DAISY!

     This is my dog - Daisy. She's my dog until she does something wrong, then she's my husband's dog. We named her Daisy though sometimes I think we should have named her Crazy. We got her in June from the pound in Anderson, Indiana. I've wondered often if they had her drugged and where can I get some more of that stuff for her. You see, when I went by the pound to check her out, after my husband had already put his seal of approval on her, she was calm as could be. I took her for a walk outside, around the building and she was easy as could be on the leash. There was another lady, with her child, walking a dog and Daisy barely even looked their way. When we got to the back of the building, a huge pitbull leaped with all his might into the side of his cage, wanting so badly to rip our throats out and Daisy just glanced at him with a "whatever..." look. So I figured we were good to go.

     Within a week of moving in at our house, Daisy was a hyper nut! Just like many puppies she liked nipping at everyone she came into contact with....just a little taste. Thankfully, she is losing that habit, but she still loves to jump up on people. Daisy is also a wander dog. When given a chance she will wander off. This trait was reinforced when she ran off down the road and a good neighbor of ours took her in and fed her oh so generously. After that, she wanted desperately to get away from us and head to the neighbors. Before you ask, yes we do feed her. Daisy is just a psycho nut puppy! 

 I haven't given up on her one day being a great dog. Right now, she looks through me when she looks my way. Maybe as she changes from puppy to dog, she'll gain a human side as well.

"Double, double..."

     This photo was taken by my three year old granddaughter and she's in the picture!  We were at her soccer game and she asked if she could take some pictures with my camera. I will admit that I cropped out her Dad's shirt sleeve at the left and the opposing team standing across the field. This little section of the photograph reminded me of the 3 witches from Macbeth who chanted "Double, double, toil and trouble: fire burn and cauldron bubble." In actuality, it's her very pregnant mother to the left, my granddaughter and her Uncle Barnaby in the center and me on the right. We're on the sidelines, whipping up our own chants for a win.

     Yesterday was a lazy day and it came along at the perfect time. I was at home, taking it easy and I needed a day like that. I had some dental work done last week and you all know how much I hate dental work. A shot in my jaw left me with pain in my jaw and neck. Two days of rain just added to an over all sense of misery. Now that I have a crown on the afflicted tooth, things are looking up. I am healing. 

     Last week, I saw a newscaster on television who had teeth whiter than the whites of her eyes. It was so distracting to watch her talk with those fluorescent teeth. The other day, when the dentist held up the new tooth she'd sculpted (with the aid of a fancy new 3-D computer - printing system) for my mouth, I couldn't help but think of those pearly whites giving the news. My tooth was a little lighter than a Frosty from Wendys. It had earth and coffee tones whipped into a natural tooth color. The dentist and her assistant stood there in their white coats as we three admired the wonders of modern dentistry. Then they set about making magic in my mouth.

Rainy Day

It was raining yesterday. This would actually figure because yesterday, in the rain, a team of six loaded a 45 foot shipping container with what basically remained of  the Newvo Deco Wallpaper Store.
    For those of you who are not familiar with Newvo Deco, allow me to quickly explain. 
    In the mid 90's, my husband and a buddy of his, bought a building in Indy. Their idea was to resale the building for profit. The building housed a vast collection of wallpaper - a wallpaper outlet.  And the story there is that the previous owners, collected old, industrial printers to repair and resale. In their search for old printers, they came across a wallpaper manufacturer in Massachusetts that had printers to sale with the stipulation that the buyers would need to take their entire inventory of wallpaper. So a wallpaper outlet was set up in Indianapolis. Semi after semi truck brought the paper, printers and everything involved in wallpaper manufacturing, to Indianapolis from Massachusetts. And the printer guys ran the wallpaper outlet for more than a decade until they sold the building and the outlet to my husband and his buddy.
    We ran the outlet for 6 or 7 years and the building finally sold. Just when I thought that all the paper would need to be sent to a landfill, two people showed up and bought the remaining paper. They loaded paper on trucks and hauled it to Anderson, Indiana. The kicker here is that they ended up renting space from my husband in this building, here in Anderson. When they got behind on their space rent, they gave the paper back to my husband.  
   The wallpaper has been sitting in this building for about 5 years.
     Meantime, my husband meets a young woman from Mongolia. She has lived in this country for
8 years and is basically into buying goods and reselling them.  She worked out a deal with my husband to take this wallpaper to Mongolia to resale. So now this paper and vinyl which has travelled from Massachusetts to Indianapolis to Anderson is  on it's way to Mongolia to line the concrete block walls of that nation's homes.  Bon voyage!

