Amateurs at Play

Citizen science has become one way to collect scientific data because it costs very little.  Every single thing in this world is about money.  EVERYTHING.  I will write a post on that perhaps soon.

Anyway, I was a citizen scientist yesterday.  What I gave was my time and energy and bravery against the ticks.  What I got was being outdoors on a perfect day, being able to take photographs, seeing a really beautiful nature trail and being with good company, human and animal.
 

 

It is spring and time to monitor those wood duck boxes that we fixed and/or installed last fall.  Data showed that of the 19 boxes, some were empty, some had hatched eggs, some had fatalities, some were never used and some had newly laid eggs.  Some of the boxes were in the early stages of their use with only 4 eggs laid and buried deep down in the wood chips with no down yet pulled from momma duck.  Others had as many as 15 viable eggs waiting to hatch and sitting deep in down.  One box was a tragedy, we think momma met with a danger and died as three little hatch-lings had pushed from their eggs and died in the box and the other eleven eggs never hatched.

The good news is that over 50 eggs were still waiting in the various boxes and about 30 had hatched and were on their way!

And we were very lucky to see Momma wood duck and 11 little ones out for one of their first swims.

Mushiness

As a follow-up to comments I made on one of the young men in my life:

This was mailed on May 10, days after Mother's Day, and I got it yesterday...

There was a little hand written note inside:

He finds mushiness very hard.  Yet, I love him completely.

Grayness Is My Mantle

Another day of sprinkling rain today, coolish, but not unpleasant.  I wanted to be outside planting on my deck with the pots for summer color.  I have to transplant some seedlings of cosmos and Sweet William to the flower beds.  I still have to divide day lilies.   I got one sunny day yesterday and killed myself with weeding, planting and then rewarding myself for a Mother's Day treat to the local Antique Fair being held at the nearby garden/museum.  A perfect, sunny, warm day it was.

I am not a big antique shopper but do have a love of Art Deco vases.  I never find any, but I still look.  I found two lovely misty ink-blue vases about 6 inches high with a smooth glaze over a very subtle pattern and I wanted to buy them.  The vendor told me that they had been reduced in price since this was the second day of the sale.  They were reduced from $275 each to $175 each.  There is just no way I can justify spending that much money on something I could so easily break!  I decided on the two for $12 turquoise vases I had found in an earlier booth...but they either sold or we could not find the right tent among the almost 50 vendors because I went home only with some homemade bath salts.  Then as another Mother's Day reward, I took a bubble bath.

I got a quick call from my daughter (which I missed) to send good wishes for the day.  Nothing from my son.  He is that way and we will never change him.  He does what he wants when he wants.  He still says he loves me, but refuses to follow any suggestions from society about behavior or being gentle with people.  I do love him in spite of the challenges. 

AND that day was the ONLY sunny day we have had in days and days and I took that as my perfect Mother's Day gift!  The next few days this week are going to also be a challenge as far as weather goes.

My Neightborhood -- Part II

If there is one thing most of us understand in the realm of physics is that eventually bubbles burst if they keep growing.  Maybe someday we will have a bubble material that expands endlessly, but not so at this time.  This applies to that housing bubble back in 2008 where the market growth and collapse brought the good and the bad down together.  Banks loaned money that should not have been lent and then sold the bad paper to another.  In the case of my neighborhood, a builder bought a piece of land that had a reality like a dark cloud hanging over it that he did not see. I wisely saw the housing collapse ahead of time if not being able to pin point its exact fall or extent.  I don't get much right in this world and this was a lucky call.  We sold our big house to move down here in a bit of a rush (I was not yet retired) because I was worried about the real estate bubble and being unable to sell my house.  I rented in the city for over two years and put my furniture in storage before I left my job.

If you read my prior post you note that there are some very wealthy people living here.  In most cases they are people that grew up here, earned their wealth here, and decided to stay.  There are also other people, like my husband and I, that while not rich, would be considered upper middle class by most standards, although our house is the smallest in the neighborhood --- so we just squeeze in there.  There are also a number empty lots in my neighborhood sitting idle because they claim a price to high to justify the type of house that would need to be built.  There is one large house on the water, the one with the tennis court, that sits idle as the owner rarely stayed here and has now passed on and his children may be deciding what to do with it.

Now, back to our builder.  When we bought our lot where we built I would drive by that builder's lot at the front end of the turn to our neighborhood a number of times.  They had cleared the land and I was wondering what was going to be built on that place.  Then a hurricane came through shortly after the clearing of that lot that brought down about 15 big pine trees on one side.  Building came to a halt while those trees were cleared away.

Finally, slowly, the house began to be built.  It was a big colonial which is popular in my state.  It was nicely landscaped and the builder seemed to have a good design.   It is all brick which is another step up in architecture where many homes have brick facing only.

It sat for some months after it was put up for sale and eventually the builder moved in.  He parked his big trucks, his boat, etc. in the driveway and the for sale sign still sat on the road.  The next year I was walking by and met a young woman with a toddler in front of the drive.  She explained she was the builder's sister and he had allowed her family to move in to help with expenses.  She was clearly delighted to be in this nice house.  More months went by.  I do not remember seeing any real estate agents showing the house, but I live a half mile down the road.  The asking price was in the high $400,000s.  This is not an outrageous price for this area, but the market had collapsed and there were no buyers anywhere. 

And then one day as I took my walk I saw the house was empty.  No cars, a few strewn toys, and padlocks on the doors.  Another year went by and the house was showing its neglect.  The neighbors and I tried to track the paperwork to see who owned it, but the mortgage had been sold and re-sold and now belonged to some conglomerate on the other side of the country!

