when the moon comes over the mountain

Tonight I chucked all my chores and my carefully devleoped plan of what I would do when I got home from work--write letters, do e-mail, blog myself senseless, clean the house, grocery shop and collapse into bed--and I went out with a friend to dinner. She's my visiting teacher and we love to gab! Quel surprise!!

We went to dinner, talked a lot and then I took her out to the job site of the house my company is building (not my company as in I own it, but my company as in the one I work for). We toured through the house and then came outside just as the sunset was at its most beautiful and the moon was rising in the sky--it was huge and golden yellow and the sunset was golden and purple. There was a beautiful breeze blowing after a hot day and we stood and talked for another hour as the light disappeared and the sky turned dark blue. When the moon comes over the mountain (a lyric from an old song), we should definitely be there to appreciate it. No painting or photograph can capture the beauty of the earth and tonight Charlene and I were privileged to witness some of that beauty as the night captured the day.

Not only did I have fun with a friend, but I was able to enjoy a beautiful sight and, guess what, the chores I was going to do waited patiently for me to come home. They will all be there tomorrow morning like hungry little children when I wake up and they will be none the worse for waiting, and I am all the better for having taken the opportunity to choose being a friend.

time flies when you're covered with honey

Yep. I missed a day. I'm sure the huge crowd of blog readers is soooooo disappointed that there are mental health clinics all over America filled with readers who missed my eloquent and ever stimulating view of the world...a.k.a. weird and erratic.

Well, it's 1015PM and I don't know where my children are, so I guess I'll have to put a bumper sticker on my car that says "IDC" (I don't care), next to the one I put on in protest to all those stupid "Proud Parent of an Honor Student" bumper stickers--who came up with that prideful piece of gluey braggadocio? Wasn't it the child who made the honor roll? Is mom or dad trying to take credit (or are they hoping that some of that intelligence might rub off on them)? My protest bumper sticker reads, "Proud Parent of Truly Lame Loser Children". And I will take credit for their state of being (or not being so intellectually swift). Thank you.

Tomorrow's Friday and that means the weekend fast approaches. Let's hear it for a no-work weekend! Huzzah!! I may pretend I won't work, but that's just a big lie. I'll do household and yard chores, but at least I'm not on someone else's schedule. Wait, I don't get paid either. Maybe no-work weekends aren't a profitable way to spend time... Isn't the saying, "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy". Well if that is true, then Paris Hilton is little Miss Sharpie. And that is why time flies will find you if you're covered with honey.

11 hours of pounding sand

Today I got to work 11 hours straight, in the heat, mostly spent at the job site trying to find out just how good my deodorant is (pretty good because no one who got near me passed out). I think some people lead mundane or boring lives--they don't get to work that many hours or in 98 degree heat with no AC or enough water to drink in order to replenish the buckets of sweatpiration I expended. Some people have nice places to work with AC, snacks, a cafeteria, and they leave when the hour hand hits 5PM! I must have gotten in the wrong line again, because I don't have snacks or a cafeteria and I rarely leave at 5PM. I do have AC when I'm in my office, so I guess that's a plus, but when I have to be on the job site (because all the cabinets for the house have been delivered and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum have been left to install them), there are no "perks" unless you count turning red and sweating profusely as "perks". Did you know that perks is skrep spelled backwards. There. Now you have an important piece of information that you can toss about at your next social event when you need to impress someone. Well, I have to go put together something for dinner and drink about 10 gallons of water--perhaps a Depends is in order for sleeping tonight or I'll be dreaming about floating down a river and it will be one level above lucid dreaming...

the natural way with spiders

To continue yesterday's theme--I did some spring cleaning (even though it's officially summer) and part of my herculean effort was to wash off the siding on my house. My house is white, but it was beginning to look a little beige after a winter of rain and a spring full of windy days and dust, so I decided to take the hose and spray it clean again. (I was also looking for a reason to get wet on a warm day.) I've been letting spiders take over my house for the last several weeks and they have been more than happy to put their webs (and captured prey) everywhere--in every niche, corner, nook, overhang, etc. But today, I bid them all farewell, apologized and turned the hose on the house. My house looks white again and spiffy clean! No longer does it sport drapes of silken threads!! But I fear that I will be paying a big price for this "good riddance" to spidey webs. I thought that maybe the spiders would enjoy a refreshing shower and an opportunity to build an even better web, and that I was actually helping them, giving them an opportunity to improve themselves--hopefully someplace other than on my house.

