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.