These Are The Nights…

Or mornings that try women’s souls.  The nights that drag by, the nights that it seems I hear every clock tick in this marvelous world of battery operated clocks that in truth, don’t…  This is one of those nights that thoughts bounce around in my head like ping pong balls, one of those nights where my mind can’t really settle on one thing to lull myself to sleep with, instead I’m jerked like a fish on a hook from one thought  to the next.

How much iodine did we mix with baby oil back in the day when it was far from any doctor’s mind that tanning might not be really very good for your skin, much less the possibility of being lethal…?

Have I ever written about learning to ride a bike on my big sister’s bike?  The one that the seat was too high for me to sit on but I wanted to learn so badly to ride that I would stand on the pedals, my hands having to reach up above my shoulders to hold onto the handlebars…

Or about the times that we, my brother and the neighbor kids and I, would have ‘hoe-downs’ in the front yard that were nothing more than our mother’s prayers being answered that we were running off the excess energy before bedtime, wrestling or chasing fireflies to catch and put in a jar with holes carefully punched in the lid so we wouldn’t suffocate them, no matter that occasionally we would pinch their glowing butts off to make rings for our fingers or a pin on our t-shirts…

Maybe it was an evening for playing ‘statue’ when the bigger kids would whirl us around and then let our hands go and how we stopped we had to hold that position… until we were itchy from falling in the grass on sweaty summer evenings until we were called in for our baths before bedtime and how sweet and fresh the sheets smelled from being hung out on the clothesline to dry in the sunshine and summer breeze back in the day before clothes ‘dryers’ came to live in our basement.

Did I ever tell you that I could dribble a basketball one hundred  times without missing a beat before I was four or that my mom had her first heart attack the summer I was twelve and I thought for years it was my fault because I had been out playing all day and she didn’t know where I was?  Of course it was no different than any other summer day when my baby brother and me and the next door neighbor had been out riding our bikes, playing in our hideouts or walking to the neighborhood store three blocks away back when kids could walk to neighborhood stores but still I knew it had to be my fault…

Or about the crush I had on the cutest boy in the sixth grade class, a little blond/tow headed kid that right now I can’t remember his last name but I can remember riding bikes with around the school yard singing every song I could think of from the musical “Oklahoma” thinkin’ I could get him to fall in love with me even though I didn’t have a clue, though I thought I did, about what love really was… probably the very first crush I ever had on anyone that I can recall right now?

Or about the crush I had on my p.e. teacher the very next year that drove that little blond/tow-headed boy that had gone on to another school right out of my memory?  And did each and every one of us have a crush on our p.e. teacher or band teacher or English teacher no matter what sex they were?

Thinking about how Hallie loves weiners and how I love schnauzers and how wonderful it is to have all these differences that make us each so unique and to really enjoy the facets that make us all bright and shining stars in a universe, a galaxy, a milky way of personalities and how we find each other by such random ways in our different worlds…  A coincidence? The birds of a feather axiom?

All these thoughts and more… and it is now six in the morning, I’ve been to bed four times only to toss and turn, finally giving in and getting up to go read stuff on FaceBook or to play Farmville or Cafe World trying to lull myself into mind numbing stupidity to slow my brain down enough to finally fall asleep and, obviously since I’m typing this missile, it hasn’t worked and since I’m going to get my hair cut at nine I will just give up, plan on staying up and hopefully watching the sun that we haven’t seen in a day or three rise in the east only to be fighting sleep in the chair while getting my hair cut or, better yet, laying getting my hair washed and my scalp massaged and feeling totally pampered…

Or is all of this brought on by withdrawal from watching more butts that you could bounce a silver dollar off of during the past two weeks, glutes and pecs and traps that were hewn and cut by hours, weeks and years of a single pursuit, a focus and a direction that I never in my a.d.h.d. life ever knew for more than, oh, perhaps twelve minutes whether in pursuit of my next meal or Olympic Gold?

Or is this no more than the sleepless ravings of a feverish mind?

Who knows…?

The Shadow knows…

Who cares?

Hallie, when did you corner the market on Ambien and why won’t you share?

