You know that feeling...

...when you're sliding down a mountainside with the rush of loose dirt, pebbles, and debris underfoot to the valley floor below?  It's exhilaratingly horrifying!  There's a small degree of control if you manage to stay upright (forget plopping on your butt and plummeting by the seat of your pants all the way to the bottom...you'll regret it), and if your hands succeed in finding anchored grab-it-fast stuff on the way down to impede that awesome flying like a speeding projectile to the target below type of apocalyptic sensation.

We took those ridiculous shortcuts when a mountain ridge would end brusquely with a drop-off straight down to purgatory, or mutate into a never-ending crest that seemed to fizzle out somewhere near China.  AND...I have slid by the seat of my pants on an occasion or two, but one's butt cheeks are notoriously inadequate in the navigating department and hoping to frantically wedge a heel into an obliging rock crevice is like threading an anchor chain through the eye of a needle.  BUT...I actually did that once gliding down the rock face of a waterfall and was (surprise!) successful.  I never looked at my feet the same way again.

Life sometimes messes with us, and some shades of me are now stuck in concrete, shades of me that I should chisel back out of that hardened block of cement.  I keep putting it off.  I seem to be knee deep in mud wallowing slap happy hog heaven apathy lately.  It happens when the responsibility load is fifty tons overweight and the perks program was outsourced to India.  When what I want and what I get aren't even in the same hemisphere.  I don't even consider the possibility of shortcuts these days.  My brain just wants to turn off the light switch and take a long winter nap.  What's happened to me?

This week most nights are in the 20's, most days are in the 40's.  Winter has already pushed out autumn with a vengeance.  Last weekend was so chillingly icy

that I just vegetated indoors with the thermostat turned up two notches above normal.  Gardens are bare boned and flooded in fallen leaves, with the bags of top soil and wood mulch lined up in sloppy stacks still patiently waiting.  Buggers!  They'll be waiting through December, January, and February.  The raised veggie beds were a semi-disaster or a semi-success. Take your pick.

The Italian curly parley is in bags in the freezer, last of the baby carrots were cooked with ginger and honey for Sunday dinner, the rest were ripped out by their roots and tossed.  The peach blossomed bean harvest is a decoration in glass now.  It is a display of humbleness to remind me that I don't always know everything there is to know about gardens.  I would say it equals one meal on the table, he-he.

Thanksgiving will be a relish tray of radishes, non-pickled green olives, cheese stuffed celery sticks, and deviled eggs with bacon bits, caramelized onions, seasoned salt, black pepper, and sour cream; veal marsala; roman style peas with caramelized onions, bacon pieces and white wine; and spatzle tossed with melted butter, salt and pepper.  Warm pumpkin pie for dessert with mountains of real whipped cream.  What more can I say...pure comfort food for me. Husband... well, husband's piece de resistance is anything cooked from scratch I put before him ;)

Life's running a bit late and so is this post...whatever will be, will be.  Windows 7 is a bit more involved than Vista ever was and I'm in last minute learning mode.  For those of you all who know me through my posts, I'm ever so thankful you're in my world and love you all to pieces.

Strange Happenstance

A bit of nonsense from an observation.

It was the circle of opportunity for that little guy...decisions, decisions, decisions.  He couldn't make up his mind.  Perhaps I gave him too much credit, perhaps it was just a case of double dosed far-farsightedness, or perhaps...just perhaps, when you're 1/64th of an inch tall your horizon doesn't really expand very far.

Pairs of feet north, south, west, and east; pairs of feet apparently mere foggy apparitions when one is keenly astute but ooh so terrifically minute.  The tiny tyke ventured to the north, veered to the east, hightailed over to the west, backtracked east, north, then southward bound. 

Tongues wagged, feet shuffled, eyes ignored as he zigged over here, zagged over there, hung a far left, made a quick right, and around again he came.  In the presence of giants, that insignificant speck unfazed by soles tipping, tapping, flipping, flopping; he was a totally laid-back ordinary kind of itsy-bitsy bloke.

Poor little squirt...he never saw it coming as he was pinched up into that soft, pink tissue and flushed down that vortex of unholy water into eternal oblivion.  So sad...so sad.  It's dreadfully tough staying afloat and carrying on when you're a misunderstood little brown tick kind of spunky half-pint.

