What It Was

Inspirational song: Hey Baby (Bruce Channel)

It's Saturday. It's Labor Day weekend. Change has come. The air just feels different. Maybe it's the barely contained excitement of the majority of the people I see and hear lately. Football season has officially begun. I'm in one of those places where that distinction matters. Down here, you are definitely the odd man out if you admit to not liking football. As for me and mine, we will be watching. I live and breathe for this stuff.  However, my game doesn't start until tomorrow. I'm not sure why they scheduled a college game on a Sunday, but they did. I'm good with that. It left me available for an experience I never would have had otherwise.

I was invited to attend a Citadel game with a group of people that included two graduates from there. Of course I accepted! I would have been insane not to. I would have been happy enough just to be at any game, but to be there with people who could speak to the history of the place, especially one with such stories to tell, it made my day. I knew one of the couples, and the other who sat where I did was supremely friendly and funny. It was an incredible night. They made sure we stood in the perfect spot to watch the cadets march in. They took me down to see the bulldogs on the side of the field at the half, including the little brindle puppy girl who was insanely cute. They pointed out the song that the band played--when most bands would play the school fight song, the Citadel band played "Hey, Baby." It replaced "Dixie," which was phased out around the same time that the first female cadet was allowed to attend. When I asked, it was agreed that they probably play that particular song ("Hey, hey, hey, baby, I want to know if you'll be my girl"), for the same reason that all of the young women of college age were spectacularly dressed at the game. There were a lot of sweet young things determined to catch a cadet's eye.

The game surprised us all. It was expected that it would be a blowout, an easy win. That was not the case at all. The smaller school they played brought fewer players, and their guys kept dropping like flies, mostly with cramps in the heavy, humid, warm night. But they played hard, and ended up beating Citadel. I really didn't have a dog in this fight (pun intended), and I was happy just to listen to the announcer, and the bands, and the crowd. I took a lot of photos, and I'm about to break another one of my self-imposed rules again. There are going to be dozens of human faces in what I post. But I don't know a single one of them, so I'm not going to have a lot of guilt over it. 

I Am Aware

Inspirational song: Killer Queen (Queen)

I try to be conscious about the things I complain about, and how I approach those complaints. I would rather cast a humorous slant than whine incessantly. I can't always find the humor in all the things that affect me, but I really do try. Today I half-listened to talk radio, so I heard half a conversation about first world problems. I know this phrase is a meme now, and just hearing it spoken reinforces my conviction to be aware when I'm trying to elicit sympathy where I don't deserve it, and cut it out. I know damned well that I have it good, and I make a point of stopping frequently and reminding myself of it, feeling grateful for it. Materially, I have what I need, and we are reasonably economically stable. I am surrounded by people who love me, and people who accept it when I love them back. I have a first class formal education, and a lifetime of travel and troubleshooting that made me able to think on my feet. I appreciate it all, and I don't ever want to come off like I don't.

Now I feel like I need to go back and reread how I reported my week at the gym. I worked hard, almost twelve hours total since Monday, and each day was pushing harder than the last. I was mentally exhausted and physically aching, but as the woman in the locker room said yesterday, "But it's a good sore, isn't it?" Yes. It was. It hurt and I wanted to curse the name of my buddy who devised our plan. However, there is evidence already, five days in, that it is making a difference. I'm in it to win it now. We are to do nothing over the weekend, so we recover, and Monday morning we are going to tear it up again.

For the first time today, I had enough energy left over to accomplish a few things, one of which was to take the kitten on a second trip to the shelter after the snafu on Wednesday. One more test, one more dip. But this time, they must have taken pity on us, because they only put the nasty stuff on her tail, not her whole body. So when we got home, it was only the second car ride in three days that she had to punish me for. She is not the most laid-back individual I've ever met. (In the pride, that title goes to the other black cat, my melancholy baby.) When I say Athena is "in your face," I mean it literally. She finds me, makes a little chirp that kind of sounds like she's saying "parp," and then she launches herself up to put her nose against mine. This is cute while she's a kitten, but it is going to get harder to handle when she is a big girl, and it's inevitable that one of these days she's going to do this when I'm holding a cup of hot coffee. Somebody is going to get scalded. Probably me. And she seems determined to make herself queen of the pride. Very much an alpha personality. It's probably not a problem, since the previous alpha is the old man, who is getting quite brittle in his old age. I don't think any of the others really care. 

