California Dreaming

I'm trying to acclimate to the latest polar vortex here, but after 4 days in southern California for a volleyball tournament, it's not going well. At least I got that change of scenery I was wanting.

This was my first trip to the San Diego area, and even the view out the airport door was lovely.

Sunsets were lovely.

Shopping was great - too great!

Can you tell she's happy? 

Me too.

This is the only picture I got of us together, I'm filming in the background.

Dolphins!

Two Midwest girls - tired, dirty and happy in the California Sand.

Silver Bracket first and second place. It was a fun match to watch.

We had such a great trip and the girls played some great volleyball.

We hope to get back soon.

Until then, we'll be dreaming of the California sunshine and barefoot toes in the sand.

xo

ps I couldn't be farther behind on my blog reading, hope to catch up this weekend :)

I need a change of scenery

Its snowing. Again.

I know, weather talk. Boring. Yes.

But when one of the lead evening news items is about running out of room to pile the snow, it's time to complain a little. This winter is the worst I have spent in the Midwest, and I came here when Mary Lou Retton was winning Olympic Gold. My first winter in Indianapolis was unimaginable, I'd never felt air that cold, or seen so much snow. I didn't know what cold or snowy really was, and then I moved farther north and west. I thought I was used to it thirty years later, but this is a new low, in temperatures and endurance.

This winter has been a relentless, hellish mixture of wind, cold and precipitation.

This is what high noon looked like today. I had errands to run.

Grocery shopping is the worst, dragging carts through the parking lot because you can't push them in the snow, and it's so miserable when the wind blows the snow everywhere - in your face, down your neck, in any open car door, and then there's the slush and snow melt when you bring the groceries in.  It's always at the grocery store that I ask myself seriously, why do I live here? There are places where people don't have to live like this, where the sun shines and things grow all year and you don't need prescription vitamin D and all wheel drive cars.

Amazingly, everyone on the road behaves, drives slowly and mostly stays in their lane, unless the wind whips up a whiteout. Those are extra fun.

I have spent hours this winter pulling snowballs out of Tucker's fur, mopping up his snow melt.

Fun times.

We're one or two snowfalls away from total coverage on the back patio. I opened the door to take this shot and Tucker dove in. I told him not to, but he is not a smart dog. The snow was over his shoulders. I screamed, he hopped back in and I mopped up more snow melt.

He's pretty happy about it all, oblivious as dogs are. He likes to go out and eat snow every chance he gets. Every time I open the front door I can't believe the little tunnel leading up to the house, it's blatant evidence that we are losing the battle here.

Sigh.

But as Vicki Lane reminded me today, there are tulips hiding under all that snow. Daffodils too. All sorts of magic, and they will come up, as oblivious to my complaints as Tucker is. The world keeps spinning and the flowers will come up and I will keep complaining and dreaming of warmer places I wish I lived.

Two months. I can do anything for two months, right?

Do you think I'd complain about how hot it gets or the gritty sand on my floor if I lived at the beach?
I wonder that sometimes, if I'm just really a complainer at heart, or if I've  been broken by a long, long winter that's barely half over.
I hope I get the chance to find out.

Thursday, my daughter and I will be in San Diego, with blue skies and water, white sandy beaches and palm trees.  She's playing in a tournament and recruiting combine and we're excited to get out of here, and trying not to think about how hard it will be to come back. It's never easy coming back to these winters whent you go somewhere warm. While I'm there, though, I'm going to try not to complain about a thing.

I promise.

xo

I wants it

There are certain creatures for which I hold an unusual interest that borders on obsession.


Saturniids Moths, tragically and sublimely beautiful:

  

 All kinds of chickens - grand, outrageous, extraordinary and at times a tiny bit frivolous:

  

 and ammonites... mysterious fossil-gems, evidence of  millenia, epochs past; of unimaginable ancient worlds:

   


I adore all natury things - butterflies, flowers, mushrooms, snowflakes, leaves, furry creatures - but those first three are my blue ribbon cat lady type of obsessions.

Well. I saw this treasure on the internet and I am undone. UNDONE I tell you.

I want to see this giant ammonite, touch it, look at it, put it on a shelf in my house in a place of honor, open a museum and charge people to view it, write songs and poetry about it.... I can only hope it shows up in a museum someday and I will set out on my pilgrimage.
  

I am beside myself here. I wants it, my precioussss.........   It sold for about $130,000, and I would have expected it to be worth millions, but what do I know about the fossil art market?  I just know what makes my pulse quicken, my brain pay attention, my add-ocd kick into overdrive.

Also, I want to have tea with the gentleman who's in the photo, Mr. David Thomas, employee at the Summers Auctions. I can tell he's as enamored with it as I am, as awestruck. Yes, I'd love to meet him too, and talk about the treasure's he's seen, ask what else he covets, what he collects.

That would be lovely.

Look at how stunning  and beautiful,  this link where I found the ammonite,

 a web page called Animals in the News.

Only one of the animals is an ammonite, all the rest are from our modern era.

Go ahead, click the link and feel all kinds of emotions.

Or for a deeper tangent, check out the Catalog for the Evolution auction at Summers Place in England.