    Now that I've brought you this far, I'll give a quick run down of the trying times we faced yesterday.

*   The shipping container was an hour and 1/2 late getting here, so we had labor standing around ... waiting.

*    The shipping container people, expect the container to be loaded in two hours or extra charges of $75.00 per hour will be incurred....it's called detention time and we racked up 3 extra hours of detention past the two hours allowed.

*   The guy who was generous enough to provide a forklift for this project had gone to lunch when the shipping container got into position, so the crew started off hand loading the container.

*   The guy generous enough to provide a forklift for this project, returned from lunch and moved one pallet before he realized that he was out of gas... so he left to go get gas - and the laborers continued to load the container by hand.

*  The guy generous enough to provide a forklift for this project returned with more gas and started moving skid after skid into place and was half way through the process before the forklift overheated and filled the entire building full of noxious fumes. He turned the forklift off to let it cool and the laborers were once again loading the shipping container by hand.

 

*The entire project was done in the pouring rain!

Habit forming?

     I have often heard it said that it takes 30 days to form a habit. And I recently came across a website on time management that insists that part of succeeding at a task involves motivation plus habit. So obviously, habit is important in the scheme of things, especially if part of my scheme for my life includes writing regularly on my blog.

     About two months ago, I started another blog entitled museum of love and marriage at blogspot. It was my intention at that time to give the world something to ponder lovewise - everyday. And my old computer died. Not an immediate death but a slow, tedious death, where I would often wonder if maybe there was hope....but there was no hope and the two of us are done.

    I went out about 10 days ago and got another laptop and now perhaps the planets will move into a lineal position and blogging can happen.

    Maybe a habit can be established.

so good - so far

     It is 11:30, Thursday night. It's getting cold outside. I believe the current temperature is 55 degrees. I have a space heater sitting approximately 2 feet from me. Yeah, winter beckons.
     Tonight my blog feels more like a journal. Personal thoughts threaten to surface until I remember that the whole world is watching....or could watch if it were so inclined. I proceed with caution, except for the fact that my life could be an open book. It would be the most boring reality TV show you'd ever watch. I'd give you 10 minutes at the most before your remote would attack.
     I like it this way. I am not a drama queen. The drama drains me. I left middle school a long time ago. I have a boyfriend - my husband. I get along well with women so you would never see a cat fight on my reality TV show. My four kids are the best a mom could ever hope for so no biggie on that front....nothing to see here except 4 young adults trying to make their way in the world.
     I want to be happy and I am. I'd like to be funnier so I'm working on that...(insert joke here). I added that part in parenthesis because I heard a woman comic use that the other night and it just struck me funny.
     I'm not overtly political but do agree with Republican presidential candidate - Herman Cain - that "America is too uptight!" A sense of humor can really help in dire straits.
     A little report on my dog -Daisy. She is getting better at not nipping everything within arm's reach of her. She gets excited and will jump into the air in what I call the croissant curl. She so wants to jump on me and hug me in her excitement but settles for the leaping, croissant curl. It's really funny.
     I'm giving a shot out to two websites that I like.... 43folders.com is absolutely great for those folks like myself who tend to procrastinate. I have gotten a lot of encouragement and good tips from this site. And yes, if you want to accomplish anything - break it down into incremental sections of time and YES use a timer. A timer is beyond belief in what it can do for you. An old saying goes "endurance penetrates marble" - that is what using a timer is all about!
    I also like happiness-project.com. It has a lot of great tips on cultivating happiness and gratitude in your daily life.
    So, there's a few thoughts for a cool, Thursday night.
   

