Planes. Trains & Pugs

Today I took Tallulah the Gypsy Child to Union Station in DC to catch a train bound for her new adventure. We had planned a nice last hour together in this place she considers to be magnificent & full of wonder & excitement. I had already dubbed it a big mall with a train running through it, but was pacified by the idea of a little more time with my daughter while eating a cinnamon roll the size of my head. Well, that was the plan anyway. What really happened is after getting there a half hour later than estimated & nerves shot from not being able to see street signs & not adjusting very smoothly to traffic lights being on poles on the side instead of overhead... parking was non-existant. So I left Tallulah standing on the sidewalk with a cart piled high with all her worldy possessions, waved a quick farewell and got back in the car & drove away, much to the relief of every cab driver in DC. As neither one of us has a cell phone, I can only hope she is actually on the train and safe. I missed her immediately. Mostly because she had read the directions and navigated us into the city and I was now on my own to get out. :) After a very interesting creative loopy maneuver, it soon became clear that I was not going to be seeing any of the first 4 streets listed on the directions so I stuffed them under the seat and started following the direction of the afternoon sun...west. Other than not recognizing anything and getting to see some very...colorful sections of our Nation's Capital I moved along fairly smoothly until I got stuck in a crosswalk while waiting for the traffic in front of me to go thru the light. I had a long line of traffic behind me, obviously comforted by my apparent navigational skills. Finally a nice old woman comes up and screeches, "THOSE CARS ARE PARKED! They ain't goin' no where! They at church!" Oh. So me & my parade switch lanes and off we go. At one intersection I lost my bearings due to #1) very tall buildings blocking the sun & #2) the sheer terror of having the schizophrenic homeless drug addict standing beside my open car window begin a very loud and violent battle with his demons. While trying to remember to breathe and hoping they spelled my name right on page 27 bottom right hand corner of tomorrow's newspaper, I couldn't make an intelligent decision whether to go straight or turn left or right. Just then I look across the street and along comes a beautiful little Pug! I forgot all about Demon Dude. My entire body relaxed & my spirit calmed and I said to myself, "Hey little buddy. Which way do I go? Can you get me out of this place?" He turned his little face and looked right at me, stopped and then turned left. So did I. At the next intersection I knew where I was, headed west & hightailed it outta there! I just love when God does that. Takes the time to send me a pug with a great sense of direction and telepathic powers! What are the odds? Once outside the city, I pulled over at what they called a "Scenic Overlook" to unpry my fingers from the steering wheel and to shake for awhile. I got out and sat on the rock wall to check out the "scenery". Across the river I saw 11 kayaks LINED UP WAITING for a turn to come to shore at a little dock. The water was covered with boats, the little nature area on the other side was crawling with people, they were practically running into each other & walking the trails in lines. Flocks of boats and herds of people everywhere. The traffic was zooming a few feet behind me, planes were roaring across the sky, then a huge loud helicopter flew right in front of me not a hundred feet from my face. Sweet Jesus in the morning get me the hell out of here, I just want to go home. I took every road that said west until I started recognizing road names again. I cheered when I saw a sign that said "Frederick" & I practically peed my pants when I saw the words "Harper's Ferry". I was gonna drive straight to the DMV and turn in my license and call Gaston to come get me, but it was Sunday and they were closed. I never want to leave my mountain or my river ever again. Tallulah did not get her passion for travel from me! I love you, Tallulah. Be happy in your new life, new job & new home. I know you will add many more friends to your already huge collection. I know God will bless you & use your talent to bring beauty & art to your new ministry. When you come home we are having that cinnamon roll. Be kind to pugs & other furry friends as you may be entertaining angels unaware. :) We all love you & miss you. And I hope that was the right station.

Lovely Luna

Today is my friend Luna's birthday. Happy Birthday Luna! Although we have known each other for many years, this year of trying to get back to living more simply & becoming more of who I really am brought us back together. I gave her the nickname Luna because whenever I am watching the moon, knowing what phase it is in, staying up to see it full...I know that somewhere Luna is doing the same. So thinking of the moon always makes me think of her, thus Luna. The other reason is because she reminds me a lot of a Luna from Harry Potter literature, both in looks & personality. She has the same kind spirit & sense of wonder and always sees the good in everything. She is a magnificent photographer & takes the most beautiful pictures of wildflowers & Nature. Luna is also my hiking & river buddy. She will sit for hours out on a rock in the middle of the river with me & just talk. She is my friend that doesn't want to go shopping or out for lunch or to the mall. She would rather help me load the muddy kayaks onto the truck, walk thru goose shit and float around on the river all day. Her idea of a gourmet meal is cheese and crackers or peanut butter & jelly. When she disappears, she has most likely taken her tent & set it up by the river to be alone, or out in the backyard with a campfire going. She is very brave and terribly adventurous. I follow her around watching out for snakes & murderers, but she just sails along happily thru life always expecting the best. One Monday morning while we were running recklessly across an old rock wall that drops off 30 ft. into the rocky river rapids below it occured to me that most women our age were at that moment sitting safely in a church basement or someone's lovely home having Bible study & refreshments. Not my friend! Geesh. She scares the hell out of me & her poor mother. She loves to travel and just got back from going across the country on the back of a motorcycle. She has 3 grandchildren, another on the way & daily cares for her husband's elderly father who lives with them. She took him in to rescue him from a nursing home. She loves the Lord, goes to church and volunteers for Nursery. She managed to put herself through college as a single mother with four children. I don't know how someone who works so hard and is so unselfish can still be such a free spirit, but she is. She doesn't care about material possessions, nice cars, jewelry, makeup or fancy clothes. She could be a model with her looks, but she mostly wears old tshirts, much to her teenage daughter's dismay. :) She stopped dyeing her hair & now has long silver locks. We love the same music, neither one of us can go more than a few hours without campfire smoke or seeing the river or watching the moon. We both want to live in Alaska one day or in the middle of nowhere, Northern Exposure is our favorite show. I love how she yells at the TV screen when a movie character does something mean. My favorite part about being friends with this beautiful woman is the almost freaky spiritual connection we share. We are always on the same page even without any contact. She says we could communicate just with smoke signals and still know exactly what the other was thinking. For instance, last week a lone solitary seagull started hanging out down by the river bridge. I couldn't find any information about a storm on the coast, so he had no "reason" to be there, he just was. I watched him and thought about him for 2 or 3 days, forgetting to ever mention him to Luna. Without knowing anything about it, she suddenly out of the blue hands me a book she wants me to read....about a lone seagull! We do that stuff all the time. Used to really freak us out, but we are kind of getting used to it by now. :) So, I just wanted to say Happy Birthday to my soul mate. Thank you for all your behind the scenes work in getting my kayak for me. I only this week discovered that Luna was the driving force behind Gaston that made my kayak happen for me, which has turned out to have become my most prized and valued possession. Nothing has ever brought me more happiness or been more instrumental in helping me "find myself" and get back to who I am. So, thanks for knowing me better than I knew myself, Lovely Luna, and I hope your birthday is as lovely as you are. :)