As time passed, the house began to be robbed of its various parts and later used by others for overnights.  It does not take long before appliances, copper pipe, etc is gone! "They -- who now own the paper" put a log across the driveway which seemed to reduce the vagrancy.

This week I saw the log had been sawed into chunks and the driveway was open once again.  Maybe an investor has purchased it and has the capital to re-dress this grandam to her former glory.  I hope so, because I worry about fire in my woods and do not like to see such sadness.

The story of lives in distress, having no place to hang a hat, and craftsmanship destroyed is very depressing.  I could mourn the issue of my property values being compromised, but that hardly seems fair as this is a microcosm of happenings elsewhere, some far worse.  Seems we have forgotten this issue in our current election where bathrooms used have taken center stage.

A Little Story Repeated Everywhere

A number of communities went through painful degeneration during that deep recession we were thrown into 8 years ago.  Even my little bit of a neighborhood was touched by this.  I remembered this while taking a walk around last week on a warmer spring day.  All of the homes in my neighborhood  are on 4 acres or more of woodland because the county was hoping to protect the waters by using limited development, and required this much land for a permit to build.  So this place is pretty rural.

If I walk to the end of my driveway and look to the right, this is what I see.

It is a little less than a mile to the main road in that direction.

This is what my driveway looks like if I am coming home.  Note the lovely landscape bed to the left that reflects we have deer!

Here is the gang hanging outside the tennis fence at my neighbors fancy house.

Above is the house of another neighbor who owns his own landscape company.  So, of course, his lawn is perfect.  He resides down at the cul-de-sac about a half mile in the opposite direction of my driveway.  (Note even he has plastic flowers under the mailbox because of the deer!)

Yes, those yellow flowers at the base of the mailbox are plastic and not spring daffodils.

This family that lives here has a very fancy entrance and actually won a lottery years ago!

The entrance to my "next door" neighbor's house is not so fancy.

But if we walk up to the main road we come to this house.  This is the house that has a sad story and I will write about that in my next post.

What Do Dreams Mean?

Today was my first day in some days without errands to run, speeches to give, meetings to attend, and other peoples projects to maintain.  I slept in until about 8:00 which is hours late for me.  I got into my sweat pants and top, glad to see it was a cool, gray rainy day outside alleviating any guilt that I might have for not working in the yard.  I had my coffee and half a blueberry muffin and read for a while.  The phone was reasonably quiet since the primary elections are over for our area.

When I did decide to move I finished the last of two loads of laundry that I had started two days earlier while I watched CNN.  I refused to be embarrassed by what our politicians are saying in the primary finale but when I saw the news that Hastert, former GOP Speaker of the House and one of the leads on criticizing Clinton for his Lewinski affair, had been convicted of a decades old case of pedophilia with wrestlers on a team he coached and using money fraud to try to cover it up, I had had enough duplicity! (Tom Delay asking us to go easy on this poor fragile old man, said more about Delay than loyalty to a friend.  I wonder if Hastert had approached Delay's daughter would he still be so forgiving?)

I turned off the TV, worked on my emails, had fun with photography "painting" for an hour and then returned to my book reading after putting some Yoga music on the CD player.  I ate some cold chicken and a bit of fruit salad for lunch.  Even though I had had at least 8 hours of sleep I began to grow sleepy in the early afternoon and went to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed.

I was in the deepest sleep very shortly.  I kept fighting to try and waken and could not.  I was dreaming that I was in a house somewhere and a lovely young boy maybe 6 or so was outside playing.  He was my son or grandson, I could not get my mind around it, except that this angelic child with a lovely laugh was having so much fun on a sunny spring day and I could hear him through the open window.  I knew in my heart of hearts that I was missing out on this precious time, but try as I might I could not open my eyes or lift my head from the pillow.  I could not wake up!  Later when I finally pulled myself out of the stupor I realized that I had slept for over an hour!

I am not sure what the dream meant, but I do know I must have needed that sleep.

Now as a thank you for your interest, I will provide a photo-painting that I worked on using filters, highlights and shadows, hue adjustment and even painting some colors with the mouse during this gray day.

Spring Surprise

Have you ever taken in an abandoned cat or dog?  Sometimes it doesn't work, but most of the time it works out quite well.  We did have a cat  kitten that insisted it would never be held, and since I had discovered I was allergic to cats years earlier, we knew we would be sending it to someone else to become a scratching post within days.  I never did hear from that girl...

Anyway, plants that have been abandoned can sometimes be like abandoned animals.  Back in the corner of the garden shop, sitting woefully and all by itself on the dusty table, was a Meyer lemon that had just been transplanted by the garden people as a last ditch effort to save it.  Citrus trees are very hardy and do not give up the fight for life easily.  It had bare branches with only a few leaves.  The scraggly orphan had been planted somewhat askew in the pot as if the garden people did not want to put out too much effort.  They offered a big discount if we would take it away.  Orphaned plants are our specialty and we did.

The gnome-like plant was the saddest looking little tree that sat in my kitchen all winter but hung on to the dozen or so leaves through the cold gray days.  I fertilized it just before spring and it seemed to perk up.  Then as the weather warmed in mid-April, I took it outside on the deck to adjust to storms and winds and direct sunlight.  The leaves got bigger and greener.

In a little more than a week it put out buds and blossoms.  Close to 100 I am guessing.  It was screaming with rebirth energy and demanding to live.

Meyer lemon blossoms are larger than one would expect, and they bloom on branches even when there are no leaves like many fruit trees.  Yes, I will have to remove many when they begin to fruit because the tree is so small, but for now I am enjoying their beauty.

Then today I was happy to see my first lemon.  I have never owned a Meyer lemon tree and I am as proud as any new parent or pet owner.  It will be hard to pick most of these off as they first form so the tree can put energy into growth and I will miss their tangy goodness.