A Beautiful Day.

I love September. I like the fact that midway through the month, my allergy to ragweed fades and I can breathe again. The weather starts to cool off, so it is wonderful to get outside and let my dog take me for a walk. September is also a great month in the garden as everything is in full force and sometimes beyond. Since September is also a month for remembering, I am remembering a flower garden I grew in 2006. It was wonderful, so I am including some pictures with this blog. Just a reminder to think good thoughts and do good deeds. One kind deed or word can make a world of difference in another's life.

Crazy Thursday!

    When I climbed out of bed last Thursday morning, I had no idea that the race was on. I'm not talking Nascar here. I'm talking my own personal "get moving!" kind of day.
     My husband is having work done on a rental property he owns. It's a double and it's sat for 3 years - unoccupied. In that time, the pipes have frozen. He has people working to get the units ready for easy living. So of course, there must be plumbing. 
     When I arrived in Anderson, I called my husband to remind him that he needed to turn off the water filter spigot - as by now, 25 minutes later - it had finished filling the tea kettle. ( This is a long story that I will not go into but will just point out that the spigot runs the filtered water out so slow that a person is likely to die of thirst before they get a 8 ounce tumbler of water.) Well, I could not get my husband (we'll call him... Phil) on the line. I left a dozen messages on his cell phone and our house phone.
Then my phone rings from a phone number that I've never seen before. I answer. It's Wayne - the plumber, working at the rental.
     He starts "Phil wanted me to call you and have you call around and find out where we can get some crimp rings."
I asked, "You just talked to Phil?" 
Wayne answers "Yeah."
"Where is he?" I asked.
     To make a long story shorter, Wayne didn't know Phil's current location. Wayne was at the rental, needing plumbing parts. Wayne started reading off a list of items he needed for the job (by now you must realize that Wayne is not a "professional" plumber). So I ended up going to the rental to pick up Wayne to take him shopping for the parts. As we were leaving the hardware store, I asked if there were any other parts needed for the job. "No, we should be fine now."
     Well, 4 more trips to the hardware store for parts, it's coming to the end of the work day and we still didn't have the water running correctly at the rental.
     Then I  got a phone call from Dave, another worker at the rental, who asks if Wayne was coming back (Wayne had to leave early for a job interview) because the kitchen sink is leaking water underneath the cabinet. I told him that I would come over there because I had been informed by Wayne that several of the parts would have to be returned and some new ones would need to be purchased. So I would pick them up and check the leak situation.
     I arrived at the house around 4 o clock. The sack of parts to be returned were sitting on the sink. Dave pointed out the leaking pipes. I asked if there wasn't a cut off valve some where nearby. He said he had tightened it down as far as it would go. He was afraid to tighten it further as it might do damage to the valve.
     I looked at him with wide eyed curiosity and asked the lethal question. "Isn't there a main valve that cuts the water off to the entire property?"
    He looked at me like I had run him through with a switch blade. "Yeah, it's under the house...in the crawlspace."
     "Well, I guess we'll need to turn it off there." I offered.
      At 4 o clock in the afternoon, when a person is gearing down to end the work day, this is not the statement that wins "Employer of the Year" for anyone. Of course him mumbling "I guess I have no choice" as he yanks his coveralls out of the back of his truck, won't get him "Employee of the Year" either.