Considering the Birds

I had the most beautiful day yesterday. Husband and kids all went down to Fairfax & spent the night. I don't like spending the night away from home, I don't like going to Fairfax & I couldn't/wouldn't leave the dogs overnight, so I stayed home alone. I woke up on my mismatched sheets thinking how much I love my bed and my life. I spent most of the day out on the river alone in my kayak with all the wildlife. My son asked me this week what my dreams, plans and goals had been. Nothing really came to mind. It is a good feeling to realize this is pretty much it. This is good with me. To learn how to really "be where you are" instead of "what could have been". My kids are getting older, the house is almost paid off, I have my kayak and the river and dogs that I love. I love my old green chair, my books & my campfire ring in my front yard. I don't want to have more money or a career. Although I never want to stop learning, I don't want a degree or a paper to hang on the wall. I don't want to travel, this is one of the most beautiful places in the entire world to me. I value all my free time much more. I don't know what a 401k actually is, but am pretty sure I don't have one. My retirement plan is pretty much start now, grab whatever moments you can, walk lightly upon this earth, get by with as little as possible and enjoy living now. Strive a little less, live a little more. "Manifest plainness, Embrace simplicity, Reduce selfishness, Have few desires." I don't want a bigger house to take care of or a yard to mow or a pool to maintain. I don't want younger looking skin or a flat screen TV. I have an old beat up pickup truck that makes me incredibly happy cuz it hauls my boat. My goals are pretty simple... I want to see how close I can get to the white egret & the blue heron down on the river. Even that I am willing to let go of, I don't want to disturb them. My biggest problem all day long was getting unstuck from the rocks where the water was low which was nice cuz I had to work hard, got to explore the other side of the river and got in a good swim. The hawk that claims this area as his territory hung out with me yesterday, hunting & fishing. I hadn't seen him for a few weeks and had been worried about him, so was very happy to see him, like an old friend. I have missed his call in the mornings. Flocks of honking geese would fly right over me & beside me, fish jumping & splashing, turtles warming themselves in the sun. I saw two deer on the shore and got pretty close. Sometimes am tempted to wish I had a waterproof camera but then realize I don't want something else to take care of. I like the freedom of keeping the memories of the beautiful things I see to myself in my own mind. No downloading, editing, sorting, etc. The more you own, the more complicated life becomes. "Consider the birds of the air..." When I got out of the river and loaded my boat, I realized since Gaston was gone, that meant no lovely fancy dinner to come home to. Bummer. So I went and got a pack of hot dogs and built a fire & voila...delicious dinner. I am a real go-getter... as in go get her a cold beer. I didn't accomplish anything. I wasn't productive or wise. I took risks but had no goals. I didn't contribute anything to the bank account. But I went for several hours without even seeing another human & it really doesn't get any better than that. It was a simply beautiful day.

A friend of a friend

Just received this very sad email from my oldest friend, Mary, who just had to say goodbye to one of her oldest and dearest friends...

"we had to put our beautiful and wonderful cat Symba to sleep on Monday. Symba has been with the girls since the day they were born and with me for 17 years. He was such a good cat. Everyone who met him was instantly attracted to him. He was friendly, loving and just beautiful. His final days were very difficult for all of us. He grew old and went down hill so quickly. I got to be with him till the end. I just wanted to pass along some pictures of him.

He will be missed something terrible...."

If you also love an animal & would like to leave a note or send some love her way, you can visit her blog.

http://nininoni.blogspot.com/

Saving Doh

I came across this article and wanted to share. (click on link below) It is full of tips on frugal living from The Simpsons. You have to read it, it's great. Since I haven't had time to write a new post of my own, I'll just borrow someone else's so you don't have to keep seeing Hell Week & Wolfgang's demented scary face. You're welcome. I am inspired. It doesn't take much. I intend to plan my entire grocery shopping list this week around the advice from this article. And no, I don't actually have a shopping list but am thinking it can't be any worse than the month that I only bought what the coupons told me to buy. That was fun & the cashier (usually Danielle) anxiously awaited to see what the coupons had conjured into my cart. I had to abandon that plan after the week when most of the coupons were condiments. I think that was Danielle's suggestion. We almost starved but still have an impressive selection of hot sauces and marinades. However...Donuts and beer are much closer to our actual purchasing and eating habits, so this one may work...

http://cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com/2008/07/cutting-calories-and-saving-doh-25.html

