Friday

Today the weather is planning to warm up to 95F. Heidi, MIL's dog, thought hanging around with me while I watered flowers was extremely boring, and was only semi-enthused about going for a walk. Maybe she knows she has a hair appointment at noon. When she's all cleaned up and sweet smelling, I'll take her over to see her Mommy. I wish she'd be happier about visiting MIL. She's not keen. Guess she's too young. I feel bad for Mom when Heidi is more outgoing and friendly with about everyone else at the nursing home than she is with Mom. With her, Heidi's just, "OK, I've said hi, now let's go home," and Mom's all Heidi come here, lay down and grabs her tight and holds her, which Heidi doesn't appear to like.

These bikes are waiting their turn to get gassed up. A new seat came from England yesterday for the older BSA, more like the original seat that came with the bike. This seat is not as comfortable as it looks, and it's so ugly! The original seat and therefore the new seat, not the seat in the picture, has springs, which I think HH calls shock absorbers. Some of the required bolts were back ordered, so HH was looking through his bolt collection for something that would make do for now. He's got it on the bike, and it looks fine, but didn't sound completely satisfied with his jerry-rigging.

Boggy Woggy Doggy

Poor Boggywoggy. Her doggy ate her purple carrots. She never got to see them. She can tell you, anyhow, she'd rather see than be them. Ha ha ha ha. I'm being silly.

The photo is my new motorcycle. I bought it myself. I will have to see about putting in another photo of it, because it's back end is the part I want to talk about.



We'll see if that works. I haven't had any luck with it. Anyway, the back tire was bald, but as you can see, it's barely visible, so changing it is tricky. The new tire came yesterday via UPS, and HH had a bit of a struggle getting the hub off and I offered to help put it back on tonight. He says the tire's currently on the balancer, and the bike has it's rear end hanging off the end of the hoist. It's his hobby, you know. Anyway, I'm not going to ride this thing. It's just for looks, though I have seen HH riding it. I think we'll put it in the yard as a lawn ornament on nice days. You know, like a lawn jockey, or a fountain. He wanted it, I had insurance money, so I bought it. That's all I know. Except it's a Kawasaki Vulcan....oh! Rats! I forgot what else it is.

Best Laid Plans

Do things in this photo look wet? Oh, let me tell you. DD added some bits to his beloved 45-flathead and was eager to take it out to test them, so he listened to the weather report and decided Friday (not this Friday) was the perfect day for a ride. He asked at work to have it off, and eagerly waited all week for his adventure. He took off for coast in a light drizzle, so was wearing his rain pants. Never mind that the weather forcast predicted dry and partly sunny. He saw sun and blue sky ahead to the south, so headed that way, and wound his way eventually to Florence, where some little tiny thing broke on his bike and he fixed it, but the surge caused a headlamp to blow. I don't remember which one, bright or dim, but I notice new ones arrived in the mail this week. The drizzle never stopped. He's just passed Sea Lion Caves in the photo, and on a clear day you could see Heceta Head Lighthouse from here, which is just down the road. When he eventually returned home, he handed me his gloves and said "feel this." They were dripping and so HEAVY. I think he had fun, but his jacket and gloves felt like they'd been held under water until they couldn't absorb any more, and they left large puddles on the linolium. The next day was beautiful.

Sure, I'll Do It

In Community Band we're playing the 4th movement, Via Appia Antica, of The Pines of Rome by Ottorino Respighi, which begings with a Roman Legion marching into Rome after victories in the East. They're tired, and feeling the weight of the journey, and the piece begins with tubas and low brass. My part is measure after measure of a repeatted quaver/eighth note only playable on my horn in 7th position. AS helps me keep in tune, BS says I have to be excited about it, BC says I have to blow fast, and SM says I have to stay with the tubas. I think it's the hardest thing I've done, and I need all that help. I try to psych myself up thinking of Avus and trying to picture his shiny armor all dusty from the long trek. When I first saw my music, I thought "They've got the wrong part, it's a drum part," and I was right about it being a drum part, but it's for trombone.

I think I have something every night but next Sunday for the next 2 weeks, and I'd better get friendly with my calendar now, so I can see which performances of Hello Dolly! I can make. I'm going to be in the pit. I will have to take up afternoon napping, since I guess I'm already committed. That was soon after starting with the new community orchestra, and thus sitting too close to BH, who talked me into playing for Hello Dolly. I'm not so sure about the advisablity of my actions.

