A Spam Poem

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Attention winner, you have been approved
but your account needs to be updated.
I looked at your pictures.
They are hot.
I have an inheritance
to invest in your country
but we were unable to process your most recent payment.
Now add this gem to your radar,
realize your manhood's full potential.
All signs show that this one is going to Explode!!
You can use it as a lovely gift;
give me a call;
Our agent will immediately commence
the release.

Pondering e-mail

I have been an AOL user since 1994. I like the interface and the ease of it. I use it for business as well as personal e-mail, using AOL's multiple name feature.

However, now AOL has put ads in the bottom of its mail, even if you're using AOL 9.0 software and not going through the Internet webmail site.

This is not acceptable for business use.

I have an nTelos account that I don't use. It uses MS Outlook. I am not very fond of MS Outlook, but I may have to go to that for business. That means I will have to spend a lot of time updating my address book and I will also have to have new business cards.

I have an account at my alma mater, Hollins University, that I could use. It wasn't set up properly and I finally last week got it functioning. However, they put my maiden name on the account without asking me. I ditched my maiden name the moment I said "I do" and never looked back. I surely did not want it on my e-mail. I thought that rather presumptious of a progressive women's college, but the tech people did fix it and I am thankful to them for that.

I also have a gmail account (obviously, since I'm using blogger) and could use that for business, but I suspect the nTelos account makes more sense.

I wish Microsoft products were a little friendlier, though.

Questions and Answers

Found this on somebody else's website and swiped it for lack of original thought today. Well, the answers are mine:

What is your name? Call me Ishmael. No, wait, that's the opening line of a book. CountryDew will do.

How old are you? Old enough to know better and young enough to enjoy doing it anyway.

Have any pets? I have 40 cows, deer, turkey, various other bird species including hawks and blue jays, and a husband.

Ever been married? Yep, for 23 years.

How tall are you? Short enough to walk under ladders in daring feats of defiance of superstition.

How much do you weigh? Nobody's business but my own.

Do anything exciting today? I caught the laundry up; for about 20 minutes there will be no clothes in the hamper.

Where are you from? The far reaches of the fantastic, the inner dimensions, and the oldest of the ages.

When is your birthday? Late spring, early June.

Can you read minds? I know exactly what you're thinking.

What is on your shirt? I have on a clean t-shirt with nothing but a pocket on it.

What color is your shirt? Gray.

Is it your favorite shirt? I love t-shirts. They are soft and cuddly and non-binding.

Where'd you buy this shirt? I can't recall.

What about your pants? I have on a robe.

And fuzzy socks. (Well, I did when I answered this, but it's taken me two days to fill this thing out.)














What kind of shoes are you wearing? Houseslippers.

When was the last time you took a shower? About 10 minutes ago.

What song are you listening to? Melissa Etheridge, "2001", on pandora.com. But often I listen to only the sound of my heart beating and the stillness of an approaching winter storm.

Are you hiding something? Only my brainwaves know for sure.

Are you plotting something? Scheming and plotting are my middle names.

Do you want to run away? I dream sometimes of moving to a quiet little town where no one knows me and I can start over. I could be anyone or no one, and maybe my eccentricities would go unheralded.

Are you hungry? No, I had dinner about two hours ago.

Are you dieting? Yes, but it isn't working because I cheat with root beer and chocolate (not at the same time, that's too much sugar all at once).

What is the weather like? It is the calm before the storm.

If you could have any power, what would it be? I would end poverty. Not sure what power that would take. But if I can't do that, I would like to be able to heal people.

Who is in your house? My husband.

What are you drinking? Water.

Do you want to/Did you go to college: I have a B.A. in English and have classes towards a Masters degree.

Fave color:: Blue.

Fave animal:: Deer.

Fave relative:: My husband, then ... hmm. That's a hard one. I know what I *should* say. But I suppose my grandmother, my aunt, my cousin.

Fave teacher:: My college English professor.

Fave school subject:: English/creative writing

-Clothes, Fashion And Such-

Fave style:: blue jeans and t-shirt

Fave trend:: There are trends?