Introspect

My laptop evaporated into thin air...poof!  We had to replace the desktop before it blanked out into oblivion; and with Victor going overseas sometime in the next day, week or month...sigh...it was deemed a silly extravagance to let the new desktop just sit there in lonely solitude.

I made myself the administrator of that little Lenovo guy (I know, I know...China).  He has to coexist with that Microsoft keyboard, HP monitor, and printer. I'm downloading boo coos of updates to make it all copacetic with that happy ever after feeling of partnership.

Google chrome is showing its belligerent side creating a problem when I open my blog with it in the front seat beside my little Lenovo guy. Hopefully I'm up to the challenge, and last night was just a fluke, a slight misunderstanding among friends when I tried to strangle little Lenovo right out of existence with his handy dandy power cord.

Anyway, the vibrator effect of the sidebar is driving me bonkers when my eyes can't help but latch onto it.  I may be in a bit of hot water when I start trying to make my changes with it.  Is there anything in this life that doesn't come with a backdoor that's labeled Don't Open and not nailed shut?

I remember husband enlightening me weeks ago on what not to expect email wise after he lands in the middle east.  Can't remember...it all vanished from my noggin like spilled milk in a room full of cats. Today I find out there will be no mail service where he'll be working...NO MAIL SERVICE.  It's like being sucked into a black-hole of non-existence.

Life's happening, so I'm shifting into fourth gear and racing with the wind down that highway of silly melding with serious.  No one ever says life's too long, but it's said a zillion times a day that life's definitely way too short.  Living life for all its worth and then maybe just a little bit more...pure perfection ;)

Thoughts, like leaf litter, waiting for the compost bin.

Times change, times stays the same.  Things change, things stay the same.  It's always a tossup between the two, a compromise needed, an attitude adjusted, sometimes we walk away, often times we dig in and ride the storm.  Boring's never the same between individuals, just as wild beyond imagination floats some boats, capsizes others.  Life.  50 shades of gray, green, blue, red, you name it...it's all there.  Decisions, decisions, decisions...even not deciding is a decision.

A choice made by someone else, we enter this race with time screaming at the top of our lungs, we exit a million different avenues of contentment or regret; but in between the two we make our lot as we chose.  We decide if it's to be sad or glad, embrace or escape, stay the same or change, run, walk or sit a spell.  We decide with what we have, whether it is plentiful or sparse, rich or poor, have or have not.  Entangled beyond all imagination, yet simple when all trimming is stripped away.

My life...in this blog you get a peek, but of course it's all so much more complicated, because...well, I'm a complicated individual.  Aren't we all?  We're complicated because we think, and we all think to one degree or another.  It's up to each of us whether we swim against the current or go with the flow, speak up or decide to bite our tongue, create waves or sit in the shade.  We actually do all of these if we're really honest with ourselves. 

Life is living and living can be from one day to more than 25,000 days and still going; and each of those days is an adventure to more or less of a degree.  Adventures not always of our creation, yet we can stand tall on that surf board and ride the wave back to the shore, we can dogpaddle like crazy back to sure ground, or we can simply sink.  Not athletic...I'm the one dogpaddling in a frenzy, but I do manage to always stay afloat, to always reach safe haven after the storm.

Roughly in my 24,401 day of living, give or take a day or week, I'm not a stickler for perfection when it comes to summing up the total of who I am.  I'm me and that's all you get.  Isn't that wonderful?  I've noticed the bathroom mirror always reflects back an image of perfection, that my photos lack ;)  Viewing myself in a foggy haze of dreamy features works for me, so I'll stick with that; and just say sometimes these portraits lie just a teeny little bit.

I'm sick...not sick of anything special...just a sinus infection, upper respiratory infection; whatever, lost my voice for a while, and oh yes...a generous dose of serious pink eye thrown in.  Two different doctors, two different opinions...I think I'll stick to what my eye doctor said.  Saw him two days ago after two weeks off work and still counting.

He couldn't understand why my family doctor had me on the meds I showed him I was prescribed that were, in my opinion, wasting my time.  Told me to toss them in the garbage, they were toxic, especially for the length of time I was on them.  Do you know how good that made me feel about the doc that prescribed them?  And he actually gave me three bottles of eye drops...eye doctor explained that just completing one bottle was enough to do me in.  Oh, great. 