I think I took exactly two photos today, both intended to be texts to my daughter. Neither is fit for the blog (partly because of that whole no-human-faces thing), so I will leave it to your imagination today.

Comedy of Errors

Inspirational song: Big Bottom (Spinal Tap)

I made a couple slightly expensive mistakes today. The first one was relatively minor, but annoying. I was shopping for the healthy fats I'm supposed to be using in place of the more dubious vegetable oils  at a GNC. I snuck down the way to a store that sells certain cosmetics at a better price than I can get elsewhere, and picked up a foundation based on a quick swipe against my wrist. By the time I applied it for real, before I left the gym, I realized that I had guessed wrong. Spending three times as much didn't make it sit better on my face than the cheap one I was replacing. Damn. I'll give it another try tomorrow, but I don't expect miracles.

The other mistake made me feel like an absolute idiot. I had a ceremony to attend this morning, so I dressed in clothes appropriate for public viewing. I stopped by my house only long enough to throw my gym gear in a bag, and then raced across town to meet with my new workout partner. I should have known when I got excellent parking that something was going to go wrong. I was halfway through the parking lot, when I glanced down at my magenta toenails peeking out from my sage green sandals, and realized my error. I failed to grab shoes and socks for the gym. I had three choices. I could quit for the day, I could take more than an hour to drive back to the house for shoes through lunch traffic, or I could go down the street to Target and grab replacements. I chose the last option. It still cost me a half hour of time, but I think I found the most cost effective solution based on what was available to me. And now I have a pair of little maroon and white canvas sneakers I can wear when flip-flop season ends (with the sport inserts in them). 

Today was another grueling three hour session at the gym. I did things I never imagined were possible by just the fourth day. There were a few setbacks, like when I totally lost it on the elliptical. That is so not the machine for me. But later, on the adductor, or abductor, or whatever that machine is, I found myself fighting so hard to keep my natural goofiness hidden. I'm still not very limber, and my starting position on the machine was in the sixth notch. My training buddy said soon I would be able to start at a ten, when I am stronger and more flexible. As I stood up, I noticed that the machine went to eleven. With superhuman effort, I keep from pointing it out to someone who probably would never have gotten the reference.

I saw on the news tonight that the entire state has received disaster area status, because of the unbelievable rain this year. Farmers can now apply for disaster aid for crops that were drowned. I guess misery really does love company, because I felt like less of a failure myself for not being able to keep the Park alive if the folks who do this for a living couldn't do it either. 

I am too tired to go hunting far for a photo for tonight, so I will let the kitten's body language speak for me. All I want to do is lie around for the rest of the evening, just like her.

Time Passages

Inspirational song: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (18th variation) (Sergei Rachmaninov)

I notice I'm having a lot more trouble figuring out when it is, the older I get. I mean that exactly like I said it. I can't always tell when the time I am currently experiencing actually happened. I think it might have always been this way to some extent, but it really started bothering me about the time I gained the ability to pause and rewind live television. Wanting to be able to back up a couple minutes at a concert or speech, because I spaced out and missed a section, happens all the time, but it doesn't really throw off my stride. It's when it becomes a matter of watching someone performing an action, and wondering when this occurred, it starts to worry me a bit. I've started watching all sporting events like they are already concluded, and if I checked the score on my phone, I'd find out who won or lost, before the first half is even concluded. And it gets really disorienting when I look at children, and think they are already grown up, and I'm just looking at an old photograph of them. It works in reverse too. I can't look at the face of a much older person, without really picking it apart, and trying to see in them the people they were in high school, when their faces were unlined, their hair was thick and more richly colored, and they had yet to lose their swagger. I can't seem to accept when I am looking at right now.