Hell Week

If you have ever done any theatre, you know that the week before the production, tech week, is called "Hell Week" and for good reason. This is the week that the house completely falls apart, kids are up til 2 and sleep til 11, all meals are consumed at Dairy Queen with large groups of people still in smeared stage makeup. It is the week where I drive, drive and drive some more & have to explain to the very gruff manly macho football coach that Wolfgang will be missing football practice due to his theatre schedule. OyVay! This is the week when poor Hank gets dragged around & I ask myself why I ever let my kids sign up & swear we will never ever do it again. In a moment of desperation & mental exhaustion I made Wolfgang an offer earlier this week. If he agreed to never audition for another play or sign up for another sport I would buy him his very own boat. I would teach him how to use it, how to be safe & then turn him loose, free to come and go on the river as he pleases. He turned me down. How did a woman who would be perfectly content to float around in the river all day long or sit in the same chair and read a book for hours hiding from the world could have turned out this bunch of energetic talented bohemian babies? I don't understand it. This Saturday morning I pick up Tallulah from BWI where she is coming from an audition for another professional acting internship. Jim Caviezel's (as in Jesus's!) acting coach had good things to say! She has been traveling thru the midwest visiting theatre friends the past two weeks. Then my Clyde-Pierre has The Night with his band & youth group, surrounded by dozens of people and loud music, happy as can be, playing his music. He and his band just released their first CD! I haven't seen him for more than 4 minutes at a time in the past 3 years. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opens at the Old Opera House with Wolfgang playing (appropriately) a wolf. When I get tired and grumpy and resent being forced to drive at night and having to leave my quiet nest, my friend Lucy reminds me that she loves my family because she says we are rainbow, neon, plaid, textured and smooth...all mixed together. Sounds like a mess to me. I just want us to be plain. I want them to be still. But it was nice to be reminded to try to see all the color my kids bring & to appreciate their talents and their energy. My friend also reminded me to not allow anyone to suck the color out of my kids. I realized that I am probably the most guilty of that. My friend has always had a way of viewing my family through a lens of love that somehow makes us look much more interesting & I love her for that. Thanks Lucy. Thanks for the fresh perspective. I will try to remember to always be my kid's biggest fan. After all, the show must go on. After my nap.

Paddling Back on Course

I have one more installment in my pet series I would like to publish here soon. But I am currently distracted. I am right back where I started at the beginning of this year, at the beginning of this blog. I lost my vision & got off course. I have completely strayed from my plan, gotten bored & fallen back into old patterns. I am unsettled & discontent. I have forgotten to have a grateful heart & to focus on simple pleasures. I saw an episode of Northern Exposure last night that was the best sermon I have heard in a very long time & exactly what I needed to hear. In a nutshell the story was about how if we allow materialistic people who are more affluent to have influence over us we can quickly find ourselves having a spirit of discontentment & craving better circumstances. About coveting & jealousy & bitterness. I was reminded (again) that material possessions really don't bring happiness & how I have allowed myself to feel the lack in my life rather than enjoying the abundance I do have. The episode ended with a picnic by the river under the blue sky surrounded by mountains in God's beautiful creation. Nature that can't be owned or possessed. Instead of eating what comes from the Earth for our nourishment I am eating white flour & sugar again & feeling the affects. Theatre & sports schedules have turned us back into a drive-thru family. My kids are back to being little rabid consumers, "needing" the next action figure every week. I spent a lot of today researching and reading and trying to dig up information and inspiration. But like so many other things that I waste time on & spend energy trying to obtain, it was right here all along. Simply Me. The most helpful advice I found was my own. Simple, huh? I went back and read my own blog, my first posts & my goals for the year. Instead of trying so hard to figure out how to hold on, I am once again going to try to let go instead. So I am relinquishing my debit card to Gaston & my greedy heart to God. Back to sitting back & see what life brings me without me making it happen. Remembering to pray when I have a need instead of losing hope. Trusting it will be provided & when it isn't to believe there is a reason greater than my need. I will try harder to refrain from grumbling quite so much & try to remember to be grateful instead. There is one thing I failed to share with you this year that I should have, something Gaston blessed me with that I need to be enjoying instead of focusing on all that is wrong. For Mother's Day, he bought me a kayak! A beautiful brand new kayak of my very own. So even though my deck is rotted, my water doesn't work hardly, I can't do laundry & the car is falling apart...who cares!...I HAVE A BOAT! :) So next time I am envious of someone else's life I should go straight down to the river and paddle away the day. Time to get up and brush myself off & get back on course. Time to stop being overwhelmed by the laundry, dishes, house & car. Time to remember to turn my face to the warm sun, to look at the sky, the trees, the moon, & the river. I hope focusing on the stars will help me navigate back where I need to be. I hope tomorrow I remember to like my life. I hope I remember to choose contentment.

Wild Child- Various Tails from My Childhood. (My Friends part 2)