Frosty the Mailbox

Handsome Hero told me to post a photo of mailbox. We have a new mailbox, and it's too small, but that doesn't matter because it's so pretty, right? As for gardening, I'm collecting newspapers to put down wet and top with compost. I put some down and dragged an aluminum motorcycle wheel out of the back of the truck, where it was headed for the metal recycle bin, and threw it on top of one soggy pile of newspapers. The leaves have not stayed on top of this pile, but the newspapers haven't blown away due to the wheel, which I think is a pretty cool sculpture to have in the garden, except the newspapers need to be hidden. Sadly, I was too slow to save the rusty old jumbo mailbox from the metal recycle bin. I had plans for it, including dirt and flowers. Rats!

When I recover from these shingles maybe I'll be OK. My head hurts, too. I think that part is sinuses. Nothing wrong with me that time won't fix, but I'm very cranky. MIL's house may become emptied this weekend by the estate sales crew. She's happy in her beautiful luxury assisted living apartment with her dear sweet little dog who thinks carpeting is the best bathroom. A nice couple from Ohio wants to buy her house, and we told them OK. I'll be glad when that's all done, which it may be soon. Meanwhile, I have boxes and boxes of mementos from both her house and my dad's house that I have to divy up between kids (my brothers, HH's brother, MIL's deceased SO's daughter who still speaks to her, amd MIL's deceased second husband's daugher. I'm going to use a grabber thing so I don't have to bend in the middle to pick things up. Bending hurts. Everything hurts. I'm such a whiner. Sorry. Shape up, self! Grrrr.

Oh! We rented Happy Feet and watched it last night. I'm glad we did because it was a lark. Very feel-goody. I enjoyed the EXTRA thing that showed the real tap dancer, too. If DD were here she could remind me of his name, which has eluded me. Oh! Look where I am. I guess I can easily look it up myself. Savion Glover. Now I want to see another movie with him dancing.

Ta Da!

After charging three batteries, and getting help from HH finding one that would keep a charge, I took this photo and DD stuffed it into the computer for me. She said she liked all the photos. I counted apples. On three trees I found 6 apples total, and none of them are ripe yet. It's Autumn. Why don't they know it? The grapes are about done, and there are puddles of them on the ground from dropped bunches. Maybe we'll have lots of apples next year.

I'm listening to BoggyWoggy's post of Horowitz playing Rachmaninoff. Mmmmmm!

Beautiful Almost Autumn

Again inspired by Mrs. Staggs at Happy Miscellany, I took the camera outside to photograph my fabulous delicious abundant grapes. What happened? The battery was dead. No matter, there's another battery. No, that one is dead, too. I've got one on the charger now, but it will be tomorrow before I take a picture, and I am trying to distribute the grapes before it's too late. (They don't keep forever, you know.) Right now they are THE BEST. Well, other people's grapes might be the best, too, but ours haven't been this delicious in previous years. MIL sits down and eats the whole bunch every time I bring her some, and she's fussy and has a small appetite. She said they're better than can be purchased at the store. The vines are growing up into the apple trees, making a little secret fairy hideout. Plus I have grapes in my apple trees. What fun.

Practice Practice Practice

Alley and I play piano duets. This is her playing now. She plays at getting so much hair on the chair cushion, the only alternative is to keep that cushion for her and change it out for other piano users. I sit on the bench and play the other piano. Sometimes she comes and sits beside me on the bench, but when she does, she tries her best to get me to stop playing the piano and play with her. She usually wins. I'd probably be able to learn something if I weren't so easily distracted.

Feeding Hannah

We've been tending Hannah next door while her people are gone for the weekend. All is going swimmingly until after an afternoon dog walk, DD locks the key to Next Door's house inside the house, leaving the food locked inside. Well, Hannah needs to eat! So before dinner time, we jumped in the car and just fortunately drove to the right pet supply store, Animal Crackers, and they not only carried the right sort of food, which DD remembered well enough to ID, but they also had next door on file in their computer. Yaaaa. They ended up giving us enough free samples to feed Hannah dinner and breakfast. I'm so pleased. The moral is, if you live in Corvallis, buy your pet food at Animal Crackers, so your neighbors will have recourse if they lock your keyes in your house.

What's Wrong with This?

"I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him."

It's quoting Abraham Lincoln, and there's supposed to be something glaringly wrong with it, but I don't see it. Can anyone help me? I feel such a dope.

Elegance

My friend Mrs. Staggs at A Happy Miscellany posted the well known quote from William Henry Channing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Channing) and it reminded me so much of Grandma and her three daughters, one of whom was Mom. I think they had this all down, and here I've let it slip away. I'm going to try to get it back a little. OK, some of it I haven't lost, but I'm going to work on the parts I've let slide. It's my heritage, and I would like to share it with my daughter.

Speaking of slides, our pianist last night at band practice said "Why don't the other kids like it when the trombone players are in the playground? Because they keep trying to move the slide and they can't swing." Groan.