Is this really common in people my age (and older)? Do you lose track of what year it is, and really have to think about it sometimes? I know we all have deep periods of nostalgia, liking to think back to happy periods in our past, clinging to pop culture memories and achievements from our glory days. But I think there is a difference between remembering fondly and feeling like you are entirely transported to a place in the past. I've started thinking of time not as a linear construct that you cannot touch, but rather as an undulating membrane, with the ability for different places along that membrane to brush against each other just lightly enough for the sensation of another time to creep across your conscience. No, I don't mean actual time travel. I mean like how you can hear or smell something, and in your mind's eye, you are completely enveloped by that other time and place. Sometimes that feeling is so strong, I really have to focus to realize I haven't gone anywhere dramatic. For the last few years, I feel like my time membrane has been snagged against 1978. It keeps brushing up against me, and I have to say, I really like it. I told someone about this a while back, and they asked me what was so special about that year that I would want to cling to it, and keep revisiting it. At first I thought maybe it was the last year I really felt like a child. I was still in elementary school, and although my parents had recently divorced, I didn't feel like it had affected me negatively. All of my grandparents were still alive, even my great-grandmother, and I had moved back to Oklahoma to live close to them. But on further reflection, I realized this can't possibly be the answer. The things that I'm getting from the late 1970s are not the trappings of a child. I was aware of music and fashion and the like at the time, but not like I am getting during these flashbacks. The perceptions I have from that time frame seem far too adult-oriented to have been my own experiences. It's like having the sensation of having been a twenty-five year old, living in New York, at the same time I was a ten year old living in Oklahoma. It is utterly impossible, and it makes no sense to me.

I think what made me start down this path, was looking at the kitten a few nights ago, with her skinny little baby proportions, and wonder how she was going to look as an adult. I am sure she'll plump up after her surgery (we all do). And her fur will fill in when it isn't getting burned up like a bottle blonde every week. It made me want to take even more pictures of her than I already do. I came across baby pictures of my Minions of Chaos, the other black cat and the black and white boy, on the day they were adopted, and if I go digging on my desktop computer, I will find pictures of my calico and her sister when they were little. We have very few pictures of the old man from his kittenhood. There was one floating around the house for a while, but I don't know where it is. I don't think it was ever scanned into a digital file, but I will look.

Back for More

Inspirational song: Islands in the Stream (Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers)

Second verse, same as the first. My sadistic friend and I met at the Y again this morning, for another marathon workout. This time around we worked on the lower body, doing moves and variations I never thought of before, and squats in between each set. Holy cow. I can't believe I kept it up, for all two and a half hours of it. I'm doing things I didn't think I was capable of. But I survived, and was capable of driving myself home, and of cooking real food for lunch. And that was pretty much the last productive thing I did. I'm telling myself that I'm getting a lot of muscle recovery when I keep falling asleep like this, but I'm afraid that might just be total BS. 

My mah jongg master needed to bring me something today, and to guarantee I was awake when she arrived, I went outside to wait for her. I watered the few clumps of flowers clinging to life. I know that if I were to cut a bunch of them back, they have a chance of springing back before the very end of the growing season. But with every spiderweb revealed in the spray of water, I get the answer to why I haven't gone yet. If I wait until it's cold enough to drive off the spiders and mosquitoes, there won't be time in the growing season to see any improvement. I have a sneaking suspicion I will end up just buying a couple containers of mums and pansies in a month, and set them out, pretending I can take credit for them. But who knows, maybe once I stop needing a nap on the couch after a mega-workout, what will come in its place is energy, with a soupçon of drive.

I would be absolutely immobile without Epsom salt baths these last couple days. Tonight, as last night, Athena decided the usual cat hangout of circling the tub wasn't enough for her. She steps out onto the mommy island, and flops around against my face, getting her feet and tail soaking wet and not caring a bit. I'll be curious to see how long she continues to do this as she grows larger. This activity carries with it a great deal of risk, either that I'm going to lose a book (or worse, a phone) or it will end in a band-aid moment for me. I didn't take a picture of her in action--this isn't that kind of website. But I did catch her afterward, as she settled in to supervise the rest of my bath. 

Weight for It

Inspirational song: Tired of Waiting (The Kinks)

I have been hopelessly glued to a certain kind of television show for the last year or two. I can't turn away from the competitive weight loss shows. It seems so unreal, so impossible that these people can drop upwards of a hundred pounds in three months. They show them in the gym, slogging away on treadmills or rolling giant mining truck tires (do they have these in regular gyms?), and they show them over and over eating horrible pre-contest meals. But they don't tell you exactly how they are eating for the show, and how many hours a day they have to be in those tire-flipping gyms. Every time I've ever had a conversation with anyone about them, we all generally agree that they spend easily four to six hours a day to make those transformations. And transform they do. I love watching their whole selves change, but I admit that sometimes the skinny faces freak me out a little bit. But I tune in every week, fascinated.

