68. Simply for the Birds.

It's still scorching hot here today.  The bird bath caught my eye and boy did it need attention!  It hadn't been painted for quite a long time now and today was the day!  Bob put a wire brush  on the drill for me and I gave it the once over.  A good douse of muriatic acid to remove the calcium, rinse, rinse, rinse and it's ready for paint.  I chose a nice teal color for the bowl and the outside  is a cream color.  It's not a fancy bird bath, only a concrete mold.  It was given to me by my father-in-law, Cotton, one of the sweetest men in the whole world.  He thought I hung the moon and didn't mind telling me so.  So even if it's plain and occasionally needs a paint job, it will always have a special place in the yard right outside the window.  There we can watch the birds big and small drop by to have a bath and a drink and I can be reminded that I hung the moon.

67. Squeeze Those Lemons...It's 104!

Eddy Fisher died Wednesday from complications of a hip replacement.  Well, that gives you pause for thought.  Something so common place now as a hip replacement and something goes very wrong.  You just never know.  Our friend Jack Kean is at USC having his artificial knee removed because of a massive infection.  They have to remove all of the metal, clean out the infection, put in a temporary  replacement and then he has to be on an antibiotic IV for 8 weeks.  When they are sure the infection is gone they will put in another knee.  Yikes! 

Just as a side note, when ever you have any replacement parts you must alert your physicians and your dentist.  When you have any sign of ANY infection in your body you must treat it aggressively as it will migrate to the replacement, that being the weakest point in your body.  The dentist must give you antibiotics before he does any work at all in your mouth, even the cleaning.  The head being extremely vascular those veins spread infection through out the body.  Good oral hygiene is one of the best preventatives for heart attack, as well.  So don't let those cleanings go!  You owe it to yourself and others to keep them pearly white.  Halitosis is very unpleasant.  I love Bob because he always gives me a heads up when my breath is less than pleasant.

Speaking of keeping things clean, we are trying to clean this place up too.  When the landlady took out the palm trees, she also removed a giant juniper that covered up a multitude of sins.  The haul trailer and the motor home being two of the biggest.  So now we have to get on the ball and figure out how to make it pretty without spending much money.  There is also a very old,very substantial swing that is sturdy but unsightly.   The landlady's children played on it and they are all in their late 30's and early 40's.  Preston loved swinging up into the big oak tree, squealing with delight when his head touched the leaves, wonderful therapy for a little boy who was fearful of almost everything. But it has to go now with out the juniper to hide it.

I have an all-over therapeutic soreness that almost feels good this fine Sunday morning.  The time outside doing yard work yesterday felt refreshing and satisfying; the sense of accomplishment nearing exhilaration.  We had to quit about 10:30 because it was simply too hot to continue.  Later in the day  the temperature crested at 104.  Whew! The hottest day yet this summer .  It has been much cooler this year and we are happy to have had it that way.  We settled in with a nice tall glass of ice cold fresh squeezed lemonade to watch a new NCIS Los Angeles.  Gotta love that DVR and the neighbor's lemon tree!

66. Palms Away!

Well, there was a little action in the canyon this morning.  We used to have two 100 foot palm trees on the far side of our driveway.  We had mentioned to our landlady last winter that they really get to swinging in wind storms and it was a little disconcerting sometimes.  She didn't say much except that it would probably cost a lot to have them removed.  We agreed and didn't give it any more thought.  Yesterday she announced that a crew was coming this morning to take them down.  

Wow!  What a show that was!  The precision with which those two men felled those monstrous palms was quite a sight to behold.  I'm glad we were here to watch.  It was a memorable experience.  They tied a cable from their work truck about thirty feet up the palm, anchored it at a right angle from the truck and put tension on it away from houses, etc.  They put the first v cut on the side facing the direction they wanted the palm to fall.  A little more tension added and then a v cut on the opposite side.  A little more tension and a cracking sound and boom!  It was over!  Right between all the oak trees, perfectly executed!  Amazing!  We half way expected critters to come flying out, but not one.  The view is much nicer and there will be no more dried palm fronds to deal with!  I have to admit we will both rest a little easier when the winter storms come through the canyon.  I guess I have never given much thought to the life of a tree trimmer.  A new respect was born this morning, I can assure you.