Tonight I will sleep with my mouth closed, even if that requires epoxy lipstick, in order to avoid swallowing more than my share of spiders--six a year is more than enough, thank you! I have decided that revenge of the spideys might be the order of the day (or night) and so I am also not taking a shower tonight, hoping that the oh-so-pungent odor I have worked up with all the yardwork I did today might keep those eight-legged critters at bay. At least it will make them a little dizzy or faint and perhaps they'll decide that crawling on me, running through my three hairs or playing hopscotch on my forehead isn't worth the odoriferousness of me and I'll be given a reprieve...until the next time I inadvertently walk through a web.

what should you do for spiders?

I have a lot of spiders building nests around my house. Daily I walk through them and end up with a silken "hair net" on my face and head. I apologize profusely to the spiders whose home I have just destroyed, but then I explain to them that I need to be able to walk out my door, out of my garage, through my back yard gate in order to function. They seem to be oblivious to my needs and continue to rebuild their webs right where I just wreaked havoc with them. Perhaps I have the dumb spiders in my yard, the ones who continue to make mistake after mistake and never learn. Perhaps I have the stubborn spiders. They won't give an inch. They are going to stand their territory. They are going to prove me the weaker one--I don't know about weaker, but I'm definitely the one sporting the most silken threads on my person. They will continue to build webs where I have ingress and egress and believe I will just give up and will remain secluded in my home until I expire and then they will cover my entire abode with webs! My house will look like a big mohair yarn ball with creepy crawly things in and around it. Or I could just take my broom and beat the webs and the haughty spiders to a hairy, mashed pulp and be done with it. But I worry that other spiders will hear about what I've done and I will find a convention of protesting spideys on my porch one morning or they will sneak into my bedroom at night and turn me into Gulliver. I'll wake up to find myself tethered to the bed, unable to move. I'll bet that will be a first for an excuse for calling in "sick"! Meanwhile, I will continue to debate with myself about what the proper course of attack should be. My apologies to Charlotte and her web and all her cousins...

today was just ducky, thank you

Whilst I was at a job site talking to one of the trades today, I heard the smallest little quackery-cheep sound and discovered a very baby ducklet walking about at the entry. It was soooooooo cute and it obviously had misplaced its little self because the closest body of water--an irrigation canal was about 300 feet away. The painter (a neat lady who used to do bird rescues, mostly ducks, in Alaska) and I capture it after a mini-chase of sorts and she said she would take it home and put it with her duck hen that had just hatched some eggs. Adoption in the animal kingdom! It works!! We did search for the mother duck, but could not find any other ducks in the area. I'm so glad we found this little fluffy creature and that Wanda was able to care for it. Baby animals are the cutest, well, except for the wart hog, the hyena and perhaps a hippo.

Tonight I went to a BBQ at a new hardware/lumber yard. Yep, I know all of you are jealous because you don't get to have this much fun. You probably go to dinner parties, or dances, or concerts, or out to fancy dinners, but I wander amongst the hammers, drill presses and ladders of life. I know a good deal when I find it... Anyhoo, I was invited as a customer of the company and I met some neat people (who also like construction materials and hardware items), had good eats and won two prizes in the drawing--a brand new 8' ladder (now my life is complete!) and a $50 gift card to ACE Hardware (the sponsoring company). I gave away the ladder to two of the ladies (sisters) at my table, but I kept the gift card because I'll find something fun for my garden or house at the store. Food and gifts. Two of my favorites.

So that is why my day was ducky and lucky, and I'm counting my blessings!

If it's Tuesday, this must be my life

I just spent an hour and a half watching teenagers and little kids swimming in a pool I was visiting with the "mom" of the household and we were sitting by the pool in the shade, with a wonderful little breeze blowing. It was delightful! It took me back to the days when I had a pool and it was full of kids (and a very enthusiastic Irish Setter) and we took trips through darkest Africa on a floating lounge, always ending up under Schweitzer Falls (the slide).