Fave label:: Who reads the labels? Better yet, who can afford them?

Fave clothing store:: J.C. Penneys

Fave clothing brand:: Alfred Dunner. Very conservative and somewhat old fashioned but always looked presentable. Plus it generally fits.

Fave accessory:: My glasses, because I have this thing about seeing.

Fave hair accessory:: Don't wear anything in my hair.

Fave hair style:: Cut?

Fave natural hair color:: Brunette.

Fave kinda shoes:: Sneakers

Fave brand of tennis shoes:: Easy Spirit

Fave brand of cosmetics:: Cover Girl. I know, I know, I am old and should be wearing something else but everything else makes me break out.

Fave perfume/cologne:: Allergic! No perfume. Gak.

-Foods And Such-

Fave food:: Chocolate

Fave ethnic food:: Chinese? Sweet and sour shrimp.

Fave restaurant:: Bellacino's, because it is quiet.

Fave fast food place:: Long John Silver's.

Fave snack:: Trail mix with nuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, raisins.

Fave junk food:: Baked potato chips.

Fave dessert:: Chocolate (it's a problem).

Fave candy/sweet:: Um. Chocolate.

Fave gum flavor:: Bubble gum.

Fave drink:: Right now I drink root beer because it's caffeine free and low salt. But I really like chocolate milk, which I don't drink at all.

Fave pizza topping:: I like veggie pizza.

-Media And Such-

Fave tv show:: Right now it's Ghost Whisperer. I also watch Rome and Bill Maher on HBO.

Fave movie:: The Lord of the Rings trilogy; I also like the original Star Wars trilogy, Flash Dance, and Dirty Dancing.

Fave movie genre:: SciFi

Fave actor/actress:: Not sure I have one at the moment. I did like Orlando Bloom until I saw Kingdom of Heaven. I also like Meg Ryan.

Fave song:: American Pie by Don McClean, You Can Sleep While Drive by Melissa Etheridge, and most anything from the 1970s.

Fave music genre:: I seem partial to a mix of mellow rock instrumentation, a vocal-centric aesthetic and major key tonality (according to pandora.com). Which is mostly easy listening Pop 40, I think.

Fave artist/band:: Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, Fleetwood Mac

Fave radio station:: I listen to Q99FM in the mornings, but only because I can't find anything I like better.

Fave way to listen to music:: While I'm working and engrossed in something else.

Fave book:: I don't really have a favorite book. I read a lot and there aren't many I read a second time. I do like the Harry Potter series, though.

Fave magazine:: Don't have one. I am in the market for new magazines, though, and will take recommendations.

Fave writer:: Jane Smiley, Rowling, Janet Evanovich, Geraldine Brooks and writers I know personally, like Jeanne Larsen, Monty Leitch, Amanda Cockrell (who writes under a pen name). My favorite poet is Sharon Old.

Fave comedian:: Ellen DeGeneres.

-Entertainment And Such-

Fave mall:: Towers

Fave store in the mall:: Ram's Head Book Store

Fave game:: I like to watch women's tennis.

Fave video game:: Morrowind. But I also like puzzles.

Fave social hangout:: White Oak Tea


Fave private hangout:: My office.

Fave thing to do for fun:: Read a book or play a video game or piddle in the garden. When you get to be my age, you try to enjoy most everything you do.

Fave place to have fun:: Wherever I might be.

Next To Last

And Nobody Cares

Out of 21 affluent countries, the United States came in next to last in a report on child well-being released last week.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, advocates internationally for the rights of children. In a first, the report card looked only at rich countries, the ones that should be leading the way and setting the standards.

The report, entitled Report Card 7, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries, analyzed 40 separate indicators using an array of existing data.

The U.S. media has ignored this report; I’ve only seen one news item about it. That was an Associated Press story that doesn't even come up anymore in a Google search, so here's a link to a UPI International story.

Great Britain, which ranked worse than the U.S. by two-tenths of a percent, saw a furor last week in its news over the issue.

The British are taking their government to task for failing its young as well as the country’s future.

We apparently just shrug our shoulders and move on.