It was all about the animals since the very beginning of my life. I have no one left to ask, so will put it together from stories I have been told and events as I remember them. Before I was born, somehow my family was exposed to a goat which had contracted rabies. As a result (and probably a lot of overreaction on the part of the medical community) my entire family had to undergo a series of rabies vaccinations. These were still the primitive days of long torturous needles through the stomach for several weeks. Since my mom was pregnant with me, somehow they had to do it from the back instead. So my animals & I were already causing trouble before I was even born. The family history also states that my Brother who was 12 1/2 years older hated me before I was even brought home from the hospital. He had caught a baby deer he had made into a pet & when my parents went to the hospital for me to be born, his precious fawn that he loved escaped from its pen. This of course was because of me & I don't think he ever got over it. It is said he would not come into the same room with me for over two weeks. It really is a shame about his deer. Apparently my first group of words that I put together as a story was about Arnold the pig who had a litter baby pigs. I can still remember my Daddy putting me on his lap and telling me tell the story. I always had at least one Siamese cat. I had one, Bojangles, that slept on my chest everynight from the time I was small. The old people who were still very superstitious were convinced the cat should be removed as it would "steal my breath away" while I slept. The cat stayed. My very first memory is standing in my crib watching Tom & Edith put up wall paper covered with circus animals in my room. My Brother always had dogs, mostly hounds. While he was away at war in the Navy, a trucker hit & killed his prize English Shepherd, Manfred. It is my only memory of receiving approval from him when I received a letter from Vietnam saying he was proud of me for not taking the dollar the driver offered to me. I was bitten by a neighbor's black lab when I was little & also witnessed a Doberman tear into the back of a boy's head right beside me so I spent most of my childhood terrified of dogs. Trick or treating was hell. But I always had what we called a snakedog. When you grow up by a creek in the hills of Tennessee, picking blackberries & tromping through the woods, you have to have a dog that will take the rattlesnake bite for you. My dog's name was Clyde & he took one over the eye & survived. He also survived being hit by a truck and knocked off the river bridge and then later found his way home. He was a good friend. He lived to be 15. I had a little white Maltese named Penny for about 20 seconds once. My Daddy took me to get her and I brought her in the back door and she made a beeline into my mother's bedroom and peed on the avacado green carpet & was put straight back into the car and I never saw her again. Living at my house was like living with Grizzly Addams & Steve Irwin. My Brother & Dad could catch anything. If I wanted a crow, my brother would bring one home the next day from high in the top of a tree. My Daddy & I caught five little baby skunks one time much to my mother's dismay. They went back to the woods to their mom pretty quick while I was dunked in gallons of tomato juice. I still don't mind the smell of skunk to this day but I can't stomach tomato juice! Once I had a new baby goat named Billy that I was running around with outside and when I opened the back door, he came in with me. When my Mama started screaming hysterically at me about the goat, Billy took off running through the house with my mom & I in hot pursuit close on his tail. Me trying to catch him & her trying to kill him. He ran into her Living Room which I wasn't even allowed in because she was so proud of her new furniture. He leaped up onto her brand new coffee table (how do they know?) while she screamed bloody murder & his little hooves DUG into it as he tried to stop himself and it was like sparks were flying all the way across the surface til he went sailing off the other side. I had Easter chicks one year that the fox from the pond ate. My Brother told me years later that the fox had NOT eaten my babies but when they pooped on my mom's front porch, she lost her very famous temper & picked them up and rung their necks. I also had a pet Donkey named Cocoa which my dad had made a cart for. My dad & brother also used to break horses, so I had various ponies & horses but never liked to use a saddle or a bit. I always rode bareback. My aunt & uncle had a farm I stayed at a lot and they kept pigs & chickens. I was always chasing down the chickens trying to catch them and then running for my life from the roosters trying to flawg me. Once when we butchered a pig, I remember my Daddy took me to his truck and let me hide down in the seat & cover my ears so I wouldn't hear the shot. Being a baby was not allowed in the country when it came to such things, so I guess he always knew how much they meant to me. I was always out on a boat fishing with my Daddy. Aside from the critters he brought to me, he was my best friend. I used to put my arm down into the water under the boat and touch big huge carp that were longer than I was. Once my Dad was walking thru the creek with waders on and a water moccasin jumped INTO the waders....and my Daddy jumped out. One summer two frogs jumped piggyback into my plastic kiddie pool and left behind hundreds of tadpoles. We had aquariums full of snakes, turtles, toads & praying mantises. I always had cats & kittens, one time I had a grand total of 27! My Brother used to catch rattlesnakes and put them in paper bags and give them to our housekeeper & aunts. He would call me over to him while he was milking it. You hold it tightly behind its mouth and put its fangs into a cloth stretched over the top of a jar and they secrete their venom into it. He would get me to take hold of it behind its jaws and then walk off and leave me there alone. I have been bitten by a copperhead but luckily never a rattler. Once I went down to the creek to check my minnow trap I was keeping some frogs in & when I finally got it up out of the water it was filled with a big old water moccasin which of course had eaten my frogs. My Uncle Joe took me to the store once and bought me a hamster. It got out of the box on the way home & got into the dashboard of his brand new car. We never got him out. We had a little dog that nursed an orphaned kitten along with her puppies. We also had hawks, pigeons, rabbits & several parakeets. When my brother had his wedding in our house, my Uncle Bud the preacher asked if anyone had any reason-speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace, my parakeet Blue Boy yelled out, "Oh Be Quiet!!" The one animal that my Daddy & I always wanted but never got was a pet monkey. My Mama always said if we ever brought a monkey in, she would leave. Some choices are never easy. :) So those are some of my animal memories from my childhood & that's just the first ten years. I was never allowed to have kids over or go to their houses very often so my pets were my friends & companions. They still are. :)

My Freaky Furry Feathered Friends (Part 1) or Where Do You Buy Square Watermelons?

