Wooo, I'm actually getting these done on Monday....Here is PromoGuy's Monday Mission 2.33:

1. Many children have blankets, or a favorite nubby stuffed animal that they like to keep near them for security. Do you recall what you had for your "security blanket" as a child? When did you finally give it up? What brought that about?
This one's easy. My favorite stuffed animal was Pink Dog (hey, maybe my creativity was latent, okay). Like the Velveteen Rabbit, Pink Dog was loved threadbare in spots and the luster went out of his coat. Somewhere I have a picture of me in my grandma's camper, nestled in the hammock-like bed with Pink Dog held close to my heart. I'll see if I can find that and post it sometime.

2. Now that you are a big kid, what do you have to give you that same sense of security?
Three real dogs, but none of them are pink. Seriously, though, I think my husband gives me the strongest sense of security. I know it's not good to find your security in any person or thing, but I can't help it that he makes God's love more real in my life just by being there for me.

3. With a little over four months left in 2002, have you accomplished everything you wanted to for the year? Is there anything that you would like to accomplish before the year is over?
Have I accomplished everything? Being that I am not a goal-setter by any stretch, that's hard to quantify! My poor garden pooped out as soon as the weather got really hot, and then I was limited by health problems and things went further downhill in the yard. But I've reconciled myself with the fact that it's just a yard and I can always clean things up when I'm better. Before year's end I would really like to clean up the spent perennials and do a good job of putting the garden to bed for the year. And I want to be sure the leaves are all raked and shredded before winter; cleaning up wet leaves in the spring is a bummer!

4. I don't know about you, but it seems to me children have it pretty good these days. Game systems, computers in the home, microwaves, cable TV, the internet, cell phones and pagers, they certainly have a wider variety of technology than most of us did as children. What modern convenience, if any, do you think it would be good for children today to do without? What would they gain?
I think it would be good for kids to do without TV. Of course, that would mean the parents would benefit, too. When a kid is fed a steady diet of TV every day, there's little left to imagination (unless they buy TV-related merchandise and roll-play based on what they've been told about the characters). Kids who are brought up on the hyper-manic production techniques of today have a harder time concentrating at school because real life is not so fast-paced and action-filled. Kids would read and do more imagination-driven things if they had no TV, too, and that would benefit everyone.

5. Many of us have one thing in which we believe we excel. What do you do better than most?
I think I communicate better than most, especially in writing. Wherever I've worked, people have appreciated my written instructions and communications, and that makes me happy.

6. In the United States, and possibly other countries, teenagers in High School usually wind up falling into several social circles or "cliques." Stoners, Rich Kids, Jocks, Cheerleaders, Band, Drama, Goths, and so on (though the names are probably different today). What High School "clique" did you find yourself in? Was it by choice or did it just happen? Did you look down on other groups? (Aw it's ok, it was/is High School, we all did dumb stuff)
I moved from a Chicago suburb to a small Ohio college town just in time to start high school. By the time I came on the scene, the largely preppy and affluent kids had been going to school together since kindergarten. I was neither preppy nor affluent, and I was non-athletic and troubled. The kids who took me in were the stoners, at our school known as motorheads back then. I jumped right in with the wrong crowd and did a lot of stupid things as a youth; the funny thing was, though, I was also very artistic and read a lot, so my group jokingly called me the "intellectual hood". I still smile to think of that because it pretty much sums up who I was for a time there.

7. (it begins) I have great news! I won the contest and we now have plane tickets to anywhere in the world. The bad news is we have to pick a place now and leave in the morning. I can't decide where to go, so you get to pick. Where should we go, and what is the first thing we should do when we get there?
LOL, you expect me to decide something like that on such short notice?! Okay, I say you should fly to the birthplace of your ancestors. Make it on your father's side for now. When you get there, you should find the town where your kin lived and take lots of pictures - interview any surviving friends/family while you're there.

BONUS: Must I beg you?
Oh, yeah, with all your heart and soul.

This week's comment question: What's your favorite dessert?
Mmmm, I have voracious, insatiable sweet tooth. The best desserts for me are the creamy ones with the light, Cool-Whip sort of topping. I love those cakes with Jello poured into the holes poked in the cake's top. Mmmmmmm.....

Please Pray

...We just heard my DH's brother Steve has been in an accident at work. Steve's arm was caught in a machine and they have taken him to a hospital in Columbus. We don't know which arm it is or how serious the injury is. I hope and pray he doesn't lose that arm! Aside from his work, Steve's worked so hard to learn blues guitar and really loves to play. If you're the praying type, we'd surely appreciate some prayers going up on Steve's behalf. I'll update more later after Howie gets back from visiting the hospital and knows more.

It's been another movie kind of weekend here at the homestead. Be ready with a cup of your favorite beverage and be ready to read. :)

Having never read anything by Truman Capote, I now want to. Howie and I watched The Grass Harp, the adaptation of one of his novellas, on the Independent Film Channel today. The official link is at its producer's site, Fineline Features. Wow, what a great movie!

As usual, it didn't get too high a rating in the consumer reviews I've read at Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes, but we loved it. It's typical that movies we like others find boring. We love a good people story with in-depth characterizations, movies about personality quirks and family conflicts and healing.

This one is set in the 1940's, one of my favorite eras when it comes to music and style, and set in a small southern town. When young Collin's mother dies, he goes to live with his father's two spinster cousins, Verna (Sissy Spacek) and Dolly (Piper Laurie) Talbot. A few days after that, Collin's depressed widowed father drives himself off a cliff into the Gulf of Mexico.

A sidenote: Okay, but don't worry, it's not one of those movies which goes from depressing to more depressing. You will not watch the credits roll only to find yourself fumbling for razor blades or a handgun to end your misery, I promise!

Dolly and the housemaid Catherine (Nell Carter) are best friends, and they bring Collin under their wings and befriend him. Joining their odd circle is retired judge Charlie Cool (Walter Matthau) and itinerant mother-cum-evangelist Sister Ida (Mary Steenbergen). Jack Lemon and Roddy McDowell also play parts in this movie. They all do a super job and make you really believe in and care for the characters. It's just a magical, touching, and often hilarious movie.

The links I give offer some plot information, so I won't go into detail here (but beware of plot spoilers at those links!). The filming is exquisite and the costumes are wonderful - it's lovely both to look at and be lost in.

Breather here...Whoooooo.

We also watched a couple of fluff movies today, thanks to Howie's co-worker loaning us a couple of movies. Those we could have lived without, though one of them sparked some good conversation afterward.

Pure, silly fluff was Legally Blonde. Reese Witherspoon is such a cute thing, and so funny. If it weren't for her, I don't think I'd have stuck with the movie. You know something which I really liked about the movie? It probably isn't what most would expect to be a stand-out thing. Her character, Elle, is a rich, fluffy sorority girl, yet when she goes to Harvard, her best friend ends up being Paulette, the gal who does her nails down at the boutique; her friend is a high school dropout and what many would dismiss as "trailer trash", yet Elle identifies with her and befriends her.

Paulette plays a sounding-board role in Elle's life, I think, and serves as a means for the film-makers to voice the otherwise friendless Elle's thoughts to for the audience. I don't think the beauty shop scenes lived up to their potential at all, but I know this is just a light comedy. Like many such light comedies, it of course had plot holes you could land a plane in, but it was a fun diversion.

And finally...

We watched Shallow Hal, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, and Jason Alexander. This one we initially liked okay (not great, but with enough to keep things going). The more we thought about it afterwards, watched the cut scenes and interviews, the less we liked it. The movie's about Hal (Jack Black), a guy who has impossibly high standards when it comes to women.

Like his best friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander), his unrealistic and shallow expectations keep him from having many relationships until...Yes, the hook. Hal gets stuck in an elevator with motivational speaker and author Tony Robbins, who counsels with him during their wait and bestows on him via hypnosis the gift of seeing women as they really are. He will, says Robbins, see their inner selves and beauty rather than their outward appearances. Okay, just go with me on this.

Suddenly, every woman he meets is gorgeous by worldly standards. And they all like him. He thinks Tony somehow just gave him confidence and that's the reason for his new found success. What he doesn't realize is that the women he's so taken with are, by worldly standards again, fat and/or ugly. (This I will touch on in a moment). He meets Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow) and is smitten. They begin a courtship and he falls for her, head over heels. He doesn't realize that she really weighs 350 pounds. Everyone around him can see this, but he sees her as slim, siren Gwyneth.

You don't see much of the "real" Rosemary through much of the film. But the film-makers go out of their way to show you she's fat. A chair she's sitting on at a diner bends and collapses beneath her bulk. When she cannonballs into the pool, the resulting plume of water goes sky-high. The underwear she discards are gigantic (you wonder how Hal overlooks that). You see far-away shots of her in her real form, and some close-ups of her big legs.

Hal's friends are polite to Rosemary and to Hal, but are repulsed by her and can't understand what he sees in her. His friend Mauricio thinks Hal's been brainwashed and, predictably, hunts Robbins down and begs him for the magic words to release Hal from his hypnosis. Zap. Now the dilemma: Will Hal still love Rosemary now that he sees her as she really is?

I won't give the plot away any more than that. I will say this, though. The movie sets out to hammer the lesson of "inner beauty" into our heads, but makes so many fat jokes and digs at the "less than lovely" that it falls flat when you really think about it. It did develop Rosemary as a really neat person, but I wonder how the audience would have reacted if she'd been shown more in the fat suit. This movie just leaves me kind of torn -- did I like it, or did I not?