Another bit of knowledge is that these blossoms are tremendously fragrant and can pretty much overwhelm your senses if you are sitting next to them transplanting seedlings as I was doing the other day.  I had to get up and move away.  They fill the air in the quiet of the early evening when I go out to share that time between daylight and night.  I close my eyes and pretend I am somewhere in Greece on a rocky island in the moonlight.  It already is a magical plant.

Magic Bullets

It is spring and in spite of the beautiful rewards of re-growth outside I have been forcing myself to move on task each day.  Being alone gives me lots of time for thinking...too much thinking.  All kinds of issues, ideas, regrets, plots, plans, and philosophical ideas tumble in my brain.  I have never had a quiet mind and that is one of the reasons, I think, that I like to read and watch television.  It is escape and helps me push the pause button.  Otherwise I resolve and re-resolve problems and relationships from the past endlessly.

As Jane Fonda says, this is the third (and final) act and we hope so much to get it right.  We hope to adjust with lessons from history, to be more accepting of changes and to pick our battles much more wisely.  We hope to be more motivated and better at seeing opportunities to contribute wisely.  We are surprised when age has brought with it only some wisdom.

I have been in a bit of a slump.  Nothing big.  Nothing to write home about.  AND nothing I can really put my finger on, which is the conundrum.  But it seems lately I have been thinking more pessimistically than optimistically.  Even avoiding the news has not given me a boost.

And then two things happened this week which turned the corner at long last.

One was a nice long call from my daughter whom I do not see often enough.  She has a SUPER BUSY life filled with work and weekend activities and we had not talked in a long time--over a month.  I hesitate to call as it never seems the right time at her end.  She had been meaning to call for weeks, but was so busy she never could pick up the phone.  Then we had an hour to just chat and laugh and tease and love.  Better than any pill or sunset.

Second, a former work friend of mine, whom I see once a year if time permits, texted me that she needed a babysitter for her grandson for a little over an hour while she went to the chiropractor.  This little guy is 9 months old and could be into everything.  I love kids, felt deep down somewhere I needed a baby fix, and thus said yes.  He was a mellow fellow and calmly crawled around the house until he found the toys and spent the rest of the time tasting them.

Two magic bullets.  What are your magic bullets?

???

So where has she been?  Is she still sick?  Has she gotten her car repaired?  The answer to number one is that I am still here plugging along in my month of freedom.  Number two is my cold is gone but I seem to be having mild allergies from the pollen which is a bit annoying.  Number three...no repairs.  Hubby has needed some emergency funding for, well it is a long story and I don't want to go into it here, and so that money for the car repair will have to wait until next month.

Well why has she not blogged?  Each morning I log onto Skype and wait for a call from hubby who is on the other side of the earth and winding down his busy day.  He has meetings, his is disorganized, and he has Internet connection problems, all of which mean I may sit for an hour in the morning with my coffee waiting for the call.  It is annoying and gets the morning off to a slower start, but I am glad to see he is healthy and still smiling, so I wait.
Later when I have gone through email, for some reason the settings on my laptop have to log me out of Blogger to use my email...I have no clue why...but I forget the Blogger logon and so I do not post to Blogger and only think of it later in the day and then the day gets away from me.

I posted this from the PC upstairs which auto-logs me on when I click the link.  Much easier.

Today I transplant about 50 tomato and pepper plants to larger pots.  Detailed work as they are various cultivars and I have to make sure that they are marked correctly for the garden sale as well as transplants into our garden and others.  I also have to move more plants outside and clean up the deck and get it organized once I get the seedlings transplanted and downstairs onto the patio.  Then weeding, weeding, weeding.

Now that I have bored you beyond belief with my simple little life, you can go back to you busy lives with fulfilling tasks and fun activities and loving people.

Scattered

Like the colored bits of paper confetti after a party

Like the seeds from a newly sewn lawn

Like the spring hail that bounces on green grass

I am feeling scattered and distracted.

Healing Time

The week ahead is  not filled with  places to be or  things to do---at least.  I finally have some space and as luck (my luck) would  have it, I am fighting a small chest cold.  I think my body waits until it knows I can focus on the discomforts of an illness before attacking the germs with the lymph glands to fight the good fight.  Lungs are my  precious weak organ.  My joints repair, my muscles release their strains, my stomach rarely finds itself  in battle with some cellular being, but my lungs open each little  elastic sac to do battle like an eager puppy dog and as the dead germs pile up, I spend the night coughing up their little bodies.  Yes, it is not a pleasant image.  But is it not true that you get sick just after completing some major tasks?

On the glass is  half full side, I went shopping last week and replaced my 10-year-old worn pillow and amazingly am getting better sleep now!

It is a very mild illness and only inconvenient during these days when the nights are pretty cold and the days not much warmer.  Spring is a dyslexic tease painting everything lime green and filling the air with familiar fragrances but keeping an icy wind at your throat reminding you it is in charge.  Hubby had planted flats of tomatoes and they have all had to be removed from the outside mini greenhouses and brought inside the house once again.  He is this optimist every year that gets smacked back by the weather, except this  year he is gone and I  am getting smacked.

I am reading books (Robert Harris's An Officer and a Spy,  Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot by Kim Baker and Bird Cloud, A Memoir of a  Place by Annie Prouix) the last of the three is by far the best.  I  am a pig when it comes to literature and cannot be patient just reading one book.

It is just past 4:00 A.M. and I cannot go back to sleep and so have made myself some hot honey and tea to sooth the  lungs.  The heater is still on and the tapping as the duct-work expands is the only sound in the bedroom.  But in just days I am sure the windows will be open and the songs of birds will arrive once again to my bedroom as dawn breaks.  Patience.