Last night I go into my bedroom where Gaston is sleeping and put a huge round watermelon down on my side of the bed. Gaston grumbles, "What is that?" "This is a watermelon" I say patiently. He says, "Yes. It is. But what are you doing with it?" Less patiently I explain, "Um, hiding it in here because Zuni is scared of it and won't stop barking at it." (duh) Gaston can be a little dense sometimes but wisely he just said "Right. Of course." and went back to sleep. At 5 o'clock this morning I woke up to see Zuni leap up on the bed and stand on Gaston's chest and stare down at him as if to say, "Alright buddy, enough of the snooze button already!." It worked. After I had put the watermelon on my bed last night, I started thinking about how weird we are here at The Burrow & all the things that my family has had to put up with because of me & my critters. (I also started wondering where I could buy square watermelon) All night I thought about all the animals I have known & the pets I have had & how almost every major event, revelation, epiphany or relationship in my life always has an animal connection since the very beginning of my life. I may be the only person in history to have undergone rabies shots while still in the womb and the whole reason my brother hates me still is also because of an animal & what happened the day I was born. I realized there is no way I can fit it all into one blog post, so tried to figure out how to do it. The Good, the Bad & the Ugly? Or by decade, Animals of My Childhood, then marriage, then present day? Since I can't come up with a good strategy, I guess I will just write it as the memories pop up. There are so many! I am open to suggestions and reminders. The watermelon incident reminded me of all poor Gaston has put up with thru the years. Some of the comments about Nacho's funny picture got me thinking too. My friend JB has made a couple of observations and funny comments thru the years that made me realize maybe I see the world a little differently. Once many years ago when we were walking thru her neighborhood I kept referring to that house as "so & so's house" and "oh! such & such lives there" & finally after a while JB turns to me and says, "Wait a minute. Are these ANIMALS?!?" I said yeah & she said, "You know, SOME people know the names of the PEOPLE that live in these houses." HA!!:) "And how do you even know all these animal's names?" I said I actually had no idea. Another time we were driving down Interstate 81 when we passed a cardboard box on the side of the road and I got really freaked out and wanted to stop because I was convinced it had kittens or puppies in it. It was then she broke it to me that no one else thought that when they saw that box, only me. I was AMAZED by this new information. It was a big revelation to me about how I see the world. Babe & Buddy are probably my favorite movies & I cannot handle movie scenes where animals get hurt. Gorillas in the Mist leaves me sobbing for hours til I can't breathe and the dog scene in I Am Legend left me shaking uncontrollably the rest of the day. My friend Mary I have known since high school commented on the MayDay blog about that weird funny dog fitting into our family. She has been around to see many of the oddities I have brought home and called pets. She even had the misfortune of having to live with us for a year so experienced some of them up close and personal. Hoppy was pushed. You will never convince me differently, Mary. :) Shasta asked about the new kitten so that made me realize I have to tell you the story of the suicidal kitty. All of that got me thinkng of Tallulah's longstanding chicken or the egg/ environment vs genetics speculation. She is undecided as to if I am drawn to these neurotic weird strange retarded animals, if I attract them ....or if I get perfectly normal ones and then make them that way. :) So I will tell you more about my extremely unsheltered childhood, Bernie the neurotic needy flying siamese, the killer attack ducks, the goat that thought he was a dog, Giselle the bald bird, the lamb in the bathtub, milking rattlesnakes & catching baby skunks. And of course, thanks to my son Clyde Pierre & his damn plastic bubble of torment, we now have Zuni the attack demon dog's new fear of large round shiny objects. Oh dear. Does this mean Dwayne will never be able to come over again???

May Day May Day

Here is Clyde-Pierre showing off Nacho in goggles. The poor little thing looks like he was just shot down by the Red Baron and is about to crash. May day! Where's Snoopy when you need him?! LOL Or maybe he's not screaming in terror. Maybe that's maniacal laughter instead. Maybe HE just shot down Snoopy and HE'S the Red Baron! Or maybe my dog is just a freak. And is Pierre mirroring the dog's expression or is Nacho mimicking Pierre?

Calling All Night Owls & Insomniacs

Anybody else not sleeping tonight? Come watch a movie with me. Or walk at the river. Or go to an all night diner. I can't concentrate on a book, seen all my movies, husband too cheap to get cable TV. The dogs are tired of playing with me & want to go to bed. I want a BLT but there's no food in the house. Desperate times people.

The Sunshine Man (Happy Birthday Wolfgang)

Do you remember the TV show, The Munsters? The family of freaks who had the beautiful normal niece named Marilyn that they all treated like she was weird & she believed them? Well, Wolfgang is our Marilyn. When Wolfgang was first learning to talk, he looked around at each of us sitting at the dinner table and announced, "I don't fit!" and put his head down on the table. A very profound and true observation. Wolfgang is our "Golden Child". He was completely different from all of us in physical appearance, we are all dark haired, he was a round little baby with blonde hair and blue eyes & fat cheeks that made his eyes disappear when he smiled. We all thought he was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen, we would literally sit around and stare at him for hours on end. He was born into this house of high-strung expressive emotional bohemian drama. This little golden ray of sunshine, completely content and at peace... and happy. A HAPPY baby??? An EASY baby? A baby that when you laid him down he went to SLEEP? I had never had such a creature before. No drama and no needs. Wow. It wasn't long before we noticed another difference. Before he could walk, he could throw a football, baseball, any ball in perfect form. No one taught him this. No one in our house knew how to teach him this. So here we were, this weird eccentric quirky (but mostly just plain old weird) family with this little all American normal child. We had no idea what to do. We signed him up for theatre (of course), we took him to all the Shakespeare productions, bought him paints and art supplies, handed him all the best children's literature. We played Mozart & Beethoven, I showed him documentaries, introduced him to the best art & films. We are all about letting everyone here be who they are...but this kid wasn't responding to any of the homeschool interests we were trying so desperately to offer. He had learned to read, but never wanted to. One night came the turning point. This was right after I had killed Jane Austen so had been realizing the importance of liking what you like instead of what you are supposed to. On his way to bed I casually said, "Why don't you grab a book to read before you go to sleep?" He said, "Mom! I DON'T READ!" I said "But of course you read dear!" Then he said of course he knew HOW to read but he didn't LIKE to read. There it is. Now was when I could choose to slip back into blissful denial & choose to ignore the fact that I have a non-intellectual homeschooled kid, or I could stand by my beliefs to never control another human being and let all my kids become who they are even if it different from what is important to me. So I said, "Oh yeah? Okay then, I think I know something you might enjoy. I saw a commercial the other day at a friends house, and I happen to know a show called American Gladiator comes on the channel we get and it looked like something you would enjoy". He rolled his eyes and said, 'YOU would let me watch American Gladiator!?!" I said, 'Yep, comes on in ten minutes, enjoy." You should have heard the yelling and screaming and laughing for the next hour. My boy was in his element. So that was when I began to let go of my homeschool Ideals and remembered to start putting my child's interests first, not my expectations. So because of Wolfgang, I am trying really hard to switch gears at our house. I have to remember that Tallulah & Pierre are grown now. It is hard to get used to, but we are not really a "theatre family" anymore. At least not right now. It is Wolfgang"s and Hank's turn. And although we still don't know where in the world he came from, Wolfgang desires to be "normal". He is SO normal. He wants to wear Nikes & watch football. He would also love to live in a nice house in suburbia with sidewalks and fenced-in yards & cell phones and hot tubs. We can't provide those things (and wouldn't if I could) but I now coach soccer & watch football again. It has been fun changing gears, digging up old interests I used to have myself before we got all homeschooly intellectual elitist, hating television and sports. Now we watch The Simpsons and I am enjoying life a lot more now. Wolfgang is also my animal buddy. None of my other kids love animals very much, but Wolfgang does. When I was little I looked at my book of dogs for hours on end and he does the same. When he was little I finally returned a dog book he had gotten from the library and had loved the covers off of it. Now that he is older he is starting to enjoy us as much as we enjoy him. He likes to remind me that we aren't normal. I tell him normal is boring, present company excluded.. Hearing Wolfgang tell the following story to a friend had me laughing so hard I couldn't see to drive... In July, I am always overcome with a need for Christmas. Immediately. Right now. Want snow and Christmas trees and carols. And with coffee, I am always overcome with a burst of inspiration and creativity and let's just say...enthusiasm. Wolfgang feels I should lay off the coffee. After 3 cups one July morning last year, we are driving home from town and I am singing Christmas carols and suddenly am inspired to paint the house. Brown. With white scalloped trim. Maybe pink. Like icing!! And at Christmas we will put big gingerbread cut outs and candy canes and make our house a GINGERBREAD HOUSE!! Yeah! That's it!! Am VERY excited about all my new plans, but by the time we get home am about to pee my pants so make a mad run for the bathroom. About 20 minutes later, I scream, "OH NO!! WHERE ARE THE FROZEN NUGGETS AND ICE CREAM??!!!!" Wolfgang, my adult, calmly says, "In the freezer. Where they belong. I brought them in and put them away while YOU were running down the path screaming 'we will get round stepping stones and paint them red and white like peppermints!!' " So I really like my normal little kid. I will use all the money he has saved me in frozen food to buy him Nikes and take him to baseball games. So in attempting to show my son how to appreciate the finer things in life, I was ignoring what was fine to him. He has opened new doors to me and made MY world bigger, has me trying new things and I am having a lot more fun.