Things like the breaking chairs and Rosemary cutting herself a huge chunk of cake at an office event just play right into hurtful fat stereotypes. Not only that, but the other girls he thought were beautiful turn out to be homely and greasy-haired. In the "extras" portion of the DVD, they showed a brief interview with Brooke Burns, who plays a minor role as Katrina. She made this big deal about how ugly the character was, from her crooked, dirty teeth to her dull, greasy hair. So....Am I to believe that all homely people are also slobs with terrible hygiene? And do all fat people eat huge portions of food in public? Do they all dress in completely unflattering clothes?

No.

It reminds me of the episode of Friends when they put Courteney Cox Arquette in the fat suit to show how Monica would be had she not shed her pounds. Suddenly her IQ dropped 50 points, her voice became whiny and piercing, her dress and hygiene went bad, and she hoarded what little food she wasn't stuffing into her mouth. What? All because she was fat?

I don't think I can say it any better than this article does.

By the way...There was much about the movie I liked, too. I just feel so ambivalent about it right now. Yes, I am a plus-size woman, an ample woman...A woman of substance...Tall, but well-insulated and voluptuous. Could I relate to many things about Rosemary's character? Sure I can. Does that make me sensitive to fat jokes and put-downs? I'd be lying if I said no. I carry as much a burden of memories as I do of pounds, and I am realistic enough to know the two are inter-related.

One other thing...I find it interesting to read many people who negatively reviewed Shallow Hal at IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes made the point of saying they were not fat, but were very offended by its poking mean jokes at the same time it was supposed to say appearances aren't what count.

Okay, at this point I feel I'm rambling...It's late and I'm tired. What IS it with me lately staying up so darned late? It's not a good thing, I think; it's just been easy to do since I am still more comfortable sleeping on the couch because of the cushions and handholds for rising. But it is also where the computer is, and it's sooo easy to find a whole night's gone by while you've entertained yourself online. Do I hear an amen? Holy cow, I hear thousands of 'em! ;)

Feel free to leave some comments and let me know your thoughts on Shallow Hal if you saw it. Or that Friends episode. Or just anything I've touched today.

I've been much too lax in updating my blog. In truth, I've just been lazy! I've not written much personal correspondence, not written here...I've pretty much just surfed and participated in the forums at Dave's Garden and read other peoples' blogs. I made random comments on a few, even promising to divulge which Peanuts character I am. Okay, it's late, but here is my Peanuts profile, okay?






Which Peanuts Character Are You Quiz



There. Ya happy? Actually, I went from being Sally several days ago to being Snoopy now. I must have gotten a lttle smarter or something. At any rate, I guess it's better than Being John Malkovich. Sorry, couldn't resist. I have been meaning to rent that, by the way. Any of you folks watched that movie?

Angiepangie has unearthed a Veggie Tales personality quiz, I see. I have taken it and will now and report my findings before I comment in her blog and tell her to be watching my page for my results. Things seem to work better when I perform actions prior to promising them, I think. ;) Here ya go, I am Jr. Asparagus:






Which Veggie Tales character are you?

this quiz was made by Karen


Must be because I love asparagus and my favorite Veggie Tales video so far has been Larry Boy and the Fib from Outer Space! Did you know there's a new full-length Veggie Tales movie coming out October 4? I want to see it, but I'm not sure if I can stand sitting in a movie with an audience of 75% young children, LOL. Don't get me wrong, I like kids; I just like them in smaller numbers and in places I've not paid my burial money to enter for such a brief interlude. ;) I believe I'll wait until it comes out on DVD and watch it with our friend's son. :)

Let's see, what else is new? Oh yes, thanks to seeing Chari's write-up at Techfluid, I now am aware of (and listed at) Eatonweb Portal. It's a big old search engine/portal for bloggers and lurkers alike. If you're a blogger, go and register for free and be eligible for a free text ad to bring more traffic to your site. If you're a lurker, check it out to find blogs about everything under the sun; I found some really cool sites there just browsing by category and keyword.

We've spent the weekend hunkered down and bathed in the glow of the TV, enjoying a movie marathon. My DH used some of of his overtime money and got a cheap Apex AD-1100w DVD player (under $65 at Wal-Mart, wooo!). We've watched the following fare since Saturday:

The Princess Bride - one of our favorites ("he said 'to blathe'", Angie, LOL)

Best in Show - Mocumentary about the obsessions of the big-time dogshow circuit

Analyze This - Cute...But c'mon, a sequel is in production?!

Lord of the Rings, along with all the cool special extra DVD stuff

War of the Worlds - Original 1953 film great SFX for the time, but...How do you compare?

Toy Story 2 - As fun as the first romp

Random Hearts - Oh, ugh. Please, value your 2.25 hours more and save your money!

Yes, we're taking a little break here for sleep. My brain hurts, especially after that last movie. What a depressing, boring, pointless drag that was, even with Harrison Ford. Yuck.

My belly is feeling better with each passing day, so that's encouraging. Thus far I've been able to stave off over-friendly pets and keep paws from puncturing my midsection. My mom and dad are still helping out with dog-walking duties for another week or so until I'm able to handle the pull of the leashes. It's been kinda nice not having to go out there and wait for our three dogs to do their respective duties in the yard. I thank God for family willing to walk the dogs. :)

The Friday Five (.org)

1. Do you have a car? If so, what kind of car is it?
Yep. It's a 1987 Dodge Aries, given to us at no cost by my hubby's grandmother when she received a newer one in an inheritance. We've had it five years now, and aside from a slow oil leak and a sagging cloth headliner, it's been tried-and-true for us.

2. Do you drive very often?
Not really. I did when I worked, but since I've been a homemaker, I don't really do that much anymore. I am a homebody, really.

3. What's your dream car?
Hmmmm...I love Jaguars. I also like the 1965 Ford Mustang, in cherry red, convertible. Mmmmmmm.

4. Have you ever received a ticket?
Yep. I was running late to the doctor's and crested a hill going 55 in a 25 zone. I slowed down right away, but the cop who nabbed me got me on his radar before I braked. I had to go to the small town's mayor's court and everything. $130 taken outta my hide - ouch.

5. Have you ever been in an accident?
Sure have, though never anything causing serious bodily harm, thank God.

You're reading the blog of a newly de-herniated woman. I had outpatient surgery yesterday to repair one just above my belly button. Yesterday afternoon I spent in a fog, in and out of sleep on the couch. Today....Ouch. I woke up stiff from sleeping in one position all night long (on my back, of course) and missing a dose of Tylenol #3. The second day's always the worst, they say, so I look forward to feeling better each day. The Tylenol hasn't been strong enough for the pain, so the doctor prescribed something stronger; I will probably be zonked out for a day or two, so don't be surprised if I am blogless for a bit...Or if my blog entries make no sense at all, LOL.

My mom's been a sweetie, coming over to walk the dogs for me. She's sitting across the room from me right now, reading a Stephen King book. It's nice just having someone here with me. Yes, the girl who is famous for being able to entertain herself for hours via surfing the web is glad to have her Mommy here. :) I don't feel much like writing right now, so farewell for now.

I am a little brain-dead today for some reason, so I'll start out with Promoguy's Monday Mission 2.31 and see if that gets the creative juices flowing. I was going to write about Mel Gibson's new flick Signs already, and one of the questions asks for a quick review of a movie. So I'm already half way there. :)

1. Ever considered just deleting your Blog and not doing it anymore? What prompted that and what stopped you?
I've only been blogging since May 2002, so I haven't considered closing it down just yet. I do wish more folks would leave feedback, though; I'm just a feedback kind of person and I like exchanging e-mails with folks.

2. How about a quick review of the last movie you saw?
What great timing! The latest movie I saw was Signs and I loved it. I don't want to give too much away here. I will warn you that, if you're expecting Men In Black or ID4, this is not your movie. It's more the style of a good old-fashioned suspense thriller than in-your-face sci-fi. There's a lot of story, a lot of laughs, a lot of things that go bump in the night (by far the scariest element, I thought)...But there's not a lot of aliens. I think I liked it more because of that suspense element. Graham, played by Mel Gibson, is a widowed Priest who has given up his pastorship. He is bitter at God and about life since losing his wife six months prior. A lot of the movie is about Graham's struggle and what the crop circles and alien invasion means to him personally, not just the world at large. The acting is excellent, and I mean excellent. It's so hard to give a brief review without giving too much away. I think I'll have to write a review, complete with spoilers, and just post a link to it in my blog.

3. What's your favorite gadget? Are you lusting for any new ones? Will you ever be satisified???
By far my favorite gadget (second to my PC, of course) is my Olympus C-2100uz. This camera is awesome! We just upgraded to it from an Olympus C-2040z, and we're really pleased with it. Am I lusting for new gadgets? But of course, dear reader! With the innovations bombarding us every week, how can you not have gadget lust? I view the love of technology as parallel to the love of learning; the day I quit learning is the day I die, and likewise my excitement for technology is insatiable.

4. Saturday night I played "UNO" for the first time in years, I mean it has been over 10 years since I played it. It was great fun, but it really made me want to learn how to play Backgammon again. What "table game" do you enjoy playing most with other people? Have you played it lately?
I'm a word game freak. Scrabble's my favorite, and we have a travel edition which is great for playing in bed. There's nothing like getting a great word on a Triple Word square, and using all seven letters in that word. Wooooooooo!

5. About a year ago I was obsessed with loosing weight, and I dropped pretty low before I got a handle on things (I've actually gained about 8 pounds of it back, and it is still a struggle sometimes to not try to loose it). Thankfully, I like fattening sweets and buttery popcorn too much to live like that for too long. Have you ever been obsessed with something so much that it was close to causing you physical or mental harm? If not, have you known anyone else who has?
Probably the most dangerous thing to me was the way I let my biodad manipulate my feelings. I fretted constantly about my relationship with him because, truthfully, I didn't have a relationship with him and I didn't want one. I finally got clued into the fact that he was just going to use me up and alienate me like he did his brother, sister and every friend he had out where he lives, and I decided to cut off contact with him. It's one of the best decisions I've made.