I did want to mention something I experienced last Thursday. As Wayne the plumber and I were heading to the hardware store, he mentioned that he had had his hand cut off in a weird sheet metal accident. I looked at him in amazement because both his hands were still attached. He showed me his right hand. His wrist looked a little knobby and there was a scar across his arm at the wrist. Wayne lives within walking distance to Phil's rental so he'd brought a notebook to work to show Dave and Richard pictures of his lost hand and the miracle of what he endured. When we came back to the rental, he showed me the notebook. As I started to open it, Dave said "you're likely to lose your lunch over those pictures."  Yet, I found myself intrigued. One pictures showed his arm and the sliced flesh at his wrist area. It was no grosser than the cuts of meat you might see in the meat section of a grocery. There was no gushing blood. Just this arm missing a hand. And the other pictures were of his lost hand. His right hand lay on a blue towel. It just lay there. I was reminded of a swan sailing across blue water....such a miracle is a hand....those fingers....the potential. I lay the notebook down and looked at his hand, now back with it's arm. Tears came to my eyes. Here he was with his hand and his fingers and the potential that this combination can bring about. It was an awesome thing to contemplate.
   OK, here's my last Crazy Thursday story. I got home around 6 o clock. Phil was home, working on the computer. I had managed to speak with him a couple of times during the day. For some reason we kept getting a bad connection and his voice was all computer-robotized, so our conversations were short but loud.
He worked a while longer on the computer then told me he was going outside to do some garden work. I told him to keep an eye on Daisy, our dog. She loves to be outside but she also loves to follow any of our neighbors who happen to be walking along the road. Phil said he'd watch her. I decided to start dinner. At a certain point, I  needed to go to the bathroom. Our only bathroom sits about 5 foot from our front door. As things were progressing, I heard a knock on the front door. I figured it was Phil and that he was locked out. So I yell out "Just a minute! I'm on the toilet!" (in a voice that had a touch of total irritation in it.)
     When I finished, I took my sweet time washing up then I stepped to the front door and jerked it open. Before me stood 2 people that I have never seen before. A man in a tee shirt and tan shorts, who just looked down at his hands - maybe checking for a hang nail. And a woman who was dressed in an ankle length,flowing, orange sun dress. She reminded me of pictures I'd seen of the Woodstock Music Festival.

   She smiles sweetly and says "Your dog was following us." And we all three look down at Daisy -my dog- who the hippie lady was holding by the collar. Daisy seemed to have little care that she had brought humiliation to me once again. All I could say was "thanks." Neither one of them said a word, just handed off the dog, turned in unison and walked away... her orange dress fluttering in the breeze.  Awkward.

Here it is, your moment of zen.

Then again, maybe I will.

     I am in my upstairs bedroom. I had moved a bunch of my office equipment up here so that I might work on a project concerning a good friend.  The window air conditioner is humming such a lovely, low hum. And I have a small fan blowing against my laptop computer. The computer's inner fan gets hot quickly and shuts everything down. So the small fan keeps things cool.
     I am in pondering mode. I have come to appreciate the power of accomplishing a mission. And I think I came to understand it two summers ago. I am just now realizing my understanding.

     My younger sister asked me to paint a sign with a lodge theme. She wanted a bear in the sign. So I checked the internet for a few images and made the sign. I have to tell you that I amazed myself.
     When I finished her sign, I just stood back and stared in amazement. All the time that I was working on the sign, I seemed to be lost in a daze of color and shape. And then I just stared at that solitary bear making his way along the mountain top.
     Time moved on and different projects came my way. One of those projects was to make a hiking trail through a mass of shrubs and trees that run the border of our property. I started the project because I wanted my son and I to have a project that we could work on and perhaps grow closer. He was unable to help because of his work so I took on the project myself.
     After 3 months, I had made my way through almost 200 feet of wilderness. And it was wonderful. For the first time,since I've moved to Indiana, I felt like I was back in the wilds of the North Carolina mountains...my childhood home.
I walk that trail and hear birds and view plants that vie for the space. A 3 foot tall Oak tree was in the path and I could not stand the thought of cutting it. So it is left to grow. I had planned to make the trail wide enough for a golf cart. So that in my old age, I would still be able to get out in the wild. Well, I am not old and so the tree grows in the path. We can step around.
     After these accomplishment and a few I won't mention. I've decided that I can do things. I can set my mind to something and work in that direction and I can accomplish that thing.
    Now,I am back to blogging. I think that my blog is the beginning of the trail. I see brush and briar before me but my goal will be reached.
    You may ask, what is my goal. And I will not tell you that because I keep the energy for myself. In time, all will be revealed.

