Gone Fishin'

This morning we are off to the Northwoods of New Hampshire on our annual fishing trip. We will see lots of moose, deer, loons and maybe even some lake trout and salmon. Some days we take a boat out onto the lake, and some days we just stay near the cabin and read books and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

I love to wake up early and go out to the porch and knit while listening to the loons, watching the lake change colors, and just enjoy the solitude. This will be our fifth year of going to the cabin, and we always have a great time, rain or shine.

The weather there comes down from Ontario, so it is often cooler than Boston, and the weather can be changeable. There are always a few rain clouds, but seldom a whole day of rain, and this year it is suppose to be mostly sunny with a 20% change of thundershowers some days. We bring rummy, scrabble and a deck of cards in case of really rainy days, but we never have had a day where it rained all day long. It is so beautiful up there!

We do a lot of birdwatching and George brings suet and a feeder to hang in the tree outside the cabin. There is our resident chipmunk who eats our peanuts. We take drives around the beautiful lakes and rivers and look for loons and foxes and other woodland creatures. Although there is no cell phone or internet, there is swimming and picnicking and we take drives to town for groceries and laundry. For some reason, I enjoy going to the laundromat when I am vacationing, something my brother always thought was very weird. The nearest town is 30 miles away, and if there is rain or a sprinkle, we often take off for town to have lunch or look around. George discovered to his delight that there is a library in town that has computers and I can log on to check my email and Ebay sales. So...there is civilization not too far away. We like solitude, but it doesn't have to be desolate!

The rivers in this part of New Hampshire are some of the world's best for flyfishing. I take my flyfishing rod, and consider it a success if I don't catch the fly on the tree behind me. Catching a fish is practically an impossibility, but it is fun to explore the back roads and get out and enjoy the scenery. Some day I would love to go to flyfishing camp, where I would really learn what I was doing. Since I don't have waders, we often just go by the covered bridge and I fish from the shore. The rivers are fast moving and beautiful and there are many scenic covered bridges to explore as well.

The car is packed up and we are almost ready to leave. I have packed some jewelry making supplies, some peyote bead work, some knitting projects, and a lot of library books. We also have good food and meats for barbecuing, and yesterday I made homemade barbecue sauce that tastes really yummy.

Have a great week and we'll see you on the 15th!

Funny cat

This is my friend's pet, Crystal. She sent this picture to me today. After a serious brushing Crystal was plain worn out!

4th of July socks

I finished this pair of socks today while watching the movie Letters from Iwo Jima. These socks are fun because I finally managed to control the yarn variation so that the stripes match! That is a feat I have not done before and I am rather thrilled with them, if I say so myself.

The movie was good, the socks turned out nice, and it's on with the fireworks!

Have a great evening.

Deck flowers déjà vu

George and I brought a New Guinea Impatien plant in a pretty planter to Michelle and Michael for their deck. We liked it so much that we we got home, we bought one for ourselves too. Here is a picture on a very sunshiny day.

Union City, Oklahoma tornado 1973

4th of July

It seems strange to have the July 4th holiday right smack in the middle of the week. I imagine that lots of people will take Thursday and Friday off and head for the hills. George and I are going to be quiet and calm. We will cook out on the grill and stay out of the traffic.

Traffic to the Cape and to the Maine Coast can be really brutal and it is best to stay out of it. I never knew about traffic until I moved to Boston. Boston traffic is like that fair haired little girl: "when she is good, she is very very good, but when she is bad, she is horrid!" Holidays tend to bring out the "horrid" around here, and long lines of hot cars going nowhere is the norm.

The best Fourth of Julys were the ones that we celebrated when I was a little girl of six or seven. My brother is eleven years older than me, so he was in highschool and very competent to handle fireworks at just the age when I was ready to enjoy them. My little brother was a baby at this time, so he was just mewing in mom's arms, but I was fascinated with 4th of July fire.

Every year we would go to Albert and Ella's farm near Union City, Oklahoma. They had a small acreage and Albert had cows, chickens and pigs. Ella wore house dresses and took care of the chickens and the cooking. They didn't have any children at home when I was small, so I had the run of the place. My brother taught me how to shoot cans off a fence railing out on their farm, and I spent many Saturday afternoons with him holding the rifle on my shoulder while I tried to aim at the can. It was very exciting. They didn't have an indoor bathroom, but a little old outhouse with the moon cut out on the door, just like the picture books. It was fun and scary to go out there at night and my mom would have to stand on the porch and wait for me. Albert smoked cigars and the living room was a small dark place that had a brass vase on the floor for spitting tobacco and the room smelled funny, so I didn't like to go in there. Their bedroom was separated off the living room with a curtain and was barely big enough for a double bed. They didn't have much money, but I didn't know that at the time.

Anyway, back to the 4th of July. My brother would shoot off the fireworks after dark. We would have our picnic dinner of fried chicken, potato salad and watermelon and then we would all line up our lawn chairs out there on the lawn facing the pasture. The stars were out, the evening was warm, the land is flat and simple, and the lightning bugs were out. My brother rigged up some of the fireworks on the clothes line, and the twirly rings of fire would shoot back and forth along the line to whoops of joy from me. Then he would set off the Roman candles and the big black booming firecrackers and scare everyone with delight. My mom and dad were very cool and let my brother handle the show. He didn't seem to need any advice or warnings, and always had things well in control.

After the big show I got to run around with sparklers, one after another, and chase the lightning bugs with some lightning of my own.

I always remember those long evenings on Albert and Ella's farm. I think of them often. Albert actually fought in World War ONE, and had awful stories of trench warfare. I didn't understand then how unique it is to even KNOW anyone who fought in that war. Ella was round and cuddly and sweet and happy in her little farmhouse. Union City was blown off the map in l973 by a mile-wide tornado that leveled the town the church, the schools, everything. (It has since been rebuilt.)