6. Did you grow up in a family or community that displayed racist or prejudice attitudes? Did it influence you in any way, either toward or away from those views? How did you manage to avoid it, or did you?
My biodad is a prejudiced man, yes. And of course that effects me; how could it not? Of course I hear the phantom racial slurs in my mind from time to time, but I am a grown up and I know from life that those mocking words are just that: phantoms. I choose to look beyond the outward stuff, because that's not what makes us people in the first place.

7. Good grief, I am starving! You got anything to eat around here?
You just missed some real kick-butt chili. It was sprinkled generously with shredded cheddar cheese and topped with a dollop of sour cream. Mmmm-mmmmm good!

BONUS: What did you tell them?
Aaaaarugh?

This week's Comment Question: What browser and version number are you using?
IE 6.0.2600 ad infinitum. ;)

The Friday Five from fridayfive.org:

1. What is your lineage? Where are your ancestors from?
Let's see, on my mom's side there's a lot of English names, as well as some Russian. On my dad's side there's German and English...I'd really have to do more looking into this for a good answer.

2. Of those countries, which would you most like to visit? England. Even if I didn't have ancestors from there, I've always wanted to visit England, especially Yorkshire.

3. Which would you least like to visit? I've never really had much of a desire to visit Germany. Nothing personal. I have this thing about being able to communicate, and I'm afraid of going to a country where I don't know the language. Thing is, I only know English. But I do know that well, at least. I'm not very cosmopolitan, LOL.

4. Do you do anything during the year to celebrate or recognize your heritage?
I love good German potato salad and sauerkraut, but I don't do anything to mark my heritage -- I'm too much of a mish-mash mutt to single any one ethnicity out.

5. Who were the first ancestors to move to your present country (parents, grandparents, etc)?
Somewhere up in the great, great, great, great...We're not Mayflower people, but we've been here a while. ;)

I found a neat personality quiz just now, thanks to a link in the Neat Net Tricks newsletter. It's the Color Quiz, and it purports to report your current emotional state by examining your choices of colors presented to you. It was actually very accurate in telling my current state of mind. I guess it makes sense...Fast food chains and marketers long ago figured out that certain colors affect people in certain ways. The person who developed this test interviewed thousands of people guaging their emotional state first, then having them rank several colors in descending order. It made sense, he said, to do the opposite then: to have people pick colors and then tell them what their choices say about their current emotional state. I think they explain it a lot better than I do -- So just check out the link, will ya?

Woooo hooooo! I got the camera today. I didn't even realize the UPS guy had dropped it off until I went to their website to check on its status. The driver had left the package in front of our garage door in the driveway, for Pete's sake. If my DH hadn't already left for work, he might have run over the box as he backed the car out of the garage. I sent feedback to UPS via their website, including a link to a picture of our house (hey, I'm visual) and asking they tell the local drivers it is not acceptable for packages to be left in the driveway by the garage. Within an hour, I had an e-mail reply apologizing for the bad experience and promising they'd forwarded the info to the local UPS hub. And within two hours after that, a man called from the local hub and left a message on our machine. He said he'd spoken to the driver and the guy told him he thought it would be the best place for us to be able to see it. He saw a small porch up in front of the house, but the item wouldn't have been any more protected there. Of course, the driver who did this was was filling in on our route for the regular guy. Ever notice how it's never the regular driver who does the screw-up? ;) Well, I'm just thankful the box didn't get smashed by our car tires, and I'm happy to have the camera a day earlier than the tracking info had indicated.

The zoom on this thing is great - equivalent to a 35mm camera's 38-380mm. Here's an example. I took these shots of our sycamore tree while standing on our patio, about 30' away from the base of the trunk. The tree is probably 75' tall, if not taller, and she's a grand old dame. :) Click the below thumbnail to enlarge.



I need to get use to a couple things, one of which is the fact that the flash is a pop-up type and does not go off unless you manually flip the little switch that makes it pop up. You have to watch the display for a flashing lightning bolt icon - that indicates a flash is needed - and either adjust your exposure or flip up the flash. Otherwise, the camera still fires, but with no flash...And the pictures turn out underexposed. The controls and menus are similar to the ones on the C-2040z we had, though, so the learning curve won't be too steep. It's mainly getting used to the zoom's various focusing ranges and that flash thingie that I need to do.

Well, today we got a call from the pound. A lady called them asking if they'd received a male beagle because her sister's beagle was lost here when she visited from Cincinnati. The pound gave her our number and when she called, Howie quizzed her a little about the dog. When she said he was a neutered male, his heart sunk. She came out to our house to see the beagle.

And she said he wasn't the same dog. Her sister's beagle is bigger than this one. Wooooo! Howie told me that, at first, he was wanting the lady to be his owner. But when she turned out not to be, he was really happy. He told her about the local radio stations' websites and the lost-and-found listings on them, and she's put ads up on both. It turns out her sister's dog wasn't lost until Saturday, which is three days after we saw Buddy. Nice to know it's definitely not the sister's dog!

Get this - an official at the dog pound told Howie the only way we could legally claim him would be if we turn him in at the pound, wait the 72-hour waiting period, then adopt him. WHY on earth would we make him live in those conditions for three days just so we could pay them a $50 adoption fee? No thanks! I know it's not their fault there are so many homeless animals, but I still wouldn't want to leave any animal there unless I had to.

Whadd ya think...Doesn't it look like they've broken each other in well? We're really attached to this little guy. He is so laid-back and...Every bit a little guy, just a happy-go-lucky little fella. He has matched Emma tumble for tumble, nip for nip, yip for yip, a worthy playmate. She really needed someone to roughhouse with, too. She and Sarah are buddies, but Sarah's no spring chicken and can only take so much from Emma before snarling a 10-second warning at her. More pics soon! ;)

Here I am doing leftovers again. These are the Sunday Stumpers, which I found at Joan's blog, aka -- are you ready for this title -- {Hairy Toes and the Lemonade Rhino}. Gotta find out about that name! :D

1) What's the most selfish thing you've ever wished for and gotten? And, was it worth it?
Wow...I think that would have to be someone I dated for a while back in high school. I was totally the pursuer, and we finally did date a brief while. But as soon as I had the quarry in my talons, it didn't interest my any more. It was not worth it, no. But it was good preparation to realize priorities in life!

2) Is it acceptable to seek a new companion/relationship/significant other while you're still in a relationship - regardless of the state of the current relationship?
Ooooh, wow. If married, definitely no. I don't see any grey areas on that one. But if dating....Hmmmmm. I think it's rotten to sneak around behind anyone's back. I wouldn't want someone to do that to me, after all. If a person's seeking other companionship, he or she needs to just be up front, get out of their current relationship, and pursue whatever it is they're looking for. It's not fair to their SO otherwise in my opinion.

3) Behavior - dictated by nature or nurture?
Both. I have friends who are identical twins, and they've seen enough nature-related traits to go with the obviously nurtured ones. But there is much that's shaped by nurture, too. The studies of twins separated at birth and raised in totally different environments always have fascinated me because they show both sides of it. My friends were raised together, so they only see glimpses of what these others have been blown away to find years later.

4) What's one of the more embarrassing moments in your dating history?
Whoooo. Being on a field trip in 7th grade with my class and having the boy I kind of liked run into the educational film we were watching at the museum exhibit and yell "SPERM!" at the top of his lungs. I could have crawled under my seat. I don't know him. I don't know him. I don't know him....LOL.

5) Red hot dogs - communist threat or patriotic symbol?
You ain't seen nuttin' 'til you've seen the ORANGE ones at this one refreshment stand we stopped at in a Tennessee state park. I mean, I know the Volunteers' color is orange, but c'mon! What is it, that southern clay??

By the way, we ordered the new digital camera on eBay in the wee hours Friday morning. It's the Olympus C-2100uz, and it is to replace the Olympus C-2040z we own now. The latter is being bought by some friends (wooo - no rolls of film to load, Amy! wink, wink). We hope to see the new one by Wednesday since the seller is sending it by UPS 3-Day service from NYC.

We'll be trading off a faster f1.8 lens for a f2.8, and we won't be gaining any megapixels since the new one is also a 2.11mp camera. However, we will be stepping up from a 3x optical zoom to a 10x optical zoom. That's equivalent to a 38mm wide - 380mm telephoto on a 35mm camera, and a better telephoto lens than the best zoom we had for the Canon Rebel G and lenses we sold on eBay in anticipation of this purchase.

One really cool thing about the C-2100uz is the image stabilization the lens has, which will let me shoot without a tripod in lower light than I normally could. Also, it has a low-light assistance light which helps the camera focus in very low light conditions, something which the C-2040z really stinks at. It also does movie clips with sound, while our old camera only did the video.

I think it's a fair trade-off, feature for feature, and I can't wait to get it so I can play with it for a few days before I have my surgery August 7! We're having some friends from Dave's Garden spend the night Friday night and eat lunch with us Saturday before they head back to Tennessee, so it will be fun having the new camera to get more candid shots from discreet distances (wicked laugh!).

Yeah, Baby! Okay, I admit my guilty pleasure...We saw Goldmember tonight with our buddy Jeff. I know, I know...Sophomoric, bathroom humor. But Mike Myers makes me howl with mirth. And the cameo appearances of various celebrities in Goldmember were great fun. Mike Myers has little competition for my yuks. Nobody but Eddie Murphy can play so many characters in one movie and get away with it. Well, okay, maybe Dana Carvey can, but I've not seen his new movie The Master of Disguise yet. Yet...