Previously, he said, "How do you tell if the stage is level? When the drummer is drooling out of both sides of his mouth."

Snakes are Fast

It's Thursday again, and that means, time to recycle, which is what I was doing, hauling the red recycle bin out to the road, when I noticed a suspicious looking stick in the middle of the sidewalk. Instantly I thought a few things: That stick wasn't there before. Where'd that stick come from? Why is that stick so uniformly pointed on both ends? That stick is not a stick. By the time I'd finished thinking the stick was a snake, it started to wiggle, and I was amazed at many things: That snake is VERY FAST. That snake is very cautious. That snake is afraid of ME. I can't see the snake but I can hear where it's going. That snake sure makes a lot of noise. By the time I finished the noise thought, the snake had settled into silence--by the way, the noise was dry leaves--under the azalea, at least that's where it sounded like he/she had stopped.

After all that excitement, I remembered BoggyWoggy bragging about her ripe grapes, so I wandered off to the grape vines. I have two varieties, and no idea what they are, but they both taste wonderful. I found some glowing in the sunlight, and though most of the bunch was still sour grapes, the sun-kissed ones looked inviting so I ate them, well, three of them. I'm not supposed to eat grapes because of their high sugar content.

I'm not diabetic, but I would be if I went around eating all the grapes I wanted. It makes my brothers mad that they're diabetic and I'm not. They eat cake and I don't. Well, maybe they don't eat much cake anymore. I don't keep tabs. Brainy brothers, they are. One of them told me not to use ibuprofin because it's bad for me. Huh? That was all he'd say about that, but he was adamant. They are both fairly inflexible in their opinions. So, is ibuprofin so bad? My doctors keep recomending it.

I know, some of you want to see a picture of DD with her face all blown up like a balloon from having all 4 of her wisdom teeth removed, but she's not keen to share that particular look. At least her poison oak seems to have responded well to the medicine her doctor prescribed, and mabe she didn't share it with me via the laundry? Knock on so far so good wood. Is there something lurking? Well, that's enough of that.

What Day is It?

Remember the poison oak? Well, my poor daughter has been attacked by some. We don't know where she got it. I think it showed up Monday morning a week ago, or Sunday night while she was sleeping. Poor baby! My best guess is she got it while looking at her uncle, my brother's goats after his daugher's wedding the Saturday before. It was a beautiful wedding, and a good party afterwards. The blissful couple went for a Carribean Cruise for their honeymoon, but had to fly home early because of Hurricane Dean.

DD eliminated all the cats and kittens she'd been playing with, because she didn't start hanging out at the cat and kitten house until after the rash had shown up. First we thought it was just an allergic reaction to her medicine which she was taking for pneumonia, which is all cleared up now. But yesterday after her visit to the doctor, the verdict was Poison Oak! Poor darling girl. Now I'm afraid of her laundry, and every itch I get sends shivers of fear coursing through me. Yikes! I am not as brave as my DD.

MIL took up most of last few days because her potassium levels dropped so low (we know not why, but she's vowed to eat a whole banana every day from now on) that she hadn't the energy to stand up. It took several hours to convince her she needed to take an ambulance ride over to the hospital. As weak as she was, those ambulance guys got her to laugh. She has such a good attitude! She's back home now and feeling better than she has in a long time. Yaaaa.

Finally I got another chance to ride my new bike. HH went, too, and went slowly enough for me to keep up, sometimes even too slow. We are V lucky to have some very fun bike paths around here and we can circle around several ways without covering repeat ground. Isn't that lucky? And it's all lush and lovely, with blackberries, rose hips, playgrounds, a duck pond with ducks (one of them singularly ugly) plus it's fun to get out in the evening with HH. Fun fun fun.

Yesterday HH and I were driving back from dropping DD off at a lesson when we had to stop for a very handsome deer just standing in the road looking at us. Driving. That reminds me, I'd better get going. Ta ta for now.

Middle Name Thing

This is the truck that Hippy drove that went to the store that carried the bike that Vita bought. I rode the bike with the large basket full of empty cans to the store and put the cans in the machine and got a credit voucher when I pushed the button, while my bike was beside me in the indoor/outdoor bottle return room. Oregon has a bottle return law, and most stores have installed automated bottle return machines. Next, we, bike and I, went out front, but when I looked at the bike rack, I realized that if I locked my bike to that rack, no one would be able to get by it on the sidewalk. There were plants and pallets of water bottles blocking most of the sidewalk in front of the store. So I put my paper in my wallet, put my wallet back in my pocket, and peddled back over the bridge, down the road through the chicanes, and home. I was nervous riding with all the cars, but all went well, and I'm thinking of taking another run during the next traffic lull. I saw a very nice functional looking bike rack at the eye doctor's as I went by. I felt a little self-concious because I was smiling so broadly, I must have looked like a kook. I am sort of wishing I'd gotten the "Look out for me, I am a KOOK!" flag for the back of my bike, because traffic is a little scarey.