One time we brought home a kitten from their farm. The kitten was black and white, and I was very excited. In the car, on the way home, we talked about what to name him. Mother said that she had heard it was an Indian custom to name children after the first thing they see. So...I named the kitten Schoolbus...because that was the first thing I saw. That poor cat kept the name Schoolbus, and even today I see black and white cats Schoolbus descendents around the neighborhood near mom's house.

So many fun memories of the 4th of July.

Have a good one!

Sharing the news

Every time I go to Michael's house I learn a lot. This trip he told me about google.com/reader, which assembles news stories by source. You subscribe to the sources you want to read and you can click through the headlines and get all the news that's fit to print, and more besides, in a very short time. And you get to choose the news sources based on the subjects that interest you most.I have my settings on recipes, the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Google news, Yahoo news...well, you get the idea.

I'm now addicted to my Google/reader. Every morning I go to the computer to check on my Ebay sales, and now I also click through all my chosen news stories as well. I can scroll through national and international news in a jiffy, and catch news about politics, the supreme court, and all the important news tidbits that make up our world. And I don't have to read a single thing about Paris Hilton unless I want to!

It may not be ALL the news, but it is darn close. The feature that Mike and I like is SHARE, where you share the stories that you think are important with others. Michael may not think that my recipe for grilled corn on the cob is the most important story of the day, but I bet he learns from it, just as I learn when he sends me stories about technology and iphones.

Today I subscribed to DIGG, which is another site where you can read a story and either send it to someone to share, or blog it. My blog has the google/reader news on the right column now. There are news stories that I think are important, or fun, or interesting, and now they are there to share. You don't have to read them, but I did, and I liked them enough to share. Information is coming to us in waves from all over the globe, and now we can share what WE like...and take control of where we hear about it.

Thanks Mike for teaching me one more thing!

Have a great day.

Work-Life Balance Is a Matter of Time

How to acheive happiness through time management

read more | digg story

Pan's Labyrinth

George and I watched Pan's Labyrinth last night. I had moved this movie to the top of my Netflix list. This movie is dark. We were both very captivated throughout, but we both commented as we were watching it about how "dark" it was. I think I expected something fanciful and fairy-tale, but what I didn't expect was the deep element of evil that surrounds the characters, whether in real life or in the Labyrinth. George said at one point that there was no relief from the bad stuff...that it was all bad upstairs and down.

I think it is a wonderful movie. I went to the website today, Pan's Labyrinth.com, and was amazed at all that is there to see. If you have seen the movie, please go to the website and see all the comments about how the movie was made. I love the website and it is obvious that everyone who was connected with this movie was really in love with it, including of coure, the wonderful director Guillermo Del Toro. Don't miss the INTERACT feature, Guillermo Del Toro's Sketchbook! It really is incredible, and they know it! Even the music behind the website is wonderful and usually I hate music on websites.

The characters are incredible and the art direction is amazing. But don't expect a light and frothy fairytale. This is NOT a children's movie.

After I watched it, I decided that I wanted to know more about the Spanish Civil War and the fight between Franco and the rebels in Spain. This is the war that Ernest Hemmingway and other famous Americans signed up for. This movie makes you think as well as feel. I was fascinated by the rebels and their bravery in the face the of the brutal Captain Vidal. And I was fascinated by the cast of characters in the labyrinth. It is all brutality, murder and mayhem and a lot of red blood handled in very artistic ways. And it is beautiful. It is almost impossible to imagine writing such a screenplay...much less making this fantastic vision into a movie.

Have a great day.

Teenagers behind the wheel

I am trying to be upbeat, but it is really a problem about teen drivers. I think that teenagers don't have enough common sense to really know how to drive well, and especially when there are other teens in the car. I think that the desire to impress others, or peer pressure, makes teens not think straight. It is hard enough to drive alone for most of us, and I would imagine that inexperienced drivers really have a hard time with other teens in the car--they just don't know it!

I am so saddened by the loss of life when five teenage girls died in upstate New York this weekend. They were passing a van, and hit a truck coming from the other direction. If only the driver had stayed where she was, went a little slower, and followed the van for awhile until she was sure. But, as a teenager, she was not sure, and she passed that van anyway.

What is the answer? Do we take drivers licenses away from teens? I am not sure, but I do know that if I had a teenager, I would try very hard not to let him or her drive with other teens in the car.

Recently I saw a TV show about seat belts. They interviewed a mom who seemed very close to her daughter, who insisted that HER daughter always used a seat belt, that they had talked about it many times and that her daughter never would go anywhere without one. She was very positive about this. Then they showed the mom a video that was taken of the car that her daughter was driving. She was with a group of girls, and none of them were wearing a seatbelt.

Taking away privileges isn't something that I take lightly when dealing with teens. My parents always gave us the benefit of the doubt and I was given my first car to drive when I was 16. Did I take chances? Yes. Did I do stupid things? Yes. Did I die? No, but almost. So....what is the answer? I guess all we can do is pray.

Have a great day.

Community Garden

Oh, Raspberries!

This beautiful fruit was in someone's community plot. Left ripening, right by the fence, and no one would even think!!! of picking any. Community gardening is so great!

Poppies!!

(Poppies have long been used as a symbol of both sleep and death: sleep because of the opium extracted from them, and death because of their (commonly) blood red color. In Greco-Roman myths, poppies were used as offerings to the dead. Poppies are used as emblems on tombstones to symbolize eternal sleep. This aspect was used, fictionally, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to create magical poppy fields, dangerous because they caused those who passed through them to sleep forever.) From Wikipedia. How did we live without Wikipedia???

Taniko, exercising her right to be a cat.

Flowers and a bumble bee I didn't see until I saw the picture

(Echinacea is a genus consisting of nine species of flowering plants in the Family Asteraceae, all native to eastern North America, and often known as the purple coneflower.) People think Echinacea has healing powers, and can be a cure for colds.