These kids were having a grand time and they will sleep well tonight because they were able to expend all those child calories of physical and emotional energy and they were just having fun--without anything electronic or "entertaining" to draw their attention away from the sheer joy of the moment. Children need to play. It is essential to their nature and their learning capacity. Adults need to play as well. It is essential to remind us of our once-not-s0-long-ago childhood, our innocence and the pleasure we took in learning through play.

Gray matters...

You know you are getting old when you walk into a room and you can't remember why, but leaving the room and returning doesn't help because you forget why you're leaving the room and sometimes you forget to return to the room. You stop, stand very still and you try thinking, "Why did I come in here?" But, the only noise you hear is a series of little cracking sounds and they are coming from your cranium and you realize that your gray matter is brittle and it is shattering into little slivers because you are putting such pressure on it. Shaking your head is not a good idea because these little slivers are pointy and they will impale themselves on what is left of the good, non-brittle parts of your brain and your brain will start to look like a sea urchin and you will get a terrific headache! The best strategy is to always carry notepaper (sticky notes are my favorite) and a pen with you at all times. As your little lightblub begins to glow and a teensy idea emerges, you can write it down. Then, when you go into "the room", you will know why. You won't have to strain your brain or drain your brain, you'll just have to read the sticky note. It is important that you do not put sticky notes on your forehead. First of all, you'll just look weird and demented and the nice men in white suits will be coming for you soon, and second of all, you won't be able to read the sticky note unless the room you enter has a mirror and if you leave the room you wanted to enter to go to find a room with a mirror, you might get confused and not know why you entered the room with the mirror and then your sticky note, written for another room, won't make any sense and more of your gray cells will begin to crackle and you'll look like an arts and crafts decoupage project gone wrong. I believe that crackling gray cells spread their joy by making your skin crackle as well. People who get Botox injections are just kidding themselves--they may look smoother on the outside, but we know what's happening up in that noggin of theirs... We'll have a whole generation of elderly men and women with smooth skin, dyed hair, whitened teeth (mostly their own), Lasik surgered eyes, but their ability to think won't be worth a lemonade stand in the Arctic.

little kids say and do the darndest things

I work in the church nursery, so I get to play with little kids every Sunday for two hours. I don't have to change smelly diapers, so that's a plus. We play with puzzles, Play Doh, cars, pretend food (there are a gazllion germs on every piece of play food in the nursery, but we nursery leaders figure those germs are so busy battling each other that they don't go after the kids who lick and chew on them--either that or the saliva drowns the little buggers [the germs, not the kids]), musical instruments, Legos, trucks, a doll house, a big playhouse, balls, lots of pretend animals, and we have very short lessons for very short attention spans (the teacher's, again, not the kids). We do fun craft items that deal mostly with glue. Little kids love glue! They love sticking things on paper, in their hair, in someone else's hair, onto teacher's dress, on the table. I have a deep appreication for the glue-meisters in the toddler world. My youngest son was the best user of glue ever. He could use an entire bottle of Elmer's on one small piece of paper. The back seat of my van was a testament to the amount of glue he was able to squeeze out onto the paper. I never worried about cleaning up the back seat--it had a covering of glue and it cleaned up as slick as a whistle. It was a little crackly and hard to sit on, but it did keep the staining of the upholstery to a minimum. Some people's cars had leather, others had Naugahyde, and most had that velvety cloth, but I had Elmer's! Back to the nursery--today we went outside to listen to all the wonderful noises in nature. We heard cars backfiring, motorcycles with missing mufflers, horns honking and sirens blasting. Yep, we learned that we should be thankful for our ears. We also learned to be thankful for our fingers because we can put them in our ears to stop the noises that Mother Nature didn't intend. All in all, the kids were happy to run back into the building, into the air-conditioning and back to their toys. Sometimes we are grateful for modern inventions and the laughter of children playing.

Saturday Night Fever...

And we're not talking John Travolta here. We've had a cool day today--only in the high 80s, but the heat is returning with expected temps of 101 tomorrow, so why wait, why not start the "fever" tonight...no white suit and brown polyester, super pointy shirt collar, or fingers pointing skyward--just thoughts of how to incorporate ice cubes in clothing to keep cool.