Now I'm not one of these people that have to be weighed on a freight scale, who end up on these shows, but the last four years of ill health have definitely left me with more girth than I care to carry around. So this past weekend, my friend and I devised a plan to mimic those shows. Today was day one of going absolutely insane at the gym. We met at nine, and didn't leave until nearly noon. Cardio, weight machines, free weights, calisthenics, stretches. And tomorrow morning it starts all over again. I had this crazy idea that tonight I would drive back up there to do water aerobics. Yeah, that did not happen. It was all I could do to feed myself today. And I fell asleep on the couch... Three times. I have to believe that it will get better quickly, because I won't last long if I'm barely able to take care of myself. Needing a personal trainer is one thing. But needing a nanny is beyond the pale.

Now it's time to go to bed early, so I can get up and do it all over again. 

Food for Thought

Inspirational song: Everybody Loves Me, Baby (Don McLean)

What started out as meeting for coffee this morning with an acquaintance who is a fitness expert of sorts, ended up being a four-hour, getting-to-know-you-better plotting session, culminating in a pact to be serious workout partners. She swore to leave our gab fest and go straight to the Y where I've been lifting and doing water aerobics, so she could join up too, and I swore to go home via Publix, and prepare for the meal plan we both agreed to. While I was absolutely dedicated to eating all organic, whole foods when the man first left town, time unsupervised and limited budgets saw me buying conventionally grown foods, that then left open the door for the occasional single serving of cake or fried chicken, until it became possible again to have a meal handed to me through a car window. I haven't completely fallen off the wagon, but I think I have a bit of road rash where I've been dragging along like Indiana Jones under the military transport vehicle. Tomorrow will be the serious rededication, while tonight is finishing off the last of the leftover beef bourginon that my younger daughter asked me to make when they came to see me. I don't want to be too terribly wasteful, after all.

I went outside to get a feel for how much work will be involved to clean up the parts of the Park that suffered the most from my neglect during the worst of the heat, rain, and bug season. The cold front that pushed through yesterday allowed the temperatures to dip down into the upper 60s last night, and the drier air today made everyone I talked to in town happier. The mosquitoes are still thick and starved for blood, and I was eaten alive just now, as usual. Most of the enormous banana spiders have moved upwards, into the trees. I saw a big one in the magnolia tree, attending to the very large cicada trapped in her web. I tried to take a picture, but I had the camera with less capability, so she may not be very visible. The man is very fond of growing grapes, and tolerant of the wild grapes that grow here. I'm not sure how he will feel about the one that has suddenly consumed his plum tree, however. It wasn't like this a couple weeks ago, but now the plum is about to be swallowed whole by the wild grape. The elephant ear growing closest to the deck seems poised to take over as well. I stood next to it and measured one leaf against my arm. It was longer than my arm from shoulder to fingertip, and I am a reasonably tall woman. That is one intimidating plant.

I harvested what may be my very last (and unexpected) edible from out back. There was one fat jalapeño on a sickly looking plant in the pallet garden. It was one of very few plants to survive that sad little experiment, but I'm looking forward to using my last little bounty tomorrow, over chicken, with the green chiles, tomatillos, and organic chicken broth I bought to accompany it.

Last night before Bonfire, I took the advice of some other blogger friends, and created a Facebook community page for this blog. It should be searchable by the title Scenes from Smith Park. It's a way to reach more people who don't know me in person, and to make the links available to more readers. Not gonna lie, I am one of those needy types who checks stats regularly, and I light up like a Christmas tree when I see hits from around the world on my map.

Also at Bonfire, one of the central characters who has been missing for months (because of his brutal work schedule), came back, and he and his fiancée brought a party game I had never played before. They had Cards Against Humanity, which is like the Apples to Apples for people who revel in the most inappropriate answers imaginable to leading questions. So, in other words, me. If you are easily offended, avoid this game. I didn't win, but I don't think it matters much. I just loved hearing all the answers that were so, so wrong. 

No Discernable Plan

Inspirational song: Cracklin' Rosie (Neil Diamond)

For our 10th anniversary, the man and I finally got our honeymoon trip. We took every bit of annual leave I had earned at the library (down to the hour), and spent 9 days driving through Scotland. We didn't have a specific plan in mind. We flew into London, rented a car, and then just drove northwest. We renewed our vows in a field in Gretna Green, just the two of us. And then we drove clockwise around the country, stopping when we were tired, wherever we found an available room in a bed and breakfast. The only schedule we had going in was that we thought we would spend a couple days in Edinburgh. Instead, we fell in love with Inverness, and stayed there for three days, taking day trips around the area, and staying at our perfect little B&B. We loved Inverness so much that it forever became my "if I won the lottery, I would buy a vacation home here" town. We ended up burning through all the time allotted for Edinburgh, and spent a single day there, before driving off to spend a night in Haddington. I think we made the correct choices. It was more our speed than the big city.