George and the community garden near Mike's house

The Spirit of St. Louis - no windshield so Lindbergh had to use a periscope to see forward!

(My mom always talks about Charles Lindbergh with a special tone in her voice. She said that when she was in highschool in Minnesota ALL the girls were IN LOVE with Lindy!)

Cats and Stuff

We had a great time in Washington and a very relaxing weekend. It was great just to be together, and make meals on the grill, go out for a fantastic Korean barbecue buffet and watch the kitty roll around in a ball of yarn.

Sometimes just being together is enough. George and I ventured out on Sunday and went to the Air and Space Museum. We weren't there long, but I was impressed with the Spirit of St. Louis. I was also impressed that they had so many bathrooms and drinking fountains -- about every 100 feet I think. Amazing. The museum was crowded with people having fun. The pretzel and hot dog sellers were busy and left me wondering how much it costs to have one of those carts outside the Smithsonian and along the Washington Mall. I bet those vendors make a TON of money!

I never go through a World War II museum and see all those aircraft and think of those men fighting in the Pacific without thinking of my mom, who was at home with a little boy, working as a Rosie the Riveter at an air force base in Oklahoma, making airplanes fly, while dad was stationed off in the Pacific Islands. What an amazing time in our history. I always head for the WWII airplanes first. George has taught me a lot about airplanes, and he is a wonderful guide.

I had a great time taking pictures in the community garden behind Michael's house. It seems to me that when people live in an urban place, and are given a few feet to garden, they become very creative and almost every little plot had something really exciting planted there. I have included a few pictures of things I couldn't resist.

Mike's kitty Taniko entertained us all as she rolled around in my yarn for the socks I was knitting, and did all the usual endearing kitty things with yarn. For some reason, cats like to have strands of yarn running around their ears and heads, and act so amusing. The world may be a complicated place, full of Ipods, Blackberrys, super fast computers, and fancy cell phones, but cats still love yarn. Sometimes the simple things are the best.

Have a great day.

Deja Vu: the best we could wish is that we could go back the two hours it took to view it.

Deja Vu

Deja Vu: sometimes a bad movie can be just as much fun as a good one. Friday night we watched Deja Vu. George had brought along our Netflix disc. He had looked forward to watching this movie and we had gone out of our way to add it to the top of our Netflix queue.

If you haven't seen it, it is about an ATF agent (Denzel Washington) who travels back in time to save a woman from being murdered, falling in love with her during the process. IMDB gives it seven stars, which is usually good enough to be good enough, but this movie cut a distinct line through the four of us. Michelle and Michael thought it was laughably awful from the start, and George and I were trying very hard to find something to like about it. The four of us have very different tastes in movies anyway, and trying to find one that all of us would like is a challenge. But this particular movie was a shared experience that ended up more fun that it was worth. We joked and laughed about it all day Saturday.

The movie is highly improbable: not real, but not science fiction either, and it lost me when the ATF agent was driving recklessly fast in a souped up ATV looking through a head-piece camera that could see into the past by four days, while trying to navigate down the wrong way of the highway at high speeds chasing the bad guy. He may be trying to catch the bad guy, but he was causing several cars full of innocents to careen off the bridges and roadways at high speeds, catching on fire, killing...well you get the idea. It was supposed to be exciting, but it looked like excess to me.

The movie lost us at several other points as well, and simply fell apart so many times that we were left groaning in our chairs. Mike was making fun of it the whole way through, and poor George was trying his best to ignore this real-time melee beside him and concentrate on trying to like the movie.

Because the movie was so bad, we had a great time yesterday picking it apart, laughing at all the goofs and inconsistencies and discussing why it was such a bad movie. We all apologized to George for being so hard on "his movie", but he didn't really care. In the end, he didn't really like it either!

Have a great day!

I'm a Rock Star!

The weather & Washington DC

Here we are in Washington DC, where the weather is sunny, balmy and beautiful. It is also fun here inside Michael's house.

Every time I get together with Mike, he has to help me clean out my laptop. Today he purged it from a lot of unnecessary evils that came into being when I subscribed to AOL dial up while visiting mom's house in Oklahoma. AOL is a scourge, as I've said before here in this blog, and dial up is the evilest form of scourging. Mike found that my new computer was hopelessly plugged up with evil sites that I didn't subscribe to, didn't download, and didn't want. The computer hourglass was stuck on load and nothing was happening. Deleting his way through all this maze of awfulness, Mike cleared me out so that my laptop is now performing beautifully and I probably will not even take this computer to Oklahoma again unless I can find a wireless connection.

The weather outside is beautiful, but part of the fun of visiting Mike's house is all the fun things there are to do inside the house. Last night Mike and I played a game called Guitar Hero, a new game of rhythm and rock and roll. There is not way to describe the fun unless you play yourself. "Feel the grip of your spandex and smell the hairspray as you take the stage and become an 80's Rock Hero". It was a rollicking good time and I can't wait to try again. It is a game involving playing a guitar, getting points while you play along with the rhythm of classic hard rock. I'm not very good, but Mike played the hardest song on the game, Lynard Skynyrd's Freebird, and he won, of course.

We also have a movie scheduled in his home theater and then we get to barbecue on his big new outdoor grill. All fun.

The downside of Washington DC is the traffic, which was almost as bad as traffic was in Boston yesterday morning when we had an early start and still got logjammed in horrible morning traffic that caused us to go a measley 15 miles in 80 minutes! The trip got off to a un-rocking start, but it picked up and we had a great time all the way anyway. An accident caused another terrible traffic tie-up when we got to DC, and although we were only a few miles from Mike's house, it took us 45 minutes to go about 10 miles.

But we are here, the weather is beautiful, and we're having fun.

Have a great day!

Road Trip

It is 4:30 a.m. and I am a real early bird this morning. I do hear other early birds out there chirping to the lightening sky.