The Netherlands ranked number one, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Spain. We were bested also by Switzerland (6th), Italy (8th), Ireland (9th), Germany (11th), Poland (14th), the Czech Republic (15th) and Hungary (19th), among others. Hungary!

The best ranking for the U.S. was in education, where the country came in 12th out of 21. In material well-being, we came in 17th; in family and peer relationships and in behaviors and risks we ranked 20th on each, and we were dead last at 21st in health and safety.

I was raised to think that the U.S. is the best country in everything, and that means that no matter how you manipulate the stats, we ought to come out on top. We’re the wealthiest of nations with the brightest brains. We work harder and longer and take fewer vacations than anybody.

And this is all we have to show for it? We can’t even crack the top 10 for in a run-down of industrialized nations and the way they care for their kids?

The six large categories are broken down by individual questions listed in charts in the back of the report. Among those statistics, the U.S. has 21.7 percent of its children living in poverty, the largest percentage of any of the 21 countries.

In the one Associated Press report I found on this report, a federal official with the Department of Health and Human Services took issue with it because UNICEF measures poverty differently.

We think $20,650 a year is poverty level for a family of four; UNICEF believes an income of $35,000 is more appropriate. Which begs the question, why do we set the poverty bar so much lower than the rest of the world?

The number is disgraceful number any way you look at it.

Being an avid reader, I was shocked to learn that 12.2 percent of children age 15 reported having less than 10 books in their house in 2003. That too was the largest percentage in all of the countries.

That is not a lot of books. That's a Bible, a cookbook, and a couple of romance novels.

Other bad things: the U.S. has the second-highest infant mortality rate, with only Hungary faring worse. We have 22.9 percent of our children under the age of 19 dying from accidents and injuries; only New Zealand fared worse. We have 75.4 percent of our kids participating in education at the age of 15; Belgium has 93.9 percent of its children in school at that age.

We have more 15-year-olds living in single-parent families and fewer students eating their main meal with their parents than any other affluent nation.

Our teens also have more babies than any other affluent nation: 46 percent of adolescent women ages 15-19 have had a baby. No other nation comes close to that.

More bad stuff: U.S. kids don’t eat much fruit (they eat a lot in Portugal and Spain), less than half eat breakfast every morning, and a quarter of them are overweight. That last is also the highest percentage among the 21 nations; they’re quite fit in the Netherlands, where only 7.6 percent battle the bulge.

Good things? Most of the U.S. households with children have a working parent (which is good insomuch as there is income to purchase necessities). Most kids get their measles shots, DPT3 shots, and polio shots. Only 14.4 percent of our students aspire to low skilled work when they are 15; in Japan, 50.3 percent have such aspirations (“low skilled” is not defined).

About 67 percent of U.S .parents talk to their children; not as high as Hungary, where 90.2 percent do, but better than Australia, where only 51.3 percent have family discussions.

Only 7.3 percent of U.S. kids ages 11, 13, 15 are smoking cigarettes, the lowest rate of the 21 countries. But 11.6 percent of kids those ages have been drunk; still, that beats the United Kingdom’s 30.8 percent by a long shot.

Also, our kids fight and are bullied, but not much more than most countries. They also exercise 4.4 days of the week.

UNICEF, which works in 191 countries, says the report shows no relationship between child well-being and GDP per capita. Many countries without the wealth of the United States, Britain or France scored higher in the rankings.

The report indicates that the European countries are consistently taking better care of their children than we are. While no indicator can tell the whole story, this seems to point out that we’re not moving in a good direction.

If nothing else, this report shows there is a need for improvement. It’s good that our kids aren’t smoking but they’re also not eating right, for example.

Both the U.S. and Britain were in the bottom two-thirds of five of the six major categories. One of the study's researchers said in the AP article that children fared worse in the U.S. and Britain because of greater economic inequality and poor levels of public support for families.

Now what can we do to change it?

The report is online at http://unicef.org/media/files/ChildPovertyReport.pdf.

