It's a small bloggie world!

I got a nice "blog-buddy" surprise today.

It all started last summer when I was following the blog of ex-New Yorker Mitch Block at Mitchell is Moving. He posted pictures of the frequent religious parades passing his apartment in Sevilla, Spain. At that same time, I was following the blog of Sharon Wallace at The Odd Essay. Sharon and her husband were in Costa Rica and she posted pictures of the religious parade in the little village near where she was staying. I was struck by both the similarities and stark contrasts of the events.

I commented on Sharon's blog that she should take a look at Mitch's blog. After Sharon became acquainted with Mitch's Seville, she decided that she really wanted to visit there. The upshot is that Sharon and her husband have just arrived in Seville and met up with Mitch. She posted pictures on her blog today.

Last January, Mitch had posted pictures of laborers harvesting all of the Seville oranges from the trees that line the city streets. This triggered my memory of reading about Seville oranges on the blog of a sweet English lady at Barbara Blundell's Blog  the previous January. She was waiting for the Seville oranges to arrive at the green grocer so she could make her annual supply of orange marmalade. She said the season was very short so she had to rush to get them before they were gone from her little village store.

 

                   (All photos from Google images)
It's such great fun getting to learn about unique people all over the world and making these connections!

A major holiday approaches

We never actually celebrate Christmas on the 25th. With several nurses and a policeman in the family plus in-law obligations to reconcile, it just doesn't work out. It hasn't dampened our fun however.

This year, we'll meet halfway between the two farthest points in the town where my youngest daughter lives. She has reserved the fully-equipped community room in the Assisted Living Facility where she works. This year we are having a non-traditional menu and going Mexican. We're having tacos, enchiladas, refried beans, rice and lots of accoutrements. I'm calling it our Mexicano Navidad.

I've got all my calendars bought so now I have to wrap them. When we get together for Christmas, the adults no longer trade gifts as it got to be too expensive. We each bring a $15 gift and then play a dice game. After all the gifts have been won, we continue playing so the gifts won are up for grabs. Anyone can take away your gift and give you theirs. A popular gift may change hands many times, so it gets to be lots of fun.

      All the cooking and shopping does tire a person out!

The silence of departed children

Yesterday, I took the kids back to their homes--well half-way, anyhow. I met my daughter (Allen's mom and the girl's grandma) at a Dairy Queen off the interstate and transferred them back to her. After having lunch, we said our goodbyes.

I admit I headed back home with mixed feelings. It's always such fun doing things with them and interacting with them. I get them just one week a year and each year they're a little older and their personalities are more developed. Kristie loves to cook and set the table. Kylah loves art and computer games and Karley, the youngest is a regular chatty Kathy. And, of course, they all love shopping and movies.

Every morning they slept late so I would get up and take my newspaper, coffee and the cats out on the patio. Karley, age 7, would wake up first, get dressed and pop out to join me. I got a bang out of the way she would talk non-stop. Karley had a hard time learning to talk but she is making up for lost time now. One morning, she told me she had gone into the room where her teenage Uncle Allen was sleeping. She told me, "I was watching him sleep and he is just adorable!"

I laughed out loud!

Allen is so cool and every inch the doting uncle. He is always watching out for them and guiding them, but is never cross or critical. They are so very lucky to have him in their life.

It was really amusing to hear Kristie and Kylah lecture each other over some supposed rudeness with, "That is inappropriate!"

On the plus side: no more macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, sloppy joes, tacos or chicken strips! Also, no more Disney kid's channel.

I sent them home with some baby hen-and-chicks to grow. They each got a drawing pad and a journal to write in. I found a treasure trove of stampers at the Unique Thrift store for a fraction of their cost and they they had a lot fun with them. Allen assembled a model Star Trek vessel and he got a copy of "The Hobbit" to read before the new movie comes out. He was an avid Harry Potter fan.

Anyway, good bye kids for another year. It was loads of fun and hard work, but I'm looking forward to doing it again next year!

                               Is it safe to come out now?

Another True Thing (When I got shot at)

Back in 1959, my  husband had a job interview in Duluth, Minnesota. Duluth is a port city on the western side of Lake Superior. There's a lot of iron ore and grain shipping traffic going out and coal coming in through the harbor.

I had never been to Duluth so it was a really big deal to travel the 300 miles and spend a night in an hotel. We arrived in the early evening and drove around sight-seeing. One of the iconic sights in Duluth is the Aerial Lift Bridge. It's unique because it's constructed so the entire roadbed is raised to allow ocean-going vessels to pass underneath.

 We drove across to the residential side of the bridge and turned around to head back. Just as we started across the bridge, we saw a man come running up behind us shouting and waving a gun. Then he started firing the gun at a man running up ahead of us. It wasn't until the man ahead turned around and started firing back at his pursuer that we realized we were in the middle of a gun battle. The bullets were ricocheting off the bridge girders around us.

We sped up and went to the other side and parked near other witnesses. The cops showed up soon after. By then, the man who was being chased had gotten away. The pursuer, who was barefoot, was out of breath and very angry as he told the cops what happened.

The victim owned a vending machine business and had made his collections for the day. He brought them home, kicked off his shoes and lay down on the sofa to take a nap. He woke to find the robber standing over him with a gun. As soon as the robber fled with the money, the victim grabbed his own gun and went after him.

