Old souls and giant spirits

Elephant with Sad Eyes - Photo by Kim Neely

I'm not sure when my fascination with elephants began, and I'm not sure what started it. My mother told me a few years before she died that my first-grade teacher once reported finding me crying despondently in the classroom. When she asked about the reason for my tears, I supposedly replied, "I don't know how to spell 'elephant.'"

Mother took us to the circus every year at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, Missouri, so it's possible that I actually saw live elephants before first grade, but I don't remember seeing circus elephants until I was older.

In the mid-1950s, my family traveled to St. Louis, Missouri to visit my great-aunt Edith. We went to the St. Louis Zoo while we were there, and that's where I saw the first live elephant I remember. I couldn't get enough of her. She was so big, and I couldn't believe our good fortune that we could get so close to her. A chain around one leg was all that kept her in place. I felt sad that she was chained, but kind of relieved, also.

In 1965 my husband won a trip to Las Vegas in an automobile sales contest. The best moment of the trip, for me, was at a cocktail party for all the winners and their guests. The star attraction at the hotel that night was a magician, and he appeared at our cocktail party with a baby elephant he used in his act. People dressed up for Las Vegas shows in those days, and as I stood there in a borrowed cocktail dress and borrowed, sparkly-silver shoes, the baby elephant wandered over and checked out my shoes with its trunk. It stayed there for a magical minute or two, exploring gingerly.

In the 1970s I began collecting elephant figures, many of which I still have. My favorite is the mother with her baby, displayed in the center set of shelves in the photo below (among the Readers Digest Condensed Books, another 1970s collection I can't seem to part with).

I've written here before about paying for the privilege of spending a day "behind the scenes" at the Baton Rouge Zoo, during which adventure I helped to bathe an elephant. That was in the early '80s, and I'll never forget the texture of that elephant's skin. Her name was Judy (like my sister).

The reason I'm writing about elephants now is that I came across a video this morning that reminded me of both the strength and the gentleness of these massive, wonderful animals. If I'd been sitting in the jeep with the photographer who shot this video, I might have died, either from the fright or from the thrill of it. But if anyone was going to die that day, it wouldn't have been the baby elephants; watch how the adults kept them safe.

Oliver (the "Twist" is in his tail)

Last week flew by in a haze of muscle aches and sleeplessness. My muscles were sore because I finally broke down and thoroughly cleaned my messy house. The sleeplessness was partly due to the muscle aches but mostly due to the fact that my granddogs spent the week here, and Lucy wasn't necessarily tired when the rest of us were.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed their company. Oliver, the newest and youngest pack member, is a treat to be around. His joie de vivre is infectious, and he's definitely the most stable, grounded dog I've ever known. Nothing fazes him.

Kim brought Ollie home on New Year's Day, not too long after her beloved Winston died. Ollie was a rescue dog. He'd been found running wild, his long hair matted to the point that he had to be shaved, and his whole hind end was inflamed as a result of a flea infestation. A Shih Tzu rescue group found him in the pound, and a foster mom in New Orleans fixed him up and took care of him until Kim saw his picture on craigslist and fell in love.

Nobody knows how long Ollie was on the streets before he was picked up, but it's obvious he was on his own long enough to pick up some street smarts. He's very clever. When he wanted to jump up on Kim's lap but couldn't get to her because other dogs lying on the floor blocked his way, he jumped up on the other sofa, gauged the distance between the arm of that sofa and the arm of the one Kim was sitting on, and made the leap. His front and back legs were stretched out so far it looked like he was flying.

One day last week a violent thunderstorm gave us a little relief from the heat, but it made the other dogs nervous. After one particularly loud clap of thunder, I took inventory of the dogs: Butch buried himself in the tiniest nook he could find in my bedroom. Lucy burrowed between my hip and the arm of the sofa. Kadi stood at my feet and trembled. Then, here came Oliver, racing in from the den and tossing a stuffed hedgehog into the air. Being inside during a storm probably seemed like a great thing to him.

Oliver's Trail of Toys

Ollie lives for toys. He likes to pull all the toys out of the toy basket in the den, pick out four or five favorites, then carry those into the living room to enjoy them. To a dog that loves toys, everything looks like a toy. One night I walked into the kitchen and found poop -- little-dog poop. By Lucy's reaction I knew it was hers. Ollie stood beside me as I fussed at Lucy and pointed my finger at the one long piece of poop and the two little round balls beside it. I left the room for just an instant, and when I came back with a big handful of toilet paper, one of the little round balls was missing. So was Oliver. I turned around to see him on his way back into the kitchen, evidently going back to make a second pickup. The missing ball of poop, I noticed, was now sitting perkily in the midst of Ollie's other toys.

We did have one other scary incident. Just before bedtime one night, I gave Kadi her thyroid pill, folded into a mini-marshmallow, and she dropped it. As fast as I moved, Ollie beat me to it, grabbed it and swallowed.

The dosage of the pill was for a Kadi-sized dog, three times the size of Oliver, so I called the after-hours vet, explained the situation, and asked whether or not I needed to bring Ollie in. They said no, but I needed to make him vomit. They said to give him hydrogen peroxide, about a teaspoon and a half at a time, every 15 or 20 minutes until he vomited.

After talking to the vet, I felt like it was time to call Kim, who was in Baton Rouge taking care of her vacationing friends' three very large dogs. While she was on her way here, I gave Ollie his first dose of peroxide. Nothing happened.

When Kim arrived, Ollie was busily playing with his toys, leaping around and happy as the clown that he is. We gave him a second dose. He licked his lips a couple of times and got an odd expression on his face, but nothing else. We encouraged him to play. We picked him up and bounced him around and rubbed his tummy. Nothing.

We dosed him again. This time we could tell he didn't feel well. He lay down, looking confused and miserable, and we heard a burp or two. But he didn't vomit. We felt so bad about making him sick on purpose, and we were quite aware that the label on the peroxide bottle stressed that it shouldn't be taken internally.

Kim called the vet again. They couldn't believe he hadn't vomited and said to give him three more teaspoonfuls, all at once. Kim asked what we should do in case that didn't work, and they said getting him to vomit was just a precaution, that the pill probably wouldn't hurt him unless he had an allergic reaction to it. Same thing went for all the peroxide in his system.

The larger dose didn't work either. By the time we gave up it was almost one-thirty in the morning, and we didn't know what else to do. Kim finally decided to go back to her friends' house in Baton Rouge, where she'd left the lights on when she rushed to come here. I promised I'd call her if anything changed with Ollie, one way or the other. I must have stretched a hand out to check on him a dozen times during the night, and each time he looked at me as if to ask why I was bothering him in the middle of the night. He never did vomit, and he's been fine ever since.

We learned with Winston that it only takes an instant for things to go terribly wrong, so this was kind of scary. This little funny-faced dog already owns a big piece of my heart.

Down the garden path

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my retirement.