In the mean time, between times, I will select the Kindle or the book and go back to Paris during he war or to Wyoming in the spring and get lost in space and time while my body heals.

On a Dime Re-run.

Spring is bugs and they show up everywhere.  Murr wrote a post about her generous hosting of those 8-legged spidery visitors to her home in the spring---actually I think they take up residence in her home year-round.

I will relate another type of encounter with a spider that happened last week and that was much more compelling.  It is spring and spiders are exploring.  The other day a spider swung from his trapeze wire unexpectedly right into my face and drifted behind my eye glasses as he tried to gain control of his movements.  It took several seconds for me to figure out why I had gone blind in one eye and then when I swiped with my hand I saw all those legs working across my wrist and under my left sleeve.  The greater problem  at this time was I was actually driving along just leaving our town on 4-lane divided road at about 40 MPH.  There was not much traffic as it was the mid-afternoon before workers were rushing home.  But, by the time I refocused on the road (only seconds has passed) I discovered to my shock that I had swerved into the left lane and then onto the grassy median with a ditch dividing this highway.  There were a handful of cars on both sides as I bounced along the ditch briefly before getting control of the car and coming to a safe and soft stop just avoiding hitting the fence pipe directly in front of me.  I took a deep breath, forgot completely about the spider,  felt embarrassment wash over me as the panic waned and gathering my wits put the car in rear gear and pulled back a few yards avoiding looking at drivers in the one or two passing cars.  I pulled ahead gently on the median, and seeing a large truck far in the distance, I turned the steering wheel as I pulled onto the opposite side of the road, made a careful U-Turn, and then took a left in the lane ahead  and made another U-Turn and headed home once again.  On a dime, folks, on a dime.

I have lost the fog light and created some limited damage to the driver's side fender as well as permanent grass stains.  I am calling the body shop today and will be punished for my distraction with an expensive estimate I am sure.

Yet, I cannot help but wonder about other outcomes.  Hubby is far away and the rest of my family and I touch base every few days or so.  If I had been in a serious accident, when would they find out?  What if I died before they reached me?  I guess they would eventually adjust, but life is shorter and sweeter than we think, is it not and not being able to say goodbye maybe one of the greatest worries.

Busy and no Bees

Sunday I was up early and dressed to go out and buy the rest of the lawn seed since I ran out on Saturday and this coming Tuesday was supposed to bring some rain.

At 10:00 AM just before I left there was a knock on the door. (Hubby is gone and the driveway gate is closed!) I was cautious. Out front were the two helpers that hubby hired to do the lawn while he was away. I was told they were coming on the NEXT Sunday. Oh well, at least I was out of my PJs.

After telling them what I wanted done, I rushed out to get lawn seed, buy them some quick lunch and go to the bank so I would have money to pay them. I only had $20 in my pocket.

Then in the early afternoon I began my Powerpoint presentation for the Commissioners. By mid-afternoon I had to run out again and take some photos from the volunteer garden for the Powerpoint. (I am a bit nervous about this VERY SHORT speech...our coordinator was clearly relieved when I said it was only 5 slides...and hope that Tuesday comes sooner rather than later. I cannot remember the last time I gave a public talk.)

I finished the presentation later in the day and sent the workers off after some further instruction and then took a well deserved bubble bath and ate a cooked frozen turkey pot pie while watching mindless television until bedtime.

This Monday morning a list of phone calls were made. A list of emails completed. I now have to call the Adult Basic Ed folks as they seem to have another student for me, and this time it is NOT help with math but reading that is needed which I feel more prepared for. Yes, my schedule is busy, but they need me...they actually need me.

Now e-bills to pay!

Next post might be about a spider and a car...if I am not to depressed to share.

Other People's Projects

Yesterday I was upstairs blogging peacefully for the first time in some days while hubby and house guest (in his early 80's) are in the basement doing prep work for a big trip.

Hubby: "We have to keep all the lithium batteries in our carry-ons.  I bought some cheap towels to wrap the big C-clamps and wrenches together."

Guest and fellow traveler:  "No, you bought some large washcloths!"

Me: "How is it going down there?  Do you need help?"

Hubby:  "Nope, we are getting there.  Just trying to balance the 50 pounds between the two suitcases. At least we are not over 100 pounds."  (They later learn they have $70.00 overage in weight.)  There are valid reasons for this weight problem and it could not be helped, unfortunately.

Someone from the basement..."I don't want you to do this now.  DON'T do it!"  Followed by grunting and shuffling sounds and someone dragging something upstairs.

...They finally left early this morning and I am exhausted as the scenario above is just a small portion of what has been going on the last three days.  Last week hubby learned a number of items (heavy tools) had been stolen from the locked container overseas and he had to rush out and buy them.  To my own credit I had warned him years ago when this plan was in its infancy stages that theft was going to be an issue on this South Pacific isle if he insisted on trying to do this project.

Our guest, who will be keeping him company, has traveled much and accomplished much and wishes to share much of his over 8 decades of life as he follows me from room to room during the three days he stayed with us making the bathroom the last resort for my peace of mind.  At least he was a good eater and ate everything I put in front of him!

Well they are off.  I now will try hard not to worry about hubby diving in the open ocean trying to set up hardware!  I will peruse the lengthy list of stuff he wants done while he is gone.  (Note to husbands:  Go on a long trip and list all the things that you do for your wife and home which she has to now do, and she will certainly appreciate you when you are home!)

Today is rainy and other than a quick spreading of lawn seed from the tiny bag left in the garage and going to purchase another large bag of lawn seed this morning, I will most likely take the rest of the day off and just be a slug.  The beauty of not moving, not thinking, not doing chores, not straightening up (the luxury of living like The Donald.)