George and I are leaving for Washington DC this morning to visit Michael and Michelle. I like a nice road trip, don't you? We will leave by 6 am to beat the crowds going around Boston on 128 and to be in Washington about 8 pm. We take our time. One of George's friends said it takes 10 hours, but it takes us more than that. We like to stop at a outlet mall in Delaware, and we make other stops along the way too.

I have packed sandwiches, fried chicken legs, potato salad, nectarines, cut up veggies & ranch dressing & lots of good things to drink. It is hard to find something good to eat at the rest stops along the way. Sometimes on road trips the food is great, but I'm afraid that is not in New York or New Jersey.

Everyone flocks to the Starbucks along the way. Starbucks--what a phenomena. I think we are all addicted to caffeine, but most probably we are addicted to their sugar. I take mine straight, thank you, without the added addiction of frothy sugared whipped cream. Do you know that some of those frappes have 17 teaspoons of sugar? I think we all need to go back to the time when a cup of coffee at a diner was a real cup, and not a super-sized half gallon, and when we added cream and sugar it was by the teaspoon, not the cup. I'm afraid there is no going back. Starbucks has taken over the world. I like Starbucks!

Today we drive through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and into Virginia. I like Delaware the best. There is a lovely road that goes through beautiful horse country and hardly a car to be seen. By the time we get there we are home free! I like driving through these small states. It takes three days to drive across Kansas! When I went to my high school reunion in Oklahoma once, and told them I lived in Massachusetts, one guy said, "that's one of those tiny states up there in the corner, right?" Well, yes.

Time to go pack. Have a great day and see you in Washington DC.

My baby woodchuck "Scratch"

Old Fashioned Can't Be Beat Shortbread

Berry Shortcake from Gourmet Magazine
(I made this for dessert on Fathers Day and it was really good!)


2 cups all purpose flour
2 t. baking powder
½ t. baking soda
½ t. salt
2 T. sugar
5 T. cold unsalted butter cut into bits
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk

Filling: 12 oz. raspberries or strawberries
6 oz. blackberries or blue berries
2 T. sugar

1 cups well chilled heavy cream
1 T. sugar
(I use Lite Cool Whip because it is better for us)
(Bake at 450 degrees. Put dry ingredients in bowl and mix in the butter with your fingertips until it is coarse meal. Add buttermilk and stir until soft sticky dough forms. Drop dough in 6 rounds on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 12 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool for 10 minutes and serve warm with berries mixed with sugar and top with cream. Oh yum.)

Sunday morning woodchuck watch

Today I am making pasta salad for a Fathers Day cookout we will have later. George's son and family are coming over for burgers and hotdogs on the grill. While I am preparing the salad this morning, I have a good view of the woodchucks.

I saw first one baby, then the other. Then mom came out of the hole and pushed something out with her nose. Then she went back in and debris starting flying out of the hole. Housecleaning time. I don't have a great view because woodchucks are well camouflaged. They are the color of compost.

Babies played around some, staying close to mama. Then, after awhile, mom climbed up on the stack of bricks and took a little snooze with one of the babies right behind her. Baby wanted to play some more, but mom was tired. They are there right now, napping and looking around.

I have some bits of celery, green pepper, radishes & scallions left over from the pasta salad prep, and I put it in a little bowl. Oh, please stop me before I feed the woodchucks!

In the meantime, through all this woodchuck viewing, I am noticing the squirrels walking all over my begonias, and digging holes in my flower beds. They are a real pest.

I hope they don't wake the woodchucks.

Have a great day!

My first peyote stitch beaded bracelet that you've heard so much about lately.

My Bead and Button Show Picture Gallery

Two pieces from the artists gallery.

You know you're in Milwaukee when you see beer signs everywhere and they play polka music in the elevators.

Non-collapsible Peyote Beads

I took a class at the Bead and Button Show called Non-Collapsible Peyote Beads. They are made using the ancient American Indian Peyote stitch. It wasn't easy to learn, but today I practiced for a couple of hours and I finally got the hang of it. I made five beads, and although they are not perfect, they aren't all that bad either.

It is fun to learn something new. These beads, when combined with silver and crystals, are going to make a knock-out bracelet! But, besides the fact that they are beautiful, the fun of them for me is that I am learning to do something completely new. Using the finest needle and thread, and tiny delica beads, finding ones way to something that makes sense is a challenge. I haven't used needles and beads together before, so this is really exciting!

After I get the bracelet done, I'm going to do the happy dance.

Have a great day.

Sightings

Today I didn't see the woodchucks at all. Maybe the skunk scared them away. Maybe when they saw the skunk they hightailed it to another hidey hole someplace. I sort of missed them, silly me!

I remember when I had a farm in New Hampshire with 20 areas of land to watch over, and a big deck off the back of the house. There were miles of apple orchards and gardens and woods and some days I would just DREAM of seeing a moose or a deer or some kind of wildlife visitor. The critters seem to live in their own dark places and sometimes they are hard to see.

One day as I was standing on the deck, I heard a faint "hiss hiss" up in the air. I couldn't remember ever hearing a sound like that. It was early morning and the mist was rising off the land over by the apple orchards. When I looked up, there was a beautiful brightly striped hot air balloon going up right over the farm. What a sight!

Have a great day!

Backyard Zoo

Last night I drove into the driveway about 10:00. There in the middle of the headlights was a big black and white skunk. I am very wary of skunks. But they are sort of amazing and cute--as long as they are going the other way.

George came out, saw me sitting in my car and said I needed to move my car forward, and I said, "Not until that guy moves out of the way." Mr. Black and White slowly ambled off, right into the area where Chuckie's family lives. Who knows who we have back there. I have seen a skunk in our driveway before, and I am pretty sure this one lives close by. Maybe he is sharing the garage condo with Chuckie. Woodland paradise.