When I made the decision to retire, five months before the actual date, the only plan I'd made was a financial one. I'd given some thought to what I'd do with the rest of my life but hadn't reached any conclusions. All I knew for sure is that I wanted to spend more time at home with my dogs.

One year later I still have no plans.  Maybe that's the true beauty of retirement.

These days, instead of waking to an alarm, I wake up to the subtle flapping of floppy ears or a nudge from a cold nose. My mornings are so much better than they used to be.

My days are filled with . . . I don't know, really. They're a jumble of all the things I like to do and not enough of the things I should do. The things that need to be done get done eventually, and very few of them have deadlines.

At the end of the day I read as late as I want, chapters instead of pages, until my eyes won't stay open. I go to sleep without worrying about how I'll feel the next day.

Honestly, this year has been like a deep, deep breath of fresh air, and it's passed about that quickly. I know there'll be a time when I'll want more structure in my life, when I'll feel a need for accomplishment again or a need to contribute my time to something that matters. But not just yet.

I may be traipsing down the garden path, but I'm smelling the heck out of the roses.

To see or not to see: who decides and who cares?

This is not the type of post one would expect to find on an old lady's blog, but the topic is one I've considered from time to time in recent years. If you are easily embarrassed, perhaps you shouldn't read further. Or, perhaps you could read further while pretending you're watching one of the doctor shows on TV and letting your thirst for knowledge override your need to protect yourself from a discussion of things related to the human body.

I'm speaking out today about a sensitive topic because I feel that the male members of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) have been scamming female television viewers and catering to male ones. (This will not be a discussion of "male members"; they can stand up for themselves.) I'm attempting to make a case that the FCC and network censors have perpetuated a fraud by insisting that any female nipple be covered or blurred on television, while allowing the entire rest of a big boob to bounce freely and while imposing no similar viewing restrictions on nearly identical male nipples. I think they're trying to make us believe that they're on the job by focusing our attention on the tip of the iceberg when, in fact, the giant mass that makes up the rest of the iceberg is where any prurient danger to society may lie.

Several years ago, the local board-of-something-or-other met to discuss what restrictions and ordinances should be applied to a couple of so-called "gentlemen's clubs" that had recently opened in the area. I still laugh when I remember reading the following item in the newspaper's report of the board's decision: "Dancers must remain at least three feet away from customers at all times and must wear pastries." Yes, it read "pastries," with an "r."

At the office we had so much fun discussing that typo. If the dancers themselves were tarts, would they meet the requirements? What if the dancers had cinnamon buns? Could they still be fined if they covered themselves with "bare" claws? Would doughnuts provide acceptable coverage, what with their dirty little peepholes? Thus began my mild curiosity about why female nipples are considered erotic when male nipples are not.

Do you remember the fuss when Janet Jackson had a nip-slip at the nationally televised Super Bowl? What a furor that caused! Since Janet was wearing the gold jewelry equivalent of a "pastry," I submit that it was not the nipple but the rest of the breast that censors and many viewers found too shocking for family television.

More recently -- and what set me on this current bandwagon -- I saw TV censorship carried to such an extreme that my eyes rolled more than once. The show was a documentary about a transgender man who would soon be undergoing surgery to make him a woman. The scene took place in a doctor's office as the doctor explained the upcoming surgical procedures. The patient had been living and dressing as a woman for about a year, but in this scene his body, naked except for a pair of white briefs (or panties maybe?) was clearly that of a very tall, rather skinny, flat-chested man. Get this: They blurred his nipples. Even though it was discussed at length that the patient was still a male in every physical way, the censors must have based their decision on the idea that he would someday in the future be a female. How big of a prude do they think I am?

Another point: If I stop to think about the last handsome, shirtless, well-built guy I saw on TV, I can conjure up a very pleasant image in an instant. I see broad shoulders and amazing abs. The nipples are there, too, but they're no more significant than shirt buttons. They play no role in my fantasy. Not being male, I can't say for sure, but I suspect men's minds work much the same way. My point is that, male or female, it's not the nipples but the shape of the flesh that surrounds the nipples that we find titillating, er, exciting.

I'm guessing most guys, given a choice between looking at a flat-chested woman with bare nipples or a woman with a set of well-rounded boobs under a patch of frilly fabric that conceals the tips, would grin and gape at the second woman. This is not to belittle the first woman, who might even gain a couple of points by covering up with a little frilly fabric of her own to distinguish her nipples from those of her male counterparts. And what about the sweater girls of the 1950s? Not a nip in sight, but they had everybody talking.

Think about the exposed cleavage you see on TV awards shows or red carpet interviews. Think about the barely-there costumes on "Dancing with the Stars." Think all the way back to "Baywatch." On TV, female nipples threaten to pop out all over the place, but they don't, quite. And as long as they don't, nobody raises a fuss. The TV censors go on taking care of their male viewer buddies by showing them plenty of the breast parts that really interest them.

In closing, I assure you that in writing about this topic, I am not making demands on network censors. My calling them out is not an instance of tit-for-tat. I just want the censors to know I see through them. And in no way am I expressing a desire to see more female nipples on television. I'm merely suggesting that if one occasionally does escape confinement, accidentally, it would be nice if we as a nation didn't get sucked into some great, collective, hypocritical gasp.

I can live with the fact that the female nipple doesn't get to breathe as freely as the male nipple does, so long as it gets the same amount of respect. After all, women's nipples serve a legitimate, honorable, and very respectable purpose.

If you have an opinion on this topic, I would be very interested in reading it. Further, I hope no one was offended by what I've posted here. I wrote this only because the perceived public fascination has resulted in a type of discrimination, and I needed to get these nipple issues off my chest.

Mexican food is on my mind

My mouth is watering for a chicken chimichanga, but the rest of me doesn't want to get dressed to go get one. Looks like I'll find something in the fridge and eat dinner right here in mi casa. And watch mi televisión.

The rules for taking turns

Butch and Kadi long ago mastered the art of eating from a spoon or fork. That's because I've always given them the last two bites of my own meal (as long as it's not on the bad-food-for-dogs list). Lucy and Oliver, my granddogs and frequent houseguests, have also progressed from licking a spoon to taking a bite from it.

At the age of 13, Kadi has recently become less interested in eating than she was in the past, and I've figured out that she'll eat more if I spoon-feed her. I've also discovered that it's nearly impossible to spoon-feed one dog when others are present and paying attention.

The dogs themselves have taught me that it's important to state the name of the specific dog who's going to get the next bite; otherwise, there's a free-for-all grab for the spoon. When I say one dog's name, though, the three others sit and wait to hear their own name called. I've been impressed that they caught on so quickly to the idea of taking turns and with the manners they show when we follow this procedure. But I haven't fully understood just how serious the concept is to them until a couple of days ago.