A last minute hint that the 80-something might also be diving did concern me.  I will not tell his wife as she currently is nursing her son from a heart attack and installation of a pacemaker as well as healing from a fall herself and needs no more stress in her life.  She also will be getting a houseguest on Monday, hoping so much this mean help for her and not more work.

When it rains, it pours....

The happy boys.

Spring Flinging

Life was so peaceful just a few days ago!

I am never going to catch up it seems.  I have almost completely given up on my exercise routine because there are so many interruptions the next few weeks.

There is a medium-sized sink hole under our garage slab, about 5 feet by 3 feet or so.  Won't really know until the driveway brick is brought up, the cracked concrete apron removed and the guys go  in and take a look.  At first we thought it was a foundation issue but garage walls are stable.  We discovered this late last fall and now finally getting the engineers report and schedule for the guys to come in an work on it in more suitable weather.  It means everything against the garage wall gets moved to the center of the garage ... or out?  It means hubby will be away and I have to handle this all!  It means thousands of dollars nicked from our budget.  Photos in the future if you wish.

Hubby informed me this past week that we are having company on  Wednesday through Saturday before they both leave for the South Pacific.  I  had been cleaning out foods, since it was only going to be me for most of April, but now I have to gear up  for at least three days of food to feed two  hungry men.  I am not going crazy and probably will buy some frozen lasagna and other pre-made stuff to  carry me through until their departure.

I have not gotten one word from the County Extension person  who wanted the presentation to the  Council members.  I will have to email him for more specifics, but since the short presentation (8 minutes) is the same day and 45 minutes away from my tutoring class I really want to make sure everything is copacetic (always wanted to use that word in  a post).  He is a rather strange man who always seems to be fearful of  women...just my take on this.

Finally, I did get the entire first floor vacuumed, floors mopped and throw rugs washed.   I was even able to run wet rags along some of the baseboards where spiders tuck under the woodwork.  Winter bedding washed and put away and summer bedding out.  Fireplace is cleaned and fire tools taken to basement.  I have no energy to wash all the windows this spring as in past.  Those double glazed frames are just too heavy.  I am looking into hiring a service, if the budget allows.

Our three citrus trees have been moved out to the deck.  We have predictions for nights in the mid to low 30's F, but not any freezing, so I think we are safe.  Two of the citrus have blooms on them which means a second harvest!  Deck is cleaned and deck furniture washed.  Birds are not  happy that I have reduced the feeders, but it is time for them to start looking for bugs and  building nests anyway.  While we were gone as bird seed dwindled an angry squirrel got into the feeder with the cage for smaller birds and ate out the plastic center core!  It now sits in the garage looking forlorn.

I am exhausted, but there are still time-sensitive items on my list.  If you can send some minions that are coordinated, I will be most appreciative.

Harvest

I had to harvest these off of our calamondin tree which is indoors this time of year.  Usually we can harvest a few each day for drinks or cooking, but our trip meant that all were harvested and went into a plastic bag in the freezer.  Now we will use them as ice cubes in our drinks.  They are smaller than a golf ball...

but full of citrus flavor.

I Have Reappeared

Returning home after a week away with grand kids...beaching, biking, walking, swimming, flying kites, eating.  Got some good exercise which did make me resolve to be more active here at home.  I will see how that resolution pans out as we move into the much warmer days of summer.  Will not bore you with photos, although I took many.  It is a privilege to have such free-wheeling time with family even when my son-in-law tends to "correct/contradict" me on a number of my comments!  I am giving him more slack these days as he (a very conservative Catholic Republican) has come to both a crises in his religious faith and a crisis in politics.  The movie, Spotlight, seemed to sear his soul, and he actually voted for Bernie last month!  While Trump may be bringing confused lost souls to the GOP he is also driving many away.

I have returned but still have lists...long lists that have to do with re-entry.  

My husband is going away in a few days on his crazy overseas (expensive) project which meant I was looking forward to almost three weeks of being alone.  Eating when and what I want, wandering around the house at all hours, etc.  But he is leaving me some of his project chores here to monitor!  I also have spring gardening work to do.  I really feel a need for a major spring cleaning of the house which should take two days.  The last item is some short presentation to our "wonderful" commissioners that has been dumped on me last minute.  All of this to be started after going through the box of mail, the piles of laundry and the grocery shopping today since there is no food in the house. 

Retirement and winter months of being indoors do make one lazy, I fear.

Anyway, now to catch up on some blog reading.  (For those who celebrate, may your Easter be joyous.)

Hi / Bye

I have lists...lots of lists.

I have lots of long lists.

I am slowly crossing off stuff.

I should be thankful

As someday I may have very few

And very uninteresting lists.

I will try to get back next week!

Baby Steps

A few posts back I posted an old list I had found on my computer under the title "resolutions."   The file date was created in August, so certainly not something I had created after one champagne-filled New Year's Eve.  That list is re-printed below.     Kerry suggested that I make the list into a poem to fulfill one of the items ON the list.   How dare she?  Well the list is below and perhaps you will recognize the age old form of poetry beneath that...no, not a full sonnet and with a cheat.  Baby steps...baby steps.

RESOLUTIONS

• Dance in the rain
•  Write one complete short story
• Write a poem adhering to some strict form--not free form
•  Enter a serious photography contest
•  Read about France for our upcoming trip
•  Call about the Adult Education Program    

Resolve this day my youth is spent red hot

Remains the tale of where and how to write.

Did she believe a dance in rain would blot.

In peaceful stillness the scene of plight?

A romp with no picture and no reward.

Rethink that trip to France which holds mind's thought

And turn instead to train the aged diehard

then,

Check off each goal before thy turn is aught

If you think this is painful to read, imagine my  torment in writing it.