Have a great day.

Ten good things about woodchucks

1. They are fun to watch
2. Chuckie has been here so many years he is like family
3. They are predictable
4. Sometimes they go to the neighbors house to eat
5. Squirrels are destructive too
6. The neighbors don't know they live under our garage
7. They don't poop on the lawn
8. uh...

ok. Seven good things about woodchucks

Have a great day.

Woodchuck Stories

My mother suggested that we should call animal control and they will come and take the parents and babies to a nice forest preserve somewhere that has a nice warm cave. Yesterday she asked me if I could put out some veggie scraps for them, and with a night's sleep, she too has decided that Chuckie and family must go.

I am not sure that animal control takes care of woodchucks. I am pretty sure that they don't. Since it is illegal to trap them...well...I guess I could call and ask.

So far this morning our backyard is a woodland paradise. Woody One sits out by the garage door surveying his new kingdom with not a fear in the world. Big Chuck ran across the neighbors lawn and then came silently back to munch away on the neighbors grass for awhile. Mom is nowhere to be seen, probably inside doing dishes and laundry like all good moms.

I had a doctor in Chicago once, who when I went in for some malaise or another, recommended "cheerful neglect." We have tried using cheerful neglect when dealing with the Chuckie problem, and now we have four little problems. So much for hoping that the situation will go away by itself.

Right now George and I are at the stage where we sit on the deck eating our dinner at night, watching the birds at the feeders and doing woodchuck watch. But if they touch my tomatoes, I'm callin' the feds!

Have a great day!

Oh no, babies!!

I am safely home from the Bead and Button Show. This morning, George and I were getting ready for church and looked out the kitchen window to the bird feeders. There was a baby woodchuck in the white petunia planter! He was really cute, and I really panicked! I went out on the deck to get a closer look and the little guy hightailed it to his home under the garage.

For three years, we have had a woodchuck living under our garage. His name is "Chuckie". In the past he has created havoc with our tomatoes and our flowers, and we have thought long and hard about ways to make him move someplace else. We thought about traps, rock music, rancid oil, guns, everything. We read advice, talked to neighbors and friends and googled woodchuck removal. Nothing seemed possible. Most methods are not humane, and if they are effective, they are not legal. I didn't want to transport a wild animal in a trap in my car. I can just imagine; "Hello, officer, meet my pet, Chuckie."

Last year we planted only flowers that Chuckie doesn't like. We put up a fence with little vials of fox urine around the fence. It worked. He did relatively little damage last year. We were learning how to get along.

This spring, I noticed that we had yet another woodchuck visiting our yard, this one a little smaller, and a little redder. I named her "Red". Seems that Chuckie found a friend. Well, one thing leads to another, and lo...today we have two baby woodchucks. We saw them out there for the first time this morning. They are staying close to home under the garage, but they come out to play, rolling around like cute little cubs.

Unfortunately for us, and for our neighbors, this is a disaster. One woodchuck can do a lot of damage, but four will eat us out of home and garden. They have already chewed up a planter of purple petunias, and if they discover our new baby tomatoes in the garden we are in real trouble. We found out one year that Chuck loved zinnias, since he came right up on the deck and brazenly ate a whole big planter of beautiful zinnias I had just planted. He doesn't eat snapdragons, marigolds or geraniums, but his favorites are baby tomato plants, petunias and zinnias.

I have named the new babies "Woody One" and "Woody Two".

They are really cute! This is a disaster.

Have a great day.

Beads like these!!!

Off to Milwaukee

It is 4:15 in the morning, and I am almost ready to leave for the airport for my trip to Milwaukee and The Bead and Button Show. If that doesn't prove that I'm passionate about jewelry-making, I don't know what does.

My friend will meet me there and stay with me at the hotel, and we have lots of other friends to connect with. Thursday evening is the wholesalers night, and you can feel the excitement with those doors open. It will be a full weekend of bead buying, bead talking, bead classes, and bead friends. I'm even planning on dinner at a famous German restaurant while I'm there. But the main deal is beads beads beads.

What could be better?

Have a great day.

Le bonheur es a ceux qui savent rire

This is my new "jewel" tote bag which I finished to perfection by affixing some beautiful sparkly Swarovski crystals. You can't see the crystals real well here, but, take it from me, they are as sparkly and cute as they come. I love the design, and it fits right in with my Sparkle and Charm Ebay Store name.

I am taking this bag to Bead and Button, and I expect a LOT of people will want to know where I got it. One day when I had more time than sense, I looked at the 15,793 tote bags that are listed on Ebay, and I found a company that makes these terrific bags.

The translation from the French is: Happiness have those who know how to laugh.

The tote bag has a zipper pocket on the side so your money stays safe, and three nice pockets inside for your cell phone, a lipstick and more money, one would hope.

Anyway, it makes ME happy!

Have a great day.

Shoes and Purses

I have an addiction. Today George and I went to the storage unit to find the bin of summer handbags because there is a specific one that I want to take to Milwaukee on Thursday. Instead of one bin, I had THREE bins of summer handbags. That is way too many. I was embarrassed. I said, "I have too many handbags." George said, "ugh," in horrified agreement.

I also have too many shoes. But I am not near as much of a shoe freak as some women I hear about. But, yes, I do have too many shoes. However, when Mother's Day rolled around, I looked at Amazon to see what I might like (at Mike's request), and sure enough, what should I see but these gloriously purple comfy shoes.

They came in the mail and they are just as comfortable as they look. They are also the only pair of purple shoes that I own. In fact, I don't think I have EVER had a pair of purple shoes before. They are beautiful.

Now I need a purse to match.

Have a great day!

Mother's Day Present

I think I need a system -- again

Michael and I talked a lot at Christmastime about a book that he liked, Getting Things Done by David Allen. Michael is very interested in this organizational mindset, and it was a lot of fun to talk with him last Christmas, and a lot of fun putting the system into a notebook and using it--for about a month.