I was sitting in the living room, holding a bowl of moistened kibble with some canned chicken stirred in. The chicken was something new, so there was a lot of interest in it. Kadi and Butch got the first bites as soon as I sat down, followed by Oliver and Lucy as they scrambled into position. The eating order was established as Kadi-Butch-Oliver-Lucy, and I maintained that order as I doled out the food.

Things got a little bit confusing when the dogs shifted position. Oliver moved in to the left of Kadi, both of them to the left of my legs, and Lucy found a spot to the right of my legs, next to Butch. The feeding order was still Kadi-Butch-Oliver-Lucy, but their sitting/standing order was now Oliver-Kadi-Lucy-Butch.

For most of the meal I had no trouble maintaining the feeding order, but at one point near the end, a little problem arose. I got distracted and accidentally skipped Lucy. The instant I said Kadi's name instead of Lucy's, Lucy came unglued.

Oh.My.God! She stretched up on her hind legs. Her head detached from her shoulders at collar-level and thrust forward about a foot, her neck turning into a large, coiled spring. Her eyes grew about three times their normal size, popping out of her head and waggling independently, on little springs of their own, over the food bowl. Her mouth opened so wide I felt sure she was about to swallow the food, the entire spoon, and my arm all the way to the elbow. We got her message, loud and clear: "IT'S MYYYYYYYYYY TURRRRRRRNNNN!!!"

You can bet I'll pay closer attention from now on. And I'm going to remember the effectiveness of Lucy's display of righteous indignation the next time someone tries to cut in front of me in the checkout line at Walmart.

The best part of being a bug

Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a world where the flowers are larger than you are?

Note: The top photo in this post was taken by Kim Neely.

Hush Hush & Houmas House

Recently, on an otherwise boring afternoon, I was delighted to find one of my all-time favorite movies on TV: Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. I've watched this film many times since I first saw it in a Texas movie theater in 1964, and it hooked me again this year.

This old movie has everything going for it:  a great cast (Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland,  Joseph Cotten, and Agnes Moorehead), a clever plot twist, and a lavish Louisiana setting.  It's that setting that holds particular interest for me these days.  Here are a couple of examples (images captured from my television set):

The movie was filmed in Burnside, Louisiana, about half an hour from my home, at Houmas House Plantation. This is one of the most beautiful places I've personally experienced. My most recent visit there was with my younger daughter, Kelli, in 2008 (unfortunately during my non-posting period). We spent an early-fall afternoon touring the gardens. At the end of our tour, we had two peaceful souls and a couple hundred gorgeous pictures to show for it.

Here are a couple of photos that remind me of the scenery in the movie:

If you compare the house in the recent photo to the house in the movie shot, you'll notice that a widow's walk (belvedere) has been added on top of the roof. The Houmas House website states that this change was part of a restoration begun in 2003 by the current owner of the property, so I'm guessing it was part of the mansion as it existed at some point in time before the movie was made.

If you've never seen "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte," you really should. And if you have seen it, then I know you'll remember its hauntingly beautiful theme song:

The song is "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" by Patti Page.

Click here to read the lyrics.

Thanks to TheNewFormat for posting this video on YouTube.

A new set of wheels

About three years ago my older daughter bought herself a motorcycle:  a red, chrome and black Harley.  Even though I’m not a motorcycle enthusiast, I have to admit that her bike is a beautiful piece of machinery.  Over this past weekend she surprised me with new wheels in the same colors.  I’m now the proud owner of a brand-new...wait for it...walker!!!

I’d been in a lot of pain for several days because my arthritic knees were pitching a major bitch-fit, and I was using crutches if I had to move.  Crutches are cooler than walkers, I think.  When I was 25 years old and broke my knee, I even danced while using crutches.  Athletes with sports injuries use crutches.  Crutches are young. 

But this walker?  I could have kissed it when I saw it.  I could have kissed it even if it hadn't been shiny and red.  It offers so much more stability than the crutches and, best of all, it has a little basket I can use  to carry a book or a bowl of cereal or even, if I’m careful, a glass of Diet Coke on ice.

Between the new walker and the assistance of Kim, who cheerfully stayed with me and did the grocery shopping, cooking, and errand-running -- not to mention letting the dogs in and out a thousand times -- I was able to rest my knees enough for the inflammation to subside.  Now I’m walking on my own again.  The new walker is parked, waiting and ready for the next time I need it.  And I know from experience there will be a next time.

There have been several instances in the past few years when a walker would have helped.  I’ve just resisted the idea of it until now.  It's still a little painful to admit to myself that I'm old enough to need a walker, but I’m really glad to have it in my "just-in-case" toolbox.  


It feels so good to be able to take a book from one room to another without having to carry it under my chin.

Water lilies

The two of us, leisurely wandering,

saw lilies, peacefully PONDering.

The day everything changed in one spit second

When my second husband and I divorced in the early ‘80s, our relationship was still very amicable. We’d grown apart through the years and through many work-related separations, but we still cared for one another as one cares for close family. When we divided our community property, we did so in the spirit of fairness and graciousness.

As part of that property settlement, I ended up with some cash in exchange for my half of the (small) equity in our house. It wasn’t a large amount of money, but my husband suggested that if I would put it into a certificate of deposit, it would grow faster than it would in a savings account. And so I followed his advice.

Several years later, I needed some of that money. It’s been so long since this happened that I don’t remember why I needed it, but my best guess would be that my car had broken down. Again. Off I went to the bank, on my lunch hour, to see what I could do.

The bank officer I met with was a woman I’ll call Rusty Soloman (not her real name). At that time I worked in personnel management, and Rusty must have had similar responsibilities at the bank, because she and I were on a couple of human resources committees together. She was then about the age I am now. She was short and stout, with grey hair twisted up in the back. Her lips seemed permanently pursed. The way she tilted her head to peer over her glasses made me feel as if I were under close inspection, like bacteria on a microscope slide. I felt uncomfortable in her presence at committee meetings and even more so at the bank.

That day we met in Rusty’s office. As it was lunchtime, she spread a paper napkin on her desk, pulled an orange out of her purse, and commenced to peel it. While I explained to her that I wanted to cash out the CD, she finished peeling the orange, pulled off a couple of wedges and stuffed them into her mouth. I remember thinking that the remainder of the orange looked like Pacman sitting there on that white napkin.

Rusty finished chewing and began to tell me all the reasons why I should leave the CD alone. She asked why I needed the money, and I told her, even though I thought it wasn’t really any of her business, since I wasn’t asking for a loan. She told me there’d be a penalty for taking the money out early, and I told her I knew that and was prepared to pay it. I don’t remember all the stuff she said that day, but I remember clearly how little I felt as I tried to convince that sour, old woman that I needed to use some of my money, and she tried to convince me I didn't.

I began explaining it to her again. And as I spoke with conviction on my own behalf, something happened that normally would have horrified me: A tiny drop of spit flew out of my mouth, arced gracefully through the sunbeams that were shining through the window, and landed, as if by intent or destiny, smack in the “mouth” of Rusty’s Pacman orange.

