somepinkflowers

then add one dog and stir

Before you get all mushy and think I finally acquired a dog, I did not.

I do not own a puppy but several own me part-time.

I am in the palm of the paws of several.

Growing up we had one dog, a half-breed terrier I think someone left by our back door, which is how all the pets arrived at my childhood home. {Well, not counting the goldfish won at the fair but that is another story.}

"Here, take this!" was how I saw it then, a gift, a dog, a cat plopped down from The Universe.

Maybe it was more a gift from God, "Here, you need this."

Most evenings I walk my neighborhood with the dog walkers. They have adopted poor-little-dogless-me and as one neighbor has two little fluffy-pups the mathematics of it all works out fine.

Sometimes I am the official pepper-spray holder as we have the occasional free-roaming rogue. Especially during hunting season one might find a working-class stray wandering lost and confused looking for a misplaced deer or turkey.

Normally these strangers listen to my voice of reason as I calmly explain, "Run! Fast as you can the other way, Lost Boy! I do not even know how to work this pepper-spray-stuff. Please get out of Carson City. Pronto."

This normally works as none of  our dogs look or smell like deer or turkey. Things turn out OK.

A temporary lost traveler wants to go home to his own kennel and kibble. These hunter-types are often misunderstood. They are simple souls and are plum worn out when they reach our hood. Two times now we have matched them back up to owner.

Just so you will know: I have never actually had to USE the pepper-spray even though I stand at the ready.

We walk prepared and trusting with our dogs into the dusk. If an owl hoots, we pick up the wee ones and tuck them under an arm.

When one of my peeps is feeling puny or has a project working I step up and volunteer for the official dog-walker position.  I might take Katie and give her one good loop around so she can do Her Business.

Katie always knows something is up. She is no fool.

She knows me but I am not The Momma. Katie drags her heels every step of the way until we get to the half-way mark. Smart cookie that she is, Katie takes off like a bat out of hell when she is on her way to her own place. When we get to the home-stretch, it is Katie by a mile.

How could Katie know she is half done? How does she know that at the very point she is now heading back to the one she loves the best?

See that is what I love about dogs. They so know stuff we do not know.

They look up at you with those old-world eyes and say everything you want to hear without even moving a muscle. Sometimes they smell and drool and we love them anyway.

On your worse day, your dog loves you.

I keep thinking I wanna a dog, gotta get a puppy, wanna do it now, dog, dog, dog....

But not yet.  I want to go here first and then here soon and so on. {Plus my pup needs to be an Inside Dog because we have these down near the creek.}

The day after I no longer have a working-away-from-the-house-career I am going to let The Universe bring me a gift.

I do not even care what breed he happens to be. I just want him to be loving like this one. OK, yes, and a cutey~pie like this one over here or, maybe a simple noble dog, like this one.

Well, will you look at this one!

I feel confident that the right dog will find me at the best time. I am sending out waves of love to The Universe to be on guard for the perfect one. I do not want to miss a thing so I will be ready.

In the mean time, back here at the ranch,  I curl up with old  Spike-the-cat, old Spike-the-inside-cat, and we are happy. He knows my ways and is busy trying to teach me how to slow down. I have never once seen him multitask.

Spike has me in the palm of his paw. He is just what I need.

and somewhiteflowers, too

Yesterday I had to have Emergency Dental Surgery. 

I know.

It sounds just terrible but it really was not as I was given some very interesting Alice~in~Wonderland drugs to take before, during and after.

Not that the pills made me larger or smaller because they did not. I did not fall down into a rabbit hole or have tea with a mad hatter. Nothing quite so obvious as that.

Just a simple, every~day, unobtrusive paradigm shift.

And haven't we all had those?

What the pills did do was make me extremely unconcerned about some minutia and then unbelievably fascinating with others.

{{Well, maybe you know all about this kind of thing and I would not be at all surprised if you did. Nor judgmental. Not me. Things happen.}}

About one hour before the appointment I took one little pill. Nothing to look at really. A sneeze could blow it out of your hand into the next county. It was that insignificant.