One of the day trips out of Inverness was to the historic battlefield at Culloden Moor. It was quietly beautiful, for its tragic history. The tourist's paths are gravel, that wind around the stone markers that show where each clan fell. After hearing the story of the battle, I stepped off the path one time, to feel the spongy ground. It was oddly soft and springy. I tried to imagine fighting in a sleeting rain on that surface, and I couldn't see me doing it well at all.

This was a long way around to talk about my Park. It took me three tries over two days to mow the whole back side this weekend. I had to keep stopping to unclog the mower, pulling out the clumps of wet grass choking the blades. I had to tip it over and clean it a few times, and then wait for the flooded engine to drain out again. Between all the rain, the sandy soil of this region, and what I'm guessing is widespread mole or gopher activity, the ground felt exactly like that squishy battlefield. I don't think I liked noticing that.

I had an earworm the whole time I mowed today. I kept singing Cracklin' Rosie to myself, over and over. I think it was a result of surfing through the decade channels on the car radio. I had to look it up and watch a video of it to try to get it out of my head (unsuccessfully). Reading the comments, I learned things I must have been too young to know when I first heard it in childhood. I had no idea it referred to a kind of cheap wine that was the "girlfriend" for the guys who didn't have a real one in a northern Canadian town where men greatly outnumbered the women. Not something I would have learned as a little girl, when it was getting the most airplay.

Speaking of wine, it's time for me to settle in with a mini bottle of wine, in the mini pool, watching a mini bonfire. I shall leave you with a picture of a mini cat from today, and the mini piles of hay I made in the back yard.

Animal Kingdom

Inspirational song: Spiders & Snakes (Jim Stafford)

I faced some fears today. I got outside as early as I could, while the temperatures were still in the 70s, and braved the spiders and other unknown pests in the back to retrieve the lawn mower and get the front cut down to size. I approached the shed with trepidation, thinking back a week or two to seeing the red-headed dog chasing a large rat out from under it during the daytime. Between rodents, potential snakes (according to neighbors and friends who have seen them recently), and the giant spiders, I have been hiding out, not wanting to be outside at all. I slowly opened the shed door, and held my body back as far as I could for a few seconds, while I looked inside carefully. I had to screw up courage to reach inside for the mower, imagining a black widow spider the size of a fist was going to leap across the dark space at my hand. Lucky for me, there was nothing of the sort, and I was able to fire up the mower and push toward the front of the house. Most of my banana spiders have moved on from their webs, but the big black and yellow lady by the chimney was still in place, and she really did not like the roaring mower coming up next to her home. I had to go through the gate at least six times, and it really made me nervous and watchful every time I went past her.

The news has been full of reports of bitey things all summer long. The day the first tropical storm blew through here, a large gator was run over in the middle of a busy street not more than a few miles from me, and that was the first of many to make the tv news. With all the rains, they have been wandering out on the beaches, and animal control officers euthanized at least one of them. I saw a couple of them last week, one a little baby about 18 inches long, dead on the side of the highway, while we were driving slowly home from the mountains, and another live one in the pond at Drayton Hall (and I didn't get a single comment about that one when I put his picture up that day). I was told that they can sprint 35 miles an hour, and go vertical, propped up on their tails if they are inspired to go after something. I feel more comfortable with my decision that day to back away from the dock on the river, when I heard rustling and splashing in the reeds, in a known alligator hangout. And gators are not the only troublemakers. I haven't lived here long, but I don't recall this many reports of sharks last year or the year before. There have been sharks washing up on the beach, getting pulled up by fishermen right on the shore, and a child surfer facing down a bull shark and escaping injury to talk to the tv reporters. This is all in the last month. 

With all the somewhat intimidating wild animals, I'm about to take my cues from my melancholy baby cat. I keep finding her burrowed in strange places, hiding out. A couple days ago, she was under the rug I threw on the landing where the dog sleeps, and today she crawled under a chair cushion and stayed. I'm one good scare away from joining her.