At the time I was starting a new job and I thought that the lists made a lot of sense. After a few months, I dropped the idea, and my book now lies unused on the backseat of my car. (One of the things on my list should be to clean out the things from the backseat of my car.)

Today I am going to go get my notebook and start using the Getting Things Done system. It is a great way to list everything you have to do in categories, and then check things off. It seems that little things are getting dropped, and this may be my answer. My stuff to do system has now percolated up to the top of my stuff to do.

If you haven't read the book or don't know the system, I would recommend it. I bought the book at Barnes and Nobel. Here is a few things from the list of things for me this week.

pack for Milwaukee Bead and Button Show
find tote bag big enough for craft light I need to take
mail chickens
mail sailboat
call car dealer to replace broken aerial
water plants
buy plant for yellow pot on the deck
buy craft for Sunday school tomorrow
make cupcakes for last day of Sunday school
update blog

Oh, I already did that. One to cross off the list.

Have a great day!

French Ducks

My mother and I ordered these French Provincial Ducks from a catalog when I was visiting her. She paid for them and gave them to me as a gift and they came today. Aren't they charming. George is a little mystified why they are French, but it seems clear to me. Don't they look French?

Morning seems like a good time to stretch out on a satin pillow!

We're going to need a bigger suitcase!

I am going to The Bead and Button Show! I am gearing up for the Bead and Button Show next weekend. I will arrive early Thursday morning in Milwaukee and find some breakfast, and then I have a class that starts at noon in wire-wrapped beads. At 4:00 on Thursday, they open the doors to wholesalers (like me), and we can shop till our hearts or our wallets break, and get amazing deals of beautiful glass and beads. On Friday evening I take another class on Peyote Stitch Beads.

The exhibit hall is immense and it is impossible to see it all in one day. It is impossible to see it all in THREE days! I have made a list of the booths that I need to visit, and making out that list has taken me three days! I bought some amazing strands of beads last year and I came home with a few beautiful artist lampwork beads. I intend to do the same this year.

Some shoppers are there only as collectors of art glass. The best glass artists in the country are there, and the work is amazing. The prices are high for this kind of work, and even though I won't buy any, it will be fun to look and to meet the amazing people who make it. See this dragon? Someone will get to take this home, but it won't be me. Beads start around $20 each for lampwork, and go up from there, into the thousands. But there is something for everyone, and no one goes home empty handed or disappointed. No one goes home hungry, either, since there is a nice little food court with good stuff to eat. It is a lovely carpeted, air-conditioned, well-lit hall, and I'm really excited that I get to go again this year. I just couldn't miss it! So many booths, so little time!

Besides shopping, it is always a lot of fun to meet the people who I have been talking to, buying from, or selling to all year on the Ebay jewelry online groups. I will meet some old friends, visit with some people who I have talked to a lot but never met, and I will make some new friends. I am so excited!

It will be wonderful to fill up my tote bag with new beads and goodies...and to fill up my address book with a whole lot of new friends!

I'm going to need a bigger suitcase.

Have a great day.

Felled by a cat scratcher

Last night about 9:00, I was walking determinedly to my computer, and I hit the carpeted cat scratcher thing with my little toe. I thought I had broken it! I yowled in pain, and the pain did not go away. I was on the floor, and eventually was able to get as far as the couch. George came with an ice pack. Keeping the ice pack on the toe was an ordeal, since even touching my toe made me want to scream.

We considered going to the hospital, but I couldn't walk, so how was I to get there? I wasn't going to call an ambulance because my toe hurt. So...I slept on the couch with an ice pack because I couldn't even limp up the stairs to get to the bedroom. Pain!

I took four Advils during the night -- probably overdosing a bit -- and slept like a baby and woke up this morning with a slightly swollen sore toe that is now turning a few colors of pale blue. I no longer think the toe is broken, since I can move it, and I was able to walk and even climb the stairs to a refreshing shower.

I now look at the cat scratcher with alarm. This cat scratching post has seen it's last day in this house. As soon as I can walk, I'm going to go buy a much softer one.

Have a good day!

To each his own

Yesterday I put 15 items up for auction on my Treasures From My Home site on Ebay. I started auctioning items that I have collected over the years on Ebay about two years ago. It has been a fun experience. Selling "stuff" on Ebay is actually easier than selling jewelry on Ebay. And it is amazing how much stuff I have collected that I could just as easily live without. Over the years I have acquired a lot of fun and interesting items that need to find a new home, and Ebay seems to be the road to take.

Yesterday I listed these chicken ceramics that I bought at the Fenton Glass Factory Sale in West Virginia about three years ago. It was a hot summer day and there was a huge tent full of glass and sculptures...maybe the heat got to me...but home with me these chickens did come.

I put them up for sale for $12 yesterday--a reasonable price for a couple of clucks--and boom...I had three watchers within minutes. There are folks out there who really love chickens I guess. It felt a little like having buyers standing out in your yard waiting for the yard sale to begin. Those chickens weren't on the list more than 10 minutes before they got their first watcher.

Getting interested buyers that quick motivated me to list another 14 items. It was 20 cent listing day, so it was cheap, and I had the time, and I even found some "new with tags" clothes that I no longer want to wear. It took an hour to sell a red blouse, NWT (new with tags), about the same time as it took me to take a picture and list it.

I am also selling one of my beautiful Hermes scarves. They now cost $450 new, and I'm afraid I may get kidnapped if I wear one on the street. They are too expensive and "show-offy" to wear to work, and I haven't worn mine in years. I have four of them that I bought when I lived in Chicago and they were a lot less pricey. So, I listed one, an Aztec print in navy, gold, white and hot pink, for $200, and I expect the bidding will go up from there.

I'd rather have the money to spend on beads at the Bead and Button Show than get kidnapped!

Have a great day!