Palm trees evoke memories of Bob's paternal grandparents though.  When Bob's folks decided to move to California from Dallas it broke Bob's heart and he has truly never gotten over it.  He would take the bus in the summer time and spend several weeks there, but his parents never took a vacation, let alone go back to Dallas.  When Bob's grandparents retired they would come and visit for a couple of months.  They were perfectly delightful people, the kind of folks you really want to sit down with and visit.  I adored them.  Everyone called Cotton's daddy, Doc.  It was in reference to a kindly retarded gentleman who lived down the street when Bob's dad was growing up.  I doubt most people ever knew him as anything else.

When Bob and I were in high school the rage was to set palm trees on fire around Halloween.  They shoot up like a rocket because the fronds become tinder dry before falling off.  Doc would stand and look at dry palm trees and say "Shoo-ee, would I love to set just one on fire, Bobby.  Just one."  This coming from the man who loved to smack giant wasp-nests and run like hell, just for the fun of it;  that adrenalin rush that comes from doing something really stupid while you pray like mad that you come out un-scathed.  It must be a male thing, because all of that escapes me.  But then I was pumped full of the threats of "what would the neighbors think,"  plus the thought of my mother's "angry eyebrows!"  That was enough to keep me on the straight and narrow, until I married Bob, of course.  My parents were sure that each and every out of the ordinary thing I ever did stemmed from Bob's influence.  In my estimation, they sure missed an awfully lot of fun!  Life is too short...especially from this end of it, so I vote for fun.  I'm not going to try to out run a swarm of angry wasps, but if I think about it I'm sure I'll come up with something.

65. It's About Details

One of life's little pleasures for me is to spend the early evening with a hose in my hand watering.  Bob calls me a "squirt idjet."  That's what his dad called his mother.  She loved to do the same thing.  The big difference was she had a real green thumb.  I, on the other hand, just like to be outside squirting water.  We have a little hummingbird that likes to dart in and out of my spray.  I don't even have to worry about moving and startling it, it seems to know I'm OK or maybe it's not paying any attention to me.  Either way, it gets a bath and I have the pleasure of watching.  

The other day Bob put a timer on the oscillating sprinkler up on the meadow.  It would be nice because we forget to turn it off, however, it stopped the little drip and the quail started dwindling away.  As soon as we figured out what was going on, he took the timer off.  We'd rather take our chances trying to remember the water is going than lose our covey.  They are such a pleasure to watch up there in the twilight taking turns in three's and four's drinking the fresh water.  

Our Trader Joe's basil plant is growing like mad in the wine barrel planter.  It must be it's "Laughin' Place", (remember from Song of the South)because each year the basil grows wonderfully there.  It is one of the few things that I have success with.  Oh, the lavender and the daisies do well and the gazania seem to propagate, but past that my gardening consists of squirting.  I plant in the Spring and squirt the rest of the year.  My thoughts on the subject are "I'd love you to grow, but really...you're pretty much on your own."  We always plant a couple of tomato plants because they remind us of, Billie, Bob's mom, plus we love the smell of the leaves when you rub them between your fingers.  We got a few off the vine...maybe ten or so, but that's not the point.  I know I'll never end world hunger with my little plants, they just make your heart feel good.

Our hearts have been a little heavy the last couple of days.  A friend...well, I guess more like an acquaintance that impacted our lives was killed in a hideous accident.  He was the fellow who did all the work on our motor homes.  He was crushed by a motor home he was working on.  The man behind the wheel was apparently alcohol impaired and pushed the wrong pedal.  Something Tuffy did everyday turned into tragedy.   He was a bit of a curmudgeon but such a wonderful all around guy.  I know when he saw us coming the color drained from his face.  He always tried to make a "silk purse out of a sow's ear" when he worked on our old motor homes.  Each time he pieced one of them back together we spent a little time talking about art.  He had a degree in Fine Arts and taught ceramics at the Hancock College, but he soon became disgusted with administration and all the politics that interfered with real teaching.  That was one thing he liked about owning his own business...no one to tell him what to do.  Never once did he ever charge the amount of the estimate.  It was always less...imagine that...LESS.  

I guess the moral of the story is that even if you do the same thing everyday you have to pay attention...the devil is always in the details. 

I know we won't be the only ones to miss you, Ron.  