Not really sure it was completely the family doc's fault as to the number of bottles.  We have our suspicions about the pharmacy we use, as the eye doctor's eye drop's dosage on the label wasn't what I remembered him saying to my face.  I called to verify.  The bottle from the pharmacy said one drop in each eye three times a day for seven days.  The eye doctor said one drop in each eye 4 times a day for 5 days, then 3 times a day for 5 days, then 2 times a day for 5 days, then one time a day until bottle is empty.  My gosh!

Told I was in the aftermath of the infection that I guess can linger for what seems like forever, I might be contagious if in direct contact with someone, but he didn't really think I was a threat to anyone at this stage of the game.  Tell that to my boss.  They don't want me at work until I am well.  Hopefully that will be next Tuesday, if my eyes look and feel better.  Hard to convince someone you're okay when you still look like your recovering from a three day binge of drinking.

Kidney disease is getting the best of my little Andee.  He's on fluids now...about every other day...whenever he needs them.  It's my job.  He flees from Vic...I think it's the towering presents when he throws himself into his walking stride entering a room...sends the cats running for their lives :)

Still reasonably healthy, Andee hardly eats anymore on his own.  He was devouring that raw turkey like a chocoholic in a Godiva store until he developed an allergy to it and got sick to his tummy.  He gets steak now.  He says round steak's too chewy for his finicky palate and ground steak just isn't right.  I have to heat the meat to the perfecto stage which is anyone's guess.  It changes with every meal.  I had better get it right, or Mr. Picky Pot malls it to death and leaves the lacerated lumps of beef in a pile on the floor and walks off. 

His regular food is mixed in a tea cup with liquid and syringed into his mouth.  He welcomes it, so I guess I'm his little slave now.  Don't I wish I were so lucky.  Whether sick or healthy, this is my plight cause I just love that little guy all to pieces.  He still demands a half hour of constant petting each bedtime before I close my eyes, still lays on my armchair back just above my head when I watch tv; still, but not so often, wanders around the house with that worn out felt mouse clutched between his teeth before he lays it at my feet.  What's not to love about this sweet little guy.

 

With sanitized hands I went off the deep end at the grocery store when Vic stopped to pick up my new meds.  Organic grapes, bananas, avocado, and a package of baby portabellas for an omelet...a real omelet.  Two eggs, a bit of cold water, pinch of sea salt, two grinds of black pepper, generous dose of thyme leaves rubbed together between fingers; whisk just a bit and pour into a small omelet pan with heated grape seed oil.  Shake pan and lightly stir with fork to perfection.  Smother with sautéed mushrooms and a slice of Applegate provolone cheese...fold over onto a dinner plate.  I'm floating on air.

Garden of Milk and Honey

All Aboard!

Off to see the colors of autumn

 in the countryside

two weeks ago

All cozy after playing musical seats

 for the best window view

I can now boast that I've regrettably viewed the seamier side of Chattanooga for nearly half the trip to escape it.  

Turnabout at the tiny town of Summerville

where NOTHING'S happening...

absolutely nothing.

Autumn leaves in all their glory

seem to be a week down the road..

pooh!

BUT

Today autumn is coming and going on the wings of angels in my garden.

dogwood

saffron crocus

paten asters

Funnel spider web with rain drops

dogwood

one lonely fall blooming flower

bellflower

northern oak

garden of milk and honey

aging towards winter rest

your squirrels busy themselves

hiding a bounty of hickory's

from all the neighboring trees

heisting fat sunflower hearts

off of the old deck railing

from the mouths of hungry birds

leaf litter softly crunches

two wrens in heated pursuit

of hiding crickets and moths

honeybees on their last quest

among lavender crocus

heavy with golden pollen

mockingbird waits by feeder

among the baring branches

the old cedar by the street

harbors the cardinals roost

dog with man walks briskly by

a glance at dying gardens

all he allows himself to see

as crisp air speeds them along

pale yellow, soft tangerine,

lush orange, and crimson leaves,

drop soft like phantom raindrops

to blanket the ground in warmth

for the cold that lies ahead

we huddle on concrete bench

with woolen coats buttoned tight

stubbornly holding onto

that last ray of cold sunlight

yearning souls quietly hushed

no sadness, no tears to shed

this end the new beginning

preparing this ancient earth

for her new awakening

on the tail end of next March

garden of hope and triumph

garden of loss and rebirth

garden of milk and honey

goodnight

sleep tight

and

sweet dreams

Vic's birthday celebration

a month ago