Missing Person

Inspirational song: Words (Missing Persons)

Nine years ago, I was working at a very unfulfilling library job. I had gone from a busy information desk in North Carolina, where I was hopping all the time, going from topic to topic fast enough to satisfy any information junkie (which I am), to a quiet circulation desk in North Dakota that was little more than a glorified Internet cafe with a book decoration. I didn't stay there long, just one year, and I wouldn't have survived that long if there hadn't been a few really awesome people there with me. I only have regular contact still with one of them, and I have a lot to be grateful for where she is concerned. Besides keeping me sane at a job I hated, she has provided several different kinds of inspiration for my writing. One of those was her being one of the few people I know to attempt the NaNoWriMo challenge, and I think the first I know to complete the challenge, writing an entire novel in one month. She did it last year, and since then, I have been spending a lot of time remembering my one attempt. I first learned of it and tried it nine years ago, when we worked together, and together we created a display for the library, trying to convince others to try it too.

I had been having conversations in my head with a character since we lived in North Carolina, with a cranky older lady who had a lot to tell me. When I decided to try NaNoWriMo, she asked me to tell her story, and I happily complied. By that point I knew a lot about her, and felt confident that we could fill the word quota in 30 days. Unfortunately, by that time, she was suffering from dementia, and quickly I realized that the way we tried to tell her story, in first person, was absolutely impossible. The farther along we went, the worse her cognitive functions got, and the end of the story would have been unreadable. So I gave up the challenge, and put her on the back burner. I thought about her a lot over the years, but I haven't given her the time she needs to rework the story. I think now I have the time and the focus, but most of all, thanks to this blog, I have the discipline to write every day.

When we moved to New Mexico, and my younger daughter's friend from California moved in with us as our foster daughter, I gave her my old computer and started using the desktop I have now. I tried to remove all the files I needed off the old CPU, but in the transfer, I missed Fran's story. My foster daughter is more adventurous than I in getting into the guts of a computer, so she completely wiped all my files off the old box and set about completely customizing it for herself. I kept thinking that maybe the story still existed on an external hard drive I used as a backup in California, but this afternoon I finally checked it, and was disappointed to find no trace of her. My only chance to find the details of my old crazy cat lady imaginary friend is to go through all the old spiral notebooks I have in boxes in the garage (someday I will speak of that addiction). Otherwise, to tell her story, I am going to have to start over, from scratch, and see how much she still remembers nine years farther into her dementia. Wish me luck.

Back to Normal

Inspirational song: With a Little Help from My Friends (The Beatles)

I fell back to earth today. My family has gone back home, and my regular obligations are starting to ramp back up as fall approaches. It's bittersweet. I'm happy to have things going on again, but I liked the sense of being in my own bubble that I had over the summer. I'm already on record as getting very excited about the coming football and sweater season.

Today was the kitten's shelter visit day. The receptionist was of the less-helpful variety. When I asked her about results from last week's test, she said there was a notation on her chart that results were due yesterday, but none were listed. I should ask the leader of the foster program for them. So I asked whether that person was in today, and the receptionist said yes, and turned back to her computer and completely ignored me. She didn't offer to call the person I needed, and she wasn't interested in discussing it with me further. Having really studied the spot on the kitten's tail, and its lack of progress, I decided not to bother trying to weasel out of the treatment. She needed it.

I got to hang out with friends twice today. The last mah jongg of the summer was this afternoon, and I was on a roll. In the first hand, I started play needing one single tile to win, and got it on the second round. It was the fastest win I've ever seen. Then, this evening, I went out to a birthday dinner for my workout buddy, at a restaurant in town that is right on the water, where the river spills out into the ocean. The view was incredible, inside and out of the restaurant. 

I did a little shopping, for my friend and for the man. I worried how he was going to get along being away from all of us for our longest separation to date, but he has quickly managed to surround himself with a lot of feline friends. The original kitten survivor is a month old now, and starting to want to play with everything and everyone. I have a care package of cat toys ready to ship out tomorrow. And today, he let me know that the second pregnant cat he took in (!!!) gave birth to three new babies. I told him he was going to gain a reputation as a crazy cat man. He said, "Too late."