   

64. We're All a Little Prickly

I think things went well last night at our first Kennel Club meeting.  At least we didn't seem to embarrass our selves.  There were seven of us who were petitioning for membership and all were interested in the "Furry Friends" program.  A very specialized animal ophthalmologist gave the program which was mostly concerned with a particular Collie ocular condition that is of genetic origin and was enough to scare the pants off of you.  Most of it went straight over our heads.  Mostly what I got out of it was to never breed dogs with that tendency, not that I have ever wanted to breed dogs or any thing else for that matter.  It would be like playing Russian Roulette with puppies.  Advance DNA required on both parents.  No wonder pure bred animals are so expensive.

Our little Maggie is all we need.  When we got home we ate the last of the peaches with crumb topping. Maggie happily licked the bottom of the pie plate and spent the remainder of the evening getting the remnants off the ends of her long floppy ears.  It doesn't get better than that!  It doesn't take much to make us happy, does it?

This will make you smile. Our dear friends Polly and Phil rarely forward things, but when they do we

know they are worth the time to open them.  This was particularly sweet.  Who wouldn't love a face like this?

On one trip through New Mexico we were driving along in the twilight WAY out in the country somewhere between San Il de Fonso and Canyon de Chelle and Bob stopped the car and said "Look quick, Sharon! There is a porcupine!"  This big ole thing was lumbering and clattering along in the culvert by the road.  When you rolled down the window you could actually hear the quills hitting each other.  One of the warnings from the information center at the state border was not to drive over porcupines even if they were dead because the quills would blow out even a truck tire.  Imagine that!

The fable of the porcupine goes something like this: It was the coldest winter ever-many animals died because of the cold.  The porcupines, realizing the seriousness of the situation, decided to group together and protect themselves using the warmth of the group.  Even though their bodies warmed each other their quills proved injurious and uncomfortable.  They had to make a decision: either accept the injury from their companions or disappear from the earth.  Wisely, they decided to return to the group hug.  In this way they learned the life giving warmth of the group far out weighed the little wounds that were caused by the close relationship with their companions.  With this wise decision the porcupine survives to this day.

The moral of the story:  No one's perfect, we all have prickly parts, but if we work together we can figure out how to stay warm and cuddly.  No one said it would be easy, now did they?

My other prickly part just came in and said "What's for lunch?"  He's like a Hobbit, "plenty and often," words to live by.

63. Let's Go Dancing!

 http://www.break.com/index/dancing-merengue-dog.html

I don't usually forward many things mainly because I don't want to bug or offend people.  But I have to say that if you haven't seen this precious You Tube clip it is too wonderful for you to miss.  We love our Maggie soooo much and enjoy each and every trick she has accomplished.  She is so willing and wants so much to please us, unless, of course, she gets the whiff of a deer.  Then everything else gets put on the back burner and she high tails it off and running.  However, I don't think I have ever seen a dog spend this much time on it's back legs with out a break.  She looks like she is having a blast.  I hope you enjoy it as much as Bob and I have.

Maggie passed her first meeting with the local Kennel Club for their therapy dog group.  We go to our first meeting tomorrow night.  Wish us luck.  She is so sweet and loving it would be a shame to be selfish and not share her with those unable to have their own Maggie.  Enjoy!

62. All in All a Lovely Sunday

Bob and I  both have had cabin fever lately.  Living so far out has a few disadvantages one of them being that we tend to be hermits and just stay home.  Most of the time that is fine but after a while we get grumpy and just a little sad for seemingly no reason.  Finances usually enter in to the equation.  Fixed income is a little crummy and I know we should have planned better, but we didn't so we pay the price.  Seventeen miles to town is only a problem when we want to just get out for no particular reason.  Gas is an issue even though our little PT Cruiser (which we LOVE) gets 22 miles to the gallon.

Well, this morning, (and Sunday is always my funky day) I got the bright idea to go to the swap meet.  We haven't been to the swap meet or even a morning of going to yard sales for literally years.  Well,  Bob is always up for most anything so we ate quickly and hit the road.  We drove clear up to San Luis Obispo which takes about an hour.  There are ones closer but our nine year old grandson, Preston, had left his Game Boy and his favorite quilt in our car yesterday so we had to drive almost that far to return them any way. 