I think it would be wonderful to be an actress. I guess I am one already, but I haven't done any real gigs. I've always loved doing immitations and making up accents and characters, though. It's such a kicker to make people laugh and forget their troubles for a while. I don't think I'd enjoy the lack of privacy in a Hollywood life, though. No, I know I wouldn't. Still...Wonder what would have happened if I'd gone out there in the world and tried it...way back when...

(Insert harp music here).

I tried out for Grease in High School. I was totally unprepared for the audition (gee, some things never change, huh?) and grabbed an accompaniment tape I had, plus a little play whose title escapes me now, lo these 18 years later. I sang Sandi Patti's "Because of Who You Are", realizing as I sang it that it was truthfully beyond my highest range. What a track to choose, huh?!

The bit I read from the play was kind of fun, and quite a departure from that sweet little Sandi Patti tune. Like I said, I don't remember the play's title at all - It was just one of the paperbound playbooks the director had ready for those who, like me, were unprepared. All I remember was, the scene involved a very angry, sarcastic woman grabbing her husband's mail off the table and flipping through it to see who the letters were from. She had a comment about several of the envelopes. I really got into it, and had fun!

The director must have heard an alto voice in my screeching, and she must have thought I had the sarcastic delivery she wanted, because she chose me for the part of Rizzo. Oooh, I could just see how fun it would be playing that hard-nosed, wise-cracking, bubblegum hood!

I chickened out. I mean before the first rehearsal, even.

I don't know if it was commitment, fear of failure, fear of success....But for whatever reason, I never did it. And I'll tell you what, it's going to be one of those deathbed regrets. I've always wondered how things might have been different had I followed through and done that. My peers might have seen me for something other than the motorhead partier who was wallowing her way out of that mire and into a decent life. I might have continued on to try other theatrical stufff. I might have....Well, what's the point in wondering, right?

In college I again tried out for a play, this one being part of Romulus Linney's "Sand Mountain". I was offered one of the leads, the part of Mary. Nope, you guessed it. I didn't go through with it, either. That time I actually had a reason. I was a very gung-ho new believer at the time, seeing things very black and white, and there were some things in the play which offended me as a Christian once I read more of the play. I'd not read it through before auditioning, you see. That was silly of me, but as I recall, it was a last-minute decision to even try out. I remember how terribly I wanted to act in that play, and how excited I was go get the part...And the sick feeling I got in the pit of my stomach as I read the rest of the play and realized I had some serious inner conflicts with its contents. It's true, even now I would still turn it down -- but I wish I'd read the thing through so I wouldn't have tried out and gotten all excited over being chosen. Ugh.

I did sing in the University Chorus at campus, though, and really enjoyed that. Our director was a super lady who really taught us good methods to bring out the best in our voices. I loved the more complicated works by Bach and Mozart, which made us all mindful to work together and learn good dynamics and blending. During that time, I sang in our church's worship team and, again, loved that blending of voices. I used to do quite a bit of singing in churches and in some weddings, but it's been years. To tell the truth, I don't even want to do church music that much anymore. What I'd love to sing is big band and standards. That's my real musical love. But I digress...

It's ironic that I would have such a desire to do something with the characters, dialogues and music in my head, but be so lacking in self-discipline that I don't want to have to go to rehearsals, isn't it? I guess if I were pulling in 20-million for a movie, I might be a bit more motivated. I just don't want any part of the hard knocks it takes to get there. I read and watch biographies....Noooo way, thanks. I guess I'll just dabble in different things, make my friends laugh, sing a few songs, and remain a frustrated artist.

Last night I started an awful headache which morphed into a migraine. Noooo fun. Helpful hint: If you want the same effect as Excedrin Migraine, take 2 aspirin, 2 acetominophen, and drink a cup of strong coffee or drink a coke. As long as I keep up with this concoction today, I can function. As soon as I let it go too far, though, the headache starts sneaking back in. Ugh. It's a heck of a lot better than it was last night and this morning, though!

A bit late, here is my response to the The Friday Five, which I yoinked from Busgirlie's site:

Friday Five (.org)
Answer the following five questions in your own weblog. Make sure you leave a comment here with a link to your post or just leave your answers in this post's comments section.

1. How long have you had a weblog?
Ummmm....What's a weblog? Sorry couldn't resist. That's a question I've heard repeatedly since starting mine on Friday, May 24. Before that all my epiphanies were noted via e-mail to a few friends. Now I tell most folks to read my blog if they want to know what's in my head, LOL.

2. What was your first post about?
It was all about appeasing my pal Angie, who'd lit the blog fire beneath my butt and gotten me to do this. That first post also revealed what inanimate object I am.

3. How many changes (name, location, etc.) of your weblog have there been, if more than one?
I've always called it Gardenwife's Plot. I just realized as I typed that how the name is a double entendre. Wow. I originally called it Gardenwife's Plot in reference to a plot being a piece of land that you work and grow. However, the cool thing is that a plot is also a storyline. This is so cool -- Wish I'd done that on purpose! Okay, anyway, I started out having this hosted at Prodigy.net, our old ISP. They don't support a lot of cgi script stuff, though, and some things I wanted to do wouldn't work. So, I ended up using the domain I'd registered and had it hosted at Newfield.net -- A decision with which I am very happy.

4. What CMS (content management system) do you use? Do you like it or do you want to try something else?
I am using YACCS, part of the Rate Your Music site. I'd been trying to get signed up for a couple weeks, but due to the limited availability to new members, I always missed out. They'd accept 25 new members every 12 hours, and I never managed to get signed on. They did let me be a beta tester for their new FTP version, however, and now I'm a happy camper. The only thing on my wish list for YACCS is e-mail notification. The site's creator, Hossein Sharifi, did clue me in to a news feed service which would let me receive notifications of comment updates via pop-up windows. I'm not sure whether I'll go for that or not. Anyone know how to modify a YACCS template so it automatically spawns an e-mail to me whenever a comment's left? Purty please?

5. Do you read people who have both a journal and a weblog? Or do you prefer to read people who have all of their writing in one central place?
I'm not sure what the difference is between a journal and a weblog. To me, they're one in the same. Maybe someone can enlighten me as to the difference. I have my favorite folks' blogs in their own favorites folder, and I make my rounds almost daily. I just haven't gotten around to linking to them all yet.

Okay, your turn! :)

Buddy seems to be what he answers to, or at least notices, so that's what we call him. Not my first choice in names, but since we were saying it in a general way, why not? He slept on the bed all night, and this morning I noticed he and Emma were asleep facing each other, a tangle of paws on both short and long dog legs between them. Buddy also endeared himself to us by coming up to the head of the bed and putting his cold nose by my ear to wake me up. He had to go out. Boy, am I glad he's a conscientious little fella and woke me instead of just finding a corner of the bedroom -- or bed! -- to relieve himself.

DH called the dog pound this morning, and no one has reported any male beagles missing. Yay! There's no listings for any in the paper, either. Double-yay!

For now, we're calling him Buddy. Here he is, in all his stubby little Beagle glory. ;) Man, he has big paws for a dog his size. They're stubby and wide, just like my DH's feet.

Well, it's my birthday today. I'm 35 now, as opposed to 34.99 - LOL. I figure if little kids can round their ages up to the next half, why can't I express mine in retail terms? I shall spend my birthday afternoon at the surgeon's office, finding out whether I will have inpatient or outpatient surgery, and when, and all that good stuff.

I saw this pretty little beagle wandering around our neighborhood for two days, collarless and with no ID. Yesterday, he tried to get in the postman's truck when the man got back in it at the nearby school. He looked so sad when the truck pulled away, taking a few steps after it. Then this morning, I passed him on a fairly busy road as I was going on an errand. When I came back from the errand, he was at the corner of our street. I pulled over and opened my car door, calling him. He trotted right up and got in the car with me! :) :)

When I got home, I knocked on the door rather than just walking in with him with the dogs loose. You should have seen Howie's face when he opened the front door to find me standing there with this little fella. His face broke out into a huge grin and he said "aaaaaaaaaaaw, he's so cute!".

Howie's always wanted a beagle.

This fella's neutered already (good thing, seeing how Emma's in heat, huh?) obviously loves people and gets along with cats and dogs alike. His teeth are clean and pretty white, so he's probably a fairly young dog.

Our two curious girls overwhelmed him at first, and he came and put his paws up on my knees as if to say "help! protect me!". After the initial introductions, though, he acted as if he's lived here all his life! Howie gave him a bath to make sure he had no fleas, and he didn't see any. Emma loves to play with him, and he puts up with her rambunctiousness like a saint.

Seeing how well they all got along and afraid to leave him out loose when I was out, I put him in the huge crate with Sarah and Emma when I went to the doctor's. When I came back, they were all sound asleep and didn't stir until I clomped down the basement stairs and opened the rec room door - That's never happened before, LOL.

We're watching the lost and found ads in the newspaper and local radio stations. If no one wants him bad enough to call and place a free "lost pet" ad or hang up a few posters, they must not want him. I suspect he was dumped by someone.

I was ready to give him to my mom if nobody claims him, thinking Howie might not want a third dog. Howie said he wants to keep him if that's the case, though -- :D Yippee!!

Pictures soon......

Oh, yes...One other thing. Today our little girl became a woman. Our puppy is officially a bitch. As you can see, she doesn't look too thrilled to be wearing her sanitary belt, but the alternative to this is....unthinkable. Anyone want to take her for a week or three?