From one thing to another

I have noticed that my interests change as I go forward making jewelry. I was never interested in bone and ceramic beads until lately, and then their natural beauty started to pop out at me. I went to a bead store yesterday with my friend Connie, and I saw a big beautiful white bone bead...$1.75...and I knew I really needed that bead!

Well, one thing led to another, I came home and found other elements in my bead boxes, and I stayed up way late...past midnight...and got up early this morning to put on the finishing touches. This is my newest creation called Woodland Safari.

It's a beauty, if I say so myself.

Have a great day!

Advanced Jewelry Class

Signing up for classes

I have signed up for my jewelry classes at Bead and Button. I will learn how to make these composite wire-wrapped beads to use as focals in my own jewelry, or sell individually to other designers. I can hardly wait!


This is the second class I signed up for today. I will learn the Peyote Stitch technique. This will make silver-capped tubes of beads that I can use to create bracelets, or sell as beads to other designers if I want.

Milwaukee Bound

The big Bead and Button Show is in Milwaukee on June 7th - 10th and I'm REALLY working up some excitement this afternoon. I made my reservations and I am spending this Sunday afternoon looking at the show classes, visiting my friend's websites, lusting after beautiful beads, and looking for good fares on Expedia and Travelocity.

Bead Fever! I went to this show last year and vowed never to miss it. The huge hall is packed with wonderful people selling wonderful art beads in glass and gems and I can hardly stand the idea of not being there. It is an amazing place to be. I have a few friends who I know will be there, and I will meet many people who love jewelry, beads and glass as much as I do!

The beautiful beads pictured here are made by Laurie Donnette. Her website is http://everafterartistry.com. Currently I'm bidding on two sets of her beads from Ebay, and I probably won't win them, but they are pretty enough to make my day just looking at them.

Now that I am back from Oklahoma and almost rested up, I have a lot of jewelry orders to fill tomorrow and five items to ship out. Lately I have had customers in England and France. It is fun to sell internationally.
I'm going to Bead and Button! Check this out!

Bead Fever

Weather, Wal-Mart & Gasoline

The weather in Oklahoma this week has been delightful. It is like Eden. It is 70 and sunny and beautiful. No wind. I don't remember ever visiting here and having better weather. I especially appreciate it hearing from George that is dropped to the low 50's with rain the past few days in Boston-town. Maybe the three days of thunderstorms and tornados (!!) earlier in my trip blew away all the bad stuff, but I have been loving this sunny cool weather!

I leave to go home tomorrow morning. I am sad to go because I will miss my mom, but we have succesfully brought her around so she feels well again, and she is already starting to get busy again around her house with her projects. She went to the Dr. today for a visit, and is doing as well as can be expected. She is eating right, sleeping right, and ready to carry on again without me. Today she painted a stool that she uses in the bathroom. She also painted a small planter and two cutting boards. She loves her little projects. She is amazing. I only wish you could all see her!

I will NOT be sorry to leave Wal-Mart behind. I am thoroughly tired of that place and have been driving to Yukon for groceries. It has been worth the trip and gasoline. Gasoline...youza. I paid $43.50 to fill up the tank yesterday. Ouch. Oh well. You gotta go where ya gotta go, and far away from Wal-Mart is where I need to go!

So, we'll see you in Boston! Have a great day.

Dial up - you gotta love it

Tonight it took me 10 minutes to log onto Blogger.com. Ten minutes waiting for a log-in page to load makes me want to reach for my revolver. As soon as I get the AOL screen the trouble starts. I have to wait for it to load up all the spyware, scam-ware, pop-up protectors, anti-virus craziness and offers of parental controls. By the time I get to my email, to Ebay, or my blog I am already frustrated and have forgotten what it was I had to say.

Dial up is a scourge. They should punish hackers by putting them in a cell with only dial up. I hate AOL. It is the only game in town, and the only way to use my beautiful laptop from my mothers house, but....oh nevermind, I forgot what I was going to say.

I had a very fun dinner out tonight and it was a welcome change. Meeting a friend who you have known for over 40 years makes one humble. So many changes, and yet we are much the same. I had a perfect piece of salmon and a tasty salad and it was great to eat someone else's cooking for a change. The evening was fun and unexpected and the drive home was full of memories. Driving down the long dark highway in Oklahoma can be a lonely experience. I don't think I saw another car all the way home, and it is nice and peaceful to be on the plains in the middle of the country in the middle of the night. Just right.

I will go to sleep grateful tonight, for friends, for my mom's better day, and for...alas...dial-up.

Have a great night.

The beautiful long tailed Scissortail

Out for a drive -- Amazing.

Today I went out for a drive and to get some supplies for my mother. I had a very interesting drive, and it was a beautiful day to be out in Oklahoma.

After laying in the supplies from the nearest Walgreens, which happens to be 30 miles away, I found a Starbucks...the first I'd seen in a week. I had a wonderfuly strong and potent iced coffee and enjoyed every sip of it. Feeling refreshed, I was able to notice a lot of interesting things going on out the car windows.

First, I thought I would mention a large billboard I passed, which said, "Stuck Pipes?" In any other part of the world, you might thing that this referred to a plumbing problem, or maybe a car stuck in the mud problem....but no...this means that there are so many oilwells in the area, that people actually need billboards to tell them where to go to unstick their oil pump pipes. I passed an oilwell happily pumping away right in the parking lot of a Chili's Restaurant. Amazing.

Further down the road I saw a yellow biplane making lazy circles in the sky, swooping down low like a bird of prey. It was a crop duster, which led to five minutes musing what kind of crop they are spraying and how the farmer can afford to hire a crop duster these days. But there he was, and a beautiful sight too. As far as I could tell, he was far from any country road, and there was no way I could turn off the highway to get a closer view, although I would have loved to.