I stopped speaking and watched Rusty carefully. Her head was bent over the orange, her eyes focused on it as if in disbelief; then, slowly, she raised her head and glared at me.

I felt embarrassed. I felt like the worst kind of clod. I touched my hand to my mouth and mumbled some version of “sorry, excuse me.” Rusty mumbled something in return, pushed away from her desk, and walked out of the office.

While she was gone, I began to assess the situation. Not in a million years would I have done such an uncouth thing intentionally, but it did kind of sum up my feelings about the whole transaction up to that point. I realized that in spite of some minor embarrassment, I didn’t feel little anymore. I thought it was sort of amazing how one tiny, droplet of spit could shift the balance of power in a room. I thought and thought until I had to wipe the beginning of a smile off my face.

Rusty came back a few minutes later with the paperwork all filled out, and it took only a couple more minutes before the money I needed was in my checking account and the balance of the CD was in a savings account. We said polite but hasty good-byes.

I’m sure my skirt tail hadn’t cleared the doorway before Rusty’s orange hit the trashcan. I'm not proud of it, but I've secretly always hoped she had to ask to borrow money to buy herself a new lunch.

Oops...I did it again!

The new design templates on Blogger offer too many possibilities for me to resist exploring them every couple of weeks. As pretty as I thought the last background was, all golden sun shining through trees, I found that the lights, shadows and busyness made the text harder to read. Maybe it was just a condition of my tired, old eyes, but I've decided to change it anyway. Today I'll go with a background I'll call "sun shining through a sparkling clean, glass window." Or, better yet, "butter."

I think this simpler look will do a better job of showing off photos featuring colors that clashed with the orange tones of the previous background. Photos like this one (can anyone tell me what kind of flower this is?):

It also occurred to me that the new background is very close to the color I painted some of the walls in my home. I searched for a long, long time to find the right yellow-gold to accent the neutral, mossy green I used on the rest of the walls, but this blog background color popped right off the chart at me. Maybe that's because it was so familiar.

I apologize if you're getting tired of seeing the frequent switch-ups here. I'll do my best to leave this alone for a while and spend the "design time" writing new posts instead.

My daughter and I were discussing a fairly colorful incident last night; maybe I'll tell you about that next.

Picture me scratching my head

My project for most of the past week has been organizing my online photo albums. I scanned the majority of my non-digital photos a long time ago and categorized them by decade, but that turned out to be the easy part. Having scanned several photos at a tiime, I’ve had to go back to each scan and crop it into individual photos. This week I’ve been working on labeling each of those photos, which has turned out to be the biggest job of all.

A lot of the paper photos had names and dates written on the back, but the paper photos aren’t necessarily in the same order as the digital ones. That means flipping back and forth through the pictures one-by-one, searching for the one that matches the digital photo I’m trying to label. That gets old fast!

Two things have been most helpful in determining the dates of the photos: 1) the fact that we moved so often while my daughters were growing up, and 2) the girls’ school photos laid out in chronological order. The scenery and the furniture in the photos helped me be sure where each one was taken, and the girls’ hairstyles matched against the school pics helped me pinpoint a year.

So far I’ve worked my way from the pre-1940 photos all the way up through 1979; now I’m ready to tackle the ‘80s. Here’s a sceenshot showing just five of the 18 rows of pictures I have to identify and label from that decade:

The close attention to detail required takes a lot of time, but the biggest time consumer is my obsessive need to stop and admire each individual photo. These aren’t just pictures to me; they’re people and places and times of my life. They’re second on the list of things I would save in a fire, right after my dogs.

As I've been writing this post, the subject matter began to seem familiar, so I just did a blog search and discovered that I wrote about this once before, right after I began this project more than three years ago. The tone of that first post reflected much more of my love for the photos and much less about the technical difficulties involved in completing the project. Sometime between then and now, I seem to have lost the ability to envision an end to this work.

The photos mean as much to me now as they did then, so I assume that the difference in tone between the two posts is that I'm three years more tired and definitely more realistic about the amount of work this project entails.

One thing hasn't changed, though: It's still a labor of love.

Birthdays, remembered and misremembered

According to my grandmother’s tombstone, she was born 114 years ago today. Except she wasn’t. She was actually born 114 years ago tomorrow. Dang, I hate that carved-in-stone error!

This photo of my grandmother, Lola, at age 2,

 is one of my most prized possessions.

The photo was taken in 1898.

I remember that the first time I saw the tombstone after Mammaw died, I inquired about getting it corrected. One option was to buy a whole new tombstone, and the only other suggestion was to put the right date on a little piece of marble (stick-on correction marble?) that could be attached to the tombstone to cover up the mistake. The former method wasn’t in my budget, and I thought the latter would look tacky.  So, I made a decision to think it over for a while, and that's what I've done about it -- nothing -- for the last 22 years.

When I think about this mistake, the genealogist in me always beeps an alarm: “DATA ERROR! DATA ERROR! DATA ERROR!” But that isn’t what really bugs me. What makes me feel bad about it is that I know Mammaw earned the right to rest in peace under a letter-perfect headstone.

Not that she would have cared. She was the most forgiving person I’ve ever known and would have brushed off that kind of mistake with a wave of her hand and a big smile. Her only concern would have been to make sure no one was embarrassed about it.

My stepfather was the one who provided the information to the monument company, and he wouldn’t have recognized that the birthdate was wrong. I can only guess that Mother, or whoever gave the dates to him, was distraught and confused Mammaw’s birthday with another birthday in the family.

That would be the birthday of my aunt Yvonne, who was born 87 years ago today.

This is Yvonne on the day she married Neale,

my grandmother Lola's son. Although Neale

is shown in his uniform, Yvonne chose not to

wear hers to her wedding; she was a WAC. 
 They met and married in England during

World War II.

Trying something new

I've spent most of this (so far) quiet holiday playing with Paintbrush, a free download for Mac that's similar to the paint program packaged with Windows-based computers. It's a fun way to spend an afternoon if you don't mind using the eraser tool a whole lot.

Here's my best effort of the day:

Let freedom ring!

Have a wonderful 4th of July!

Seeking clarity

In 2006, on the second day of my blogging adventure, I posted a poem entitled "Reunion," along with an explanation that the title of this blog came from that poem.

"Reunion" is in the sidebar, as it has been since my first day as a blogger, even though I've always doubted that it shed enough light on the obscure blog title. I'm leaving it in the sidebar because it's old and comfortable and makes me feel good.

Last night, twenty-one years after I wrote "Reunion," words with another velvet-sacks  theme crawled into my head while I tried to ignore them and go to sleep. They insisted on lining themselves up first one way, then another, a couple of words and phrases changing places like chorus dancers who have suddenly realized they're out of position on the stage. The words wouldn't leave me alone until I turned on the light and wrote them down.