Those of us who live in the central valley area of California realize that heat (lots of it) is necessary for the ripening of fruits and veggies, but those of us who aren't fruits or veggies don't want to "ripen". Until this new heat wave passes--probably about September--we'll be using our slightly fried brains to try to figure out how to stay cool as a cucumber (Where did this saying come from? Cucumbers left in the sun aren't cool, they're half-way to becoming pickles. Add some water and spices and they're Vlasic classics).

I never thought living in Alaska was a good option. However, that northern clime is looking more and more enticing. Meanwhile, short of a major move north, we'll continue to give most of our disposable income to the local utility company and bless the name of whoever invented air conditioning--wasn't it Mr. Carrier?

where's the swimming pool?

The weather forecaster finally got something right--it's hot, hot, hot here today! That makes up for all the "it's going to rain" forecasts that came to nothing this past winter.

I went to the grocery store on my way home today, my usual thrill on Friday afternoon, and I broke the speed limit coming home because everything I bought was either melting or cooking while I drove through town. So much for the AC in my car. It was no match for Mr. Sun, a.k.a. "I'm Hot and I Know It". Now the rest of us know it too. No one likes a smarty pants...

I had great ambitions for this afternoon--left work early today, but ended up talking on my cell phone in the parking lot of my office to trades and suppliers for half-an-hour before I could actually leave the area. Now I'm thinking I'll just take a little nap and then I'll do all my "chores" tonight when it's a little cooler. The AC is running and it feels so nice. No wonder people lived short lives and were grumpy in the "olden days". They wore corsettes, button-up shoes, high necked shirts and blouses and had no AC. I'd have been grouchy and died young myself. The alternative in modern society is to be grouchy and take a long nap. ZZZZZZZzzzzz

we're having a heat wave...

Remember when doing the wave at a sporting event or other large crowd gathering was fun. Well, when there's a heat wave, all the fun is gone and no one wants to be in a large crowd of sweaty, smelly, cranky people period. There's no coordinating of standing and waving arms above heads--no one wants to raise his or her hands above heads because there are some major sweat stains under the arms and there is, as mentioned a couple of days ago, a very sizable chance that your deodorant has taken a vacation and left your armpits to fend for themselves. Armpits do not fend well. They of-fend. Sorry, I couldn't resist that. My apologies to all the pun-o-philes out there in bloggerslund. Anywhoo, we continue to play Icarus here in YC and all of our wings are melting. If I want eggs for breakfast, I don't have to fire up the stove, I can just take the frying pan outside, place it on the sidewalk for about 5 minutes, drop in the eggs and, voila, I have fried eggs (or scrambled if I have the energy to push a fork around in the yolky mixutre). Toast can be made by place bread on the hood of the car and the fruit is ripening and heating up on the tree in my yard (apricots), that I can just take one, open it and spread it on the auto-toasted toast. I have learned that too many apricots are not a good thing. Ahem. It's a delicate subject. Let's just say that there's no place for Metamucil when there are lots of fresh apricots around...

Tomorrow the weather forecaster has promised more 100 degree weather, but then Saturday, a cold front is moving in and we'll only hit 93! Get out the woolies and the snowboots!

new theme for the week

Have I told you how hot it is here in Northern California? Aren't northern countries supposed to be cooler than southern countries? Well, so much for that theory of geography. We're sweatin' with the oldies, the newies and all the in-betweenies. Tomorrow is scheduled to 102 degrees, but who the Hades cares whether it's 101 or 102 or 105. Once it goes over 100, all of us find our deodorant failing to work, beads of perspiration rolling down our faces and, for those who wear eye make-up, the sweaty racoon look is in! On hot days, you wake up, take a shower and feel refreshed, then you put on your clean clothes, your make-up and you walk out to your car (which, by the way, doesn't cool down until you get to work and so your make-up--so carefully applied--is now dribbling down the crevices and wrinkles of your face making your face look like a relief map from Alice Cooper's back pack). Hair flattens out, and clothes cling. Now the combination of the melting make-up, the wet, pinhead hairdo and the clinging clothes is a sight to behold. I'm just not sure who should be beholding it. Old folks will pass out from the shock. Small children will need years of therapy and teen-agers will take more drugs because they won't want to deal with this kind of reality. On that happy note, I'll say good-night and go turn on the AC...

