NaNoWriMo Procrastination

I came home with a plan tonight. I was going to work on my blog and then work on my writing for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I need 50,000 words by the end of November to qualify and it doesn’t even have to be good or published. Just written. 50,000 words is a lot of words and since I accidentally hit “NO” yesterday when asked to save something, I lost about 2500 words.

So I am behind a bit.

That was the plan.

But this fell asleep on my lap.

And this kept hijacking my possessions.

I’ll have to go looking for my calculator. Zephan thought he had a cell phone and took off with it pressed to his ear.

Now it is 8:30PM and all the people 25 and under have retired. Us old folks are kicking back with our hobbies.

And I am doing what all NaNoWriMo authors do best: I am procrastinating. And just in case you are wondering, I have taken the challenge before. One year I succeeded in capturing 50,000 words onto paper. It was the worst novel ever. I’ve fallen short a couple years in a row. But I’ll keep playing the game because sometime I will really complete the 50,000 word novel and it will actually be readable.

He’ll probably be 25 when I do that.

November Garden (or what to do with mud)

This blog is supposed to be about my garden (sometimes), but I haven’t done much with my garden since July when I busted my ribs. The ribs have healed completely, but now the weather has changed and my life has changed and priorities have changed. Pretty much in that order.

And there’s this. This is new. This is a gopher or a mole that has invaded our yard.

This has been hunting the gopher. It can’t end well.

The gopher may live another day, but the back door may have taken a fatal blow.

I just love dogs.

This is my garden today. In between rain storms.

I don’t want to get all muddy and wet, so instead I took photos. I’ll contemplate the photos awhile and guilt myself into planning a day in the yard to work on everything that needs to be done before winter really sets in. I’m thinking sometime between now and Thanksgiving Day there will be a relatively dry Saturday or Sunday and I can get the shovel out.

I’ll divide irises, peonies, grape hyacinth and daylilies. I’ll dig out some of the Shasta daisies and the borage that took over my prayer garden. I’ll dead-head all the flowers that still need it: the asters, the nasturtiums, the hollyhocks, the peonies and the sunflowers. The chickadees have stripped the sunflowers of seeds. I’ll cut down the old canes on the black-cap raspberry and trim up the Oregon grape. And by that time, I will have filled the yard debris bin and topped off the compost pile.

Don has already cleaned out the vegetable garden. He’s mowed the front lawn for the last time this year and is waiting for a dry day to tackle the backyard one more time. Then we will both be done with gardening for 2009 and we’ll be looking forward to seed catalogs.

A Proud Soldier

I think he is a World War 1 cavalry soldier. He is made out of cast iron and the paint is chipped and his horse is missing the off hind leg from the hock down.

That’s the right side, from the knee down.

Here’s the story:

I was a toddler. We lived in Jarbidge, Nevada in the summers and wintered in Elko. I remember that we were in Jarbidge and that my grandparents on my mother’s side were visiting us. That would make it about 1959, when my little sister was born, but it could have been 1958 because there are a lot of family photos of relatives from that side of the family visiting us in Jarbidge in 1958.

It doesn’t really matter. It’s the memories that matter.

We were on a picnic. I remember my dad had a bota bag full of wine and he offered me a drink but I turned my head and the wine squirted into my ear. Everyone seemed to think that was very funny.

I remember the colors: the brown of the earth covered in pine needles and the sunlight filtering through the aspens and evergreens. Yellow-green-light. I remember the sounds of laughter around the camp fire, the picnic table, the other children.

And I remember wanting to be alone.

HSPs are like that, even early in life. I was overwhelmed and needed a moment just to myself. So I was there, on the far side of the station wagon, kicking at the dirt with my toe and listening to the older kids run and laugh and the adults talk.

In my mind, it seems like I was there for a very long moment in time. I believe it is just that time sometimes becomes transcendent and a moment is suspended in our hearts and mind forever. This was one of those moments, and then it was over as my grandfather scooped me up in his arms, declaring, “Here she is!”

OK, I am not certain anyone was even looking for me or that I was missing, so I made up that bit about my grandfather.

What I am not making up is what my foot kicked loose in the dirt. The little soldier on his cavalry mount, minus that bit of leg.

I remember all the adults were impressed with the find. He was an antique then.

And he was mine. No one ever tried to take him from me. And somehow, I have managed to keep him all these years.