Mousey Toys

Inspirational song: Most Toys (Marillion)

My daughters have gone home again, and I am left with the debris after the storm. There are Rock Band instruments strewn about the living room, half-empty bottles of wine that need to be emptied either into the sink or into me, and an explosion in the number of mousey toys scattered around as a gift from my younger daughter to the kitten. I loved having the girls here, but as always, the week went by far too quickly. It is really difficult for me, living farther than a short day's drive away from them. I'd like to be able to see them more often. I assume that over time this will get easier, but the first few years of them living away from me has been harder than I imagined.

I've been trying to decide what story would be best to tell from my girls' childhood. We made an awful lot of references this weekend to the day they decided to hide from us in their toy box, buried under stuffed animals and dress-up clothes. They tried so hard to stay undetected, but were helpless against the attack of the giggles that gave them away. But there just wasn't enough story from my perspective there, so I asked for ideas from the mischief-makers themselves. The younger suggested I tell one of our family legends, which has gone down in history as "some sort of wedgie incident." 

I was working at the library, when an email came from a very grumpy man, with the above vague description as a subject line. The man was fuming, explaining that both girls were currently sitting on their hands, with their noses against the wall, not allowed to look at each other or talk to each other while he calmed down. He had broken up a screaming, crying, duel to the death between the children, and tried to get a straight answer from a third grader and fourth grader about an alleged assault. The little one cried that her big sister had given her a wedgie, and it hurt. So, in loud, gruff daddy voice, he yelled her name, and asked, "Did you give your sister a wedgie?" Hiccuping and crying, she said yes. When he pressed for why, she went on, "She told me to!" It was the last thing he expected to hear, so he stumbled a bit, but eventually teased out the explanation that the younger child had heard about wedgies, but never experienced one, and so she decided to learn more about them. She demanded that her sister give her one, but sensing a trap, the older and wiser girl refused. So to force the issue, the younger girl gave her sister the first wedgie. At that point, the only honorable option was retaliation, and the second wedgie was given, this time in anger. And that's when the battle was fully engaged. 

I cannot possibly count how many declarations of war have happened between these two over the last twenty years. They will fight over the smallest, dumbest things, as if the survival of the human race depended on the outcome of the squabble. But a few hours later, they will be running around like the best of friends, their partnership reborn out of the ashes like phoenix chicks every single time. I think the fighting is what gives them strength, like the Wonder Twins rings of power. They are fascinating to be around, but being their parents is not for the faint of heart. Given the chance, hell, yes, I would move back to live in the same town with them in a heartbeat. I excel at this game too.

My First Miss

Inspirational song: Rainy Days and Mondays (The Carpenters)

I knew it had to happen one day. I let it get to be past midnight in my time zone, without getting my blog out in time. I'm going to concentrate on the fun I had with my kids and not the epic sense of failure from missing my goal. I am working very hard on finding the positive when I can.

We tried an alternate route home from the Georgia mountains this time, and while it may have been fewer miles, it was a significantly longer travel time. The twisty, turny roads through the mountains had a slower speed limit, and it was foggy and rainy. We got behind a lot of trucks and a lot of congested traffic. And when we neared the intersection of two interstates close to home, we stopped on the highway for over half an hour. There were two "incidents" close to each other. One might have been a flatbed truck attempting and failing to turn around through the median to tow out the other, a truck that rolled and landed on its side in the trees. Together they accounted for a long delay, and my dogs spending a third night at camp.

I wanted to find something exciting to entertain my daughters for the last night they are here, but I think we are all just too worn out to do much. We went out for the best fried chicken in town (seriously, Cane's is addictive), and all picked out new nail polish colors so we could come home and do mani-pedis in front of Jane Eyre on television. Maybe tomorrow I can take the time to tell one of the stories I had intended for tonight, before the rain delay.

Booger Hollow

Inspirational song: Coal Miner's Daughter (Loretta Lynn)

I have only been up in these mountains a few times in my life, and every time, I am absolutely overwhelmed by how much I love them. My man tells me all the time about how desperately he misses his Rocky Mountains, and I only sort of understood until I started coming here. The story is that our family's Native American heritage is Cherokee, although I don't have a lot of documented proof on this. When I come to this part of the country, where the Cherokees held out and refused to leave when the government shoved them off along the Trail of Tears, I experience the same sense of euphoria and connection to the land as I feel in my corner of Oklahoma, on the land my grandparents owned. When I ride in a car through here, my eyes are wide open, so I can take in as much as possible. If I stopped the car as often as I want to so I could take pictures, we would never make it to our destinations. I took dozens today, and I probably should write two or three posts, just to get all of them up. But that would take me away from the family weekend too much, so I will just have to edit.