I'm calling this little piece of prose "The Introvert," and giving it the top spot in the sidebar because I think it does a better job than "Reunion" of explaining the velvet sacks metaphor. I'm not sure why these words came when they did, the way they did, or why, coincidentally, they were accompanied by a distinct mental image of a medieval maiden in a dark, dank castle keep.  I wish I knew the rest of the maiden's story.

What do you think this is about?

Tent Revival

This enormous tent sits on land less than a mile from my home. The tent is so large it could hold at least a couple hundred people, and it probably does hold that many each day, though not all at the same time. This particular tent was not erected as a place for people to congregate for singing and praise and worship and praying to God in Heaven for peace on planet Earth. This tent is all about hellfire and brimstone of the man-made kind.

It's a fireworks tent.

Someone "revives" it twice a year, a couple of weeks before the 4th of July, then again right before the Christmas/New Year's holidays. The only thing I can think of that it has in common with a religious revival tent (other than its exterior appearance) is that both have a pretty strong focus on bringing in some big bucks in a short period of time.

I've digitally doctored the photograph of the tent to make it "more pleasing to the eye." In the original picture, as in real life, the unadorned, white tent offers a visual field of serenity that belies the nearby presence of utility poles and lines, vehicles headed in three different directions, golden arches, and all the other ugly signs of life near a heavily trafficked intersection.

Another tent, smaller but more flamboyant, sits cater-cornered across the road from the  one pictured. It's an open-sided canvas construction, with lots of giant, boldly colored banners waving to distract drivers and advertise the rockets and bombs for sale inside.

Twice a year, these tents and their contents wreak havoc on us. I've posted before about my dogs’ fears of fireworks. It breaks my heart to see them so frightened, and every year my anger grows that parish officials won't ban the sale and use of fireworks in this area. They're banned in nearby Baton Rouge and in the small town on the other side of us, but if my closer neighbors want to show off their hosting abilities, they can offer more than hotdogs and potato salad: They can provide explosives!

I heard the first "pop" this afternoon. The noise always starts before the actual holiday and ends days afterward, and all it takes is one loud bang to ruin an entire day. Butch and Kadi know from experience that one explosion is usually followed by others, so if they hear the last one near midnight, I might be able to get them to go outside again by three or four in the morning.

Obviously, these tents wouldn't be erected if there wasn't a market for fireworks, but it bothers me that there doesn't seem to be much regulation of when and how they're used. It would be tolerable if fireworks were permitted for an hour or two on a designated day. That would probably feel more like a celebration, too. I'm just not buying the idea that all the folks who live in the unincorporated areas of our parish are happy about the loud noises, not to mention the fiery sparks flying over our rooftops at random times over a two-week period. It's a bit much.

I wish they'd put it to a vote, but that isn't likely, so I'll just do what I do every time those tents go up: I'll fervently hope for rain.

Pardon me, have you seen my head?

Of the numerous bills I get each month, I pay about five by snail mail.  The phone bill is the last one to come in, so the day after I get it, I write checks and go to the post office.  That’s just enough time to ensure that my mortgage payment gets where it’s going with a couple of days to spare.

One day last week I piddled around and missed the mail pickup time at the nearest post office, so I waited until the next day.  I got distracted and waited too late on the second day, too, then I remembered that the mail collection time is an hour later at the post office in the nearby town where I used to work.  I decided to drive the extra distance.   Since I was going in that direction, it seemed like a good idea to use that trip to make a deposit at my bank, which is just down the street from the post office.

Somewhere between here and town, my mind wandered, though obviously not the part of my mind that was impressed with itself for thinking to combine the two errands.

After I made the bank deposit, I came home, pulled into the carport, turned off the engine, picked up my purse, and there on the seat were the bills I was supposed to have mailed.  I’d daydreamed right past the post office.

I thought about it for a few seconds, long enough for my stern, no-nonsense persona to come out and purse her lips, then I backed out and drove the whole sixteen-mile round trip back to the post office.  Yes, I wasted gas.  I could have waited one more day and gone to the nearer post office, but I felt it was important to teach myself a lesson.  

What about you?  What absent-minded thing have you done lately?

Kadi spies on me

It’s true, she does! Kadi’s a good, good girl, almost saintly, but she’s not perfect. She can’t pull that pale orange fur over my eyes anymore.

Now that I’m home all the time, Kadi keeps close track of my whereabouts. If I move from one room to another, I don’t travel alone. She almost always follows me and lies down nearby. Most of the time I find that endearing, but sometimes all the togetherness gets a little annoying.

If I shift from one hip to the other in the recliner, and the recliner squeaks the tiniest bit in response, Kadi’s head jerks up, and she’s on the case. What’s happening here? Are you going somewhere? What are we doing?

If I’m rushing to get something to drink during a TV commercial, she’s right there with me, pacing underfoot so I have to move carefully around her. Someday I'll need her, by golly, and she'll be right there, but it's unlikely I'll have an emergency during the span of a commercial break.

We have made a little progress in addressing this problem, but only for one room in the house. I’ve learned that if I say out loud, “I’m going to the bathroom, I’ll be right back,” she’ll usually stay put. Just not for long.

Because I’ve lived alone for years, I’m in the habit of leaving the bathroom door ajar, so when Kadi spies on me, I see her do it. Even when the door is closed, I know she’s there; I see the shadow of her nose under the door and hear her sniff-sniff-sniffing.

I use the word “spies” instead of “peeks” because she’s sly about it. She doesn’t come into the hallway (an excellent vantage point) and look around to see where I am. Instead, she strides purposefully toward the bedroom (where I almost never am during the day). Just before she gets there, she whips her head to the left and looks pointedly into the bathroom (where I am often during the day). And here’s the deceitful part: She keeps on going into the empty bedroom! She waits there for just a few seconds -- evidently all the time she thinks it will take for her old, naive human to believe she had business in the bedroom -- then comes out grinning and lies down in the hall outside the bathroom door.

I’m on to her now: She's not just "Kadi Marie, Kadi Marie, prettiest girl I ever did see," as I sing to her (to the tune of the Kit-Kat jingle). She's Kadi, a.k.a. Sister Mary Katherine, K-9 Private Eye.

Try a little tenderness

During my long, conspicuous absence from blogging, one project that occupied my time was organizing my digital photos into meaningful categories, applying tags for easy sorting, and eliminating duplicates and bad shots. If one were to accumulate the hours I've spent on this task into a single block of time, it would amount to weeks, maybe even a couple of months.

I've made lots of progress, but the end still isn't in sight. For every photo I've managed to drag to the trash can, another one has pleaded to be rescued. I've pored over each of these ugly babies, searching for anything salvageable, and once in a while I find a little potential.

That's when I switch into "extreme ho-hum makeover" mode and go to work with Photoshop Elements. Sometimes it saves a nature photo that would be beautiful except for utility wires draping across the scene. Sometimes the cropping tool rescues the only interesting corner of an otherwise dull shot.

