Cooler Weather

 

The hot weather has finally hit the road, and we have cooler temperatures at the moment. I'm sure we'll have more 90 degree days before September ends, but for now it's more tolerable outside.

Whew!

Sunday Stealing

 

Labor Day Questions

1) What’s something you want to do before summer slips away?

A. I need to get outside in the darkness and look at the stars, taking my camera in hopes of catching some stray shooting star.

2) What book are you currently reading?

A. I am reading The Vaster Wilde, by Lauren Groff. It's about a young woman who fled the Jamestown settlement circa 1610 or so, as everyone else lay starving and dying. She is traveling the wilderness north in hopes of finding the French in Canada.

3) What have you been listening to?

A. Alexa plays a lot of Fleetwood Mac lately.

4) What shows or movies have you been watching?

A. We have been watching Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, Deadliest Catch, Password, and In the Eye of the Storm.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week. 

 __________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

All By Myself

 

Today I am happy that I had a morning to myself, wherein I was able to do things at my own pace and speed, and thus managed to strip the bed, do the dishes, wash four loads of clothes and put them away, and other such tasks. I like setting my own agenda.

Saturday 9: Working in the Coal Mine

 

Working in the Coal Mine (1966)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) In this song, Lee Dorsey sings that at 5:00 he's already on the job. What were you doing this morning at 5:00 AM?

A. I was sleeping. I usually get up between 6 and 6:30 a.m.

2) He's worked so hard all week that he's too tired to enjoy his weekend. What are you doing for fun this holiday weekend?

A. We aren't doing anything different as far as I know. 

3) Lee Dorsey was raised in Portland Oregon, home of the Portland Trailblazers. The NBA season kicks off next month. Do you have a favorite basketball team?

A. I root for the Indiana Fever in the WNBA.

 

4) This song was written by Allen Toussaint, who had a long career as a composer and producer. He produced Fats Domino in the late 1950s and worked with Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney into the new millennium. What job have you held the longest?

A. I started freelancing/stringing for newspapers in 1984 and stopped in 2024. As far as a job with a W-2, I don't think I stayed anywhere longer than two years.

 

5) In 1966, the year this song was popular, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey was born. Are you a good cook?

A. I am a fan of not cooking. 

6) 1966 was the year when more Americans purchased color TVs and black and white sets. When you were a kid, did your family have a black and white TV?

A. As best I can remember, we had a color TV, but my very young years may have included a black and white TV.

7) Labor Day is a big weekend for mattress sales. Do you plan on buying a new mattress before the year is out?

A. We bought a new mattress back in May.

8) Though kids go back to class earlier these days, store aisles are still full of school supplies. When she was a little girl, Sam was crazy about her big box of 96 Crayola Crayons with a sharpener in the back. Share one of your back-to-school memories.

A. When I started second grade, the teacher informed my mother that she did not use nicknames. I had a family nickname at the time, but she refused to use it and called me by my given name. I am so grateful that she had that rule.

9) Labor Day weekend is the unofficial beginning of fall. Have you had any pumpkin spice yet?

A. I do not like pumpkin spice, Sam. I do not like it, Sam-I-Am.

_______________

I encourage you to visit the posts of other participants in Saturday 9 and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however. 

Zoom Calls

Today I had a really great zoom meeting with someone. I couldn't imagine growing up that I'd be dealing with folks from all over the world via my computer. It makes reaching out to touch someone have a whole new meaning!

Thursday Thirteen

Things Not Allowed in My House

1. Coconut anything. If it smells like sunscreen or tastes like disappointment, it stays outside. Coconut odor is enough to make me hurl. Why? I blame some medication I took when I was a child that smelled like coconut, but I could be misremembering.

2. Dogs. I’m allergic, they shed, and they always want to “just say hi” by humping my leg. I love dogs, I grew up having dogs, and I owned a dog for the first 17 years of our marriage, but she stayed outside. The house is for people; the barn is for animals. No dogs allowed.