Thursday Thirteen

1. If my husband outlives me, I hope he buys a coffee pot that turns off automatically, since I won't be here to go behind him and turn the thing off.

2. I don't drink coffee and never have. I think I've had maybe 10 cups in my entire life. And those were times I drank it just to be polite.

3. My husband drinks one cup of coffee every morning. He says it helps him, ah, you know. He makes his own breakfast and his own coffee every morning. Then I go behind him and clean up his mess and turn the coffee pot off. I'm fine with that; I don't like to get up at 5 a.m. like he does.

4. Tea is the drink of choice in our household.

5. Since we both stopped using sugar, our tea is unsweetened. Except my husband uses Splenda, which I won't use because I think it is poison.

6. Since I stopped caffeine a year ago, my tea is not only unsweetened, it is also decaf. Sometimes I get desperate and reach for the honey and then it's decaf and honeyed.

7. My favorite tea is Irish breakfast tea, but I have a hard time finding the decaf kind in the grocery store. I have to buy it at the speciality tea store.

8. My husband likes Lipton tea, the orange pecoe kind.

9. I have a friend who has a website all about tea.

10. A new coffee house opened up in Fincastle; I haven't been in it yet. I hope she serves something besides coffee.

11. I started drinking tea when I was about 12 years old. My parents don't drink tea but our neighbors did. They used very tall Rubbermaid glasses that stained brown from the tea. The tea was very southern and quite sweet. I thought it wonderful.

12. After I discovered I like tea, I started drinking instant tea because that is all my mother would bring home.

13. I did not set out to write about coffee and tea, but here it is anyway.

Revelations?

Today I had an interview (for an article I am writing) with an alternative healthcare provider. I did the interview and then asked the provider if she would perform Reiki on me for just a moment so I could see how she did it.

Reiki is energy healing with your hands, for those who don't know, although it is a little more involved than that. I've had a couple of hours of instruction in how to do it and can do it a little but I am not proficient at it. I have found it beneficial in the past when I've allowed someone to do it to me, though.

I wanted to see the difference in her healing and mine and the person I used to see, since that is my only experience with Reiki.

This person told me that I could use my pen as a healing tool. I found this interesting because an online friend said the same thing to me just a couple of days ago. She told me in an instant message that I am kind to people and do more good than I could ever know. It was a nice thing to hear.

The alternative healer also said I have managed to be hidden from the world while in full view and she wondered how I managed to do that and write for the newspaper. That is easily answered - no one is more invisible - and so highly visible - than the news reporter who stands behind a notebook and/or camera and watches and records. If you don't speak people pretty soon forget you're there. People remember the history, they don't remember who writes it, but they wouldn't have it to remember without the writer.

Another curious thing was she stopped at my stomach, puzzling over the energy she felt there. The other Reiki professional whom I saw over a year ago now also found issues with that particular area of my body. I have always attributed it to my hysterectomy but I am not entirely sure that is the answer. This person said it felt like my energy just stopped at my pelvis and went no further. She said it felt empty. Not too different from what I've been told in the past, actually.

After the Reiki, I felt a little dizzy and for a couple of hours afterward I felt not quite right. Not bad, but there was an obvious shifting of my energy. I usually feel a little weird for 24 hours after acupuncture or Reiki or anything else that causes an energy shift. I cannot attribute that to the person I saw today, knowing as I do that I always experience weird things from these alternative healing efforts.

I may make an appointment to work with this person. But I have to write the article first.

Books: Still Water Saints

The latest book I've read is Still Water Saints: A Novel, by Alex Espinoza.

I give it *** stars, recommended reading if you're interested in the Latino culture and/or the spiritual, or new writers.

Visiting Animals

Yesterday morning, I glanced out my window and saw these lovelies in the front yard:

This morning as I was getting my tea I saw these lovelies in the back yard:







Now you can all say you've been mooned by a turkey!

Book: The Same Sweet Girls

The Same Sweet Girls, by Cassandra King
Read by Laura Hicks
Audiocassette.

Yesterday I finished listening to this book on cassette. At first I thought I would not like it, but the longer I listened the more involved I became with the characters.