We budgeted money for her spay for August, but she surprised us. Oh, joy! No more carefree romps, Emma dear. We learned several weeks ago she has a hankering to run, so she's never out without a leash now. She's gotten loose from us twice, but it was by accident. She is NOT easy to catch when she does get loose, either. It's all a really fun, endless game for her --- Dash up to mommy, fake to the right and run left! Whip by daddy, tail held high!

The first time she got loose, my hubby came stomping into the house ticked off as could be. "It's your turn!" he intoned, "I've HAD IT. I can't catch her!" So out I went, walking through the school parking lot behind our yard. DH said she'd even been running in the middle of the road -- Oh, Lordy! Finally, though, I found her near the doghouse of a neighbor's dog, right next to the large schoolyard field. If it hadn't been for the flash of white in the moonlight, I'd never have found her.

She was silent and sneaky, watching me search and hearing my call and the rattle of her treats bag. As soon as she realized I'd found her, she began her mad dashes around me. Despite my having a bag of her treats, despite my crouching on the ground in the middle of the field, she would not come to me. She's a beautiful dog, and to see her run unchecked is to see fluid poetry in action. But not at 1:30am. Not when you're sore and tired.

Behold! Here came DH riding up on his bicycle, intending to herd the wayward puppy toward me.

What does a puppy do when she sees something she's never before encountered? Does she care that it is the wee hours of the morning? No! She barks and exclaims "what the HECK is that thing!? Ohmygosh it's big, but it could be fun!" She advances, then skitters back, then advances again, barking. It's all such great fun! Plan A is a dismal failure, so DH turns his bike toward the school's exit to our road and starts toward home.

Something I can only liken to the Pied Piper Effect occurs: Emma follows him, trotting behind the bike with her tail held high, like she's done it a thousand times. She docilly and quietly tailed him all the way up the road and right into the garage, where he nabbed her.

The next (and last) time she got loose, slipping her collar, I joined the search looking like a metro housing reject. It was that bad. I'd been doing some cooking and was just chillin' at home that afternoon. No bra. Tomato-stained white t-shirt. Shorts. Hairy legs. Messy hair.

Of course, Emma was back behind the same neighbor's house, trying to engage their English sheepdog in play. Poor Lucky, said dog, is shy and was a reluctant playmate. As soon as Emma saw me, the chase was on again. This time, she grabbed something from the ground in her mouth -- a wad of red socks from the look of it -- and pranced around carrying it like a great banner. Then she ran back to Lucky's domain. And back out again to get the sock thing and strut. I could see people moving around inside the house belonging to Lucky girl. By the time my hubby met me at the scene of the crime, the neighbor had exited his house and walked up toward us. He was smiling. This was a good sign!

Once he stooped to pet his own dog, Emma couldn't stand it. She had to run up and get attention, too. Her saving grace is her love-sponge nature, yes. Howie hooked her back into her collar and thanked the neighbor as I crossed my arms over my chest and smiled broadly, hoping my smile would be a bright decoy and distract him from the rest of me. I hope he didn't notice how trashy his dog-crazy neighbor looked, but if he did....Oh, well. :)

No more solo runs, doggie girl, especially now.

I was so touched today by the arrival of the most beautiful birthday card I've ever received, from a dear gardening friend I've yet to meet "in person". I have had a lot of pain today for some reason and was really feeling down for a while, but getting that card really perked my spirits! You just never know how some little thing like that can make such a big difference. Another happy thing was I heard from a friend with whom I've been out of touch for a while. It was such a cool drink of water to see an e-mail from her, and it was good news I read in there. So I've been blessed both by snail and e-mail this day. :)

Yesterday I had the treat of seeing the caterpillars of tiger swallowtail butterflies on a stand of Queen Anne's Lace in a friend's field. I had decided to sit and wait with Howie while the group at a cookout took a short walk to let dinner settle. Thanks to Teresa for telling me they were there and showing me just the plant where the group saw them! I was so excited to get more pictures having to do with these flying jewels. :)

The cookout I mentioned was a really nice time. Several of my hubby's coworkers are gardeners, and they decided earlier this year that each would have the others over for a cookout during the summer. So, this first cookout was held at Rick and Susan's, and we so liked just sitting back and enjoying the gardens at their place. They have some cool and unique stone sculptures, including a bench made of huge slabs of stone. They told us the stone had been carved from giant bolders; the company which sells the stone has the boulders brought into the facility on railroad cars, then slices through them with giant saws. That must really be something to see!

They put the bench in their garden in memory of a good friend who died a few years ago; he used to visit and loved to wander their property and enjoy the land. I think that's a marvelous tribute. I told Susan it reminded me of the piece Robert Fulghum wrote about a bench he saw at a cemetary. I'll find an excerpt sometime and post it here. In the meantime, you can pick a copy of the book its from up at Amazon.com for 75 cents (used).

I am so excited! Today I got a second chance at some butterfly pictures, and this time the butterfly stuck around. It wasn't the pretty black one today, but rather a tiger swallowtail. He let me get within 6" of him and take shot after shot. Those echinacea must have been awfully tasty to keep him still for so long. They pictures came out great and I'm really happy with them. Until I get them on my site, I've posted them in this journal entry at Dave's Garden. Enjoy, and feel free to poke around the other entries there. The site's my second home. :)

Emma, our greyhound-mix puppy, has a small brown splotch on the white portion of her forehead. This is not a natural splotch. When I mentioned it, Howie said "Oh, I spilled coffee on her." Yes, our dog is a carpet. I took her coffee-stained head in my hands and kissed her nose, crying "we can't have a white dog any more than we can have a white shirts, for the stains!" Poor puppy, I must wash her head.

Uh, oh....Maybe my family is right. I just learned I am 65% Internet Addict

I am pretty addicted, but there is hope. I think I'm just well connected to the internet and technology, but it's really a start of a drug-like addiction. I must act now! Unplug this computer!

Take the Internet Addict Test at fuali.com

Oh yeah? So take the test yourself! ;o)

My DH designed his own logo for his webpage. It really looks like him - I love it! It just doesn't reduce well, as you can see. If you click this thumbnail and see the full-size image, it's okay. Is this because the graphic is saved as a GIF file?

I'm beta testing YACCS's comments service. So, I'd appreciate it if you would leave a comment today.

I stayed up until nearly 7:00am today, editing photographs, working on my website, and just puttering around. I just wasn't tired, so I figured I would enjoy the night. When I finally did sleep, it was the sleep of the dead. I slept straight through until 4:00pm, and it felt wonderful. I feel no guilt for sleeping in at all, because that's the first really good night's (or day's, but who's counting) sleep I've had in weeks and my body and mind both feel refreshed. Aaaaaaaaah.

When I looked out the front window this afternoon, I saw a pretty black butterfly noshing on one of our pink delight buddleia. I dashed inside and got the camera and strode toward the door as I turned it on and set it to its macro mode. I opened the front door just in time to see that butterfly flitting toward the back yard. Still, even without a butterfly, it was overcast, but bright light and I took some shots of the perennials out front. Thunder rolled, and the sky turned very grey. Oh, God, I thought, please let us get a good rain. It was then that one of those rare and cool weather things happened; I heard the rain start pouring a ways off, then saw it come slashing down out of the sky, but it was down the hill from me. As I watched, it came rushing toward our house in a torrent, covering the yards between us like a forest fire licking through dry grass. I fled for the porch and, once inside the front door, turned to look back outside.

The butterfly alighted on the porch rail, four feet from me. And then the rain came, and he skipped away in the raindrops.

What a tease.

One last thing before I slumber: Blog Haiku. This is terrific stuff, from the beautiful and simple page design to the collaborative haiku efforts of people everywhere. Kudos for taking two art forms and combining them, taking them to the next level -- oh-so-much-better than peanut butter and chocolate. Well, close, anyway. And that's really something coming from this girl. ;)

Well, it was bound to happen. I stumbled upon a TechTV fan site: TechTVTechies.com, and I took a quiz which tells me which Screensaver I am. Screensaver as in person on TechTV's "The Screensavers". And the drumroll, please....

Take the
Which
Screen Saver are you? quiz.

It's the quiz with oomph!

Created by Rachel (oomph)

and John (woobyslj)

Actually...All except for the getting sympathy from women part, it's pretty accurate, LOL. I *love* TechTV. The geeks on that channel are brains, but also great at improv. "The Screensavers" is our favorite show -- Those guys make my husband and I laugh aloud, every show.

Having read Big White Guy's "Squidgy Pickle Incident", I was doubly amused when I found something aberrant in my pickle jar. There I was, minding my own business, getting read to top off a lovely cheese and Miracle Whip sandiwich with a few bread and butter chips.I unscrewed the lid on a new jar. With my fork hovering over the contents, I saw it. A smiley face. In a pickle slice.

It was just too weird. There they were: two little round eyes, a perfectly-centered nose, and....AND...A crescent shaped mouth. I laughed aloud (something actually not that unusual for me). There was a split second where I just knew I should take a picture of that pickle. But no, I didn't. I ate the evidence with my sandwich. And it was good. Of course, I called my husband at work and said, "I found your pickle", thinking he'd done it as a prank. He is a prankster, after all. But he had no idea what I was talking about.

Then, I turned to my friend Pangie and asked her if she'd messed with the pickles last time she was over at our house. After all, she is known to mess with my desktop wallpaper. She replied that, though it did sound like something she would do, no. I even called my mother and asked her if she and dad had pulled a joke on us. No. Was it at the factory, then, that someone gave a pickle slice its happy countenance?