Preserving the Memories

As I wrote awhile back I am in the process of trying to preserve organize photos.  I am starting with plain ordinary photographs, and then onto plain ordinary 8mm where I will look into preservation of such since projectors are going the way of the dinosaur and finally onto VHS tapes.  I organized the slides long ago and they are in neat little labeled boxes because they were created mostly BC (before children).  My move to preserving will begin with digitizing the movies once an index has been created.  I will probably never digitize the photos...except for my poor wedding album.

Below is one of the early photos that I came across in my husband's family collection box and I thought it was charming.  The photo was scanned in the sealed frame and I did not want to disturb it, so the clarity is a bit rough.  It was taken in the 1920's when his mother (the girl in the photo) was about 14 by her father, my husband's grandfather, who was a professional photographer in the city. 

On the back of the photo is written "Miss Folly---age 14-16?  Masonic Lodge"

As I progress on my research I will share what I learn in terms of preservation if you like.  It can get very technical and down in the weeds so I have to skim the surface in terms of information or both you and I will throw in the towel.  It also can be expensive, but maybe better than doing it yourself.  I once worked for USDA on a preservation project for printed materials, which was cutting edge at the time and a lot of work and more detail than I expected.

My first stop during this project--preservation and digitization-- has been the Library of Congress web site which researches this field professionally for all the libraries in the country and therefore, takes it pretty seriously and pretty comprehensively.  Wish me luck!

Sexy

What is sexy?  Well, how do I define sexy.  That thing that gets your heart beating and your head spinning and your juices flowing. That which makes you glad to be alive and encourages you to throw caution to the wind and do something out of the norm. That thing that makes you forget all the mistakes and portends a fresh start.  Below in no particular order are things I find sexy.

• Investigative journalists who are in it for the truth because there is usually not a lot of money.

• People who are preservationists. People who preserve land, man’s structures, old ideas, and memories.

• People who fight for the truth and are willing to die for it. 

 • Something very strong protecting something weaker, the lion and the lamb, the marine and the child refugee, the teacher and the bullied, the policeman and the homeless woman. 

 • The writer that crafts words into a picture of such beauty you cannot get it out of your mind. The actor that touches the heart of humanity in a single character’s line. The painter that sees with a stigmatic yet clear eye.

• The human determination to understand and find a middle ground. 

 OK. Your turn, what is sexy to you?

Procrastination...should be the title of a song.

Going through old e-files on my desktop and cleaning out the detritus I came across a file created in August of 2015 called Resolutions.  I rarely write lists of resolutions, but I must have been bored on this hot August day:

RESOLUTIONS

Dance in the rain

Write one complete short story

Write a poem adhering to some strict form--not free form

Enter a serious photography contest

Read about France for our upcoming trip

Call about the Adult Education Program    

Oh well, I got two of them done!

Alice Down the Rabbit Hole

Today's Sunrise

No new news on Alice (see prior post), I am sad to say  The children have a blog which gets updated every few days, and we all are desperate for some conclusion to this tragedy.  Flyers have gone up everywhere, churches contacted (including the one she attended infrequently), and interviews at a nursing home where she used to volunteer and was fond of one of the male "inmates."

If she had found a friend to take her out of state the medical care needed would alert the network.  Besides, what kind of friend would put her family through this awfulness?  Perhaps she is dead and lying somewhere waiting to be found in the spring.  Snow cover is gone and birds are singing and today it will reach the low 50s again.  The concern is only for the living after a while. 

My husband has been having very slight memory problems for a few years, as have I.  But our concern is on his side since his mother did have senility as she reached her final years.  She kept going back in time and only remembered things in her 30's near the end.  She thought he was her brother and did not remember marrying and having a son.  She did know what irons, phones etc. were for.  So, we worry when he forgets stuff.  It is natural, I guess.  We study 'what' he forgets and while mine is long term memory loss his is more short term.  I think it has more to do with a lack of focus on his part.  He gets distracted.  I play games on the computer, take online courses, do volunteer work (my math tutoring alone has stretched my brain).

Our (his) lives are still pretty dynamic.  He is flying to the South Pacific to do some SCUBA diving on a project in April.  He swims a good mile several times a week.  He still has his good humor while I am the more difficult one. 

We are all Alice in some way and want to protect those we love from any burdens we inflict without our control.  My parents seemed to have had very sharp minds up until the very end as did my husband's father.  It is a bit of a gamble no matter how hard we work at keeping our senses.

Alice, please help us find you.

True Stories

Marissa put down the phone and stared out the window at the cold winter morning.  She was beginning to feel panic and she once again ran down the lists of options in her mind.  Last night had been all wrong.  If she hadn't rushed over after a long crazy work day still angry from the argument with her secretary, and fighting the usual Friday chaos in traffic to north county where her mother had her garden apartment, if she had just waited until this morning when she had a clearer mind...  But the caregiver was waiting on the paperwork and could wait no longer. 

Marissa is a professional financial adviser in a large company in the city.  She is in her early forties, unmarried and has lived her whole life in the city.  She takes each day as it comes and is not afraid to take charge.  Her latest burden has been a mother living alone with late onset Alzheimer's disease. Marissa's mother, Alice, was in denial and had been able to live alone for this past year while they considered what actions had to be made until several scary incidents caused Marissa and her brother Chet to pursue hiring in-house care.

A contract needed to be signed before care could be hired.

Marissa brought the paperwork last night and carefully explained to her mother what it meant.  She asked her to sign it.  Alice was suspicious and didn't want a stranger living in her home.  She didn't understand why this was even necessary.  As they closed in on the first hour of discussion Marissa lost her carefully controlled patience and they began to argue.  Marissa threatened that Alice would have to go to a "home' if she did not sign the papers, which was true.  After another hour and exhaustion on both sides, they were at an impasse and Marissa left the papers on the kitchen table and headed home.