The book reminded me heavily of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and it certainly seems to be a rip of that genre. Still, I enjoyed listening to it in the car (which is where I listen to a lot of books) and don't hesitate to recommend it for a light yet heart-tugging read. It's not an intellectually stimulating book but it does ask some important questions about friendship, relationships, and acceptance of death.

A group of women from college meet twice a year and remain friends. They call themselves the Same Sweet Girls, or SSGs for short. They have good-natured rituals and they don't all like one another, which made for some interesting contrast of characters. Yet they still care about the other, regardless of what goes on on the outside.

Each SSG has her other life - husband, lover, etc. and we learn about most of them. The book settles in to reveal all about Corrine, who has lots of issues and who faces the ultimate one at the end of the book.

I would wish for all women a couple of good friends.

In the mail

So in the mailbox today is a letter from Appalachian Power trying to explain to me why my rates increased 33 percent.

Blah blah blah. I'd have rather had the postage they spent on this mass mailing.

But here's their excuses: increased cost of coal, construction of pollution equipment (hey, blame the people who want to breath because your power costs more, they are saying, the stupid gits), more tree trimming (mother nature's fault, I guess), and new energy delivery facilities (whatever that is).

The solution - manage your personal budget better. Ha. That isn't exactly what they say but mostly it is what they are implying.

They want to make more profits, is all. Watch the middle class and the American dream depart ... it's leaving us bit by bit, every day. The gas companies will take it, the power companies will take it, the phone companies will take it, health care will take it. Ba-da-ba-boom! Out like a light.

Thursday Thirteen

1. I visited my grandmother again today. She remains in the hospital and the angels still sing to her. Today they were singing "Stand up for Jesus."

2. The ice remains on the mountains and it is absolutely gorgeous in the sunshine.

3. Yesterday for reasons that are unknown to me, I broke down and bought a very silly video game for the P.C.

4. I told myself many months ago that I could not have a new video game until I wrote a novel. I didn't buy the video game I really wanted, which I suppose is fortunate, as that involves days if not months of game play. But I can't believe I bought any at all.

5. A relatively new friend is upset with me and I have absolutely no idea why or what I have done. I'm hoping I'm just a handy scapegoat.

6. I rewrote a letter for one of my clients, who told me my version was "greatly superior" to his version of the same letter, only I used the word "I" too much.

7. We're having a roast for dinner. Bake at 325 degrees for about 25-35 minutes per pound, bam, you're done.

8. Peter Pan Peanut butter is being recalled, apparently because it will cause salmonella. I have three jars with the recall number sitting on my pantry shelve. The number is 2-1-1-1 at the beginning of a long number on the lid. Refunds supposedly are available; send lids along with your name and address to ConAGra Foods, P.O. Box 57078, Irvine, CA 92619-7078. No word if they'll also refund the postage it takes to send three peanut butter lids to California. That information came from WDBJ7.com.

9. I used to subscribe to Writer's Digest magazine but this year I'm letting the subscription expire. I think $25.96 for six issues is too much money for something I don't read that closely anymore. I've been a subscriber since 1984.

10. I'm subscribing to Countryside & Small Stock Journal and Consumer Reports instead. They're the ones who sent me the "get a free issue" coupons about the time I got my renewal to Writer's Digest.

11. I wrote a column about light therapy that ran in my weekly newspaper today. It apparently was well-received as I've received some complimentary e-mails on it.

12. Yesterday I attended an "instant poetry" talk by Jeanne Larsen, a professor at Hollins University. I used to write a lot of poetry but don't anymore. I miss it.

13. We all read our little instant poems aloud and Jeanne said I had mixed images of the seasons in my poem. I don't know why she thought that (the poem's below, maybe you can tell me) unless she was projecting what she knows about me onto the poem. She knew me in a former life, when I was dark and goth and depressing. That isn't me anymore.

Here's the poem. It was started from words she handed out that came from a translation of a Chinese poem called "Poem to Ancient Melody" by Liu Yao.