Weirdness continued, weeks later. I opened another jar of pickles - this jar being dill pickles - and saw another face. This one, unlike the first, appeared surprised. It had eyes, a nose, and a round mouth. Triumphantly, I marched into the office to show my husband. "Those are holes from the seeds," he declared. And then he proceeded to snatch that puppy from my hand and eat it. Again, no evidence! But I swear it was a face.

I can see it now: "Woman sees face of Jesus in Dill Pickle Slice" Yeah, THEN they'll all believe me.

Breaking news from the Gosh, I Need A Life department:

I just realized today that I've come to recognize the various chewing sounds the dogs make. Emma, especially, tends to lay on the floor behind my recliner and chew whatever's close at hand. The Nylabones are very hard plastic (AND bacon flavored, might I add), and they make an appropriately irritating tooth-on-bone scraping sound when being gnawed. Rope, the dogs' beloved rope bone, squeaks as the fibers are pulled between Emma's teeth. Hot Dog Squeaky toy is a rubber squeaky toy, so that's not hard to figure out. Oh....And when Rabbit is treated for his numerous dog-induced injuries and sent back to the front lines, well, he's easy to discern thanks to the squeakers embedded his body.

The wisdom of this last toy was obvious after Emma systematically destroyed three other fuzzy squeaky toys. Rabbit has very long legs and ears, providing an excellent flop factor, as I dubbed it. He can be shaken roughly by any appendage or ear and he has a suitable dead-animal flop the dogs both seem to enjoy. (How do they fling their heads and necks around like that without getting a major dislocation, anyway!?) The second reason Rabbit was an exellent choice is the three separate squeakers in his body: one in his ample midsection, and one each in one foot and one hand. The advantage of this redundancy? Even if the dogs dismember this fella, they still have at least three squeaky toys, nomatter how odd the parts look when separated from the whole.

Any other sound - especially that which sounds like plastic wrap, tinfoil, plastic yogurt cups, tuna cans or, worse, like something too small to produce anything but lip-smacking sounds - is cause for immediate investigation. A twist tie or paperclip, though fun, can be deadly.

I found out from my second doctor's appointment that the discrepancy in my ultrasound versus the CT-scan is almost surely due to adhesions (scar tissue) that have formed at the site of a 1992 surgery. An ultrasound does not show them, but a CT-scan does. It's nice to know my pain is validated -- this has been going on for more than two years and getting worse, and it hasn't just been my imagination or low pain tolerance.

Anyway, I go back to see the surgeon on July 25, and by then this OB/GYN will have spoken with him and discussed what the best course of action will be for me. I wonder now if the surgeon will be able to do the surgery as outpatient. The hernia is up high, just above my belly button, but the adhesions are very low in my abdomen and in my pelvic area. So....I guess I just wait and find that out next Friday. It's my birthday, incidently, and I just can't wait to sit in a waiting room on my birthday, LOL. ;) But I do feel relieved after seeing the OB/GYN this week and hearing what she said.

I have to say, I have the best husband in the world, too. He went with me to the OB/GYN's office, not only to the waiting room, but to the exam room as well. I was really nervous and didn't know what to expect to hear, so he was willing to brave the estrogen-laden environs and be my ever-lovin' support. His only complaint was the glaringly obvious lack of mens magazines. He forgot to bring his computer geek magazines with him, so he instead perused the titles on the tables in the waiting room.

There were oodles of ladies' magazines strewn about on the tables: Child, Parent, Town & Country, Working Mother, Fit Pregnancy...But not an Outdoor Life or Car & Driver to be found! Not even a People Magazine, that staple of doctor office waiting rooms everywhere! What is UP with that? Surely a few men darken their doorstep every week, and why shouldn't they have something to occupy their minds while conversations around them drift toward things like When was your last period? How long did you bleed? How heavy was the flow? and other frank discussions of feminine hygiene and parts.

My man really did make a sacrafice. ;)

Whew, okay, now the date header is working. I messed up the blogger button and will have to copy that code back into my template, though. In the meantime there's a link, at least. And still have to get the comments working. Anyone recommend a good comments service or script that's easy to use? I'm using enetation.com's service now, but I'd really prefer something which would e-mail the comments to me as they come in. Drop me an e-mail if you have any suggestions.

The date headers from blogger are not working right....Still working on them. And I need to get comments running again. When I do, will ya make it worth my while and leave a comment? ;)

Well, it's getting there, this page. I was bashing my head against the keyboard trying to figure out how to add a column to this page using HTML, when it occurred to me: I own FrontPage 2000. D'Oh! I know it adds all its own junk, but I found I could still just copy the blog template into the HTML section of a new page in FrontPage, then go to the "Normal" tab and fiddle to my heart's content in WSYIWYG, then toggle over to "Preview" tab and check it out. When things looked right, I'd just toggle back over to the "HTML" tab, copy the code, and paste it back in my blogger template. Voila! It worketh! And with no FrontPage extensions. I am a very happy camper. :) Now I need to figure out this comments stuff.

No, you're not going crazy. Well, okay, I have no way of knowing that, actually. But you're not imagining things if you think my blog is transforming before your very eyes. I've been tweaking a template I found at blogskins.com and having some trouble getting my table to be three columns. I want a column in the black space to the right of this entry. Aaaaaaargh. My favorite tech support gal is away from the computer for a while, so I'm muddling through this myself. No comments working yet, either. So e-mail me if you want to say hi or leave a comment. :)

I see another doctor tomorrow to try and figure out what's causing the pain I've been having. I'm ready to just get things moving - If I have to be admitted for exploratory surgery, so be it. If I don't, then I'm ready to have the outpatient hernia repair done. I just know I am really tired of waiting; this in-limbo feeling is yucky.

Clueless at the Movies

My DH and I went to see a movie with our friend Jeff tonight. Our intention was to see Bourne Identity. We bought tickets for that, walked in the cineplex, and managed to wander cluelessly into the wrong theater! What we saw was Minority Report, which was excellent. I saw a preview of this movie months ago in a market research survey I took for Greenfield Online and thought it looked really interesting, and it proved to be so. The basic premise is three people, known as precogs (as in precognitives), see murders which are going to occur in the future. Technology allows the police to view the thoughts of the precogs in audiovisual form, where they search the images for clues as to where the murder is going to take place. They then dispatch cops to prevent the murder, and the would-be killer is arrested for intending to murder. They precogs are never wrong. Right?

I won't give anything away. There were a couple of inconsistencies, but they were far outweighed by a good, complicated plot and great acting. There's also a scene which I really loved, being an avid gardener. Remember Little Shop of Horrors? Well, that ol' boy has nothing on this one lady's work. Anyway, no spoilers here. Just suffice it to say we walked out of that theater so psyched and talking about it!

Walking into the wrong theater was one of the best mistakes we've ever made. :)

I'm feeling blue today for a few reasons. I can't really go into details, but one good thing has come of it. I realize I need to culture my relationship - my friendship, really - with God more. Though I am a social person and get along well with people (nobody's a stranger, you know the type), I don't have many really close friends. I have a pretty small circle of people with whom I feel really comfortable and with whom I want to spend my time. It isn't that I dislike others so much as this:

In a nutshell, I appear to be really outgoing, and I am. I just don't let people in very easily.

The thing is, though, I depend on the people in my life too much. God wants me to get to know Him, but I tend to gravitate toward my (for lack of a better word) "earthly" friends instead of God. Nurturing human friendships and having a vital relationship with God is great, but not one at the exclusion of the other. So when my happy norm of friendships is upset - be it by absence, sickness, you name it - I am left twiddling my thumbs and feeling bereft. I don't know what to do with myself! God wants to fill that gap, I know. But I have such a hard time really trusting Him with my heart sometimes.

If you've read my entries here, you know my relationship with my "absentee father", is not good, and I have no good father memories associated with him. So it's hard to trust God as Father. It's hard for me to really trust people, too, but people are just so much easier, in a way. You can look 'em in the eyes, see their expressions, hold their hands, hug 'em, and pat 'em on the back. Even my good friends from the Internet - many of which I may never meet face-to-face, are often more real to me than God. I can chat with them in word or type through this marvelous network tying the globe together. But God is so "out there" to this believer most of the time. I know there's the Bible, but even it just feels like a one-way conversation to me when I'm down like this. People give me the two-way communication I thrive on; but I need that with my Maker, too.

I am a Christian, and I've seen God work in my life. I have no doubt He's real, but I just wish He were more real to me. I know the only way to get to know people is to spend time with them and learn about them...I need to get past what keeps me from doing that with God. He already knows me, after all. It's not like I'm apt to say something inappropriate or shocking to Him. I need that communion with Him to sustain me.

I just realized last night that an older version of my blog was still at the main gardenwife.com page. That made things kind of confusing, considering those entries quit prior to July 4th! That's remedied now that I have a basic splash page up. Hope it didn't make your brain hurt too much in the meantime. ;)

This evening I caught up on a little blog reading at Bus Girlie's site, and one of her entries really threw me for a loop. It isn't that anything she wrote ticked me off, offended my sensibilities or made me want to write my congressman about something. Actually, she describes driving past a really bad auto wreck and mentions how the family members must be wondering where the people are.

In 1989, the year I was a senior at the local tech college and didn't yet have a car, my grandparents drove me to campus in the mornings and picked me up in the afternoons. One afternoon, they were late in arriving. For my chronically early grandpa who couldn't stand being made to wait, this was really unusual. I stood out in the May sunshine, glancing at my watch every so often, and waited. Finally a friend on his way home asked if I wanted a ride.

