Trying again

OK … I tried to post pictures the other day, but a cyberglitch ate them, so here they are again:

Songdog is madly in love with my sister. He spent most of the weekend attempting to attach himself to her body. I think his new life goal is to become Grace’s Siamese twin.

While Ron dug postholes for the tomato plants (I will get pictures of those ASAP), Grace and I sat out on the deck, blowing bubbles like a couple of 5-year-olds. For the record, Song is afraid of bubbles. I don’t know why. He ran and hid under the deck when he saw them.

The sage put out buds. Ron reports that it is blooming today, but I didn’t see it when I was out there, so I haven’t gotten a picture yet. I shot this the other day while Mom and Dad and Grace were in town:

Grace and I found this inchworm struggling to climb the garden fence on Friday:

Ron and I got the garden in the ground on Sunday afternoon. We’ve planted 30 tomato plants (representing at least 18 different varieties); two different kinds of beans; two kinds of cucumber; two kinds of peas; okra; zucchini; watermelons; and a wide assortment of flowers and herbs, some of which are in hanging baskets on the pergola and some of which are in the garden.

We still have to get eggplant and put it in the ground, and I have to rustle up my collard seeds. I have a few more annuals, including sunflowers, to plant, but they’ll probably have to wait until I get a hand free later this weekend.

Emily

Catching up

I posted the other day about my family’s visit to Tulsa, but a WordPress glitch ate the post and accompanying pictures and kept my blog out of commission for a couple of days.

I’ll redo the earlier post and add an update on the garden when I get a hand free, but at the moment, I’m running on about four hours’ sleep, and I spent all day digging and hoeing and planting and installing fences and doing all the other things it takes to get the garden in the ground … then went to the office at 9 p.m. and spent about three hours working on some pages … and I promised Suzanne I’d meet her at the gym tomorrow at 6 a.m. … so I think it’s time to have a snack and head to bed.

Emily

Caterpillars and butterflies

“That which the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.”
– Richard Bach

“Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

Yesterday afternoon, the Starlight Express and I had a fender-bender on the way home from work. I was coming around a blind curve when traffic suddenly ground to a halt in front of me. I didn’t see it in time and wound up smacking into the big, heavy tow hitch on the back of the truck in front of me. Score: Tow hitch 1, Starlight 0.

My car was pretty heavily damaged, but no one was hurt, and it didn’t damage the truck, so I was grateful for that.

Within seconds of the accident, a whole series of wonderful little blessings began to unfold, starting with the fact that everybody involved in the situation, from the other driver to the guy who filled out the paperwork for my rental car, was very kind and very helpful.

Especially noteworthy: A Christian Science practitioner I know — who is a real sweetheart and has a gift for sort of reaching right through the phone line to give me a hug when I need it — happened to call just as I was starting to feel very angry with myself for making such a stupid mistake and very sad because I knew Ron was unhappy with me. Of course my friend immediately nudged my thoughts back in the right direction and got me started looking for (and finding) blessings in the situation.

I think the most amazing blessing came into my consciousness Wednesday afternoon.

I knew Ron was not happy about the $500 insurance deductible, but I assured him (and myself) that we would have what we needed, when we needed it.

The insurance company gave us a $100 discount for using their preferred body shop, which brought the total down to $400. Then I remembered that I have $175 coming in from a freelance photo assignment I did a couple of weeks ago and $35 coming in from mileage reimbursement at work. That left $190.

I wasn’t sure where that $190 would come from, but I knew we would have it when we needed it.

A few hours later, I got a phone call from another magazine editor, offering me $175 to write an article about Route 66.

I called Ron and told him the deductible would be completely covered if he’d just walk into my office and take $15 out of the change jar on the shelf above my craft desk.

The whole experience was a lovely little illustration of how divine Love does, indeed, meet every human need, be it physical protection, moral support, or financial considerations. In this case, I needed — and received — all three at various points.

I don’t have my car back yet and probably won’t for several days, but in the meantime, my insurance company has picked up the tab for me to rent a car. Even the make and model have turned out to be a funny little blessing. I used to drive a Dodge Neon a few years ago. I made fun of it the whole time I had it, because it really wasn’t a very good car, but I’d been apprehensive about renting a car to use while my own car was in the shop, because I hate driving unfamiliar vehicles.