The filters tool is the one I've had the most fun with. I've taken so many photographs that looked good through the camera lens but turned out to be blurry when I saw them on the computer screen. The worst ones were discarded (well, not all of them; I'm apparently a photo hoarder), but application of an "artistic filter" to the slightly blurry photos made them look like little paintings.

Seeing a photograph that represents a beautiful slice of reality can take my breath away, something these little "painted" shots will never do. Still, I find them charming in their own way. When you see them posted here from time to time, you'll know a lot of love and tenderness went into making them blogworthy.

Well, isn't that an amazing coinkydink?

After all the time I spent yesterday deciding on a background picture for the new blog layout, I was delighted when I checked out today's JigZone puzzles.

Scroll to the bottom of this page to see for yourself.

UPDATE:  If you visited here earlier in the day and scrolled all the way down, you found a jigsaw puzzle titled "Sun Acadia Tree" that looked very much like my new background.  If you enjoyed it, I'm glad.  On the other hand, if you're just reading this post for the first time, you'll think I'm crazy.  There's a big blank space where the puzzle pieces used to be.

I posted the puzzle on my blog at JigZone's invitation, so I don't know why it was removed.  Anyway, to eliminate confusion, I'll just go ahead and delete the puzzle workspace, too.  If you did the puzzle, liked it, and want more, click this link.

Coral Honeysuckle

Honeysuckle hugging fences,
Morning glory on the vine,
Tantalizing summer scents as
Rich and sweet as cherry wine.

Metamorphosis

Today I changed the look of my blog for the third time in the four and a half years since I started it. Also for the fourth, fifth, and sixth times. All I wanted to do initially was try to widen the red paisley header I’ve used since September of 2007 so I could use wider columns in the blog.

That’s when I discovered that new blog templates had been added to Blogger and the old ones were nowhere to be found. Uh-oh. What was a lazy blogger to do next?

I quickly chose a new layout that coordinated nicely with the image in the old header and stuck with that for almost an hour. That’s how long it took to realize it wasn’t going to be simple to figure out how to center the image properly, and I couldn’t live with it being lopsided.

The old paisley image had to go, so I deleted it and left the red header bar, then added a matching red background. I liked the way the posts were set out on their own white areas, but the template faded large areas of the brick red to pink. I like pink but don’t like to live with it, so that look had to go, too.

By using the same template and removing the background altogether, I was left with neat, pale grey-white columns topped by the red header. I chopped the old red paisley image in half and stuck it in the sidebar, after which the page had a similar feel to the old blog. Except it looked much more professional. I kept it for a couple of hours. When I looked at it later, it looked so professional it felt sterile. Who knew red could appear cold?

Back to the template palette, I worked my way through dozens of possible combinations, searching for warmth and light. This is the final result. These golds and caramel browns are colors I’ve used in my home. I think this look is much more representative of who I am than any of the earlier designs.

Welcome to my sunlight and my shadows.

In the name of pretty

When I read Helen's post about late-night TV commercials, I was reminded of another commercial I saw recently. Over time we’ve all become familiar with TV ads for a well-known brand of undergarments for people who, shall we say, have bladder control issues.

The older I get, the faster I need to move after that first little urge hits me, so let me state up front that it’s reassuring to know that this type of undergarment is available. I hope I never need this product, but I won’t make fun of anybody who does. (Unless, of course, it’s the occasional astronaut who wears adult diapers to save time when she travels to kidnap her boyfriend’s other girlfriend.)

What caught my attention about the new commercial is the statement that their product is now available in prints and colors. Heh. Heh-heh-heh. Bwahahahahaha! Talk about putting lipstick on a pig!

Do you think the new colors and prints were requested by consumers? If not, can you imagine the sales genius of the ad man who managed to sell this idea to the product manufacturer? He must have been some VIP’s son or brother-in-law.

Now, I’m sure there are sexy, vibrant women in all parts of the world who use this product and whose partners understand the reality of the situation and find the women as desirable as ever. But I’m willing to bet the diapers, plain, colored or printed, disappear before any lovemaking gets too steamy.

I’ve been trying to imagine all sorts of scenarios involving candles, wine, batting eyelashes, and a healthy adult male’s reaction to the sight of fancy-printed diaper-panties. So far, every scenario I’ve come up with makes me laugh.

Do you think this is as funny as I do, or is my sense of humor just way too twisted? Am I the only one who thinks that even if she might be grateful to have these absorbent panties someday in the (hopefully distant) future, she won’t be deliberately showing them off to anyone just because they’re prettier now?

Maybe the colors and prints aren’t for others, you say. Maybe they’re to build the self esteem of the wearer. Hmm. Maybe. Whatever works, I suppose.

I guess it all depends on your point of view.

Something in the air

My house apparently sits directly under the flight path from Baton Rouge (our state capital) to the oil-challenged Louisiana Gulf Coast. This year, along with the usual summertime sounds of chirping birds and buzzing insects, we regularly hear the whup-whup-whup of helicopters overhead. I don’t know whether the frequent flyers are government officials or news reporters, only that so many of them fly over each day that Butch and Kadi no longer pay the slightest attention to them.

Of course, this isn’t the dogs’ first exposure to the whirlybirds. The many helicopters that flew overhead during hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Gustav (2008) may have desensitized them to the sound.

To me, though, that sound is still a little unsettling, especially when two or more helicopters are traveling together. It isn't the noise that bothers me; they fly high enough to keep from creating a disturbance. It's the sound itself. Somehow, in my mind, the clacking of those propellors has morphed into an aural symbol of suffering and urgency, and I feel just a little bit anxious every time I hear it.

It’s been a rough five years here in Southeast Louisiana.

Favorites: a matter of taste

I keep a loose list of things to blog about; otherwise, I'll forget them. Apparently, that practice isn't too helpful, because a recent review of old posts proved I've already written about some of the things on my current list of blog ideas.

Okay, so I'll scratch 'em off. For now. I can't promise some old theme won't show up again.

I did discover, in going through the old posts, that some of them feel special to me, and I decided to list them as "favorites" in the left sidebar, underneath the archives. It wasn't too difficult to differentiate between the posts I "phoned in" and the ones I really wanted to write. But it was tough choosing favorites. So many old posts seemed as comfortable and familiar to slip into as the old pair of sandals I'm wearing now.

I made a long list and winnowed it down to twenty-five, not at all sure I'd come up with the same list if I were to do this exercise again. These posts are "favorite" only because they're special to me in some way. Some of them are about feelings or experiences, some make me nostalgic. Some were just plain fun to write, and some wouldn't be special at all except for the wonderful comments left by you, dear readers.

I tried to list these posts chronologically, with the oldest posts at the top so there wouldn't be any spoilers, but Blogger doesn't seem to offer that option. So, they're in alphabetical order, which, I guess, turns out to be pretty random after all.