Poem to an Ancient Melody

On this day of love
the nightingale, brilliant and gold,
captures the song of the round, rotund moon.
I listen from my window, the glass glistening
with late spring frost
In the twilight by the brook
the dogwood's blossoms fall,
pile up like snow.
The candle flickers in the mirror's mirage
as the clock chimes eleven.
Tonight, I will not know sleep.

The Valentine's Ice Storm of 2007

Something Small

I have long been fascinated with the weird, the strange, the divine, the apocalypse. How much longer will mankind reign on this earth? Will we die out in a massive clump or will fall away one by one, the decline unnoticed until it's too late to stop it?

I don't know. But I have long thought it would be something small that takes us, that destroys humanity. Not a nuclear war or even global warming, although maybe the something small will be related to either.

In the last few days there have been stories about honey bees. These little creatures are quite necessary if we're going to move forward.

Imagine, the entire agriculture industry brought to its knees by a little bee - or the lack of the bee.

In this day and age, with all our wisdom and technological advances, hives are bees must be moved from field to field so pollination of crops can take place. We don't have a machine that can do what these bees do. We don't have an answer to their loss if they should in fact become extinct.

Some plants will continue to prosper because they are pollinated by wind, but the majority of pollinating plants require that tiny little bee to make the pollination process complete.

The news reports indicate the bees have low immunity systems and high levels of foreign bacteria. It might be a natural decline, or it might be the result of something we've done.

There really isn't anyway to know.

So maybe there will be, in the future, no honey for your bread. Maybe there will be no bread.

All for want of a bee.

Books I've Read Recently

These books are going to be leaving me soon. They will be donated to the local library, where they will either join the stacks or be sold. I have read them all and I'll mark them with astericks indicating how well I liked them (four astericks is something I really want to reread and in which case is not likely to end up in a list that is going to the library).

I hate to give up any book but I've not the space to keep everything that comes my way:

The Fame Game, by Charles Casillo**

Rise and Shine, by Anna Quindlen***

The Hamiltons, by Catherine Cookson**

Dear John, by Nicholas Sparks*

We Are All Welcome Here, by Elizabeth Berg***

The Woodsman's Daughter, by Gwyn Hyman Rubio***

The Alchemist's Daughter, by Katharine McMahon***

The Cinderella Pact, by Sarah Strohmeyer*

Lights Out Tonight, by Mary Jane Clark**

Hearing Angels

Grandma

I learned Friday night that my grandmother had been moved from assisted living to Lewis-Gale Hospital.

She's been having difficult moving about after she fell several weeks ago. She also has diabetes and is grossly overweight, all of which combined makes for poor health.

I went to the hospital yesterday to visit her and see how she is doing. Her door was shut and I could hear a nurse or therapist scolding her for not wanting to exercise. They were trying to get her to move her swollen legs so she can get some circulation going. I finally went in and let her know I was there. Her face always lights up when she sees me.

It took three nurses to get her back into the bed and resting comfortably. When it was quiet again, I asked the usual questions, how she was feeling, what the doctors were saying.

"A neurologist I think it was came in to see me with my regular doctor," she said. "He asked me all kinds of questions."

"What'd he ask you?"

"What day it is, how old I am, that kind of thing. I told him. He asked me who the president is. I said, George Bush," Grandma said. "Then he asked me who the vice president is, and I said Cheney." She looked over at me. "I don't know his first name. What's his first name?"

"Dick," I replied.

"Humph. That suits him," Grandma said. I turned to hide my smile.

A few moments later, Grandma asked me if I heard the music. No, I don't hear any music, I told her.

"I listened to it all night. I know the City of Salem said they were going to pipe music everywhere and I'm hearing it," she said.

"It's the Vicodin, Grandma. The pain medication you're taking," I said.

I asked her what they were playing. "Can I sleep in your barn tonight, mister?" she said. I asked her how that went and she sang it to me. She got all the words right, too - here's a version of the song.

I asked her what other songs she was hearing, and she said the Wabash Cannonball, the Wreck of the Old 97, and Little Mee Haw (which I can't find but I've no doubt is some song from the 1920s.) She was hearing the songs of her youth.

