal and usually an empty plastic tub or two.  You see, vendors also come to Wildflower.  Then on Sunday everyone packed up all of their tubs, wheels, chairs, etc.  At this point the previously empty tubs were filled with newly purchased fiber, dyes and equipment that they could play with in the coming year.  Sometimes, they would leave with more spinning wheels than they arrived with and many times as we left tears were shed since most of us wouldn't get see one another again for another year.

I still get the notice every year for Wildflower and I keep thinking that one of these years, I will shock Midge and everyone else and show up again.  But until then, I'll probably just go get a sack of yarn out of the closet and start a new project.  If any of you with daughters are interested Midge's group also hosts a Knitting Camp for girls each summer.  I can get information to you if you let me know.

Have a great afternoon!