Lo and behold, my rental turned out to be a Dodge Neon — so I’m really not driving anything unfamiliar at all. It’s newer and designed a little differently than my old car, but all the controls are in basically the same places, the stereo even works like the one I had in The Albatross, and it handles just like The Albatross did … so I wasn’t nervous at all when I got behind the wheel. It was very reassuring, and I thought it kind of funny that I was so happy to be driving the very make and model I’d complained about and made fun of for years.

Every human need, indeed.

Oh, and my Cubbies won today. We’re in first place.

Emily

Cardinals

I was wandering around the garden this afternoon when I looked up and saw something cute: A pair of cardinals kept flitting around behind my neighbor’s house. Something spooked them (probably the tuxedo cat who lives in the drain pipe back there), so they took off, along with a mockingbird and a couple of other birds I hadn’t noticed.

Speaking of Cardinals, my Cubbies are half a game ahead of St. Louis and half a game out of first. If they beat Cincinnati tomorrow, they’ll be in first place again.

Go Cubs!

Emily

Irises

I went and interviewed the president of the local iris society today and took pictures of his beautiful flowers. He has about 150 different varieties of iris. Only a few of them were blooming, although a lot of them had buds on them. They were absolutely stunning. After the story runs, I’ll post pictures here.

I need to get some rhizomes and plant some irises around the pond. They’d be pretty there. I keep promising myself I’ll plant irises and tulips and daffodils in our yard, but I never seem to get to it. Maybe this year….

Emily

It’s good to be a grownup.

As Ron reports on his blog today, Pixar has a deal with Kellogg’s to promote the upcoming movie Cars, which is set on Route 66 and features the voice of my friend Michael as the sheriff.

Everybody on Route 66 is just dying for the movie to hurry up and come out, because Michael has been teasing us with little bits of information about it for the past four years.

As part of this promotional deal, Kellogg’s is putting little cars in specially marked boxes of cereal. One of the little cars is the sheriff.

A few weeks from now, when this promotion hits the shelves, Ron is going to walk into the kitchen to find me standing at the table with my arm buried up to the elbow in a box of Frosted Flakes, trying to extract my little plastic Michael car from the bottom of the box without having to wait until I finish all the cereal.

The last time I pulled a stunt like that, I was about 5, and I got a spanking for it. But I’m not 5 any more. I’m a grownup. And grownups buy their own cereal, and grownups can do whatever they want with it, and their mommies can’t do anything about it, because that’s what being a grownup is all about. So there. Nyah, nyah, nyah.

It’s good to be a grownup.

Come to think of it, let’s put that on the list of stuff I’m going to do with my new niece or nephew: As soon as the child is old enough to appreciate such pleasures, we will get out a box of sugar-sweetened cereal and plunge our arms into it in search of toys, and if the cereal turns out to be yucky, we will take it to the park and feed it to the ducks, and then we will go have some ice cream, because ice cream tastes better than cereal anyway.

And then Ashley will kick my butt. But I’m gonna be an awesome aunt.

Aunt Hippie

Gardening

I spent this afternoon in the garden. We aren’t planting yet (we’re still six days from last frost), but I wanted to get the garden laid out and the paths and planting beds all mapped out in advance so we could spend next weekend actually getting the garden in the ground.

Today’s project involved installing some low fencing to mark off planting beds. We found some little wire fence material that looks sort of like a miniature version of the garden fence. We bought 100 feet, which wasn’t nearly enough, so I’m going to the hardware store later to pick up more fencing and more stakes to keep it stable. Hopefully I can find shorter T-posts. I used what I had in the garage, but they were too tall. I think it still looks pretty good, though. Here’s one of the beds:

Hope your Sunday afternoon was productive.

Emily

Great-Grandma’s watch

Great-Grandma’s watch is working again.

It hasn’t worked in a long time. Mom had it repaired for me before she gave it to me for my 16th birthday, but it quit working a few months later, and the jeweler said it was pretty much a lost cause, because the gears were so old they’d gotten stripped out.

But I got it out tonight and set it and wound it up and ignored it for half an hour, and when I peeked at it again, I discovered that it’s working.

I knew it would be.

See, Great-Grandma received the watch as a gift for her 16th birthday. Her boyfriend gave it to her. She didn’t keep the boyfriend, but she kept the watch, and later, after she’d grown up and gotten married, Great-Grandpa used the watch to time her contractions when she had Grandpa.

Grandma had borrowed the watch for some reason right before Mom was born, and Grandpa ended up using it to time Grandma’s contractions.

Great-Grandma gave Mom the watch for her 16th birthday. Mom kept it, and when I was born, Daddy used it to time Mom’s contractions.

