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.