The cops took our statement and we left. Afterward, we went to a bar to talk about it with other folks. We bought a copy of the local newspaper the next morning, but the robber hadn't been caught.

In retrospect, it seemed like the entire event was merely a part of the whole trip experience. We just went back home and left it back in Duluth. As it turned out, the job offered didn't pay a high-enough salary that the move would be worth it. So, I just filed it away in my memory as the only time I have been shot at.

 
(My son is a "luthier" who repairs violins and string instruments. He once attended a small convention of luthiers in Duluth. He told me afterward, "I was the Lutheran luthier in Duluth."  He loves wordplay like that.)

Now that I've got it, what do I do with it?

It seems like everybody is getting on Pinterest lately, so I did too. I'm not entirely sure where this will lead. I managed to post something on Facebook via Pinterest, but then, I already knew how to do that.

I guess you could call me a "joiner". I only got on Facebook because everyone else in my writer's group did.

I think I will be "pinning" some recipes and cute pictures that I run across. It looks like there are a lot of categories to check out. If I find any really interesting stuff, I'll let you know.

My souvenir wall with stuff from the American Southwest, England and Iceland. (Why do some pictures absolutely refuse to hang straight?)

I guess I'm gonna be staying here in the Homeland

My passport expired a year ago. I felt really bad about it--the fact that I no longer had the option to just fly off to London at a moment's notice. But, I was being practical; if I can't afford to renew my passport, chances of financing a trip abroad are nil.

After all the recent upheaval in the airline business, I'm now feeling much less deprived. Why would anyone want to get on an overseas flight if they didn't absolutely have to? In addition to being treated like a bus passenger (plus paying extra for every amenity including luggage), you are faced with hours of security screening and personal intrusions. Even after all that, there is still the threat of terrorists! You really "gotta wanna" get someplace to do all that.

It makes Homeland seem like the place to be safe and secure, doesn't it?

In a perfect world, I would have been...

Once in a while, you hear people say that they love their job so much they can't believe they're getting paid to do it.

I spent my life doing a wide assortment of jobs: working in factory boning chicken for Campbell's Noodle Soup, working in a freight company office, hospital business office, and in an insurance company (interspersed by about 20 others over the years.) None of these were what you would call a "perfect fit" for me. Looking back and taking all of my interests into account, I've finally realized that in a perfect world, I would have been a world traveler and producer of wildlife documentaries.

I might have sat on a Rwandan mountainside with Dian Fossey and watched gorillas. I could have trekked through the jungles of Gombe with Jane Goodall to observe the chimpanzees. I would have gone on National Geographic Expeditions to exotic places to do award-winning films about thought-to-be-extinct animals.

Of course, this would assume that I was strong and athletic, that I had photographic/cinematic skills and that I had no family obligations. Oh well, it would have been great fun. So, tell me, what's version?

WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN YOUR PERFECT LIFE?

Wishful thinking

I love to go places. Although I have traveled some over the years, it's still not enough. (Actually, I'm not sure how a person determines when you have traveled enough.) However, since I don't have any extra income to pay for such luxuries, I felt that I had traveled as much as I ever would.

Two movies I've watched recently have given my wanderlust a boost. I watched the Darjeeling Limited with Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman as three brothers on a train trip across the Middle East. This was followed by the film Bonneville starring Jessica Lange, Joan Allen and Kathy Bates. They are three friends who take off on a roadtrip to deliver the ashes of one's husband with the usual incidents along the way.

Now, I saw this picture on a fellow bloggers post and that old feeling came over me again. I want to get in a car with a few pals and hit the open road looking for adventure...or at least a good time...or even a swell restaurant. I'm dreaming about a devil-may-care time where money is no object and everyone you see envies you because you're having so much fun.

Well, maybe I wasted my Sunday afternoon but I enjoyed it. Hope your afternoon was enjoyable as well.

Of dandelions and daffodils

Ten years ago, a friend and I went on a one-week tour of England. We went in March before the higher tourist season rates went into effect. As it turns out, that is a great time to go.

When we arrived at our hotel, our room wasn't ready yet. As luck would have it, a tour bus out front was just leaving for Windsor Castle. Off we went to see the green, green grass of England dotted with daffodils. It was incredible! There were daffodils growing like dandelions everywhere. This impressed me more than the castle.

Then in 2005, my sister and I went to Iceland for a week. There were big beautiful bunches of dandelions growing there. Not the wimpy little dandelions like you see in Minnesota, these were big, healthy dandelions of spectacular size. Clearly they were in their preferred environment.

I suspect the Vikings brought the seeds to Iceland in 978 the way the Scandinavians brought them to Minnesota in the 1800's. I went online to try and find a picture of Icelandic dandelions, but nothing came close. If the plants had been evolving and adapting to Icelandic climate for a thousand years, our American dandelions have a long way to go before they adapt to our climate.

Sadly, daffodils have never taken hold in this country. You have to go to England in the spring to
see them bobbing in pastures, ditches and woods. My passport expired a year ago and I didn't have any reason to spend $100 to renew it. The chances that I will ever go abroad again are negligible.

But then, I have already been to England in the spring!