reasons I want to be good

Today it was almost 100 degrees here in Yuba City, CA, bean sprout capital of the planet. All the sprouts have wilted and most of the people who live here have turned mean and cranky and just a bit melty. Who invented heat? Satan!! That's who and he is torturing the people of my town right now as I type away. All the fruits and vegetables are trying so hard to grow nice and juicy and ripe for all the world to buy and Mr. Hothead Sun is going to turn everything into a dried up version of whatever. Prunes weren't invented by some clever person who wondered what would happen if a plum got all wrinkly. They happened because the heat stayed too long and the plums all got sucked dry and turned into prunes before they were ever picked. Now we just hurry the process by picking them before the summer's heat hits and we run them through a very hot "room" on a conveyor belt. They start out as lovely plums and end up looking like what Joan Rivers would be without her 600 plastic surgeries. And, yes, dried fruit did come to us from Egypt and the Middle East, but have you ever seen the "put it in the sun for a bunch of time and let nature remove all the liquid from it" fruits that those areas produce? They look like leather. They act like leather--good quick fix for a shoe with a hole in the sole. And they taste like leather with a hint of fruitiness. (Yes, I know there are some not-so-nice spins on this last sentiment, but leave them unsaid. Thank you.) Well, now I'm feeling a bit piqued about all this heat so early in the not-yet-summer season, so I think I'll go out and water my lawn and myself and save the crankiness for another day...

Can we exchange Monday for another day...

Could Monday be the new Friday, at least this week and then when Friday comes around, I'll switch them back and that way I'll get a weekend in the middle of my week and a weekend at the end and that means I'll only pretend to work for three days instead of five. I'm running out of convincing ways of appearing to do my tasks. I have learned that I can almost go into a trance while seated at my desk staring at my computer, but the give-away is that just as I am passing into the netherworld of unconsciousness, my head droops, I drool a little and the sizzle from my keyboard jerks me right back into the real world. There are only so many excuses I can give for why I need a new keyboard. I have no children or errant pets at work, so I can't blame them and no one else uses my computer or my office, so it looks like the finger of blame is pointing straight at moi! That's why I need four days off every week--fewer opportunities for shorting out keyboards and more time to do what I really want to do with my time. Number one on that list is DO NOT WORK TOO OFTEN OR TOO LONG OR TOO HARD! Number two is DO NOT GET COMFORTABLE AT WORK AND START TO LIKE WHAT YOU ARE DOING--IT COULD BE HABIT-FORMING AND PEOPLE WILL GET THE WRONG IDEA ABOUT YOU; THAT YOU ARE A CONTRIBUTING MEMBER OF SOCIETY WHEN WHAT YOU REALLY WANT TO BE IS A LAZY, GOOD-FOR-NOTHING (SOMETHING MY MOTHER WARNED ME ABOUT MY WHOLE LIFE). Thanks Mom.

second childhood

Not that I ever left my first childhood--why abandon something that allows you to play, to get dirty, to eat what you want, to take naps, not to have to hold a "real" job, to get an allowance just for making your bed and putting your clothes in the dresser--but this evening I was re-united with two friends from my high school days. We still feel 16 even if we don't look that way, and, when we get together and talk about the "good old days", we mostly remember the good things and what it was like to be a little naive, a lot hopeful, and ready to challenge the world, make it a better place and make some memories in the bargain (whereas most full-blown adults over 60 often spend a lot of time talking about memories instead of making them or expecting to make them in the future). We hadn't been together in about 20 years, but the years melted away as we strained to remember names and faces and where people were in the here and now of 2007. We talked about classmates who were no longer around--most of the Class of '62 now are 62 and it just seemed a little young to have lost a few dozen friends. We talked about teachers and principals and vice-principals (why are vice-principals always the disciplinarians--does it have something to do with their having a title with the word "vice" in it?), coaches and driver-ed teachers (now there's a group that might experience early death after what we put them through driving around town in the dual-brake school vehicle, turning without signalling, backing into trees or other cars, and trying to run over pedestrians in the crosswalk--who'd have thought they had the right-of-way?) and guidance counselors. All in all it was a great evening, a pre-requisite to our class reunion coming up this fall. We graduated from high school 45 years ago, but it didn't seem like such a far-distant milestone as my classmate, Janet Balbutin, and her younger sister, Ava, and I talked through dinner and into the twilight of evening. Some people say you can't go home again and others say it's impossible to recapture your youth, but that's what high school reunions do--they bring you "home" again to those people with whom you shared the growing-up years, the getting-through-teen-age-perils years, the anxiety of who-we-might-be-in-life years and on that one night when we spend time with our classmates, we are 16 again, and the fact that we are in the twilight of our lives, fades into the background as the first song or two from 1962 plays and we look past the receding hairlines, the bi-focals, the wrinkles, and into those youthful faces that we once were...