I ventured on to Fort Reno, a historic fort that was used in the Indian wars, and where horses were kept for the calvalry in the Civil War. During World War II, it was used as an internment camp for Japanese, and other prisoners. I often think that anyone waking up there would know that it would be useless to make an escape. There is a hundred miles of prarie between you and the nearest railroad. Today it is used as the OSU agricultural research station, and it has a very interesting cemetery where we have often visited.

At Fort Reno they also have a few hundred acres of virgin prairie. This is land as it was in the beginning, when the Plains Indians roamed free before the white settlers came in with hoes and plows. The prairie is home to all those wonderful plants and wild flowers that you need to get up close to see, and the birdsong that I heard there today was really amazing. I unrolled the windows, and caught a few pictures of the Oklahoma State bird, the scissortailed flycatcher, and saw a lot of bob whites, as well as lazy turtles enjoying naps on the hot asphalt. I wish that I lived long ago when all the prairies were untouched...but then I wouldn't have Starbucks now, would I?

After that I went to a familiar outpost, the Cherokee Trading Post, where they have beautiful silver jewelry, and all kinds of western-themed souvinirs. I have been there so often I wasn't even tempted to buy anything but a couple of postcards for my friends who may not know how wonderful Oklahoma is. Nothing like a picture of a buffalo or a long horned steer to remind them. The trading post has some fenced in buffalo for the tourists to see, but they look rather forlorn and lonely so I don't visit them anymore.

The weather is changing constantly from sun to clouds, and as I drove back, I hit a few raindrops that were soon blown off the car by the hot prairie wind. Soon it was time to get back to my mother, who has always loved living in Oklahoma, and who is also --amazing!

Have a great day.

Little House on the Prairie

Things are just different in Oklahoma. And things this trip are different than usual in Oklahoma. It is very green and it is the grass, not the corn, that is high as an elephant's eye. The rain comes every afternoon and big black clouds form. We have had 10" of rain and a constant 1" of rain in the cellar. Pumps are pumping, hoses are squirting, and still there is water in the basement. I am hoping that there are no more tornados. One is enough. They are cleaning up across town, and all the plumbers and electricians are busy. I know.

Yesterday we found out that the water heater had flooded out, so this morning we got a new one installed. I didn't care how much it cost, when the man said he'd be right over, I was very happy!

Yesterday the phone stopped working and AOL crashed, which meant that I had no phone, no internet access and no LIFELINE line for my mother. She is better, but very dependent on others. Not having her LIFELINE working really bothered me, so this morning I was up early to go buy a new phone line, install that, and get a new AOL CD, which solved the internet problem too. Dial up is slow and awful, but it's better than nothing!

I hired two sons of a friend to come this afternoon and help me pull some weeds and pick up some trash that has accumulated over the few months since Mom has been able to take care of things. It isn't really trashy...but just a little littered. One of them found a bull snake in the yard. It was a small thing, and he had it in a jar. I convinced him that if that little snake could talk, it would ask him to take him down to the creek and let him go. No snake wants to be in a hot jar with a small hole in the top. He looked at me like I was crazy (the boy, not the snake) and he went to put the snake back where he came from. God willing, the tornado missed us, but the creek DID rise!

Being in the land of afternoon bull snake saving is a bit of a change for me. I can't say that I enjoy it. I survive it. I was the third car at the Super Wal Mart, and since that is the only store in town that sells anything much, that is a feat to beat the crowds. I bought a new phone line for my computer, and picked up the free AOL disk to update my software to something usable. Early to bed and early to Wal Mart means you connect to the real world, and I was hungry to read the news and emails.

Today I am going to relax by making a strawberry pie. Mom isn't eating much, but I think I can tempt her with that. She is doing lots better, but it will take a village to keep her that way. I am the mainstay of the village, and it seems that my calling right now is to try to see that my mom is where she wants to be. All I have to do when I feel that this may not be the case, is remember how we both cried when I had to leave her in that rest home, and how hard she exercised and worked so she could, in her own words, "blow this joint". Blow it she did, and it is over her and my dead body that she will ever go back there.

Off to surf the web and find out what is going on "out there".

Have a great day.
God Bless us all!

Tornado!

Yesterday evening, the black clouds rolled in. You can tell you are in trouble when the sky is devided into two, with black on top, and light down below. I turned on the local weather channel that has the professional tornado chasers in Norman on cams. They showed a huge funnel cloud circulating with no funnel coming down to touch the ground. They estimated the path the storm would take during the night and it went right over our house in El Reno.

I spent the night watching the tornado reports and when the tornado sirens went off here it really shook me up. After 10 minutes, the sirens went off again, with a different kind of siren announcing the all clear. If I had been conversant in siren language, that is. To me it sounded like just another tornado siren--scary!

Outside there was nothing happening. The sky was a dark menancing gray color, and there was no wind. I felt the pressure change in the air. I watched. I listened. I opened the cellar door.

At eleven I went to bed upstairs. Sleeping was out of the question and then I heard the storm hit. It felt like a hurricane. The winds were 70 mph, and it was raining sideways. Again, the tornado sirens sounded, and this time they lasted for a full 30 minutes. I wrapped up in a blanket and sat on the couch, ready to react if glass started breaking. Nothing broke, no trees came down, but the lightning was striking so fast that it was just constant. The TV announcer said the lightning was striking at 100 hits a minute, and I now believe them.

At 1 a.m., the storm left. The announcer said that people in Piedmont needed to be in their storm cellars, and I knew that it had gone over us. Several semi trucks on the highway were blown over, a business on the edge of town that makes tarps had been destroyed (darn, just when we might need more tarps), and a few trees were downed. They showed the funnel cloud. It was about 1 mile from my house.

We survived it and lived to tell the tale. The plastic lawn chair outside wasn't even turned over, but the huge big garbage bin in the backyard was overturned.

It was exciting. Too exciting. But Toto and I are fine.

Have a great day.