I saw one for sale at an antique mall once, many years ago. That soldier was complete and the dealer wanted a lot more money than I was willing to pay. And a lot less money than I am willing to accept for my soldier.

He’s still proud.

He’s so brave.

Hug A Soldier

So sad and so senseless. All I know at this point in thime is that the shooter was from Virginia, graduated from Virginia Tech, and was a psychiatrist who worked at Walter Reed.

He opened fire on men and women who were unarmed and who were being processed for a tour of duty in Iraq. Only they never made it out of the Processing Room at Ft. Hood, Texas before the war came to them.

So I am not posting a photo today. I am just going to sit here and pray for the wounded and the families. And pray that some how we can make sense of it all.

I did call my soldier and told him that I love him.

Extended Parenting

On my way home tonight, I debated several ideas for tonight’s blog entry. For one thing, we had a beautiful sunset and I was trying to keep an eye on the changing reds and keep my eye on the road. That’s not as easy as it sounds because I was trying to watch the sunset in my side-view mirrors and traffic was stop-and-go. And I like to be a safe driver. But it was so beautiful and changing with every tick of the clock.

I didn’t have any safe place to pull over to get a photo of the sunset, so blogging about it became a moot point.

I thought about blogging about all the beautiful autumn colors.

I took this through my windshield during lunch. Don’t worry, I wasn’t driving. I didn’t even have the keys in the ignition.

But as pretty as it is, the truth is that most of the trees have lost their leaves already and we are slipping into winter colors rapidly. One good rain-and-wind storm and the deciduous trees will be naked.

Then I arrived home. My daughter was trying to make dinner with a toddler underfoot and a crying four month old baby. I took the baby and held him while she finished up dinner and set something before her toddler.

After dinner, I brought Zephan into my bedroom so he could sit on the bed and play with his blocks (he can’t get them out with the dog around because the dog tries to eat them). The dog is penned all day and needs some freedom in the evening to wander around the house. I can check my email and Zephan can play blocks and the dog can run around without stealing baby toys.

Sam came home very late tonight (he worked 12 hours today) and wanted to eat dinner. Arwen hadn’t eaten, either. So they took Zephan and went to the kitchen to eat and left me in charge of Javan.

And this is what happens when Grandma is left in charge of the baby.

And this.

Extended Parenting. I don’t think of it as babysitting because the kids don’t try to take advantage of me. I offered. And sometimes I say “NO.”

I try to remember how it was when I was young with two under the age of 3. And no help. One crying, one under foot and food on the stove. Wanting to sit and eat but having to hold and feed a baby first.

I think about how it used to be normal for extended family to live in the same household, helping with all the parenting chores.

And I like to think of this.

I’m just a sucker for that.

Just Hanging Out

I am way behind on everything, but I think I’ll just hang out tonight. Watch TV and do nothing.

Sometimes you just have to be a couch potato.

It’s My Birthday!

I share this day with several friends, one of whom is  a true “birthday twin”. I always joke that I am the older one to make her feel better.

It is also my daughter-in-law’s birthday, so Happy Birthday to Kaci Hicks! Love you!! “MMMMMUAH”! (kiss)

And my photo of the day is courtesy of my beautiful husband who took me out to dinner & bought me a gift certificate at My Mother Knows, a locally owned gift shop that I just love. Mary is the sweetest person even if her grammar leaves a lot to be desired. ;-P

So here it is:

Isn’t that gorgeous? Mt. Jefferson in the Cascades. Possibly my favorite of the Cascades.

Thank you Donald!

Back to Business – Photo 95/365

I missed a week and a few days there between taking a vacation and adjusting to a busier household. But I promise to finish what I have started: a photo a day for 365 days.

This morning dawned foggy. I had no clear plan except to try to get somewhat organized, file a bunch of stuff that needed filing, and maybe take some photos of my very sad autumn garden.

But the aftermath of Hallowe’en lured me.

There was this very damp spider web in the lone Lodgepole pine in our front yard.

A lonely oak leaf in our backyard.

(I mean very lonely: we do not have an oak tree in our yard. This fellow came floating from somewhere across the street to land here and fill up with rain water.)

My jack o’lantern before disposal. (The ants were already hard at it inside.)

Hey, does that pumpkin look familiar?

Check this out:

Boo HAHAHAHA.