Mom gave it to me for my 16th birthday, but I wasn’t planning on having kids, so the watch said, “Well, I guess my work here is done,” and it quit working.

But it started working again tonight.

I knew it would, because my little brother is going to need to borrow it sometime around late December. He’s going to need to use it to time his wife’s contractions.

I went to a lecture this morning that my church sponsored. The topic was aging. It was a good lecture. The speaker gave a lot of advice on how to not feel old. I took a lot of notes.

Too bad I didn’t have my notes in front of me an hour and a half later, when Oliver called to inform me that Ashley is pregnant.

I am, of course, utterly thrilled by this bit of news.

I am also feeling OLD.

Very, very old.

There are certain things I think of when I think of my little brother.

Watching my little sister’s reaction to Mom’s pregnancy, for instance. Grace was not quite 2 when Oliver was born. When Mom was about umpteen months pregnant, Grace would stand on tiptoe to peek up under her shirt, wave at her belly, and say, “Hi, baby!”

Watching Oliver blow out the candle on his first birthday cake. I still remember the cake and one of the toys he got for his birthday.

Listening to him stick up for me when he was about 3. Some boys in my class liked to pick on me, and Oliver wasn’t having any of it: “You just tell those boys they’d better not mess with you, ‘cos you’ve got a little brother at home who knows how to kick butt.”

Watching him tear around like a maniac, grabbing any vaguely swordlike object — ruler, pen, stick, fork, paper-towel tube, whatever — and raising it above his head while shouting, “Thundercats … HO!” like his favorite cartoon character when he was about 4.

Making fun of him when he was in grade school because he had to be taken to the doctor to have a piece of an ink pen extracted from his nose after he stuck it up there as part of a weird little impromptu comedy routine.

Oliver is good at weird little impromptu comedy routines. He has a knack for entertaining little kids with his weird little impromptu comedy routines. That’s because he has never really stopped being a weird little boy with weird little impromptu comedy routines.

I took him out to Tucumcari one weekend about three years ago, and he spent the entire trip entertaining me with his weird little impromptu comedy routines. I laughed so hard, I thought my sides would never stop hurting. I hold him personally responsible for the lines around my mouth and eyes. To this day, I cannot walk into Clanton’s Cafe in Vinita without thinking of one of Oliver’s weird little impromptu comedy routines and laughing so hard that my face hurts.

Oliver is going to be an awesome daddy. He will make his kid laugh at all the right moments and embarrass his kid at all the right moments and keep me laughing with stories about funny stuff his kid did in between.

He will tell me funny stories about his funny kid, and I will laugh and laugh and laugh, and the lines around my mouth and eyes will get deeper and deeper, and I will look old before my time, and I will feel old, thinking of Oliver as a baby and listening to him tell me stories about his baby, and I won’t care, because people will look at me and say, “See the laugh lines in that old lady’s face? She must be blessed. She must have a hilarious life.”

And they will be right. I am blessed. I have a hilarious little brother and a hilarious little sister and a hilarious niece or nephew on the way, and I laugh all the time, and the laughter is making me look old, and I don’t care, because old means more years full of more memories of more laughs, and more lines around my mouth and eyes to help me remember them all.

Emily

Slow day

Not much to report today. I didn’t spend a lot of time outside, because we had some training at the office all morning, and I spent the afternoon playing catch-up and trying to get the paper put together in half the time it usually takes to do that. It was a busy day — just the way I like it — but I was tired when I got home and just went to bed. I’ve been up too late too many nights in a row. Not tonight. I’m going to bed early so I can get up and run with Suzanne in the morning.

I did have time to run over to Billy Sims’ Barbecue in search of some chocolate cobbler during my lunch hour, but I came away disappointed: They have changed the dessert menu and are only serving brownies these days.

I am giving serious thought to launching a letter-writing campaign to get them to either bring back the chocolate cobbler or turn loose of the recipe so I can make it myself. If Mom still has her pudding cake recipe that made the brownie thing with all the goopy chocolate sauce around it, perhaps she would be so kind as to post it here. It tasted very similar to the chocolate cobbler.

Emily

Blue-eyed grass

Just when I think I know every square inch of my yard, it finds a new way to surprise me. This evening, I came home from work to find this mass of gorgeous little blue-violet flowers blooming next to the air conditioner.

I have never seen flowers like these before. They just appeared, out of nowhere, in the backyard today.

I just looked them up in my wild herb book and online, and I am pretty sure what I have here is blue-eyed grass. Breathtaking.

Hope your day held beautiful little surprises, too.

Emily