The above entry was the original. The original that I could not find on Wolfgang's birthday. One month later, I find it. The following is the one I pieced from memory & threw together. :) I like the original better, but parts of the new one I didn't want to delete or edit & copy & paste. Will tweak & fix later. So both versions...

This week my Wolfgang celebrated his thirteenth birthday! I can't believe it was 13 years ago that my beautiful little blonde haired blue eyed boy was born. The Golden Child. We have no idea where he came from. He is our Marilyn from the Munsters, the normal one in a family of Freaks. He was my easy baby, my content baby, my happy baby. He never needed anything. And he was SO beautiful. Dwayne used to call him Droopy because of his basset hound jowls. I used to stay home from church on Sunday mornings just to hang out with him and quietly enjoy his company. Literally hang out. He would sit in his little johnny-jumpup in the doorway (not jumping) & I would sit on the porch and read Education of Little Tree while he simply happily hung there in his little canvas bag on an elastic string. Just being still & quiet together. Needless to say, turning 13 means he is no longer still nor quiet...but he is still fun to hang out with & one of my favorite people in the world. When my friend Betsy asked him over 10 yrs. ago at church nursery one day how old he was, he said "Forty-six". When she asked him how old he would be on his next birthday, he said, "Forty-seven." Duh. For his second Halloween we dressed him as William Wallace & boy did he look natural! We used to all sit around and just stare at him. We all are dark he was golden. When he was 2 he looked around at all of us sitting at the dinner table & burst into tears & said "I don't fit". You said a mouthful, little guy. Not only was the kid completely different in appearance, he was totally different in every way. For one thing, before he could walk, he could throw a ball. Any ball. Perfectly. Hand him a football, perfect spiral pass. Baseball right to you. Basketballs...in the basket. It wasn't a phase. He didn't outgrow it. We tried theatre, because that's what we know how to do. The men in our family comfortably wear tights on stage, okay? He didn't go for it. Just doesn't go with the Nikes. For years we tried books. A whole house full of books. Shelf upon shelf of books. The best books. Not interested. He wanted to watch American Gladiator instead. He was born into this weirdo family. How did WE get a Cool Kid? A normal all-American kid who wants a cellphone & "stuff". When I tried to put Pierre's hand-me-down nerdy Hawaiian & little old man shirts on Wolfgang he looked ridiculous. It clashed with his cool. (but they look great on Hank) He wants to play ball, go to games, hang at the mall & he talks on the phone nonstop. (who told him about the mall??) So we are trying to adjust to him still & he to us. He has really stretched us. And has made me lighten up too. I try to remember to discuss this year's NFL draft instead of authors. I am trying to get accustomed to this new rhythm that my new teenager will require. It is new territory, but he is so worth the effort. He has made my world bigger & brighter. He is very dependable, my token grownup, he has always made me feel like he is the one taking care of me. He keeps an eye on the gas gauge and reminds me (constantly) to put gas in the car. He has also rescued many gallons of doomed ice cream from my short attention span. One day I walked into the kitchen after having returned from the store a couple of hours earlier and screamed, "#@!*!, OH NO, THE ICE CREAM?!" To which my Wolfgang calmly replies, "I put it away. While you were running down the path yelling '...and we'll paint the house brown & pink like gingerbread & make peppermint stepping stones!!' " My hero.
Of all my children he is my animal buddy. He loves the critters like I do so I am happy to have someone to share that with. He is a loyal friend, a strong leader, caring brother & loving son. He is a real guy's guy, a manly dude, but if a baby comes near, prepare to see him melt all over himself and quickly dissolve into ear to ear grinning. He likes everybody & has best friends from ages 4-19. I sure do love this little Sunshine Man that was sent to me. I can see a lot of my dad in him and that makes me very happy. I am proud of my son. I love that he is kindhearted to those who need it, has a great sense of humor & a very generous spirit. He really keeps me moving & also keeps me laughing. As he leaves childhood behind I look forward to knowing the man he will become. I am confident he will be someone I will like very much & can depend on. A good tenderhearted man. But for now, he is a great Sunday afternoon football buddy that I still love to just hang out with. He is fun to be with. When he was a baby, his Grandmother once made the comment to me that I was "just silly over that baby". I still am. He always has been and always will be one of my best friends. :) Happy Birthday Sunshine Man!. I love you, Wolfgang.