My oh my, what a diverse wonder of things. Very Museum of Natural History meets Museum of Oddities meets Modern Organic Art. 

So I can't have that giant ammonite, or the diplodicus skeleton, or any of those treasures, but I will survive. I will sit in my yellow room, my own little natural history museum, full of sunshine this morning, and my own little evolutionary collections, and let the sun shine on my face and be happy. It may be arctic-like outside, but today, this Friday, I am warm and content inside with my treasures and my thoughts in my patch of sun.

Happy Friday

xo

Time and Money and Stuff

I'm really hung up on time this week.

Things I think happened a few years ago keep turning out to be many, many more. I am losing track of time.

Lets start with my washing machine, which I was sure I bought a few years ago. Few? Try Seven.

Yesterday, I was just minding my own business, drinking my coffee, doing some laundry. The washing machine starts squeaking and thumping in the spin cycle. I stop it to look. Dear lord, the plastic door seal is ragged and torn, the spinning tub hanging suspiciously low. Broken. Badly.

What to do? Call for a repairman and pay $100 to find out I need a new one, or just get a new one? Didn't I throw out the extended warranty renewal not too long ago? Didn't I say things should be expected to work, how silly to waste the money on an unlikely event? Yeah, that was me.

To renew the service contract is $340/year, or to have a serviceman replace the bearing assembly is $250 in parts alone, and hours of labor, plus likely another $200 for the drum, and oh its a discontinued model, and poorly rated so I'm getting rid of that expensive hunk of metal. I'm glad I can't remember how much over $1000 I spent for it, but that's a lot of quarters at the laundromat. My first washing machine, purchased in 1987, sits in my husband's garage. A GE or Sears model, can't remember. He uses it to wash towels and shop rags. They really and truly don't make things like they used to.

I hated that Bosch washer anyhow. It always lied about how much time left on the cycle. A 56 minute wash cycle could take 90. Sometimes the spin cycle left clothes soggy, sometimes it spinned them into oblivion. I now read online that all front loaders are design flawed, weak and breakable at the bearings and super expensive to replace. Now I know.

In other news, the dishwasher is dying a slow death, and I think, golly I've only had this thing six years.
Nope, try Ten. A Decade is a long time for a dishwasher. I'm tired of pre-washing and post-washing my dishes and was already looking at replacement models when the washing machine killed itself. But I can't shake the surprise at how far off my perception of the purchase dates was with the reality. I'm losing years.
Why? How? Who knows?

In another time warp example, my daughter informed me that Tucker's Birthday was this week. I know how old he is because we got him 3 months before Dad died, and I know exactly when Dad died, and I can't believe how far away that day was, and yet how recent it feels. So Tucker turned six, which both kids couldn't fathom, they thought he was maybe four. I said welcome to my world, where I just keep doing the time warp, again.

My daughter's new coach just asked how old she was and I said 16, and when he asked her birthday, I suddenly realized that although she feels newly 16, she is not, and will turn 17 in two months. How did that happen? I could barely focus on the conversation because I was so shocked that my baby is turning 17.
How am I losing my grasp on time? I used to be a steel trap with dates, anniversaries, milestones.

I truly don't know. But I have two theories.
One, the older I get the faster the gerbil wheel spins, so it's easy to get dizzy and disoriented.
Two, the less I sleep, the more confused I get about things like timelines and the more my memory turns to mush.

Theories aside, I'm out of sorts here, and pissed how much time I'm losing, and how much money broken things are costing me this year.

In my last tirade about time, at the request of a friend, I agreed to let a college scholarship kid talk to me about knives. I asked how long the presentation was and he said 45 minutes to an hour. I said you're gonna need to speed that up, I don't have an hour. Well needless to say, the pitch went on way past an hour. Try an hour and forty minutes, the last thirty of which I tried with increasing frustration to get off the phone. I even said point blank this has gone on too long, and I'm brain dead. I can't possibly think or talk about this any more. But he kept talking, or babbling, and he was so nice and nerdy I didn't have it in me to be mean.
But at the end of the pitch, he gave me the price for the starter knife set - 8 items in a lovely wood block for only $834.00 - say WHAT?  I tried to explain to the kid that it was not his lucky day to call me on the day my washing machine died, and I didn't need new knives, and he just kept trying. These are the best quality knives made in the US and you'll never need to buy another knife again in your life, and on and on. Um, hey kid, I'm 54, and odds are I won't be needing any knives in about a decade or two. Not a sound investment. I finally told him look, I have to hang up now. Right now. Bye, bye. I think he was still babbling when I hung up. Poor kid. Poorer me, giving almost two hours because I can't ever say no. That friend of mine's going to get an earful about this one.

So yesterday was a blue ribbon day for thinking about time, wasting time, and thinking about wastes of time and also money, and if nothing else, at least I didn't waste any more of my money on the best knives made in the US. I think I'll survive just fine without them.

Oh, and finally.....6 more inches of snow last night, bringing our YTD tally to almost 60" of snow. The world has gone mad.

And yet, Tucker doesn't seem to mind one bit. He just takes life as it comes, and probably doesn't have the slightest concept of time.

In my next life, I want to be a dog.

xo