Toddler Mutant Ninja Turtle

Our life has been turned upside down here. My oldest daughter moved in upstairs with her husband and two small children. This is a small house to begin with and now two families are sharing it with one bathroom.

I now have a toddler who follows me everywhere and wants to do what I am doing.

One evening, I needed to find something in the storage area under the stairs. I have this down: if I need to get something out of either the attic or the area under the stairs, I have to wear knee pads because it is a lot of kneeling on hardwood floors and my poor old knees are just not up to that anymore.

Of course, Zephan wanted to try on the knee pads.

They fit him just perfectly.

I think he looks like a Mutant Ninja Turtle.

Pop-pop was especially impressed. (I couldn’t keep Murphy out of the picture. He has to be where ever Pop-pop is. He’s co-dependent.)

That little scrunched up face just kills me.

Have a safe & Happy Hallowe’en!

White King

Our trip took us into Salt Lake City during rush hour. We didn’t stop again mostly because we were cruising through country we’ve both seen, we were tired, and we wanted to make the last leg the shortest (from Elko to Reno). The slat flats are always interesting to me, but I’m not so much into the city of Salt Lake City. It’s a city and I live in one.

We made Stateline as the sun dipped completely below the horizon and completed the trip into Elko in the dark.

Terry and I spent our very early years between Elko and Jarbidge, NV, where Dad was a Forest Ranger. Summer months were spent up at Jarbidge and winter months were spent in the Forest Service housing in Elko. I was always overwhelmed when we came to town. Our little sister was born in Elko in 1959.

Even after we moved to another Ranger station in another town, we spent a lot of time visiting old friends in Elko or just passing through on our way to Jarbidge (we spent a lot of vacation time at Jarbidge). There’s a little nostalgia in Elko for us.

We checked into our motel and kicked back. I picked up some advertising rag they had in the room and was shocked to see White King displayed without the backdrop of the Commercial Hotel & Casino. Terry assured me that the Commercial still exists and White King is still reigning there, it had to be some fluke of advertising that they put him on a different page than the casion.

I suppose Elko is all about White King. It’s the first thing that comes to my mind.

When I was a very little girl, White King was a brand new attraction. I remember very clearly the awe I felt when I first viewed the colossal polar bear in his new glass display case just inside the doors of the Commercial. In later years, my sister and I would beg Dad to take us to the Commercial just so we could see the bear. He probably obliged us once, but once was all we needed to keep trying to get to go see the bear.

Terry took me to go visit the polar bear.

He stands 10′4″ (just over 3 meters) and weighed 2200 pounds in life.

I’m still pretty much in awe of him.

He is still reputed to be the largest polar bear ever taken (and he was taken by Native Americans, not by a Great White Hunter). Just an fyi.

Seeing the old bear pretty much made my day.

The rest of the trip was not routine or boring, but I feel a need to bring my story to a close and move onto other subjects. From Elko, we went to Winnemucca, another place where we spent many years of our childhood growing up. And from Winnemucca to Reno where Terry still lives.

We saw antelope, mule deer, a small wolf, a porcupine, a bald eagle, a golden eagle, a coyote and one dead elk. I think that was our wildlife count: Terry might add something.

In Reno, I met up with an internet friend, Heather, and spent an hour over coffee with her. It was wonderful to put a face to someone I know online (and yes, I do this frequently). She’s a wonderful person!

Terry and I made a drive to Fernley to eat at a wonderful little casino and restaurant, mostly on Heather’s advice. Mary & Mo’s Wigwam is not only a bit of a local icon, but is an interesting little Native American Museum. Everywhere you look in the restaurant, you can see displays of arrowheads and other Native American paraphernalia. But it’s almost all arrowheads.

The service is good and so is the food. Definitely a place to stop, even if you are like me and you don’t gamble.

While in Reno, of course I connected with some family members: a cousin and her husband plus my brother’s daughter and her two babies. I haven’t had a chance to meet Kimm’s babies and this was such a wonderful gift to me. Not only did I make the trip to see my dad and my son with his new family, I got to see my niece and her family.

Elijah looks so much like his grandpa at this age. Totally fearless. He’s a few months older than Zephan.

Little Miss Brooke is days older than Justin. Can you see how impressed she is by me?

Unfortunately, I was in the throes of a cold and was afraid to hold the baby much. Maybe next time I visit I will get to cuddle with this little bundle of sweetness.