Northern Exposure - the Update

     Starting in December 2010, I began watching taped cassettes of the Northern Exposure series. These tapes were a gift to me from Linda, my sister in law. Northern Exposure was a TV series that ran in the 90's and centered around a group of people living in small town, Cicely, Alaska.  This week I came to the end of the 110 episodes. I stood in my office in Anderson, Indiana with tears in my eyes as they closed out with a song from Iris Dement - Our Town - as the characters went  off the air. It was a beautiful closing. 

      Well, I felt like a fool, getting all teary eyed over a TV show. Yet, as I stood there all verclempt, I was reminded of  my childhood years. We had a certain substitute teacher - Mrs Gragg - who always brought the stories. I have no way of knowing if she was left instructions about daily lessons but as soon as we saw her, the begging began..."Tell us a story, tell us a story..." And she would. Sometimes, she'd read a story - with emphasis! And sometimes, she'd tell one from the heart. She had such a gift.  My grandmother was a bit like that too. She'd tell us stories from her childhood. My siblings and cousins and I would sit and listen with total attention as she spoke of dynamite boxes, the mica mines of Mitchell county, her many sisters (5, I think) and the various endeavors she undertook in her childhood.

     The television show ended. The characters still live out there in Cicely, Alaska. The actors have moved on and the story tellers have moved on too. So I took the tape out of the vcr and looked at the label. There are five episodes on the cassette - the last three and the first two. I smiled to myself as the first episode is cued up for my next visit. Thanks, Linda.

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Here it is - your moment of Zen!

Sleep, Perchance to Dream

     It's raining outside and I have been awake since 4:30 AM. Sometimes my mind runs in whirlwind mode, so sleep gets pushed aside. That's what was happening this morning. I hate this of course because without adequate sleep, my brain can sometimes get "brain lock."
     I'm sure you've had it happen. You've started your day on little or no sleep and as you go about your daily activities, you find yourself staring at the task at hand. You may have been staring for a few seconds or you may have been staring for many minutes...brain lock.
     I've heard that this is actually a type of sleep state... the brain takes what it needs.

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Here it is, your moment of Zen

A Note On Lounging.

Hello to all my remaining blog fans. I could start right here and give you a list of reasons why I have not written lately. I could but I hesitate to do that. Let's face it, we are all on this wild run away train called life.  You think a few days of time have passed and when you check it out...it's been a month. Maybe it was a few years ago and discover it was decades. That is when it gets scary. So I will move on.

I was reading about blogs the other day and found that the consensus thought is that successful blogs are blogged twice a week and contain just a few paragraphs of writing. Interesting huh?

 Well I wanted to just write this morning and give a little insight on "lounging." I think that use to be a thing. There use to be lounge wear, lounge singers and the insult "lounge about." I was talking to my oldest son about this last night. I told him that I just lounged about all day on Sunday and didn't even get out of my pajamas until around 2PM. And I loved it!  I watered a few house plants, looked through some old papers, watched a little TV and snacked all day.  And as I think of it, a good lounging day involves drinks. Not alcoholic ones - that gets into more of a drinking thing than a lounging thing. Coffee and tea are facilitators to lounging - alcohol takes over the show. Of course, I think that if you are leaving the house during your lounging endeavors, you need to put on regular clothes and shoes. Wearing pajamas and house slippers to the shopping mall is just plain sad.

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Here it is, your moment of zen.