Now, I do not mean to push drug~usage onto anyone. I do not even drink colas or teas that contain caffeine. If I even LOOK at too much dark chocolate I am buzzing off the wall, awake all night with wild heart~beating.

So do not get me wrong here. I was never the Wild Hippie Girl who swallowed This and That.

No, I was the Flower Child who baked my own bread, made my own jam and worked in the food coop in exchange for organic cashews and fresh Zellwood corn.

Body=temple kind of thingy.

About 10 minutes after I swallowed the pill I noticed the white azaleas sitting on my kitchen table as I slowly ambled past on my way out the door.

I really, really Noticed Them.

They were simply Glowing. Turning this way and that, posing, they begged me to take a few snaps.

And so I did.

And then a few more.

I was completely mesmerized. At that very moment all the planets in the world combed their hair and smiled at me.

We had such a bond working here. Those white flowers, the planets and me.

The sun, coming in through my window, was singing to me in honey tones of goodness. The flowers were practically purrring in the warm sunshine. Their petals velvet with never~ending softness.

Why in the world should I have Emergency Dental Surgery when the entire world was so bright and promising right there by my kitchen window?

Why? Why, indeed?

If I placed my head down on the pine table the energy magnified by the water, which sweetly nourished my flowers, would certainly heal my wayward tooth. Clearly this was my ticket to perfect teeth, healthy gums and unimagined riches.

A rest in the sun watched over by somewhiteflowers.

Clearly my ticket to everything.

But that was yesterday.

If my driver had not been waiting I might still be at the kitchen table with my addictive camera, my enticing white azaleas and my drug~induced visions of bay~window nirvana.

Today I sit easy and upright with pulsating Frankensteinian stitches above molar #3.

I remember nothing of the actual Emergency Dental Surgery procedure. Thank goodness.

I sit here at the table gentle swallowing Dannon All Natural, No Artificial Anything strawberry yogurt. A few of the browning azalea petals fall gently down to rest on Pine Table Street.

The temperature dropped 15 degrees on this the first day of Spring here in Florida. The wind outside my window is whipping itself into an oak~pollen froth.

Where is my singing sun? Where?

suitcase as scrapbook

I started spring cleaning this morning.

I know. Where is the fun in that?

Mostly I was inspired by by this new studio.

Well, no major transformations are going to occur over here at my house. Instead I simply began cleaning out one of my favorite pieces of furniture.

Which would be THIS.

At the bottom of the main compartment is a small zipper which opens the lining back from the case. From here you can see how the wheels are attached and how strongly the frame is made. This is where I stash my travel detritus.

Not the scary liquid kind of detritus that worries Homeland Security folks. The other stuff, plastic and paper.

Mostly I push shop bags down into there in case I might need them later on, which I never do. Also, I push little pads of paper down in there. You know, the ones you pick up in hotel rooms.

Everything has a story. Everything has a use. Everything could be used later, in a pinch.

But should I throw out this stuff? Should I push it back into my secret storage space?

You tell me.

The green plastic bag with Harrods stamped in gold is from the last time I was almost thrown out of the Food Hall for photographing an attractive display of quail eggs.

This kind of thing happens to me with alarming regularity. I see pretty food and snap it and someone gets all bent out of shape.

If you see my name in the police blotter one day it will be because I took a photo where I should not have.

The first time I was in Harrods, many, many years ago, I ran smack dab into Richard Harris. Right into his face. He was not very tall. This was before his Harry Potter/Dumbledore  days.

I think I said, "Oh, dear. Pardon, me!" but all my brain was doing was thinking this----> Someone left his cake out in the rain.

There is another shopping bag in my suitcase  hidy~hole. It is small and white with MGM stamped in gold.

I am like a crow sometimes, collecting bags with shiny letters.

This one is from the MGM Grand Las Vegas. The bag came from the kiosk in the lobby where they sell water for about $6.00 a bottle. The whiskey sours, on the other hand, are free, if you are betting, which I did later.

Two things happened the day I got this bag. First I saw a lion in the rather sad plexiglass cage there in the lobby. She  was napping on top of the walk~through part of the cage. I looked up at her big paw there on the glass  and I placed my little hand there against hers on the outside of the glass.