When we arrived there was really a nice crowd. I guess because the weather was lovely and it is a three day weekend.  At any rate we browsed a couple of aisles and I found a lovely hand crocheted table cloth.  It is a cream color and my lazy Susan that Bob made for me fits perfectly in the middle.  It was the rare price of four dollars!  On the next aisle a fellow was selling several used cast iron skillets.  I have three, I think, one from my mom that is a huge chicken fryer.  It will hold two cut up chickens.  I love it and treasure it because it belonged to her.  I go back and forth from using cast iron to teflon and right now I'm in favor of cast iron.  I can't find any teflon that doesn't give out on you.  I even spent a fortune on Calphalon and it still separated. 

Any way I had a six inch cast iron skillet that I had inherited from my grandmother.  It was perfect for frying two eggs.  I loved that skillet!  It left my company purely by accident, I think in the oven of a motor home that we sold.  I was broken hearted.  I have been on the look out for one ever since.  It's not that cast iron is hard to find, it's that little six inch cast iron skillets are hard to find.  Well, by golly, this man had one.  Another four dollars and that puppy was mine!  You can't cook meat in cast iron that you want to cook eggs in though. For some reason it makes the eggs stick and it takes a complete re-seasoning for future egg success. So this little gem is off limits for meat.

There were a few other things I could have bought but decided I didn't really need them, but it was so

nice just to stroll along with Bob and share an ear of corn prepared Mexican style.  They brush a little mayonnaise on the corn, roll it in a Parmesan like cheese and sprinkle it with chili powder.  Sounds a little odd, but it was very tasty.  Our first experience, but I'm sure we will have it again.  Turns out it is one more thing to like.

As we drove home through the vineyards we told each other how much we loved living in the country and that all in all it was a lovely Sunday.  We decided that next time we get the bug we would try the Santa Maria Swap Meet, that is if they still have them when we get around to going again!  Sitting there contentedly looking at my new found treasures, it occurs to me that, you know what?  It might sound silly, but what if this is my grandmother's little cast iron skillet, finally making it's way back home to me.  Well, now that makes me grin!

61. Good Ole Thrifty Drug

This photo of Thrifty Drug store taken in 1959 really got me thinking about how many times I got in trouble for "missing the bus."  Now, we all know that I didn't really miss the bus.  Oh, I missed it ok, but not by accident...by design.  I didn't have an over abundance of spending money.  I got my allowance and had my babysitting money, plenty really for the time.  Still, once in a while that extra change was just too tempting and even though I knew I would have to face my mother and her "angry eyebrows," I disobeyed her anyway. We walked from Fremont Junior High School a few blocks to Second Street.  There was plenty of time to make the bus, but once in a while I would screw up my courage and miss the bus to go with my friends to the soda fountain in the back of Thrifty's.  Phosphates and Lime Rickeys were the big deal then.  I loved Cherry Phosphates.  Spending that half an hour with my friends was wonderfully wicked for this "Goodie Two Shoes!"

I was never sure why my mom didn't want me to go to Thrifty's after school.  She would only say that I needed to come home on the first bus available!  No questions asked!  Well, she left me no recourse now, did she?  The call of the Phosphate was like the fabled Sirens who, by their sweet singing, lured sailors to their destruction upon the rocks!  My mom would just have to deal with it and believe me, so would I!  I have always been very tender hearted so the punishment was never more than a few cross words.  I guess we both knew it would happen again.  I was the oldest and it's hard to let go, I know.

The Apex Cafe was another place that was off limits.  That, however, had no allure to us.  It was a horrible little place on Garey that we had to walk by to get to the bus stop. You could almost feel the

wickedness seeping beneath the door. Rumor had it that there was a drug bust there and that needles and drugs were found stashed beneath the sink in the kitchen.  We had barely heard of anyone taking drugs then, a few people smoked later, but not in junior high school.  Even in high school drugs were something rare.  It breaks my heart to hear about all the drugs available to our youth today.

We had such simple fun the kind of fun that our young people find boring.  Like riding your bike all over the place, just you and your pals free as birds.  We just had to be home before dark.  I suppose things still happened but it just wasn't sensationalized like everything is today.  It makes you afraid to take your eyes off your children for even a second.  I'm so glad that we had the freedom to experience simple things.  They are memories we cherish.  We wanted our children to experience that freedom, but I guess you don't miss what you didn't experience and they have their own memories.  Their memories are just different, I guess.  We had fun when they were growing up, it was just not in the same way.  That's life, I guess.  Nothing stays the same, does it. 

 











http://www.cloudcreations.com/cafe/sodafountian.html
Downtown on Second Ave., Pomona, California in 1959.