Christmas and Beyond

As usual, we started holiday celebrations at Crab's parents on Christmas Eve. It was low key compared to years past. In fact, it was a little strange in comparison. His folks are starting to slip and the lack of traditional crap which used to bug us bugged us because it was not there.

In their golden years they have discovered the joys of the company of cats, not that this detracted from the holiday. In fact the cats are a nice diversion and give one a topic of conversation other than "I told you that twelve times already" or "your house smells like a sewer".

The young addition to their family was cowering in the basement, poor thing. She was frightened by the sudden influx of humans. But the king of the house reigned.

Hawkeye

Icicles

Icicles

Uncle Nutso and Jelly Bean

Cards have always been played at every get-together at Crab's parent's house. Crab's parents have approximately 389 decks of cards, some of which have been combined for Spite and Malice. After opening gifts, eating dinner and washing dishes H and I settled down to a game of four point pitch with her grandparents. I selected a deck which had a note attached that said it was for a 5 person game of pitch. We pulled out all the cards from 3-6 and started playing.

H & her grandpa won the first game. H and I were rolling our eyes when her grandma claimed to have played the 10 of diamonds earlier when it was crystal clear I had played it on the last hand. The second game ended with H and I aching with laughter. She snorted. I nearly pissed my pants. This happened on the same play:

Must have had one up my sleeve

Did I mention they were slipping?

The next day we opened presents here before heading to my folks. There's not much expectation there. There are no traditions except for the excellent food. Oh, and the fact that it becomes an official holiday when someone whips out a gun. Then others run to their trucks and get out their guns. Let the pissing match begin! It's better when it's warmer and the guns tend to be farther away from the house.

This year only one brother produced a gun. My niece showed off her skills.

Sharp and shooting

Only hitting beer cans!

H's boyfriend shot a gun for the first time ever.

Better here than in St. Paul!

I am jealous of the birds that flock to my parent's feeders. I rarely see a cardinal here but they are so ho-hum at my folks.

Cardinal? Again? Yawn.

Christmas night we chilled at home and played Yahtzee.

Molly helping Crab score in Yahtzee

I was not feeling well over the holidays. One day around New Year's I spent the whole day in my jammies. When I finally felt semi-human I went out into a blue and frosty day.

Blue

Frost

Nest

Cold road

Holidays are over and I am glad for that. Now if i could only get rid of whatever it is that has been hanging on to my throat since before Christmas. New year, new hopes and today -- a new bird. One I have never seen hanging around at my folk's place.

Owl

Deflated

The holidays are over and I am grateful for that. I was ill and am still not feeling my best. On the first day I felt like moving I took a short walk and snapped this picture that describes my mood perfectly.

Deflated

Bermuda Triangle

Weird things have happened out here in BFE. You would think we'd be insulated from craziness but we're not. We attract it.

1. Once a runaway from a troubled girls home ended up at our house having an asthma attack. She walked 10 miles on the tracks, passing countless farms and chose this place to be the one she got hauled away from by the authorities.

2. One chilly October morning a man knocked on my door at 6 a.m. He'd been at the bar in K Town the night before and took his tried and true gravel route to M town and ended up in the ditch. He was considerate enough to sleep in his car and wait until morning to knock at my door. He was no where near the gravel road route to M town.

3. One evening a crazed, drunken man knocked at my door needing me to call his wife to come and get him with the horse trailer. And a winch, I guess. He had been riding along the dredge ditch and his horse had gotten mired in the mud.

4.The topper (the tip of the triangle,if you will) has to be the guys who took a left turn onto the railroad tracks near our place, hanging up their car. The sheriff's office was called, the deputy arrived and Crab and Deputy Bill worked at pulling the drunken idiots out of the car AS A TRAIN WAS BARRELING TOWARDS THEM. I stood in the road with baby H in my arms watching the train smash the old Chevy down the tracks and wondered if Crab, Bill & the drunks survived. (They did.)

I don't miss the errant drunks and runaways but it's hard to keep the Bermuda Triangle feeling going if nothing weird happens. Now I have to settle for the 2 roosters that showed up a couple of months ago. No hens, just roosters.

Tonight I went for a short walk. The weather was turning and there was a near triangle experience.

Sun on K Town

November Surprise

Weather

Nest

Retrospect

It seemed serendipitous to find a Facebook friend with twenty five pounds of tomatoes she did not want. I didn't can anything this year and I jumped on those tomatoes so fast the other FB friends were eating dust.

I am still in the middle of a canning mess. The sad part is these aren't real tomatoes, they are greenhouse grown and devoid of tomato aroma, texture and flavor.