I don't know why I get such a sophomoric thrill out of the childish name of the holler a couple hills away from us. The names of Appalachia are so funny to me, but not in a disrespectful kind of way. I adore them all, the sillier the better. (I'm also endlessly amused by Toadsuck Park, but that's farther west in the Ozarks.) Every time I come here, I giggle like a little kid, and say "Booger Hollow" out loud about fifty times. 

My man has told me many times that someday he wants to hike the Appalachian Trail. Today I got to do that...sort of. We went to an access point, and wandered around, up the trail maybe 150 yards. They sell tshirts at the general store that say "I hiked the entire (width of) the Appalachian Trail." I seriously considered buying one. We are on the south end of the area that is considered the Great Smoky Mountains (I'm not sure where the geographical boundary is for them, but it can't be all that far away). When we went up to the trail today, it was foggy and damp and so beautiful. Normally we would have sweeping vistas from where we were, but there was something hauntingly beautiful about the fog. At this way station, they had been collecting the worn-out boots from the hikers looking to replace their gear for so long, that the trees outside are covered in them, with the limbs drooping from their weight. If I find myself able to do the trail with my man, I look forward to pitching shredded, smelly, duct-taped shoes into the trees like the other people have done. How is that for a goal on the bucket list?

On the Move

Inspirational song: On the Road Again (Willie Nelson)

I have been doing an awful lot of driving this week. I spent most of the day in the car again today. Lucky for me, it has all been for fun and excitement and family. The girls and I (my own daughters--my foster daughter has already gone back to her home) have gone up into the mountains to see my father and stepmother at their vacation cabin. I've never made it up here in the summer, so I can't wait to get out and take pictures of the scenery. I have taken some early spring and winter pictures from the other two times I've been here, on a camera I can't turn on anymore, on a chip that appears to have been corrupted. I need new ones. I'm also looking forward to exploring the area with my parents and daughters. There is a country store and access point to the Appalachian trail near here, but I don't know whether we will actually get out on the trail. I would like to, but I think all of us, including me, are just too broken right now. We're all gimping around with aching backs and sore feet and one broken arm (not mine). I think we are all healthy enough to wander through a few antique stores, though. I'm very excited about that.

For all that I live fairly close, my giant herd of animals has precluded me from getting to travel down here very often. I'm glad to have the opportunity to get away once in a while. My dogs are at camp, and they love it there. Thankfully, the staff at the kennel know my dogs and like them well enough, because my little red-headed dog forgets all his manners when he is there, and barks non-stop, to remind everyone he is king of the kennel. The cats are mostly on their own recognizance, with my neighbors making sure they are safe and unmolested.

I focused heavily on driving today, since the trip took fifty percent longer to get here than I expected. I didn't stop to take any pictures on the way, and the ones I took when we arrived were just desperation pics while there was a little daylight left. And now, the night has set in, and the bourbon and soda has come out, and bedtime is approaching quickly. My ability to compose is diminishing. I guess that is the sign to stop for the night. Hasta mañana.

Vacation Pictures

Inspirational song: 25 or 6 to 4 (Chicago)

What a crazy, wonderful day. Having all three kids here has been entertaining and busy and hectic and I have absolutely loved it. We stayed up way too late last night, playing a goofy game that we essentially made up on the spot, and we had a tough time getting moving this morning. But eventually we stopped saying, "I was waiting for YOU," and got everyone to the car. We went downtown, to a gourmet donut shop I saw on the Cooking Channel (yum!), and then I took my archaeologist, artist, and architectural student to Drayton Hall, the oldest preserved (not remodeled) plantation home in the country. We all took bunches of photos, and I'll share a handful of mine. We came home and made another of my signature dishes that my baby requested, and finally got those rounds of Rock Band played. I am seriously out of practice.

I noticed, while we were downtown, that I'm not the only one who couldn't keep flowers looking perfect through this drippy weather. We parked near a hotel, and their window boxes were looking a little last their prime as well. I felt comforted to see faded flowers, even though in comparison, they were still way better than the crunchy hanging baskets on my deck.

It's now time for me to go to bed. Tomorrow I have to take the dogs to camp so we can all drive down to see my parents. And if the dealership can take a peek at my car to tell me why it made a funny noise today, that would be great...