Middle Name Meme!

Here are the rules:

1. You have to post these rules before you give the facts.

2. Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of their middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.

3. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog post containing your own middle name game facts.

4. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

The Middle Name Meme

S: Sun. That's the name on my new bike, and it goes with my sunny nature.

U: Unique. Just like everyone else, I am unique. No one is like me; no one is like you. We're all special.

E: Edgy. That's me. Always on the edge just barely hanging on. Nothing's nice and secure. Maybe that's why I'm so jumpy.

Tagging Three People:

Avus. He may have a very interesting middle name; a son of his does.

Mindy. Hey, Mindy. What's your middle name? You can start a blog and stuff.

Humbug. Hey! Where are you, Baugh Humbug?

Wednesday Wanderings

I was inspired by Avus to post this picture, as he has some from a lovely bike ride he took. Maybe the connection is only in my head. See the bike with the orange stripe poking out behind the building? That is what HH bought for DD. DD hasn't ridden it yet, but she's planning to. It's a 250 Ninja. HH took it on a 450 mile weekend along Columbia River and scenic coast range. This was somewhere along route. His knees were saying "We want to stretch out now!" by the time he got home.

I'm keeping a close eye on the poison oak. Some of it is completely dead now, but there's still green in a bit between the lavender and candytuft. I don't know if I'm brave enough to deadhead the lavender. That's usually fun because it smells wonderful. We're supposed to have temperatures in the mid 90's, so I'd better get out earlier than I usually do to water whatever's left alive out there.

If It's Tuesday

This must be Corvallis. Last night, at the urging of the Carnivorous Hippy, we traveled all the way to Albany (10 miles) to see trumpet player Gavin Bondy's band, The Shanghai Woolies while picnicking in Montieth Park. DD said she enjoyed them more than Pink Martini, which played Saturday Night on lower OSU compus in Corvallis, which they lauded as the "Home of the Corvallis Youth Symphony!" Yaaaaaa! Shanghi Woolies have a fabulous adorable singer, Mel. More cheers. Hurrah!

Tonight the Corvallis Community Band is playing Teddy Bear's Picnic in Central Park. The Hippy and I will play with our daughters and Mr. Hippy. Summer fun! Then Wednesday night we'll play again in Central Park Gazebo. Fun fun fun.

Arrrrgh!

Deadheading the Candytuft was not as satisfying as it might have been. With all the dead flowers gone, I could see what lay underneath. More Poison Oak! I've got the Poison Oak Blues.

Not a Wierdo

You Are 12% Weirdo

Your thinking is so in line with the mainstream, it's pretty freaky. Have you ever considered running for political office? You're so normal, people can't help but feel comfortable with you!

Are You A Weirdo?

Hot July Morning

Whew! We are supposed to reach 101-degrees F today. DD is sitting for rabbits this week, and is worried about them as they are in cages outside. A neighbor, possibly the one feeding the fish, had draped a sheet over the bunnies' cages for shade, and DD gives each a frozen water bottle to cuddle. They may need two bottles today. Dog next door is being left in our care again this weekend. She's a dear sweet golden retriever, and we enjoy her company. Hope there's no lightning Friday night, as she's scared of it. Weather predicts possibility of it.

Why did this adorable half a Vincent run out of gas? I forgot why. There WAS a reason. HH and OVM club members were riding around on beautiful Columbia River old highway. HH was riding his BSA B31, and doubled back after filling up his tank to let Vincent here siphon some with his curly blue plastic hose. You can see through the hose so you can tell when the gas is coming and don't need to swallow any, though hose is too curly to siphon without suction. HH doesn't bother with fancy methods of siphoning.

That reminds me of my brother. One time he was siphoning, and got some (ew!) gas in his mouth, which he immediately spit out, but then, to get the taste out, he grabbed a handy Coke bottle and took a swig--unfortunately for him, he had earlier drained some engine oil into the Coke bottle. Yikes. He has, I think, learned from this experience to be more discerning.

The Gardener

Photo is by Larry until I take camera and photo MIL's heather, but it's not blooming any more. I just wanted to tell you the funny story she told me about the directions she gives her gardener. She can no longer do these things herself, so she has Rubin come twice a month or as often as she can get him. When he came the other day, she said, "I don't want it flat, and I don't want a ball." Rubin looked at the shrub, looked at MIL, looked at his pruners, looked at MIL and said "You don't want it flat and you don't want a ball." Then he repeated the whole thing. I'm glad they get along.