I think my day would have been better spent on plan A, which was defrosting the deep freezer.

Labor Pains

My camera worked on Labor Day. I got some nice pictures. The next time I picked it up everything I snapped looked like this:

Nice lines and color!

That's Molly, the little firecracker I rescued from a stupid, stupid woman who was giving all of her flea-bitten, wormy cats and kittens to the shelter if no one took them. My neighbor took 2 kittens, too, so Molly has siblings just down the road.

I guess I don't have much room to talk, stupid wise. I was on duty when Hey Bob escaped. I still dream about her and want her back even though that would exceed my 2 cat limit.

It has taken Skittles a little longer to warm up to Molly than it did Hey Bob. Maybe because Molly is such a fearless feline. She does not know when to quit and gets in moods where she decides the dog's tail is the ONLY toy worth playing with even though the dog snaps at her.

RAWR! I hate that kitten!

Oh, yeah. I got a new camera, too. I am still trying to figure out its nuances and I wish I were as steady as a tripod but it's a big improvement over lined, magenta tinged images.

Cat fight!

Testing the zoom on my lens. I took these from the same spot.

Wide angle

At the end of the optical zoom

Digital zoom

Testing the macro:

Pansy

Jetsam and flotsam from this morning's walk:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Change In The Weather

The weather is out of the sticky hot summer mode and into the glorious fall mode. The cats have noticed. Last Monday I would have banged their heads together if I would have been able to catch them. They ran and chased each other from room to room and up and down the stairs.

Hey Bob escaped last Tuesday morning and eluded me all day. I finally got her in the house before Crab came home in the evening. She got a stern talking to and responded by settling into my lap and purring.

The next day things were pretty quiet. Snotty Pants is getting fat and lazy and Hey Bob was still recovering from Tuesday's romp. Before I went to bed I put the dog out to do her business. The cats ran to the porch. When I opened the door to let the antique dog in both cats bolted for the lawn. No biggie. It's happened before. Besides, I get up to pee at least once in the night. And Hey Bob is newly spayed so at least she wouldn't come back pregnant.

When I woke up at 2:30 I went out with a flashlight. Snotty Pants raced for the safety of the porch. Hey Bob danced in the light and completely dodged me. Fine, I thought, she will be more than ready for a warm, dry house when I wake up.

I haven't seen her since.

Chit Chat

To those of you who know me, even if just in cyberspace, you know that Thursday night was my first night of the league bowling season. I was less than excited to start a winter sport during the height of summer and kind of hoped that my team had had a private meeting and kicked this old broad out. No such luck.

I went. I bowled. I kept score. I sat and waited my turn. And when I wasn't keeping score, bowling or waiting I kept my eye on team mate Chit Chat, who was boring holes in the brain of our potential new sub with a constant stream of mindless blather.

I watched the bowlers in the rotation and evilly eye-balled Chit Chat when it was her turn to bowl. Often it was necessary to shout "CHIT CHAT -- LANE WHATEVER!" The rest of us agreed that we were happy that it was not our brains that being drained of vital fluid.

One of my team mates brought up a good point -- that it was a "talent" to be able to ALWAYS have something to say.

Team mate said she was in situations all the time when she never knew what to say. I had to agree. That is me all the time. I've seen Chit Chat accost people who barely knew her and engage them in long conversations. Such a talent would never keep me from funerals (well, except for the churchy part) or wedding receptions where the only person I knew was the groom's mother.

When bowling was over Chit Chat commandeered a conversation from another bowler about the attempted suicide of her sister and turned the light on herself. Isn't it also a talent to know when to shut the fuck up? When to listen? When to put the keys in the ignition and drive away?

Since I could not afford the loss of more brain matter, I got in my car and drove away.

Anti-Social

I sloughed off yet another funeral today. Sorry. I don't do church well. Tonight I am avoiding a wedding reception after avoiding the wedding this afternoon. I would feel bad about that if the bride or groom could pick me out of a line-up, but neither could. The mother of the groom (who is responsible for me getting an invitation) could but I'm hoping she is sufficiently soused and will not remember if I attended or not.

My neighbor called a while ago to invite me over for a few brewskis. Her husband is gone. Crab is gone. It is a beautiful night to sit in the yard and gab. I could go for a one-on-one gab session with an old friend but she said one of her sisters was coming over. If there's one sister, there's three and that's three too many.

It is Saturday night. If I had my druthers, I'd be out with the 30 something bachelorette party that I wasn't invited to. It's just as well as it is nearly past my bed time as I write.

So -- blah.

August 7, 2010

Bright

Heart of the matter

Droplets

More Droplets

The day went down the toilet after this.