We talked a bit and I asked her if she still heard the music. "Not right now," she said. "They're changing the record on the player."

As long as I kept her talking, she didn't hear her music, but as soon as it grew quiet, she'd ask me again if I heard the songs. "I don't understand why you can't hear it," she fretted. "Why am I hearing it and you're not?"

"Grandma, you're hearing angels," I finally said. She accepted that and not long after, I left her to sleep.

We Had Snow

On Tuesday night, winter came. I took these shots on Wednesday at various times throughout the day.

Photos taken with a Canon PowerShot S3IS.

Thursday Thirteen

1. When I was in the seventh grade, in 1975, we had six weeks of exploratory classes. One of those was the business class. We had to draw a picture of ourselves when we 40. My picture was of a woman with glasses in blue jeans holding a pencil and paper because I wanted to be a writer. The picture was strangely prophetic, except that the woman in the picture was skinny as a rail. I missed the part about gaining weight in my prophecy, but I got the glasses right.

2. My grandmother on Christmas Eve, 1975 dreamed that Jesus came down to her and took her wedding ring from her while she walked with him in a lovely garden. He told her she didn't need her wedding ring any longer. A week later, my grandfather died of a massive heart attack.

3. A week after we buried my grandfather, a black cat showed up at my grandmother's house and stayed. It disappeared a year to the day my grandfather died.

4. A week after my mother died in 2000, a black cat showed up outside the window of my office. I saw it nearly every day; the last time I saw it daily was in 2001, a year to the day my mother died.

5. However, I have on occasion since then seen a black cat cross in front of my window, and every time, a day or two later I've run into my father in a public venue (my father and I are estranged).

6. Once I purchased a set of runes that have to do with creativity (not the runes you might normally think of). Seven times in a row, I drew out of a bag the rune for Chaos. It was one of the 21 runes available.

7. Prophecy is not something I've thought I have a penchant for, but I have always been in awe of the spooky and the divine.

8. When I was quite young, possibly in the fifth grade, I felt like I was being watched at night. I thought there were aliens looking in the windows. Not long after, there were reports of strange lights in the sky in the air over Craig County, just across the mountain from us.

9. I once participated in a National Enquirer skywatch for aliens. I was 13. I went outside on a hilltop and laid on a blanket and spent the night watching twinkling stars.

10. As an adult, I love the stars and spend lots of time looking at them in the summer, when the weather's not so cold. But I have gotten up in December and gone and sat outside to watch the meteor showers at 2 a.m. You can almost see prophecy in the glow of the light when a meteor streaks across the sky.

11. I do not read the National Enquirer now. My mother read it all the time, though, which is how I came to read it at age 13. She believed it.

12. I think the Old Farmer's Almanac is pretty good at prophecy; they get the weather right about as much as the TV weatherman and they do it a good year in advance.

13. I don't know how I feel about end-of-the-world prophecies, but I understand that ancient prophecies from the Mayans and other native civilizations indicate December 21, 2012 is it for us. Make your plans.

The Hawk

I saw this hawk early yesterday morning. The breeze was whipping and it was very cold - about 5 F. At first I couldn't figure out what I was seeing and thought it was a plastic trash bag that had blown into the tree (witch's britches, I've heard that called).

But a glance through the binoculars (we have those laying all over the house, not to spy on the neighbors but to look at the animals) indicated it was a bird. At first I thought it was a lost owl but another view confirmed a hawk sitting in a bull pine.

Nothing to do, of course, but grab the camera and see what it would do. I opened the front door and stuck the camera outside, trying my best to keep the wind out of my poor bad ear.

The first two pictures are cropped; the last is what I got straight from the disk.

February Freeze

We have a fire in the fireplace for the first time in almost two years. We didn't have one last year all winter because we'd just painted the house the previous summer. And of course fireplaces smoke up the house, I don't care how careful you are.

No fire thus far this year because of concern that the smoke would upset my allergies, making my ear and my balance issues worse. But tonight it is very cold. It is 10 degrees (F), with wind. It is supposed to be just below freezing tomorrow, a veritable warming trend, but we also have a chance of snow.