I know that the fact these are my favorite posts doesn't mean they'll be yours. But maybe, if you're new to this blog, you might enjoy some of them. Or, if you're a long-time reader who visits here on a day when I haven't posted anything fresh, instead of hurrying to click the back-button, maybe you'll read something you've forgotten and give me a pass.

Will I ever be mature enough to control inappropriate laughter?

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the floater that had suddenly popped up in my right eye. It was annoying, but I wasn't worried about it.

On the night after I wrote the "floater post," I started experiencing flashes of light -- tiny, moving, macaroni-shaped lightsabers -- when I'd go from a bright room into a darker one. The flashes weren't particularly bothersome, so my initial plan was to ignore them. But it was the weekend by then, there was plenty of time to nose around on the Internet, and almost every article I read said something to the effect of, "It's usually nothing to worry about, but if you don't get immediate medical attention, there may be dire consequences."

On Monday I called a retinal specialist (I have early-stage macular degeneration and had been to this office once before) and ended up there again on Tuesday. That appointment went well. The doctor said he couldn't see any signs of a serious problem but wanted me to come back again in two weeks and then again in a month. "Sometimes these things take a while to appear."

I was fairly perturbed about having to go back for follow-up exams. Because they dilate my eyes at every appointment, someone has to go with me to drive me home.  This means one or the other of my daughters has to take off work, which, while it makes all the waiting-room time more interesting for me, makes me feel guilty for wasting a big chunk of their time.

Anyway, this past Wednesday was the two-week follow-up.  I expected we'd breeze in and out fairly quickly. Instead, the doctor found a little retinal tear. He explained the significance of it, then told us he'd need to do a laser procedure to "spot weld" the area to prevent a retinal detachment. Fortunately, he could to do it that day, right there in his office.

So, we waited again. We waited a long time, and then another long time after that.  At one point, Kim said, "I wonder what's taking so long."  I replied, "Hmmph. He's probably sitting in his office reading up on laser procedures." Kim instantly put her hands in the typing position and said aloud as she typed in the air, "How... to... do... laser... surgery... on..."

Maybe you had to be there to appreciate the humor, or maybe it was because I was a little nervous, but the air-Googling struck me really funny. I laughed out loud, then Kim did, and it turned into one of those moments that grew funnier the longer we thought about it.

Right then was when the doctor came in, and his first words were, "I'm sorry you've had to wait so long." A wave of humor hit me again. I was sitting in the exam chair, my head was tilted waaaaay back, the doctor was standing right beside me with the laser instrument in his hand, ready to go, and my lips were clamped together so tightly that my smile must have looked like a maniacal grimace. Just as the doctor leaned in over my head, I couldn't hold it any longer and let out one short burst of laughter.

"I'm sorry," I apologized. "We were talking about something funny just before you came in, and I need a second to regain my composure."

The doctor chuckled, too, presumably because laughter is infectious.  "That's okay," he said.  "I expect you'll stop laughing as soon as we begin."

He was right. But as soon as we were safely back in the car, it got funny all over again.

My purpose in life...

...at least from the perspective of Butch and Kadi, has been made clear to me: I am their maid.

Judging from their recent behavior, it's a good thing I retired when I did. They adapted so quickly to my being home all the time that I suspect they may have had previous discussions about their need to hire additional staff. Part-time help just wouldn't cut it anymore.

For example, Kadi has always loved to have her belly scratched, and I've always loved to do that for her.  But she used to wait until I'd sit down on the sofa to roll over at my feet and expose her belly.  Now she's just as likely to race past me when I walk through the house, hurl her big body across my path, flop onto her back right in front of me and stretch all four legs into the air as if to demand, "Stop! Scratch me now."  I don't think this has as much to do with the itchiness of Kadi's abdomen as it has to do with my increased availability.

An issue that's bigger than the belly-scratch-tripping-hazard is the way they manipulate me for treats.  Especially Butch.  Years ago I thought it made sense to give each of them a treat when they came back in the house after taking care of their doggy business in the yard.  I wanted them to be happy to come in quickly when I called them.  This was especially important when I was working and their outside time was often a quick trip in the morning or sandwiched into a lunch hour.

Once I retired, though, Butch, began asking  to go outside many, many, many times a day.  He's always had a bladder like a bathtub.  Unlike Kadi, he still does.  So I've tried to ignore him when I know he's been out only a short time ago.  But he's persistent.  He'll stand at the door and scratch it every ten seconds or so for as long as it takes to wear me down.  My daughter suggested that if I let Butch stay outside longer, he might not ask to go out so frequently.  But for Butch it's not about being outside; he's an inside dog through and through.  The whole bunch of us can be outside, and Butch will ask to go in by himself. It's all about coming back in. It's about the treat.

It's hard to relax with all of the extra interruptions.  I mean, come on, Butch doesn't just pop outside and pop back in again.  He's blind.  It takes him a while to find the perfect spot to squeeze out two or three drops to prove he needed to pee and another little while to find the back door again.   I often have to stand in the door and clap my hands to help him navigate. I'm trying to figure out how to communicate to Butch that it would be easier on both of us if he'd just learn to ask for a treat and stop the whole fake in-and-out thing.

I know Butch is faking it because I can predict when he's going to do it.  Example:  Both dogs stand at my knees while I eat my meal, and usually, if it's something that isn't bad for them, I will give the last two bites to them.  Kadi considers her bite a treat.  Butch considers his an appetizer.  He'll wait about one minute before he goes to scratch on the back door.  Every. Single. Time.

But maybe Butch is getting tired of the charade, too.

The other morning I woke up about five-thirty and let the dogs outside. As soon as they came back in, I gave them each a dog biscuit, then went back to bed.  Usually, they'd go back to bed, too, and maybe they did, for a while.  All I know is that just before seven I heard a little whine and there they both were, tap-dancing eagerly beside my bed.  I knew they couldn't possibly need to go outside again so soon, but I stumbled out of bed and headed to the back door anyway. I opened the door and stood waiting, finally realizing I was alone.

I turned around and there were Butch and Kadi, twenty feet behind me, standing side-by-side with their noses stretched upward to the package of rawhide chews I'd left on the dining table. Because they did this together, I can only assume they had discussed their plan beforehand and agreed between themselves that it was perfectly fine to wake me up to to give them rawhide.

If I'm being honest, the unnecessary interruptions bother me, but it's the manipulation that bothers me more. It's the fact that Butch thinks he's so much smarter than I am.  And Kadi probably is smarter than I am, but it hurts my feelings that she uses that against me.

Seriously, although I've groused about some of their annoying habits here, I am loving spending more time with these two old dogs.  Butch turned twelve in March, Kadi will be thirteen in June, and I'm no spring chicken myself.  I consider it a privilege to grow old with these two sweet souls.

Even if they do take advantage of me.  