We drove toward my town, and on the way we looked down off the expressway to a sidestreet below and noticed a car wreck. By the time we got home and my mom's landlord came running out to tell me I needed to get to the hospital, I knew the feeling I'd had was right on. That mangled piece of metal was my grandparents' car. I hadn't recognized it when I saw it by the side of the road, surrounded by EMT's and squads. Maybe I didn't want to recognize it.

Shirdan drove me to the hospital. He was driving stickshift, but held my hand at the same time; I can still feel his warm hand when I let myself remember that day. We arrived at the ER and I walked around until someone noticed my questioning look -- doubtless a familiar look there -- and took me aside. Again the touch. Only this time it came in the form of a little grey-haired ER nurse. As I cried out "Where are they? Where is my grandma?", that little nurse took my hand.

She said, "Honey, it was a really bad car wreck. Your grandma was hurt really, really bad.....She didn't make it." All the while patting my hand. At the time I don't think I even felt her touch. But I remember it now, over a decade later.

My mother, who'd received word separately, was there, too. I don't remember who got there first. I remember clinging to her and crying, some of the few tears I shed during the whole ordeal. Grandpa was hurt, but would make it. I can't imagine the anguish that must have pierced his painkiller-induced grogginess! His wife was dead! He was obviously in pain, but he made his (and her wishes) clear when he uttered two words: "No wake".

They ER was ill-equipped to handle his injuries, so he was sent to a hospital in Columbus. My mother and I followed the ambulance, ambulance chasers in a somber sense, and arrived a few minutes after the squad brought him in. And again we waited. Another ray of light appeared in the form of my friend Rosa. She appeared and enveloped me in a big, squishy Rosa hug. Thank God for full-figured mamma types. :) Again the touch. This time in the form of Rosa brushing my hair. Right there in the ER, she got out a hairbrush and brushed my hair. She and I have lost touch through the years, but I vividly remember that tenderness.

Grief is such a strange thing. My grandpa had to stay in the hospital for quite some time, and missed grandma's funeral as a result. Mom and I, propelled by shock I suppose, were the most "together" at the funeral home. We went around comforting others. Grandma was an English teacher, and active in her church's ministry with developmentally disabled adults, and the calling hours preceding the funeral saw many unfamiliar faces filing through the room. All of them had been touched by her. But still we walked and ministered and shared good memories. I still don't know if it was shock or if it was just God's comfort. I suppose they're equal in most ways.

I hardly cried. Relatives converged on my grandparent's house to gather and reminisce and take care of "business". But grandpa was still in the hospital, so being there in that house with all those people not normally there -- that was surreal and awful. One day during all of this, I retreated to the woods which abutted my grandparents' property. There, in my familiar and safe getaway, a bed of pine needles in a pine grove, I sat cross-legged in the softness of that spring day and howled out my grief. It was so raw.

But then I was done for a while. My teachers at college were all very understanding, especially my accounting teacher. Alex Roletta is his name, and his wife Lois and he used to drink coffee and talk with my grandparents at the doughnut shop. Again the touch. His eyes were so sad and sincere when he spoke his condolences to me. You don't have to touch someone physically to touch her heart.

Grandpa lived until 1990, as I recall. He tried to be brave and keep some normal routines in his life, but it was hollow and meaningless without her. It was for all of us. They had a big picture window in their livingroom, and as far back as I could remember, they'd stand with their arms around one another waving to us as we backed out of the driveway to leave after a visit. After her death, we'd pull in the driveway to see a different inner world at that house, with my grandpa slumped in his recliner watching TV or dozing. I was young and selfish, hurting and confused about things of my own, and couldn't face the rawness of the pain there, so I avoided the house. I feel terrible about that to this day, even though I know why I did it.

It wasn't all doom and gloom, but there was a shadow cast over everything. He came to my graduation, though. He beamed, so proud. I know he was thinking of how proud my grandma would have been. We started going to restaurants for holiday dinners. It was painful trying to be cheerful on those days. I think all of us would have rather just stayed home and denied the holiday was even there. It just felt so empty.

When he was in the hospital later, with congestive heart failure, I visited him. I'd just sit and read while he dozed or watched TV. Again the touch. This time, it was just the action of being present that touched. My mom told me later how he loved how I'd just sit and be there. He hated small talk, so that's the best gift anyone could give him.

Writing this is so painful; I've never actually thought about it and put it down in writing. I've related bits and pieces to those close to me, but never the whole story and the incredible import of the little things which transpired over its course. I am saddened to think they never got to meet my wonderful husband or my step-dad. Tears did not come easy to me then. Today, especially as I write this, they flow freely when my heart is touched.

But there are many gifts I carry with me to this day. I love nature, especially birds. I love to read -- I have to read. I am excited about learning. Oh, when I think of the fun they both would have had on the web...Once they got over the technology of it, they'd have loved it. Okay, now I'm smiling again, and I think it's a good place to stop.

Wooooooooooooooooo! The camera sold right away today with Buy It Now on eBay, and the lady paid for it right away with PayPal. I am so thankful! Our friends are buying the Olympus we have now, and can pay us Friday. So...Now we're shopping for the Olympus C-2100uz. We can't afford to buy one brand new unless it's on a really great sale somewhere, so we're looking at factory refurbished units. The warranty will only be 90 days from Olympus on them, but we feel pretty comfortable with that. I love shopping online for stuff, so this is great. I like digging around for the best vendor coupons and stuff. Yippee!!

By the way, here's a shameless plug. Hey, it's my blog, so I'm allowed! ;) I'm selling a Canon Rebel G 35mm camera and setup, complete with three lenses, a bag, some filters, the original manual, plus a second book. I'll probably post a link here soon, soon as I get it listed. Check out eBay and search for me by username. I'll give ya one guess what name I use there. Hint: It's in the title of my blog. And I don't go by Plot.

Added: One auction, comin' right up! Please spread the word if you know anyone who's camera shopping and wants an outfit in near perfect condition, and from a heck of a nice couple to boot. ;)

One Surgery, Comin' Right Up....And Plants Galore

I've not heard anything back about the CT-scan. I suppose no news is good news? I should have called the surgeon's office today and checked, but a friend called and came by unexpectedly and I forgot all about making that call. I guess I'll have to call tomorrow - either that or be a geek and fax the office tonight asking they call me. Hmmmm...I like that idea better.

A friend from church who had hernia surgery has been dealing with complications. I didn't know this until I read her e-mail Sunday night. She's had fluid building up and has had to go to the surgeon's office multiple times in the last three weeks to have it drained. How awful for her! She may end up in the outpatient surgery clinic the same day as me if she has to have a drain put in. Poor gal.

Oh, me oh my. I wasn't really nervous about my own impending surgery until today. On the one hand, I want to feel better, and I know this thing isn't going to just mend on its own, thankyouveddymuch. But I don't relish surgery and recovery and all that. Yuck-O. I've not looked up the procedure online yet; I'm not sure if I want to research this procedure before Wednesday. It's sometimes easier going into this stuff just a little blind when it's not a serious operation/condition and when you trust the surgeon, I think. I sure don't want to see pictures!

One GREAT thing today, though: My friend Bev (a friend I made through the master gardener program) came by at my urging and took home a bunch of perennials. DH and I bought oodles of them in mid-April at an annual 25-cent perennial sale and then didn't get most of them planted. Next time, we will have the beds prepared before we buy plants or grow any from seed. She walked away a happy lady with lots of new plant babies, and watching her depart, I felt a huge burden lifted from my shoulders. There's a few left still needing homes, but nothing like there was before. Some of 'em I might pot up into gallon pots where they'll stay until we can plant them in the fall. It's just really been bothering me to see all these poor plants in their pots out back. I'd been fairly realistic and potted most of them up into bigger containers so they would have a little relief and room to grow -- plus not dry out so quickly -- but there they still sat. And when this hot weather hit, I could see it was a lose-lose situation having them drooping there in the heat. Aaaaargh - never again!

Note to self: If you have the beds ready BEFORE getting any plants next season, all you'll have to do is dig teeeeeny little holes and plant the seedlings right then. You won't have to worry and watch them languish in pots all over the patio while you see the weeks slip by with no new flowerbeds in sight.

I had my CT-scan, along with the standard pre-surgery tests, Tuesday. After rushing around madly to get there on time for my 9:30am appointment, I got there only to learn they were running "about a half hour behind". Okay, I thought, that's not too bad as far as doctor's office delays go. A lady brought out a quart of barium and told me to drink it at 10:00am. I asked if it would be okay for me to run over to the other area labs and get my other tests out of the way while I waited for the test, and she said that would be fine. She asked I be back by 11:00am.

Shaking the quart of milky white barium in its plastic bottle, I went out to the car and headed over to another local lab. Ignoring the straw, I just took the lid off the jar and chugged the stuff down. It wasn't as bad as I'd expected; it's changed since the last time I drank it in the mid-1980's. Now it's flavored something akin to strawberry, but not quite strawberry. Still, I didn't want to sip the stuff leisurely. I ran my errands and left vials of blood and EKG printouts in my wake, and got back to the first lab by 11:00am. Great timing, thought I.

I waited. And waited. Finally, at 12:15pm, they took me back and gave me the chest X-ray, getting that out of the way. Then I was sent back out to the waiting room to wait some more. They did have this going for them: The offices and waiting rooms are beautiful and have very comfortable furniture in them. And I had my Dean Koontz book to read. Without it, I would have been stuck reading really old issues of magazines.

Speaking of magazines, when I was waiting at the other lab the other lab, a 60-ish fellow walked into the waiting room. He glanced down at the table of magazines and commented, "They must only see women here." I looked over and laughed when I saw the rows of neatly arranged Women's Day magazines covering the table. That's all there were. I picked one up and said, "Oh, c'mon, here's one with an article about grilling That's a guy thing, right?" He and I then discussed Martha Stewart. There's advantages to being a person who loves to talk to strangers - it sure passes the time!