Her morning broke a restless night of no sleep and she called her mother early as she did every morning since her mother had been diagnosed.  Alice was not an easy person to care for, she had had mild schizophrenia for years and her children were always on egg shells around her.  Ever since Alice's divorce from her father decades ago, the burden of care had fallen on her.  Some days were normal, but some were filled with upsetting emotions.  This new dementia diagnosis was more fuel to a simmering fire.

Marissa decided to call Chet, her younger brother, an engineer who with his wife and little boy lived a few miles away.  She had held off because Chet had problems of his own.  He had been diagnosed years ago in his twenties with inflammatory bowel disease and had spent years on treatments that worked for a while and then failed.  These past months he had worked from home because the symptoms had become so debilitating.

They decided to drive over to the house together.  Although they both had keys the door was unlocked and they walked into the familiar apartment.  Everything was in place, the bed had not been slept in, Alice's purse and keys and credit cards were on the table, and Alice was not there.  They knocked on nearby doors and no one had seen her.  They walked in different directions in a mile or so around the neighborhood calling her.  Hours passed and nothing was found to give them a clue to her whereabouts.  They did not want to, but decided to call the police.  Because of Alice's medical condition, the police immediately dispatched two units and began their own canvasing as well as looking through address books.  Marissa made calls.  The afternoon was coming to an end and Marissa and Chet called friends who came out in winter jackets with flashlights began a grid search assisting the police.  By sunset the police had both search dogs and cadaver dogs that worked for the next 24 hours across the suburbs and outside woods.  Temperatures dropped below zero in the dark and held on through the morning.

There were no security cameras to give a clue.  Someone who lived in the apartments said they had seen her pacing back and forth in the parking lot at about 10:00 PM.  Maybe waiting for a friend?  But they had called everyone they knew and nothing turned up.

Facebook and other social media were used as tools to find Alice with recent photos of her.  Another long and anxious day passed and still no clues were found.

Marissa was blaming herself for having the argument and for pushing her mother and for leaving her.  She was wracked with guilt.  Chet had discovered some paperwork that Alice had drawn up with a lawyer more than a year ago that had given him Power of Attorney...something he had not known...and now he was wracked with guilt.  He could have signed the contract. They had failed her.

It has now been over a week and no sign of Alice.  Since she does not have money, credit cards, a phone or car, it is a real mystery.

This is a true story of friends of one my children with names and details changed.  It is very different from TV when the tragedy is being lived by people you know.

It is a Dangerous World Out There

This past fall while traveling in Florida and visiting some long time friends, I met a man.  He was a childhood friend of my friend and they had not seen him in decades although they lived in the same state.  The man was in his late 70's I am guessing.   He was tall and handsome.  He used to be an engineer.  I surmised that he was a very successful engineer because he recently lived in a beautiful house in a very nice part of Florida, one of those impressive gated communities.  He lived there alone and I think his wife had passed years ago.  He had been a community leader explaining he had thrown many a party for political candidates.  (Stop me if I have told this story.  I swear I have the memory of a gnat.)

We were talking about weather, food, filling time because his car would not start.  He had come for a visit to my friend's house and could not leave.  He was restless and impatient.  That type that I know so well that runs companies or manages projects.  The type that wear out the carpet and check their  watch every few minutes.  It was getting dark and both he and the neighbor lady he brought did not like to drive in the dark.  This is common among the elderly and a joke among the middle-aged in Florida.

The conversation got around to his new smaller neighborhood and why he had sold the big house.  I assumed he was going  to say that it was too large for him, too hard to maintain, too expansive to use or that his friends had all moved away.  Instead he said he had moved because he used to wake up in the middle  of the night listening for noises and thinking someone would break in and kill him...not rob him, kill him.  Now maybe I could read something into this, like who had he wronged over  the years or what did he know that we did not about his past, but I really think there was nothing nefarious here.  There was no crime spree any greater than any other place in the state or even the states for that matter in his area.

I think he was that man that never was comfortable in a community unless he was the leader running things.  I do not think he was the man that trusted his fellow man.  He was not the man that figured most people are honest, most people are fair, most people do not have hidden agendas.  He was the man  who would vote to go to war first and ask questions later because the world is a dangerous and ugly place.

Last week I read a news story about an incident on the mass transit train  in England.  A man, large and military looking, got on the car  and began  having an emotional attack of some kind.  He was talking to himself, thrashing about and terrifying the other passengers.  A woman in her 50's or 60's was sitting at the end of the car where he was standing and she reached out and took his hand when he took a pause in his emotional outburst.  He collapsed to the floor in tears and sat there the rest of the ride  holding her hand.  At the end when it was time for him to get off he said softly to her, "Thanks moma (mum?)." and exited the train.

When this woman was later interviewed they asked her if she had been  afraid.  She said, "Of course."  but she explained that her instinct told her to try to help.  She did not know how he would react, but  she  knew he needed something.  Yes, I know that this could  have turned out so much worse for  her, but I truly feel the odds were on her side.  The world is not that dangerous and ugly if we use caution and  love.

It is Not Adding Up

When I began to volunteer with the county Adult Basic Education program it was a very slow start.  I took a three hour training/meeting that involved more in the way of forms and cautions about privacy, legal issues, etc. than it did about learning theories or learning styles. While initially they had told me they really needed someone living at my very rural end of the county, months passed before I was contacted with a student.  During that time I was certainly romanticizing this project and envisioned hours of success and happiness and goal completion!

As I wrote in a prior post, it was to teach math...not reading, which was a bummer for me.  I only volunteered for math because I felt guilty not trying to help students.  It was high school math, not Algebra or Geometry, etc. thank goodness.  I was told not to contact the student until I got my "packet."  Someone spent a good part of a day pulling together all kinds of exercises from various curriculum books, included the answers, and put them all in an inch thick notebook which I picked up at the local high school.