The World at my Fingertips

I think I may be crazy. (this is not a poll, so don't start casting your vote) I pretty much have the whole wide world at my fingertips. So many beautiful places and experiences to choose from. I can walk to the Shenandoah river, hike the Appalachian Trail or spend the day roaming around Harper's Ferry. I can go to the theatre with my kids, out to eat Indian food with my husband, play with my beautiful dogs, read any book in the world and watch any film ever made. I could jump on the train and go to Washington DC and see amazing things, architecture, art, museums, history. Unfortunately none of these things interest me because I am obsessed with a strange desire. All I can think about is my overwhelming need to find a bag of Bugles. Remember Bugles, those little cone shaped corn somethings? All I want to do today is put Bugles on the ends of all my fingertips and eat them. Do they even still make Bugles? They should. My kids have to experience this. Did you eat Bugles off your fingertips? If you did, were you a witch, a wild animal with claws or were they glamour nails? If not, what did you eat off your fingers. I am thinking this may say a lot about a person. This could save years of therapy & psychoanalysis. If I can't find Bugles, I guess I will have to settle for a canister of Pringles and make duck lips. Quack.

This is Boring

Okay, this is REALLY boring. My noble attempts to spend less time at the computer have driven me to taking goofy pictures of my alcoholic couch potato dog. Scoot over, Anne Geddes, here we come. (Is anyone else completely freaked out by that woman's pictures??) Good thing I no longer waste my creative energies and time WRITING. Now I spend my time doing productive things (as seen here) and watching hour upon hour of Gilmore girls & Northern Exposure. I miss my blog. My dog misses my blog too. He looks depressed. Maybe he should start a Dog Blog. Speaking of which, I tried joining a Pug Group on Yahoo, but after about three days of 389 posts about people's pugs, it got a little tedious. (mine is cuter) So then I got so bored & lonely I joined a Group of Loners....no joke. Loners who get together. As you can imagine, being a bunch of anti-social misanthropists, we tend to annoy one another & get on each other's nerves. You guys were way more fun. If I promise to let all of you make fun of me, can I come back and play? I will try not to wax philosophical or go to the Dark Side. I also promise to burn my copy of Fahrenheit 451 and not read anymore destructive literature that might lead to fanatical behavior such as abandoning my blog or moving to Alaska & eating poisonous berries. Zuni would like to say he REALLY hopes you will let me blog again or at least take my camera away & help me find another hobby. Soon.

The Final Chapter

...I am 42 years old. In 10 years, my youngest will be grown and I will be in my fifties. I have been married almost 25 years and in 25 more I will be 65 years old! Math is not my strong point, but the way I see it, I have wasted enough smucking time and am running out. I watched the sun go down tonight over the river from my deck, knowing that it is one of the last nights I will be able to see the river from my house this Spring because of everything bursting out green. This weekend is a full moon. What if there is no next Fall for me, how many river sunsets have I wasted, how many full moons have I missed while sitting in front of this screen? I pretty much start my day here and end my day here. This is where my child finds me in the morning and the last place he sees me when he goes to bed. I don't think there is enough time to waste on computers and movies anymore. If this is the only place we "meet" then we don't have a real relationship. (I am however very grateful for this computer that brings my dearest friends Mary and Jewls into my home daily from hundreds of miles away. Brilliant use of technology and as soon as Teleporting Machines are available and I can actually beam them here, I will be the first in line!) If you want to visit with me or hear my thoughts, come sit with me like my real friends do, stay for dinner and have a beer or we will go for a walk by the river or best of all, write me a letter. I am going to read more books, enjoy more cigarettes, drink more whiskey, go to church less (if that is even a mathematical possibility), eat more bacon, write my private thoughts in composition notebooks and most importantly never ever care again what anyone's opinion of me is or how they might respond. (I bet your fingers are just itching to leave a comment) My friends already know me, know what I really believe about God, church, politics and this smucking war. My opinions are now private and my thoughts are my own, they won't be posted. The computer is moving to a far off corner and I am finished with the television. I am not going to waste anymore of my time with people I don't want to be with doing things I have no desire to do. I will be down at the river sitting by a fire or walking in the mountains.
I watched a wildlife presentation recently and got to touch a hedgehog. She was created to roll herself up in a tight little ball, to hide her face and make herself prickly. Predators who want to chew her up and destroy her bat her around for awhile, try to bite down, find it unpleasant and then finally give up and leave. If God gave creatures the ability to hide for protection and survival I am sure He doesn't mind when we have to do the same. My beliefs are not up for scrutiny and judgement. They are my own.. Luna says I was born in the wrong century. If I have to become prickly on occasion to survive, then so be it.
This is one woman who has no intention of becoming another techno casualty.