Checking in at the Hilton

Well, I guess some one woke up (or a job or two was threatened) and Ms. Hilton is now back in jail--rash and all.

Hey, if having a rash will keep me out of jail, I have a plan. Every late spring when the weather here in Northern California heats up and I get a rash just thinking about moving around in the heat, I'll commit all my crimes and then, when I get arrested, I'll declare that I have a rash (and I will have one so it's not a lie), and I'll be set free and I get to wear a keen ankle bracelet too and stay home! Hey, that means I can't go to work. Dang Jethro! That means I can sleep in. Wander around in my jammies all day long if I want. Not have to answer to anyone but my probation officer when he or she calls to check on me--that will make me feel "special". I think little Paris is on to something, but, of course, she does have advantages over me. She's rich. Her parents have mega-buck lawyers. She can whine and cry and fling herself about much better than I can. I just look like a blonde-haired version of the Michelin man whose whine sounds more like a motor that needs oil, and, when I cry, my mascara runs and my eyes look racoon-ish and the last time I flung myself anywhere, my upper torso walked sideways for days. So I guess I'll just continue to obey the law and find some other way to get my 15 minutes of fame... Aren't Paris Hilton's 15 minutes up? Oh, wait, she has the resources to buy lots more time. I wonder how much my jar of change will get me...

Thurs is the day before Fri

Yep. We're back to that old thought--tomorrow's Friday. And because I have been very, very good and put in 41 hours as of today, I'm going to leave work early tomorrow so I can take care of my errands and be home before 5PM. Then I really, really, really will mow my front and side lawns. The lawn has gone to seed and it looks like an ethereal mini-forest. I'll have to wrestle with myself emotionally and be tough enough to cut down the little "trees", knowing that I am ruining the habitat of many little sprites and fairykins. I'm sure they will now gang up with the spiders that I either escort out of my house or accidentally crush or drown (and it really is accidental) and they'll all be after me. I won't be safe coming or going or sleeping. That means I'll have sleepless nights and my work efforts will become even more pathetic than ever and I will look forward to Fridays with even more intensity, which will probably stress me out and I'll have a heart attack while mowing down the fantastical forest known as my front lawn, and I will die whilst the little "folks" are tethering me to the ground just like "Gulliver's Travels". Is it Friday yet...

I can't believe it's taken this long...

It's been four days since I've hit the blog trail and my verbal hiking boots are a little shifty and scuffed. Too much work. Too little life. Too few gray cells at work...

Today's topic is "Why am I on the computer at 9:09PM and I haven't had dinner or done anything useful since I put in an 11 hour day today?" I really do need to get a life, filch it, steal it outright, buy one, trade for one...something!! It's not that I don't find work rewarding. It does put the proverbial roof over my head and food on my table (if I ever get there in the evening to eat something--and cereal doesn't count), but too many hours of work make Jack a dull guy and me a nitwit!! But it is Wednesday (weirdest sounding day of the week name) and that means we're heading to Thursday and the weekend. This is a recurring theme in my life. I'm actually going to thrill myself this Friday by leaving work early so I can get home and...ta-da! mow the lawn!! I may have to take some Valium so I don't get too excited about the prospect of my Friday evening activity. Of course, then I'll not be able to drive "under the influence" and I won't make it to work and then I won't earn any money and then I won't be able to pay my mortgage and then I'll get all depressed and I'll find myself on another night sitting at the computer at 9PM writing about how my life is spiralling out of control.