Everywhere…

You’ve seen a lot of here through my posts of the past and I’ve shown you quite a bit of there through the last few posts. I’m having trouble finding the rest of the photos I wanted to wind up there with so now we are going to everywhere so you can see the blank slate that I am starting with… This is a rental home so I won’t be able to be as comfortable in doing any radical creativity but I can certainly make the place feel more like a home.

Here we go…

The house is on a corner and has this fourteen foot wall in the front yard. I’m already planning on what I’m going to do out here.

There are a few neglected and older shrubs along the about 3 foot wide bed that goes along the walk heading up to the front door.

then the walk is right along the house to the nook where you find the front door. This is looking north to the stockade fence. The shrub on the right is a rose of sharon that was there when we rented. Our rose of sharon that I’ll be bringing is younger and shorter and I will plant it closer to the brick pillar.

This is a crepe myrtle and there is one planted on either side of the drive way and you know that something else is going to be planted in there so it doesn’t look so plain.

This is looking up the side yard from another gate in the stockade fencing. I love the fence, SueSue doesn’t. She can’t see what’s going on in her world except for the occasional squirrel that drops into the yard, the she is on a mission to get that critter. Being the ornery and lazy woman that I am, I’m going to start feeding the birds AND the squirrels. After I need some entertainment to lighten my day occasionally, too. And if she catches one and kills it, I know how to skin them and fry them. I’m not too worried about that happening, because while Suess is fast she is not quite bright. She runs straight at them and you know squirrels can twist and turn on a dime…

This is the back yard. It is pretty large which the girls love, except with the stockade fence they can’t keep track of what all might be going on in their corner of the world.

This is the side of the house that the front is on, just the other side of the fence.

As I do my planting thing, I will take pictures along but I must tell you that Carol’s sister has her ideas about how we should plant the place. She, besides being rapid cycling bi-polar, has got to be ocd as much as she likes and needs order in her life.

She likes things in a row, I like things the flow. When I got to the house I took my babies out and looked around. When I saw a number of plants all along the back fence all in a row and almost exact distance apart. I just got my shovel out of the truck and started working on them… even as boring as she like it. Carol and I have lived together for so long that she know that there is method to my madness and whatever I do usually comes out somewhat unusual. And usually she loves what I do even if I do things somewhat with odd combinations that I enjoy trying odd colors and/or textures. So I know that while I will keep as many plants alive as I can, this will be essentially a plain, basic garden because the riots of color and shapes of a garden that Carol and I both enjoy is like raucous noise to her sister.

So as I get things planted and growing I’ll keep you posted but for right now, besides my life being bland, I’m so exhausted from the moving that I probably won’t be a very interesting blogger. And if I don’t live through this move I just want to say thanks to all of you who have become my friends through this wonderful blogging medium.

Calling All Warriors...

A very dear friend of mine from all the way back to the covered wagon days of high school is have a mastectomy today. I'm asking all of you to say a prayer, shine the white lights and call all the angels to look after her and all the other people living with and fighting this disease.

I have learned so much from her about different choices available depending on when the cancer was found, how big the spot and the type of cancers. I also am learning lot about choices you have when you have a mastectomy. For instance, I did not know that on the cosmetic reconstruction you don't even have to have a nipple. You can get a tattoo if you prefer, of whatever you want on your breast instead of a nip.

To give you an idea of my friend's outlook on life and her incredible sense of humor, when she was telling me about having choices, she had me in the floor laughing so hard I was crying. What nailed me was when she said she was thinking about getting the recycle logo tattooed in case she had a senior romance she figured it would be a definite conversation piece. When I talked to her last Friday I asked her what she had decided... a nipple or a tattoo. She said she thought she might like to get a dahlia... a beautiful pink dahlia, not a red one lest anyone would think she was a "hussy".

With an attitude such as that I have no doubts that she is going to do great but it never hurts to call out the forces and ask for protection for my friend, I'll call her Teacher. I'll call her Teacher because she does and has taught school for a bunch of years and she has taught me so much in just this short span of time since her diagnosis about breast cancer and the so very many treatment options that are out there nowadays... And also about laughter in the times of facing adversity.

And,hey you all, go get your mams slammed. Do it! It can save your life.