Her paw was 50 times bigger than mine. I bet every one does that. Measures their hand to the lion's paw. It must be a universal thing, unless you happened to see a real lion while out in the actual jungle, where I have not yet been. Not yet.

After pawing the lion I went to work~out in the hotel fitness room.

While there I ran into this guy and he turned out to have extremely well~defined muscular development. I mean, Really Well~Defined. You could have knocked me over.

It just goes to show you. You can never tell about people you see on TV. How tall they are or how muscular.

On my last trip to Italy I stayed near the train station. I had been on my own for almost 6 weeks and was feeling a big homesick. I had spent the last 3 days revisiting my favorite places and eating. My room was small but well~appointed.

It was late and it was raining, the only night of my trip with poor weather, but the manager of the hotel pulled out a blue striped umbrella from the cabinet behind his desk.

He asked me where I was going and I told him I did not know so he recommended a place off the beaten track. Down the Via Nazionale and then down a narrow side street. It was below ground level and I felt like I was making a Grand Entrance, feet first with blue striped umbrella dripping.

And this is how I happened upon some sort of celebration where I was one of maybe four Americans in the entire place. The Italians took us all right in, fed us and spoke English to beat the band. It was perfectly wonderful. I have no idea what all I ate.

They would not even let me pay, even for this.  Can you believe it? I also met some nice folks from North Dakota which I had not planned on doing while in Rome.

During the party the rain stopped and I forgot the blue striped umbrella but the manger did not seem to mine one bit.

This is the way these things go. If I had not been so full I would have had one of these. Next time.

Later I slipped the mini~bar honor pad into my suitcase as I packed.  After all, there were three pads there beside the teeny refrigerator.

A remembrance. From there in Rome to here, now. In my blog. In my hand while I am Spring cleaning.

So.

Should I throw out this stuff--the shopping bags, the pad of paper? Should I push it back into my secret storage space?

You tell me. I would not want to be considered a pack rat. Ever. Not me.

hearts are flying and i am so thankful

For the longest time I thought my daddy was a Yankee.

Not that there is anything wrong with being a Yankee, or anything, but as a Florida born-and-raised child I thought North Carolina was part of The North.

After all, we did drive north every summer to visit my dad's family in Greensboro and it did take us forever to get there. It was UP north.

I may have been geographically challenged or just young. I suppose if asked I might have said that South Dakota was part of The South but no one ever asked me. Besides that, we never drove to South Dakota.

We never had the need.

I have never been to a funeral in the real north. I have never been to a funeral anywhere north of Greensboro, North Carolina, so I am not much an expert on funerals around the United States.

I have not been to many funerals in my long life. If you added them up, I do not think it would take both hands to count them all. Well, maybe, just.

It is not that I don't know people. I do. I know a ton of folks but most of them live practically forever. Thank goodness for that. Or maybe I was away at college when the older aunts and uncles died.

I was away at college a lot. Off and on.

The other ones, the people who die, at least lately, have been cremated and had their ashes scattered out to sea while guitar music floated gently down from the dunes. Beatle songs, some James Taylor, a bit of John Prine.That kind of thing.

Usually there are several big dogs wearing colorful bandannas and acting well-behaved at such events.

It is like the dogs know.

 

I do not mean to be gruesome here, but that is what I want for myself. Say in 30 or 40 years.

I do not want anyone messing with my hair after I have passed on. No one would get it right. You just cannot blow my hair and have it look like me. And I do not want to look like someone else for my last part.

But maybe that is just me being controlling.

Plus, I do not want people to look at my  face with a still tongue. A silent tongue. Not me.

Mostly I want to be cremated and sprinkled out to sea. I want to float around in the sun and let that be it.

The Mediterranean Sea would be a great place but that might be too much trouble. Any sea would do nicely. Even over here where I hang out now would be OK with me.

I am going to take a wait and see attitude about the whole thing.

 

The first friend of my mom's who stopped by after my daddy died brought us cold, roasted chicken and potato salad. I guess they do that up north and out west, too. They bring on the chicken, roasted or fried.