Well, just because I want to end this on a perky note, I'd like to say thank you to my huge audience of blog readers--those two or three brave souls who check out my blog occasionally because they just can't believe someone 62 can be this strange. Did I ever mention that my mother was traveling through Roswell, pregnant with me, when there was a report of aliens landing? Take me to your leader...earthling. Oh, heck. Take me to the dinner table.

falling off my flip-flops

I wear flip-flops when I water my yard. It makes no sense to wear fancy shoes, or shoes that are difficult to put on or take off since I come inside for the half-hour needed for each section of my lawn. I have sprinklers in one small area of my backyard, so I do manual labor to get water to the rest of the thirsty little blades of grass. But I digress. So, there I am in my flip-flops turning on the sprinkler or moving it to a new area and I always get wet, especially my feet. I set the sprinkler and walk away. I haven't gone more than three steps when my feet go slip-sliding away on my flip-flops (we used to call these items thongs when I was growing up, but if I talk about my thongs slipping, some people would get the wrong image and idea and we do not want that happening). It must be the foot cream I use to keep my feet from looking as old as they are. The water hits my feet, the lotion becomes slime and my feet go sliding. I begin to totter and teeter and I resemble a drunk who is in need of a major sleep-off. I then have to make a decision--go barefoot and risk stepping on a snail and feeling the crunch/squish directly or keep the flip-flops on and risk breaking my neck. The snails lose. The flip-flops come off and I am once again able to walk like the sober human being I am. I've tried several different slip-on style sandals and flip-flops, but they all have slick inner soles. My question is--why would anyone create a slick, slippery inner-sole for a shoe being worn around the water--beach, pool, lake, etc. by a person who will be getting wet and will probably be wearing sunscreen lotion on his/her feet. Someone at Sandals R Us is laughing and probably buying stock in medical insurance.

Did I miss a day?

Yesterday was Thursday, all day. I checked my calendar, the Internet and a few other sources and, yep, it was Thursday. I think I was taking a ride on the Mothership that day, because I forgot to blog. So now it's Friday and I don't want to start a trend--not writing about my strange and sometimes pathetic life every day. Some people might wonder if I've lost control of myself (well, yes, but that happened a long time ago), and other people might wonder if I'd lost my mental stability (well, there's never been a question about that; the only thing stable in my life is the one I occasionally visit that is filled with horses), and a few stragglers might wonder if I've wandered off somewhere (wandering is my specialty and I've been perfecting it for years--my feet wander, my eyes, wander, my fingers do the walking and they wander, and, mostly, my mind wanders).

Friday is the end of the week and, boy howdy, am I glad! That means there are two days I don't have to go to work for someone else. I don't have to keep someone else's schedule, meet someone else's expectations. Saturday and Sunday belong to me, and if I feel like staring at a cloud and trying to figure out what its shape resembles, I can do it--refer to the wandering mind noted above (a perfect mental environment for cloud watching). Tomorrow I am going to lunch with several of my friends from high school--one advantage of moving home to be with my parents was being with many of my high school friends. We're planning our 45th year high school reunion. It takes several of us to remember things--it's kind of a group effort, but eventually we do remember names, places, etc. Our reunion will take place in late October (hopefully the 90 and 100 degree days will have packed their bags and taken a hike by then) and we'll all get together and look through fuzzy-focused eyes at each other, try to remember names (staring at name tags on someone's chest is just a little too familiar for my taste), ask when we either can't remember or read (whoever is in charge of printing names needs to write them really BIG!), and we'll check out weight gains (anyone who is decidedly thinner than when we were last together is not allowed to come), hair losses, pictures of kids, grandkids, spouses, significant others, life partners, and ex-whatevers. We'll sing our Alma Mater making lots of mistakes and hoping our false teeth don't fall out when we hit the high notes, and we'll all remember how great it was to be a Honker--yes, folks, that is the name of my high school's mascot. It wasn't embarrassing when I was growing up to talk about being a Honker, because we didn't know there was anything weird about having a Canadian goose as our "team leader", but, once I went to college and all of my dorm mates and I were sharing stories of our high school adventures, the question inevitably came up--what was your mascot? At first, I was bold and proudly announced, "A Honker!" After the laughter died down and the finger pointing ended, I realized I had shame in my background and I needed to avoid answering mascot questions for the remainder of my life, except among other Honker alumni. Even Readers' Digest published a little blurb about the top 10 stupidest mascots, and Yuba City's Honker made the list. Make me proud! Honk once if you're from Yuba City and the rest of you quit laughing...