I read somewhere, in some book about writing, that if you must write about the weather, then you've nothing to say. But I have always found the weather interesting and in looking back it's always good to be able to say this event happened when.

I remember several significant weather events in my life, and there are dramas around all of them. I recall a big snow during a full moon when I was teenager (so like, 1979?). The snow stopped, the air cleared, and it was as crisp and clean as a plate glass window. My parents and my brother and I went walking, stomping through the snow. We laughed, threw snowballs at one another, and relaxed in the moonlight as it reflected off the snow almost as brightly as sun. I was happy for this one evening, and I remember it because it unusual for that. My parents weren't fighting, my brother wasn't being a pest, I wasn't being yelled at for existing. For just that one evening, we lived in the now without recriminations or tears. It was a happy snow.

It snowed on my wedding night, November 18, 1983. A light dusting, nothing much to speak of, but I remember it because of the event surrounding the date. The day I changed my fortunes and my life for the better.

In 1993, we had a huge snow. The power went out for a week. One week without electricity seemed like a lifetime. We had a generator, so we had some power, but not enough to take a shower with. Mostly we used it for heat and cooking. I could not get out of the house for days, and finally I couldn't stand it anymore. Despite my husband's warning that I might not make it back up the driveway (we have a very long driveway, uphill), I took off and went to Salem to take a shower at my grandmother's. That is the longest I have gone without a shower and trust me, that is not something I ever want to experience again!

Those are the snow events that stand out in my mind. There are some cold nights - I remember having to bring in the dog many times to be sure she was happy and warm - but they all merge together. There were big snows in my childhood but they too are a blur.

That moonlit walk is the one that stands out as something special and pure. I always thought it was a vision of what might have been, if things had been different. I am grateful at least for that one night, an evening in the moon and the snow, the one day I actually had a family.

The Moon

I took this picture early Friday morning as the moon was beginning to set. The Trapper's Moon. Or Little Famine Moon, I think it is called. I took the photo with my Canon Powershot.

The Project

My husband and I own an older house. I lived in it a very long time ago. I inherited it from my mother with people in it. They moved out in November. I don't know what the place looked like when they first moved in, but it was pretty well trashed when they left.

So my husband has been fixing it up.

Here are the kitchen cabinets in the beginning:


This is what they look like today. We plan to add some brass hardware to them to make them look better still.



This is what one of the rooms looked like:



This is what it looks now, after painting and a new light fixture:



The house is heated with propane. This old propane furnace stove apparently had no blower. We did not know that. The people who rented from us never told us if anything was wrong with the house; the roof leaked for five years before they mentioned it.



This is the new propane heater, and there's been some painting in here:



This room had dark wainscotting and a wooden ceiling. The white turned out to be newspaper that had been placed over wooden slats and then painted over. We were unaware of that until my husband pulled things off the wall.



This is what it looks like at present. The wainscotting and ceiling have been painted and paneling will be put up where the painted newspaper was.



An air conditioner sat in this window and leaked water until everything rotted.



This is the new window. That's husband (left) and nephew (right) doing their work today.


I've been unable to do anything but deliver pizza because of my allergies and chemical sensistivity. Just being over there today for a half-hour made my lips go numb and made my chest tight. So this is my husband's project. I am trying to stay out of it and not "offer advice" but sometimes that is difficult, particularly since I lived there once, very long ago.

In another month or so I will post some "final" photos, I hope.

Turkey Tracks

This is why I really wanted a good camera with a nice zoom:



Four tom turkeys walzed into view, strutting their stuff between the oak trees.



They were fanning their tails and their face was blue, a sure sign of mating interest.



I don't know where the hen was, but she must have been close. I guessed on the other side of the ridge.



The birds gave a mighty gobble before they moved out of my sight.



I spied the birds from my window as I sat at my desk at about 9:15 a.m. this morning. I grabbed my Canon Powershot and headed out the back door. I didn't even stop for a coat. I scared a woodpecker when I went outside, but the toms were far enough away not to notice. They had other things on their mind.