This sweet friend of my mom's covered the table with food--rolls and freshly steamed asparagus dripping with butter-- while she talked about the good times she remembered sharing with my parents.

She had lost her own husband a few years back and she knew what we needed even though we did not. The last thing I wanted was food and yet we ate and ate and ate.

I wanted to never get up from that table.

I wanted to be 12 years old forever. I wanted to not have to be in charge of anything else ever but washing the dishes and putting the left-overs away.

That is what I wanted.

 

I know I say this all the time but it is true: I love how things turn out.

Even in bad times things seem to turn out OK.

My mom and dad had planned their funerals years and years ago so we had to do very little decision-making. Bless them.

The funeral director knew my family and went over everything like he was a relative or something.

Maybe he is. I'll have to check.

 

My daddy wanted two songs sung at his funeral. They were not Beatle songs or James Taylor or John Prine.

They were the two songs that where sung at his own mother's funeral about 100 years ago.  She was my Granny and this might have been my first ever funeral.

I seem to remember the church being very hot and the windows were wide open. I could see the blue sky.

Everyone was given a paper fans printed with the name of the funeral home on the back side. On the front side was a photo of sun shining down through the moss-hung trees. The sun's rays fell on pink flowers blooming near green, green grass. Heaven on earth, it looked like to me.

The card-board was attached to a tongue-depressor-looking piece of thin wood. We all fanned and fanned to beat the band. Moving the air.

I remember thinking dramatically, "I am going to keep this fan forever!"

It might be in my attic still.

I will let you know if I find it.

If you are southern, you might could guess that one of the songs would be Amazing Grace which is perfect for such events. This song is a good place to let go of the tears you know are going to come out anyway. There is no holding back with Amazing Grace.

Maybe it is early programming but I cry every time I sing this song. I am not even going to pretend to be embarrassed. If I just hear the first few bars of this song my eyes get wet and I know to look for a tissue.

Sometimes I can be so southern.

The other song my daddy wanted was On the Wings of a Snow White Dove which is a real tearjerker, too, but if that was what my daddy wanted, that is what he was going to have.

 

I had no idea what to do about those songs. Time was short. I did not want taped music one bit.

We talked to the preacher about who should sing. About who could sing.

My cousin Charlene would have been perfect but she was out-of-town in Atlanta. So we prayed about it and ate more cold chicken and potato salad.

Then we let it go.

More food came our way. More widow-ladies.

Macaroni and cheese and fried chicken. Seven-up cake. Walnut-apple cake. Fruit, fruit, fruit.

My daddy's two sister arrived from out-of-town town, one from Texas, the other from North Carolina. Each was chaperoned by grown-up cousins I had not seen in forever.

Finally my cousin Charlene arrived from Georgia and took the music issue to heart. She arranged for my cousin Norma Kay to play the piano. Two cousins I had known from day-one. Only yesterday we were were playing dodge-ball and swing-the-statue and dressing doll-babies.

Now they were going to sing at my daddy's funeral.

These cousins of mine had done duets before and both are so talented I cannot help but brag. In a very short time--while I ate food I was not hungry for--they practiced my daddy's requested songs.

Amazing Grace and On the Wings of a Snow White Dove. 

Cold chicken, potato salad, macaroni and cheese and seven-up cake.

It could not have been any better.

I only wish my daddy could have been there.

I will always be grateful to my family and friends who sent messages of sympathy and understanding during this ever-so sad time, who dropped-off food and flowers and tight hugs.

I cannot thank you each here but I do thank you everyday still, in my heart.

Thank you so much.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The afternoon I left my home to go visit my daddy, for what turned out to be the last time, I received a wonderful box of sugar cookies with pink icing. They were from a friend who sent them to me because she thought I could use them "right about now."

Go figure.

The first friend of my mom's who stopped by after my daddy died brought us cold, roasted chicken and potato salad. For dessert we shared these sugar cookies made before they were even needed.

I wanted to never get up from that table.

I wanted to be 12 years old forever, eating sugar-cookies with pink icing. Without a care in the world. With my daddy napping in his chair there in the living room, cross-word puzzle half done. Waiting.

That is what I wanted.