3. Barbed wire. I don’t care if it’s “decorative rustic.” It’s a tetanus shot waiting to happen.

4. Poison ivy or poison oak. Check your shoes, check your pants, and if you are oozing in places from being around it yourself, please stay home, or go to urgent care for a steroid pack.

5. Ticks. If you show up with one, I’m burning your clothes and maybe the porch. These things now carry so many diseases that they're like a mini-monster just hiding in the grass waiting to get us all. Talk about the walking dead. Crikey.

6. Snakes. Live, dead, rubber, or on a T‑shirt. Absolutely not. Those things slither, slide, and flick out their tiny little tongues in ways that give me the heebie-jeebies. No way no how.

7. High wind. If you open a door and the house tries to leave the foundation, close it.

8. Anything that smells like "ocean breeze." That’s not a scent. That’s a chemical lie.

9. Tech that insists on “helping.” If it auto‑corrects, auto‑plays, auto‑syncs, or auto‑anything, it can auto‑stay outside. I don't need my microwave, stove, refrigerator, or washing machine connected to the Internet so it can talk to me. I have Alexa for that.

10. Anyone smoking or smelling like smoke. If you walk in trailing a nicotine weather system, you’re turning right back around. Sorry, but my asthma can't take it and honestly, you shouldn't be smoking it anyway.

11 Plants. If it needs feeding and watering and has dirt that routinely requires changing so that it doesn't smell like compost, it’s not compatible with my lifestyle.

12. Food described as “fusion.” First, I don't even know what that means. It sounds like you're making a nuclear reactor. Pick a cuisine and commit. My kitchen is not a laboratory.

13. Anything that sheds glitter. I don’t need to sparkle. I need to not vacuum for the rest of my life. And if you're the person who thinks putting things in birthday cards so that the stuff spills everywhere when the envelope is open, you're not particularly welcome, either.

_________________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 974th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Time with a Friend

 

I spent time today with my friend T. and we had a wonderful time laughing and talking together. Nothing like a good friend to make the happiness jump all around inside.

September Happiness Challenge

In recent years I have participated in the August Happiness Challenge, but I didn't this year because I'd spent July writing gratitude poems and needed a break.

So, I will do a September Happiness Challenge all by myself, although anyone who wishes may certainly join in. I don't have to do it every day, because it's whatever makes me happy!

For today, I am happy that my husband is able to be around to wait for the washing machine repairman. I will be home during part of the wait, but I have a dentist appointment and need to leave.

Knowing he is available to ensure that this work gets done makes me very happy indeed.

Flower Power

 

Teaching Guitar

As I've returned to playing the guitar after a short hiatus while I recover from a shoulder injury, I've been working scales and getting my muscle memory back in my hands. The practice reminded me that at one time, I taught guitar.

I was still a teenager and not yet married. I was 18 when I started giving lessons.

The first young man lived a little way from us. His father was friends with mine, and I believe I was volunteered for the lessons.

They started out well enough, but about six weeks in, his interest waned. I recalled the emphasis my piano teacher had placed on practicing and decided to echo her nearly word for word the things she said to me when I didn't practice.

It went something like, "If you don't practice, you're just wasting my time and your parents' money. If you don't want to do this, speak up and tell your mother that."

I was never sure if the boy decided he didn't want to learn, or if his mother, who was listening in the kitchen, didn't like my tone of voice, but that was our last lesson.

My next student didn't go much better. I attended church with his family, and his father asked me if I could teach his son to play. But only gospel songs.

I said sure. We settled in with some Amazing Grace and a few other songs, I don't recall for how long. Long enough for him to grow bored with C, G, and F chords, I think.

He asked me if I knew how to play Stairway to Heaven.

Sure, I said, and I started playing the intro to the song.

His father opened the door to the living room so fast that I jumped. "Get out!" he bellowed. "I don't want that devil's music played in my house! I told you just gospel."

I packed up and got out as quickly as I could.

They soon quit coming to church, but I think that was because they moved, not because a devil-music guitar player sat in a pew in the building.

My third and final student lived in the city, and by that time I was working. There were no restrictions on what I could teach him and we got along swimmingly. The lessons ended when one of my community college courses and his after-school schedule collided. 

