Saturday, February 28, 2009

Detective



Detective
*
Mysterious March advances
Upon his cold, evading adversary.
In search of a clue,
He dusts the earth with a fine yellow powder;
But soon April, accomplice to
The notorious February,
Washes away all evidence as
The two thieves steal away.



****
By

Thursday, February 26, 2009

That's My Gal




I taught her everything she knows.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Ride Like the Wind



Nowhere so busy a man as he than he,
and yet he seemed busier than he was.
~Geoffrey Chaucer


***

Sometimes I feel just like this little guy: rocking like crazy and not really getting anywhere. . .but enjoying one heck of a ride!

Saturday, February 21, 2009

If Eyes Are the Window to the Soul. . .

. . . What does this say?

This is "Jude," our new ward; aka Sir Chews-alot, Night-stalker, or as I like to call him, Osama Bin Dog. And to borrow from another cliche, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

P.S. But we love him in spite of his ill-mannered behavior. :)

Monday, February 16, 2009

Fire One, Fire Two. . .

It's never really dull here. . . or normal. But life out in the middle of nowhere has its benefits. For example, if the mood strikes, I can do my best rendition of New York, New York in my front yard, in my nightgown, in the middle of the day, and no one's eardrums (or eyes) will be the worse for it. Or I can do my best interpretation of Beyonce's Single Ladies and no one will even know, except our dogs, and they love the way I dance. (I won't say if I have ever done this, but if I wanted to, I could!)


But living out in the country also has its challenges too. We deal with things like washed out roads, rabid skunks and gangs of deer just itching to rumble with any car which comes along. My son and my car's left front fender can testify to this fact. And once I even came home to find an angry bull in my front yard, and I promise he looked like he was thinking, "Go ahead, make my day. . ."

Sometimes living out in the country is hard work. Just last week my girls and I put out a fire in the woods behind our house which started when the transformer on the power pole exploded and sparked a fire. Living where we do, there are no nosy next door neighbors like Mrs. Kravitz checking up on our every move, so it's really a good thing that someone was home to intervene. Unfortunately my dear husband was not at home at the time so it was up to us girls to deal with the fire. And with the continued drought conditions in our area, the spark spread like, well, wildfire! The "girl brigade" managed to put out the fire before it spread too far, and before it became necessary to call the local Volunteer Fire Department.

This incident is a far cry from one we experienced a number of years ago, the last time the woods near our house caught fire. That fire came at the hands of my wonderful husband who is by no means a pyromaniac. On this particular morning he'd decided that it was time to get rid of every single scrap of lumber and every fallen limb which had accumulated on the farm for the past 18 years. This was a job for Super-dad and it needed to be done. . . and it needed doing that day. (No matter that it was the windiest day of the year and that we'd had no rain for weeks, and that the still, small voice of his reasoned and rational wife warned against such a task.) He and the kids worked all morning gathering wood scraps and twigs and and vines and logs and anything else that would burn, and soon they had assembled a pile of debris the size of Delaware in a clearing far enough away (so he thought) from the nearest tree. Super-dad called the Forestry department for the necessary burn permit, and then the fireworks (ha, ha, I love throwing in these puns! :) began. Literally, seconds into the decision, he realized it was a huge mistake. The fire leaped high into the air, and quickly spread to the edge of the clearing and then into the woods. Visions of Bambie and the ominous warnings of the woodland creatures, "Man's in the forest!" came to mind as we all began stomping and swatting at the spreading fire, to no avail. Our hose was too short to reach the inferno so we were forced to run back and forth with buckets of water to try to tame the spreading menace. Although the wind was blowing away from the house, it became obvious that things were getting out of control; so I dashed to the phone to call for back-up, i.e. the real fire fighters, and rushed back outside to help where I could. The ragtag group of volunteer firemen quickly arrived and fought the fire before it spread too much further into the woods. During all of the hubbub, my girls disappeared and I assumed they had gone inside the house to get more water. Within minutes the fire was extinguished, we thanked the firemen, and I returned to our (saved!) house, exhausted. As I walked through the basement door I stumbled over a large sleeping bag, and I noticed that it was filled with something. Apparently, the girls had decided that our house was surely going up in flames and they had rushed inside to rescue all of the family's most precioius earthly belongings. They had used the sleeping bag as a means of carrying the valuable family heirlooms out of the"doomed" house to safety. What a sweet, thoughtful gesture, I thought. But when I looked inside the bag, expecting to see all of our baby pictures, Grandmother's hand made quilt, and dear Great-Grandfather's pocket watch, instead, what I found was my girls' entire collection of Beanie Babies.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Spread It Around :)

"Beloved, let us love one another. . ."
1 John 4:7

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Fired Up



If you need a smile or some fun, last-minute Valentine stuff, check out Catching Fireflies. They have the cutest stuff ever, and it is very reasonably priced. I've been a fan for a long time, and recently I discovered that they have a blog. They even featured one of my works -- you can catch it all here. (Sorry. . . awful pun intended. :) Happy Wednesday!

Saturday, February 7, 2009

You Just Can't Make Up This Stuff



[Another from the weird and wacky local news -- sounds like Seinfeld meets OJ.]

Bike theft leads cop on slow-speed chase

A man accused of stealing a bicycle led a police officer on a slow-speed chase Monday, as the man tried to peddle away from a patrolling officer, according to police. An Athens-Clarke Solid Waste Department worker flagged down an Athens-Clarke police officer at about 1:30 p.m. Monday to point out a person who just had stolen a bike from Trio Lane, police said. The officer caught up with the bicyclist on Ruth Street, and though the officer turned on his cruiser's blue lights and siren, the man continued to peddle, police said. The officer used a loudspeaker to order the man to stop, but he kept going to the end of the road, where he ditched the bike and ran, police said. An officer caught up with bicyclist - identified as Milton G. of 185 Spring Court, No. 18 - and charged him with theft of the 24-inch Huffy Gravity bike, fleeing or attempting to elude and obstruction.

[Editor's notes: The key phrase here, is "attempting to elude." Really?! Can't you just imagine this scene with the guy on a bike, and a police car following with blue lights blazing? It is one crazy world we live in! ~cn]

Read the article here.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Eyes Have It

Love this pic my daughter took recently of her little black cat, Tres. If you remember, Tres used to be a boy kitty, until I took him to the vet to be neutered and found out he was really a she. You can read the whole sordid story here.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

We're Doin' Business Here



I love these little kids. Thirty seconds, well worth the investment.