Back to the CT-scan. After my chest X-ray, barium lady came back with another quart of the good stuff and asked me to drink half of it. Awwww, only half? I complied, wishing it were a nice, icy-cold Coke. No luck. I learned I not only got to enjoy the chalky goodness of barium, but also get an injection of dye! This I was not expecting and I had done well not to faint when my bloodwork was done an hour earlier.

*SIGH* To her credit, the lady doing the CT-scan, Callen, was so sweet and gentle. She kept asking me how I felt and explained everything so I'd know what to expect. She asked if I'd like a cool cloth for my head, and I told what I couldn't wait for was a Biggie Coke (no food or water after midnight, remember). She was such a nurturer!

She left the room for a bit, and when she came back in, she said, "I know you said you wanted a Coke, but would a Pepsi be okay? I brought you a present!" She handed me a wonderful can of Pepsi, condensation glistening on its surface. There was also a wide piece of surgical tape around it with a note: "KB, have a better day!" and a smiley face (she had my name spelled out). I loved that woman then and there. :) When I left, I gave her a big hug, and she said she loved it when patients were huggers. It just made my day - what a sweetheart. I walked out of there at 1:10pm, hours later than I'd expected, but that gal had me smiling.

Fwoooooooooooooo.

All this to say, you just never know how some small kindness will affect those around you. Dear Reader, have a better day.

Normally, I don't make it a practice to reply to spam. I mean, what's the point? It just lets the spammer know they've reached a human being at the end of the line and that only results in more spam. But since I'm getting ready to close down the e-mail address which received the spam, I felt an uncanny freedom to reply. So I did. The spam, which I'll include here, is a long one from someone claiming to be clarivoyant and to have received my name and e-mail address from when I answered an ad on twistedhumor.com one time. I can tell you, the spam I received from twistedhumor.com, even after my "officially" unsubscribing after finding their newsletter pretty offensive, was really something. It was just non-stop! Anyway, what follows is this chick's psychic spam and the reply I sent back. If I get any reply from her, I'll post it here, too.

K, please forgive me for writing such a long letter, but I sincerely believe that what you are about to read can be of great benefit to you. You are receiving this letter because you responded to my advertisement on twistedhumor.com If you responded in error, or wish to be removed, simply hit reply and type remove in the subject line.

My name is Cheryl Jones, and although we don't know each other yet, we do have a common bond. Since birth, I've been blessed with a gift from God called clairvoyance, which essentially means that I can connect with the energy of others from a distance and read into their past, present, and future, and provide valuable insight and professional advice. I have and continue to help countless people worldwide every day in dealing with relationship and financial issues.

First, I must tell you upfront that no one can magically make your problems disappear, issue spells hexes or curses, or anything of that nature. If you gain anything from this letter, PLEASE, do not send money to anyone professing they can do this, or anything else that seems too good to be true.

Being born clairvoyant was, and still is a challenging life. I too have had my fair share of troubled relationships in the past and know exactly what you are going through. When it comes down to dealing with life's everyday issues, I'm a woman just like any other. I suffer through hard times, wondering, "Why me?, How in the world am I going to get through this mess? Is the man I'm with really right for me? Is he faithful?, What should I do?"

Knowing how the gift of clairvoyance can help answer these questions, I too sought the help of others who professed to have this gift. Unfortunately, as you are probably aware, many are frauds. I too was promised miracles, only yet again to find myself with a broken heart and empty wallet.

After witnessing first hand all the false promises made, hyped up T.V. commercials, magazine ads and web sites, I swore up and down that my gift would be used to benefit a few select individuals who really wanted and needed my help, as it was intended. When you call for a reading, you will always speak with me personally. I am not part of a network, or in a group of people sitting around a conference table answering telephones reading pre-written scripts.

I know it's extremely convincing to hear that your loved one can magically be reunited with you, someone can cast a spell to draw anyone to you, or that winning lottery numbers can be dropped in your lap tomorrow, but think about it: Would anyone who could legitimately do this be willing to share this information? If so, it would have been so widespread by now that everyone alive today would be filthy rich and living in total bliss with the partner of their dreams. You and I both know how far-fetched this sounds.

Okay K, so now you're probably sitting there wondering if all this is not possible, than why is a clairvoyant stranger writing me and saying that my life could change forever by picking up the telephone?

The truth is simple. Only you have the power to take action and improve your life. Only you can do what it takes to repair a damaged relationship or move on and find an ideal partner.

As a professional in this business and having been in your shoes countless times, I share your frustration and can provide a real service that guarantees accurate results, because I have your best intentions in mind. Once we speak, I will clearly see your current circumstances and see what your future holds based on what actions you take or overlook. This vital information will empower you to make decisions leading to optimal results. Here are just a few questions you may have which I know I can be of help with:

*How does the person I'm with really feel about me?
*Is he/she being faithful?
*Would it be in my best interests to end this relationship?
*Will someone new be entering my life?
*Do you see children or others in my future?
*Will my financial situation change?
*Do you see me at a better or different job soon?
*What should I do, right now, to get the results I desire?

Revealing accurate information concerning current and future relationships has been my forte since I first discovered this gift. Sometimes, answers to questions you may not ask about, such as financial matters, pop up anyway. You may even be shocked at some of the secrets we discover!

Are you stuck in a dead-end relationship, dead-end job, or just tired of being alone waiting for that special someone to show up? Why not stack the deck in your favor, right now, and find out exactly what you need to do to be on the best path your life has to offer?

Once we speak, you'll instantly realize that I am a genuine compassionate woman with a remarkable ability to help you. In a matter of thirty minutes, I'll provide insight and specific information to you so profound and powerful that I guarantee you will want to save my phone number for the future or pass it on to friends.

Since I am extremely proficient at what I do, I can tell you that a call typically lasts 30-40 minutes, sometimes longer. Regardless, I charge one flat rate of $77 for my service, as I cannot do an accurate reading if you are focused on how high the charge will be during the call. Please note that I can only accept MasterCard, Visa, or Discover for payment.

Now I've taken the first step and reached out to contact you, but the final decision is yours. Within a matter of hours you could be in possession of vital information leading to better times ahead, or this information can go undiscovered. The choice is yours.

I truly hope that you have no doubts about me and will take action and call me today at (###) ###-####. If you like, you may leave your contact information at the following link and I'll call you within 24 hours to schedule an appointment: http://www.###.com. Either way, remember, I'm here to help you when you need it.

Your Friend,
Cheryl Jones
(###) ###-####
VISA/MC/DISCOVER ONLY

P.S. Remember, I work alone, so if you get my voice mail when calling, please be sure to leave your name and telephone number so that I may call you back promptly.

Weak with laughter here. Okay, now here's my reply:

Greetings, Cheryl! :)

Well, if you are clarivoyant, you must realize that

(1) I did NOT respond to any ad on twistedhumor.com

(b) I am not at all interested in your spam any more than I was interested in twistedhumor's relentless mailings following my request to unsubscribe

(three) The e-mail address to which you sent this spam is soon to be permanently closed, so it matters little to me whether you bombard me with more junk because it will be bouncing right back to ya.

Just know that this is being fowarded to the government's UTC address and to every abuse address I can find regarding your ISP and those through whom your message bounced on its way to me. Being clarivoyant, though, I'm sure you surmised this already.

Thanks, and happy future readings,
You-know-who

Many, many thanks to Tom Dye for his assistance and hosting prowess. Check out his site at Newfield.Net. Goofy Angie documented the migration of Gardenwife's Plot from my old spot to Gardenwife.com yesterday. Silly girl.

I have my own website now, hosted officially and everything --- WOOOOO!!!

WAAAAAAAAAAH!!

Is it already over? *sigh* We had the BEST time down in Tennessee with our DG friends. There were 27 Dave's Garden subscribers down there, and by the time all the spouses, significant others, kids and friends were included, the count was around 72, I believe! There were liberal doses of hugs, lots of laughs, and -- holy COW -- a lot of plants traded. Howie and I tent camped, and we learned the tent sites were quite a ways away from the RV spots and main "civilization". At first, we didn't like that (especially considering the shower house was that far), but in the end we found it was nice because it gave us the chance to get away from the crowd a bit and greet each morning at our own (very slow) pace.

The campsite was sheltered (if you can call it sheltered) by some trees which attracted some huge emerald beetles. They kept their activities up in the top part of the trees, thank goodness. The few we saw were, ummmm, otherwise occupied (read: mating). We enjoyed being serenaded by a mockingbird, both day and night. Horseshoe counted sixteen songs coming from it one time -- just amazing. I'm not sure if I'd enjoy having one sitting outside my window every night, but it was fun for a couple days. We also enjoyed freshly brewed coffee with Horseshoe each morning, courtesy of Shoe and his cast-iron dutch oven. Seeing Shoe and his daughter enjoying each others' company like that made me wistful; I think it's wonderful they have a good relationship and have been able to enjoy a week's camping together like that. I bet mamma's going to be glad to see them back, though!

There's just so much to tell about this weekend, I don't know how to write it all down. The weekend went way too fast, just like they always do. I can't believe it's over, but it is. DH and I left Tennessee about 1:00pm and pulled in at home around 10:15pm. Unlike the ride down, which was lovely and cool because we drove overnight, the trip home was horribly hot and sticky because we drove home in the heat of the day. Our poor puppies were sacked out flat in the back seat, panting hard and looking pretty listless. We stopped often, gave them water (and even Gatorade at one point!) and let them (and us) stretch. But, oh, how interminable that drive seemed!