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Here is our contribution to the local economy, not to mention my enjoyment. The upgrade wasn’t done in an “HGTV hour” but ran pretty smoothly over about ten days. We are talking ALL new–except for the shower curtain I am very attached to. There is a learning curve as with anything new. I still feel like I’m fighting a spitting anaconda when trying to adjust the Water Pik, but I’ll learn. It’s so nice to be in the new millennium.  Now on to the kitchen.

[]This is the Swiss Army Knife of painter’s tools. Home Depot gives them away. The paint can opener on one end works great, but I have a question. Do we really want our painters to have a beer bottle opener on the other end? On second thought, after rolling a couple of coats on porous knockdown this week ourselves, Jerry and I vote yes.

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Could I get some help here? This beautiful, vine-like plant was given to me by a friend, but neither of us know what it is. It was in the yard of an older house when she moved in and grows vociferously in Florida.  Not that a rose by any other name would be any sweeter, but we would both appreciate knowing what we have.

You know what makes this illegal immigration issue so complicated? These damn tamales. Some of you know I am renovating my house. That calls for laborers and craftsmen –U.S. citizens because of my feelings on illegal immigration. I had a job set up with a local tile setter, but he had excessive earwax on the appointed day, then a pulled muscle the second day. Fernando could come right away. He did a beautiful job and by damn he brought me tamales the second day. You see how complicated this gets? I am from Texas and would sell my soul for a good, genuine Mexican tamale. Thank God I didn’t have to. Fernando is studying for his citizenship, so obviously a resident alien. So I’m off the hook—except for Ramona. Actually, it was my mother who rescued her from our garbage, trying to feed her children. After that day, she cleaned our home (and our friends’ homes) for over twenty years. When the time came, she insisted on sitting by my father’s casket all night. As I said, it is very complicated.
Most of us who lobby to enforce our borders are not bigots. We just believe in sovereignty, secure borders, and fair treatment of all who want to enter from whatever country.  And we want our our country to use its powers to pressure our neighbors to the south to treat their citizens right. We have no problem trying to rearrange priorities of countries on other continents. Mexicans live in a beautiful, bountiful country, rich in oil, tourism, precious metals, and history. Their people should be participating in the wealth that funnels to the elite. Why isn’t this a priority with our government? Why can’t Ramona and Fernando make a living in their beloved country? Why?

You may have noticed fewer words coming from this site lately. We are in the throws of upgrading our thirty-three year old house. We put a new roof, double-paned windows, remodeled the master bath, carpeted and did interior painting a few years ago. This time we are remodeling the other bath and kitchen, as well as painting the exterior. Let’s hope that does it for a while.

In the past few weeks we have had to decide “our style” as they say on HGTV. Good thing our style had some leeway because we switched from white kitchen cabinets to maple because the white ones available were not real wood. We did not want to be breathing the fumes from whatever they were. We’ll also use low VOC paint. I was told it is so pure we could eat it. Yummy. That will be nice to know when our stove is out. Our original white appliances became stainless since the cabinets would not be white. I was clinging to the twenty-something dishwasher until it graciously began to gasp and ask to be relived at the opportune time. In one day the cabinet maker tells me the cabinets will be gone and new ones in, along with new countertop. Amazing. Everything has fallen in place so well – after an initial fist a cuff with FEMA. Don’t ask.

My bath will be gutted tomorrow morning, the one I’ve used for thirty-two years. It feels kind of sad, but I’m sure that feeling will go away when the stylish new tile, vanity, toilet and tub go in. The good thing about a) being older and b) watching a lot of HGTV, you get a pretty good idea of what you like in the way of tiles, colors, cabinet styles. I don’t know if I could have done this at twenty. Actually I kinda did ,and the bathroom looked like a green stamp catalog and the kitchen cabinets were orange. It’s good to be old and not quite so daring. After all, this is probably what our children will inherit. No doubt they will gut it and start all over. Orange cabinets maybe?

 

A Central Florida day-care center is under investigation after a toddler bit a one-year old girl repeatedly. Wonder what fairytales they read those children at the Hansel & Gretel Preschool?

 I know.  Sick humor again.

See that guy standing on his balcony high above the city, looking down on the town? He has mountain envy. Not that I blame him; so do I, but not in the same way. I want my mountain in little chunks – stones and rocks. As soon as I realized there was a paucity of rocks in Florida, I began to covet them. People in North Carolina know this, so they blast those mountains and haul them piece by piece to Florida.It took a while to realize that where I now live something was missing. Shirley Jackson could never have centered her famous short story, The Lottery, in Florida. Not enough stones.

Today we went to rock haven. It’s a place called Pebble Junction where they stack sorted rocks in neat piles over acres. We bought beautiful river rock last year to go in our solar water fountain. Today we planned to buy enough to edge our wildlife garden – thirty-one feet. It would look exactly like the one in Ireland I fashioned it by. Of course, rocks aren’t sold in feet. They are sold by the pound. Do you have any idea how much thirty-one feet of small stones weigh? We don’t either, but our initial calculations convinced us the plan was not going to work.