Beware of deceitful Flemishallies

During the time I was AWOL from this blog, I found plenty of activities to keep me busy. Some of them were things I chose to do, but at least one tedious task was a result of switching from a PC to a Mac.

Some of you know that genealogy is a passion for me, one that began when I found some notes my grandmother left behind when she died in late-1988. The genealogy software I used for for all those years was Family Tree Maker. It did a wonderful job of organizing family records and creating interesting reports, and I couldn’t have been happier with it. What I didn’t know until I’d decided to buy the iMac is that Family Tree Maker isn’t available for Macs.

So, based on online reviews, I purchased Reunion genealogy software for Mac the same day I bought the new computer. Reunion, too, does a fine job, and it was really easy to transfer my family file from Family Tree Maker to Reunion. All the names, dates and places made the move flawlessly. The notes, however, were a different story. Those pages and paragraphs of narrative attached to many of the names didn’t make the transition as smoothly. All the words of the notes were transferred, but many of the spaces between the words didn’t make it.

After more than 20 years of research, there are 6,787 names in my genealogy database now, and I had to go through them all one by one, read every word of every note, and insert spaces as needed. It was extremely time-consuming but, most of the time, not too difficult.

Then came a sentence that stumped me: “He was betrayed by his Flemishallies.” What? What the heck are Flemishallies and how did they betray him? A quick second glance made it obvious I needed to insert a space: "Flemish allies."

Everything in the database is back in order, which pleases me immensely. Still, I must admit that thinking about Flemishallies pleases me almost as much, in a whimsical way. I imagine them as some kind of magical, mildly malevolent creatures of the sort Harry Potter might have encountered in the woods around Hogwarts.

I think that in the future, on those days when one thing after another seems to go wrong, I might choose to blame it on the Flemishallies. It would take some pressure off me, and, after all, it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve caused trouble for my family.

A Brief History of an Early Romance

I thought he was a handsome prince
Who'd take me to his castle.
Turned out he was a vagabond
And something of an ass'le.

One more eye-doctor story...

...before I forget to tell you:

It had been more than five years since I'd had my vision checked, so when my daughter said she needed to get her eyes examined, I went with her.

The beginning of the exam was fairly typical of what I’d experienced in the past. I pushed my face into the giant-goggle machine and rested my chin on the cold metal bar. First, the doctor darkened the room. She looked at the inside of my eyes while I looked first in one direction, then another. She caused little puffs of air to blow onto my eyeballs. Then she asked me to read several rows of letters on the light box on the far wall. That went fairly well.

While the room light was still off, the doctor went to the far end of the room and fiddled with something I couldn’t see. (My face was still pressed into the machine.) When she turned back to me, the following conversation took place:

Doc:     “Can you see this?”

Me:      “Yes.”

What I saw was a large, dark area that almost totally obscured the light box.  On the dark area I could see a red rectangle and a neon-green rectangle, both kind of shadowy, and both with something written on them in a large, unfamiliar script.

Doc:     “Okay, read what you see.”

Me:      “Well, I can see it, but I don't know if I can read it.”

Doc:     “Just try to read whatever you can.”

Me:      “Okay. ‘You. Are. Something something something. To God.’”

Doc:     “Uhhhh, okay, wait a minute.”

She leaned in to the machine and made some adjustments.

Doc:     “Okay, let's see if this is better.”

Me:      “It’s still not very clear, but I’ll try: ‘You are. Never. Something something to God.’”

At that point the doctor shook her head as if she were totally confused, then turned around to get another look at what I was reading. That’s when she burst out laughing and announced that she’d inadvertently left a cabinet door open. The large, dark shape I saw was the inside of the cabinet door, which opened directly in front of the light box. The red and green rectangles were brightly colored sheets of paper taped to the inside of the door, each one bearing a handwritten affirmation.

Apparently, when I was saying, “You are something something something to God,” the doctor was hearing, “U-R-something-something-something-2-God.” To her, it sounded like letters and numbers. She said later she had thought I must be “blind as a bat,” and she couldn’t imagine why I kept saying “God” after I messed up.

The rest of the exam proceeded normally, except that neither of us could restrain an occasional fit of giggles.

Float like a butterfly, er, mosquito

When I went to get my vision checked in November last year, the optometrist referred me to an ophthalmologist to check out "some things going on" in my eyes.  Both doctors mentioned the presence of "floaters." Since the floaters weren't in my line of vision, and since the doctors told me they were very common, I wasn't the least bit concerned.

All that changed late Thursday night.  A new floater popped up, one that appears to be hovering about three inches in front and just to the right of my right eye.  It's a group of little black "threads" that have joined together to look like a side view of a fairly large mosquito.  I've known a couple of other people who have had floaters, and they've told me, "Eventually, I got used to it."  I'm counting on that.

In the meantime, it's driving me insane.  I never realized how many tiny eye movements are involved in the routine business of life, but there are thousands of them. And with each little upward or downward or left-to-right flicker, this bug-thing darts in front of me.  Have you ever used a computer mouse that wasn't adjusted correctly so that the slightest movement of the mouse made the cursor jump clear across the screen?  That's how this floater moves.

It's distracting when I read, although its position keeps it from blocking the words I need to see.    If I'm reading the left-hand page of a book, the floater flutters around on the right-hand page.  If I'm reading the right-hand page, the floater crawls around on my hand.  It flies all over the place when I'm looking at the computer screen.

Yesterday, after drinking a cold Diet Coke, I glanced into the glass and saw a "bug" sitting on the pile of ice cubes.   I moved my eyes and, in my peripheral vision, saw it fly away.

The floater is much less noticeable when I watch TV as it seems to get lost in the motion.  I noticed the same thing yesterday when I was driving; it didn't bother me at all.  Maybe I need to do more things that involve movement.

Or maybe I'll just wait and see if I get used to it.


SPEAKING OF EYES...
Doctors who advertise on television fascinate me.  They are probably quite competent in the performance of their professional services, but often their amateurish commercials make them seem to lack confidence.

On the other hand, there's one local eye surgeon who speaks with assurance of his abilities and of his experience:  "more than 20,000 Lasik surgeries."  He makes me believe he's  probably quite good at what he does.  Still, there's just something about him...

I can't let March slip away...

...without announcing the birth of John Owen Hoover, born on the 16th day of this month to my granddaughter, Kalyn, and her husband, Adam.  I am in love with this tiny, sweet boy.

The photo above was taken by his Aunt Michelle about an hour after his birth.  Now, at two weeks old, Owen is fine and healthy.  So is his mother.  I'm so proud of his mom and dad, the kind of home they've made for their son, and the kind of parents they're already proving to be.

I realize that this event officially makes me a great-grandmother, and as old as that sounds when I say it, I can't think of any new title I'd be happier to hold.

I think my daughter Kelli feels the same way about becoming a grandmother.  If her feet ever touch the ground again, I'll ask her, just to be sure.

(Thanks, Michelle and Kelli, for the use of your photos.)