I looked over the exercises.  I slowly became terrified over my research hours because I honestly do not remember the details of combining fractions and the rules for decimals, I mostly just used a calculator in my daily life these days.  Word problems are another challenge and can be easy or difficult.  Anyway, I studied and prepared and then called my "student," a 50 something black woman who had dropped out of high school at 17 due to pregnancy.  This is such a tragic and common story.  You can go here to read about our very first meeting.

We have now had over 12 sessions together.  Our meetings have been erratic to put it generously.  She cancels about 20% of the time due to a granddaughter in the hospital, her flu, a grandson she has to get ready for coast guard deployment, her moving to a new location, a migraine, and this last cancellation was due to a fall on hard concrete while doing her job.  I myself had to cancel over the Thanksgiving holidays for travel and we did have a "snow" day.  She cannot afford voice mail and when I call I just have to wait for her to call me back to touch base.  She does not seem to have email either.  That is another challenge.

The program lets her take her test early if she has enough formal class hours plus hours with me.  I sent in the paperwork and while I discouraged her from taking the test in January she went ahead and took it anyway.  She did pass her reading but did only slightly better on the math side and thus failed.  I have not seen the tests and while I have asked her and the county offices to let me know her areas of weakness, I do not seem to get much help. 

She still seems enthusiastic to meet this challenge, but also shows up and then cannot read the problems because she forgets her glasses.  I have been around the world a few times and know exactly what is going on here.  She does not want to quit and yet she does not want to continue.

I have scheduled the library study room for 6 more weeks and will continue with her into late spring and about 12 more classes, but realize at that time if she is not ready, she may need to find a new volunteer teacher.  I think she is not allowed to take the test again until September, but I am not even sure about that scheduling.  I will give it my all through these next months, but feel a little disheartened that I am failing her and she is failing herself.

Update

Regarding movie/video preservation it is the 16mm and 8mm home movies that turn  to acid.  They do not like dramatic temperature changes or  being stored in very warm places.  Once these films start their "vinegar" transformation they can  no longer be saved.  We had converted all of our reel-to-reel type movies years ago because some were almost 100 years old from my husbands family!

But at the time we converted them we converted them to VHS as that was all that was available.  Now those  VHS are getting old and must be converted to digital.  The DVD's are not recommended as long term archival  medium any more, so we may have to put them on flash  drives,  or  hard drives and as back up  store them some safe place "in the cloud."  This process is actually a scary and expensive nightmare.

My wedding photo album is fading because I did not  have money for a professional photographer and it is snapshots taken by friends, so that is something I need to also  send away for professional restoration  soon!  It is sad that we are not going to live forever, even virtually, it seems.

What is that smell?

Is it a bouquet or a stench?

I lived in an apartment for two years before my retirement.  It was a change I had to make because we sold our house and had no where to live.  We were retiring in a few years and had not decided WHERE we wanted to live, and felt the housing market was too squirrely to wait for another few years when we might find it more difficult to sell the big old house.

The big positives in this new lifestyle were that it took an hour to clean the whole place.  I lived across the street from my workplace.  Everything I needed including shopping, hardware, restaurants, cultural activities and mass transportation were just blocks away.  It was a new lazy way to live without the yard work and the low utility expenses.

The negatives were that I rarely got to know my neighbors.  We may meet at the mailbox but many tenants came for just a year and then left.  My view from the apartment was of a parking lot and the rooftops of business buildings.  I missed my gardening.  There was little room to entertain company unless you went to the lobby with human traffic and stale air, and the kitchen was not exactly set up for cooking.  Our first Thanksgiving I actually bought a large box Thanksgiving dinner from the local supermarket.

The other adjustment was the closeness of living spaces with strangers.  Fortunately there was only one yelling match that took place in the stairwell off my kitchen door. 

But I also frequently smelled curry in the hallway.  Now I do love curry but not everyday and certainly not that stale smell that lingers in the morning as I ride the elevator down to work. There are those commercials that remind people the smells of their pet can be hidden to them but very off-putting to others.  You can always tell when a toddler lives in a house no matter how careful they are in changing the little one.  And there is the joke of stale cabbage odors and cigarette smoke in homes of the elderly.

Well, once my new home had off-gassed its odors of wood, sheet rock and paint, we noticed something a little off in the master bedroom closet.  Now to clarify, this closet is HUGE as The Donald would say.  It is not only walk-in but there was room enough to put the grand children's portable crib when they came to visit.  We checked out the shoes, billed sports caps, and dark corners.  I checked hubby's suits which he no longer wore and we had some of them cleaned.  We could not identify the smell and eventually we no longer smelled it...because we got used to it.

Once or twice when my son visited he commented that the closet smelled funny.  He did not make a big deal out of it, probably thinking old people shed skin and stuff, and therefore, their closets smell funny.

We never could figure it out until yesterday.

Hubby was going through all of his old photos albums, his parents albums and diaries etc. in a box on the top shelf.  He called to me and said he had figured out what was making the odor.  In his hands was an 8mm movie tape in a metal case.  I could smell the acid yards before he reached me, the vinegar syndrome where an acid is created by the decay of the ascetic base.  Fortunately we had converted this to VHS years before, but now I have been reminded that we have to digitize even that medium.  VHS gets brittle and fades, to say nothing of the fact that we have only one VHS reader in the house and it is part of a TV set.

The movie tape acid was so strong that we had to wrap it in a plastic garbage and take it out to the garage garbage bin.  Even today I can detect the smell in the garbage!

Now when son comes down to visit, I am going to take him to the closet for a sniff test.