All is never lost as long as I remember my camera. I captured pink sparkly rocks, green sparkly rock and the most beautiful of all, the glacier green. It looks like chunks of iceberg. So I have been to the mountaintop and couldn’t afford it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How would you like to get more than $150,000 in public money to write your book? I’d go for that. Of course, being the show-off that you are you would probably want to see your book actually published and sitting on the table at Barnes & Nobles. You wouldn’t be satisfied with readers having to make an appointment to sit in an office and read your book. But remember you are getting $150,000 for your six-chapter, 175-page collection of musings and advice. You could live with that, couldn’t you? Florida Senator Mike Haridopolos does not have a hard time with that arrangement. His political musing and advice brought that kind of money from Brevard Community College.

Jack E. Davis, an associate professor in University of Florida’s history department has a problem with Haridopolos making $38,000 a year primarily to write a book. He called the payment “an amount that a talented writer with a literary agent might get from one of the big New York publishing houses as a book advance.”

Haridopolos’ book –uh, manuscript – is described as in insider’s description of the legislative process and campaign advice for prospective political candidates. With the catchy title “History & Processes” the book is jam packed with advice not available elsewhere, such as:

• “A cell phone will be essential.” So is “a computer with an Internet connection.” Who knew?
• “This is a tough, expensive and emotionally bruising business.” Expensive? Tell the taxpayers about it.
• “The candidates who are not strong public speakers can find comfort in the fact that very few people attend public forums, and that most who do attend are in the audience only because they work for a campaign.” All the while, the candidate is able to gain experience and improve his ability to speak publicly, confident that the public is not in fact watching.” On the job training.
• “Critical stories, or stories the candidate perceives to be critical might appear in any event, but these should rarely be cause for concern. Only candidates hyper-analyze news stories. Unless the story involves real scandal, most people merely glance at it and, in time, forget it.” The voters are working  so hard until sometime in May just to support the government (and politicians) with their taxes that they don’t have time to weed out miscreants in the political arena.

 

So here is my advice for you writers out there. Forget agents, publishers, self-publishing, etc. Get yourself elected to office and cozy up to a learning institution with a budget.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope Jerry and I are good grandparents. It surely didn’t start out that way. The first time her parents trusted us alone with our year-old granddaughter we took her to Birds of Prey. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Birds of Prey in Maitland, FL rescues injured birds and releases them back into the wild when possible.

Haley smiled at the white-faced, barn owl as we entered. That may have been her last smile. We pushed the stroller to the bald eagle cage. There poor, injured, no-longer-majestic eagles loped around an enclosure, some dragging a wing. Haley’s face began to screw into a tortured mask. We quickly turned the stroller toward the cage behind her. On every crooked limb sat an injured vulture. Their bald, blood-red heads popped from fluffy white feathers above their scruffy black bodies. Wings drooped on some, claws or feet were missing on others. The scene we had always looked on with pity we now saw with a toddler’s eyes. Before Haley lay a Tim Burton horror scene of deformed, hissing, grunting vultures. She screamed to the top of her lungs. We calmed her down and cut our trip short, feeling like failures as grandparents. We thought we would be better at it.

Haley is ten years old now and thankfully doesn’t remember our first little foray. Perhaps it had no lasting impact on her little psyche. When we are out in nature now my camera cannot rest in my lap. She shouts incessantly “Ahmaw, take a picture! An anhinga! A gator! An eagle! An osprey!” Is it just possible that we didn’t scar her permanently?

Blue doesn’t care that my favorite color is yellow. It boldly elbows into memorable moments in my life. Sometimes like ectoplasm it appears and makes something seemingly unimportant become memorable; other times the moment is inherently important and the color is blue. No other hue is so brash.

Blue is there in things I can’t forget:

—the Carolina blue of the football jersey my husband wore at John Marshall High School. As long as I’ve known him he’s pointed out “almost Carolina blue“—always “almost.”

— the brilliant near-turquoise blue of St. George and the Dragon at the National Museum of Art in Washington, D.C. We visited there in 1957 and though I’ll never forget the detail of Salvador Dali’s Last Supper on loan in the main gallery, it was the blue in that painting that comes first to mind when recalling that day. Things are perpetually “almost St. George Dragon blue,” too.

— the blue my husband painted the interior car lights when we were dating and car radio playing “Blue Moon”, “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Blue Velvet.”

— the blue outfit our first son was wearing the day we picked him up from the adoption agency, a perfect match for his eyes.

— Easter Sunday just passed I accidentally turned a stovetop burner on under my daughter’s casserole dish waiting to go in the oven. I quickly moved the bubbling dish to a cold burner. That is when it exploded sending cobalt blue, glass shrapnel all over the kitchen. What do you think we will all remember about Easter 2008? BLUE.

When color pops from my black and white world of memory why is it blue, inexplicably blue?