I ran into this former guitar student - now a grown man with a family of his own - a few years ago and he told me he played banjo in a band. He said I'd gotten him started.

I remembered these three young fellows yesterday while I ran scales up and down the guitar neck, limbering up as I begin returning to a regular routine. I thought about how I'd tried to teach all three of them, but only one took to the lessons.

I guess one out of three isn't bad.

Sunday Stealing

SURVEY TIME!

1. What will you remember from August 2026?

A. I will remember that I had physical therapy for my shoulder. I will probably also remember that this is when Dolly Parton died.

2. When will you start your holiday shopping?

A. I usually have started by now. I am running a little late this year.

3. Where did you meet the person you fell the hardest for?

A. I met him when we were kids on the school bus, although he doesn't remember that. We met again when we were older underneath the football goal post at high school football game.

4. Where did you meet your best friend?

A. I met her at a library event. She was dressed as a cow. I was reporting on the activity.

5. Share a fact about the last person who texted you.

A. The last person to text me is a wonderful, caring woman who has known me since high school. She gave me a compliment no one else has ever given me.

6. EXTRA! EXTRA! Since June's DIY meme was such fun, let's do it again. Please close out this post with a question for your fellow Sunday thieves. Hopefully we'll have enough responses for a September DIY.

A. What’s a skill you wish you could download into your brain instantly?

Or

What’s a place you remember vividly even though you haven’t been there in years?

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week. 

 __________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: Animal Crackers

Saturday 9: Animal Crackers in My Soup (1935)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

This month Saturday 9 will be tasty, featuring songs with food in the title.

1) Do you eat soup all year round, or do you consider it a seasonal dish?

A. I don't eat it often in summer. If I am sick, I might eat a bowl of chicken soup, but mostly I consider soup a fall through spring sort of meal.

2) Gazpacho is a popular cold soup. Made with water-rich tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers, it's considered a good choice for hot weather because it's hydrating. What are your favorite summertime foods?

A. I love watermelon. It's terribly expensive now, but it's one of my favorites. I am also partial to strawberries and blueberries.

3) This week, Shirley Temple sings of the delights of having crackers in her soup. How often do you add crackers to your soup: always, sometimes, never? 

A. Sometimes.

4) "Animal Crackers in My Soup" was the big musical number in the 1935 movie Curly Top. Shirley played Elizabeth, who helps her older sister find love with a handsome millionaire. Have you ever played matchmaker? If yes, were your efforts successful?

A. I don't recall ever playing matchmaker. 

5) Gertrude Temple, Shirley's mother, was her daughter's onset hairstylist, creating the famous "curly top" with pin curls. What's your hair care regimen? 

A. I wash my hair and blow it dry. If there are ends trying to turn me into the flying nun, I take a curling iron to them.

6) Bartenders are still called upon to create the non-alcoholic Shirley Temple, made with ginger ale, lemon-lime soda, and grenadine. What's the most recent alcoholic beverage you drank? 

A. I last had some blackberry wine in May 2012, at my last creative writing class at Hollins University. The teacher brought it in to celebrate the end of class and the fact that most of us in there were graduating with our masters degree that year.

7) In 1935, when this song was popular, Amelia Earhart flew from Honolulu to Oakland, California. Are you a nervous flyer?

A. I haven't been on a plane since 1993. I don't recall being especially nervous about it.

8) Also in 1935, The Hoover Dam was dedicated. Today it's a popular tourist attraction, with more than 7 million visitors each year. Have you ever been to Las Vegas?

A. I have been through Las Vegas. My parents drove through the city during a two-week round driving trip from Virginia to California. I don't remember if we stopped there.

9) Random question: You get a spur-of-the-moment invitation to a meal with your best friend. Could you go wearing what you have on right now?

A. No. I have on an old t-shirt that says, "Keepin' it Rural" and would have to change into a nicer shirt. This is just for wearing around the house.

_______________

I encourage you to visit the posts of other participants in Saturday 9 and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.