So what about my blog, 'Simply Me'?...I have decided the blogosphere is simply not for me. I have a simply marvelous idea. A simple solution! How about instead of spending hours of my life simply sitting in front of a lifesucking screen & using immeasurable amounts of my mental energy, I simply stop. I will simply unplug this contraption & move it to an out of the way corner & no longer start & end my day sitting in front of this blasted thing. Sounds simple to me! Since I am a simple, private person, I go back to my preferred mode of writing which is composition notebooks. No thought about which font or who might be dispensing judgement. Simple paper & pen. Blogging is simply not for me. I find it simply draining. I will get rid of all the mental clutter & not place myself under a magnifying glass. Live & let live. Blogs are great, just not for me. To each his own. How about I simply go back to being the loner I am by nature, curl up with my cats & dogs who are my trustworthy friends & write? That sounds like a SIMPLY fabulous idea. Less technology, fewer wasted hours. What a simple solution. I simply astonish myself sometimes. The lady simply vanishes. And now, I will simply, Go Away.


~Thank you for all the kind comments and for all the support and encouragement. It is downright addictive. All of you have been great and have brought me a lot of joy & confidence. This blog & your feedback has really helped me get to a place I have been trying to get to for a very long time. It has also brought many good memories to the surface and has reminded me who I am & where I come from. It has been very therapeutic & a lot of fun. Thanks for reading. (curls up into a prickly ball & hides face)

Tragedy of Technology- Mourning A Loss of Life

Many years ago I read an amazing book that changed my life and the way I see the world forever. My husband says after I finished it, I closed it, got up and threw our television out the door. A lot of time has passed since then and the television has wormed its way back in...and multiplied. It now has many wires and growths in the form of Gamecubes, Playstations and DVD players. When Tallulah and Clyde were small, they knew how to entertain themselves and read for hours at a time, drawing, writing and acting. This winter when the electricity went out for a few hours due to a beautiful ice storm, Gaston and I realized we have a problem. This became clear as we watched one of our younger children have an emotional breakdown and melt into the floor proclaiming his death was forthcoming in the absence of electrical power. I swear I heard the words, 'If only I had a laptop!". I asked Gaston who this child was and where were his real parents because there is no way this could be MY child...could it? This same child's happiness level for the entire day can depend upon whatever "item" he wins on the virtual pet website...not a REAL item, but a PICTURE on a screen. Our children have a new society of friends which revolves around virtual reality, nothing tangible or real or breathing. This is disturbing. "Some things have to change around here" would be the understatement of the century. For inspiration, this requires that I once again read Fahrenheit 451.
If you read it in high school or in college as an assignment, you were most likely told it was a classic book on censorship.That would be completely incorrect. It is about the opposite of censorship. It is about a society so entertained by interactive television on The Walls and The White Clown and The Relatives, by constant music playing in the seashells in their ears, all serenity and peace obtained by mind altering drugs, racing about at high speeds, bombarded by advertisements and media to the point of being so far removed from Nature that all love of learning and reading is gone. He talks about knowledge being predigested into bite-sized pieces to accommodate our "knowledge for dummies" mentality. Doesn't sound like such an ingenious book, does it? He is simply describing MP3 players and big screen television, reality TV and interactive gaming systems. One simple fact makes it amazing....he wrote it over 50 years ago, before those things existed, before our world existed. It is a profoundly disturbing prophetic book. If you haven't read it recently, pick it up.
You will meet Clarisse. You can recognize which house is her family's because of the absence of the TV antennae. Or satellite dish? In the evenings, you will see their home brightly lit up, no blue flickering of screens. You will hear laughter and discussions taking place. On rainy days you will see Clarisse outside with her face turned skyward. You will see her drink up all of life and hopefully be inspired by her sense of wonder. If you read no other book this year, please read this one. Instead of reading my blog, read a chapter of Fahrenheit, Walden or The Education of Little Tree. Our family used to be like Clarisse. I think Tallulah is still very much like her. My childhood time I spent with my Daddy was never in front of a television. It was out and about in Nature and with animals. I want that life back. The tragic part is you can get pretty lonely, due to the casualties of technology...
We had an old friend we all loved (and still do). But things used to be SO interesting, rich and colorful before technology took over their life. My dear friend would write me handwritten letters, stay long into the night eating good food, discussing books, art, gardening. At the end of every visit, my children had learned something new or had been given drawing lessons or taken on Nature walks learning all the names of local trees and plants. Those days are gone. Now our dear friend only talks, lives and breathes computers. No more time for lessons. All the beauty and magic is gone. No more sharing the knowledge or happy memories. Another technology casualty.
I have lost many fine opportunities to spend precious time with friends who instead choose to either play with their techno toys or discuss them. Why is there no etiquette for cell phone use? Why is it not illegal to drive while using one...failure to pay full time and attention. I hate them. And I don't care if that offends you. Your cell phone offends me. People who normally have perfectly fine manners suddenly become rude if their cell phone rings in the middle of a conversation with me. No, "excuse me" or "sorry, mind if I take this?" or even more appropriately turn the damn thing off. I see so many parents missing a lunch with their children by spending the entire time on their phone talking to someone more important. Why are kids running around with the things? I just recently was enlightened to the fact that many people TEXT WHILE DRIVING. What the hell? This makes me never want to be on the road again. I read an article recently about a college professor who assigned his students to not use their cell phones or computers for 24 hours & write about their experience. Some described it as the longest day of their lives while some enjoyed experiencing other things. A 24 hour experiment? I thought it was a misprint, 24 whole hours of survival. I am bewildered by people who complain about their financial struggles while every child in their family is packing a cell phone and has their own computer. It is treated as if it is a bare necessity, an essential part of life, not the extravagance that it is. A chicken in every pot is now a laptop for every child. While with a group of kids the other day, i watched three preteen girls sit in a line beside each other, not talking...texting to OTHER people. Does no one else see the absurdity and the effects of all this on the children? Fahrenheit is coming true and the kids are the victims. At home we all sit at a different screen in separate rooms. I see coffee shops filled with people communicating...but not with each other, with the screen in front of them or the phone in their hand. This miraculous tool of communication alienates me from my husband. We LOVE our technology. If you don't believe this, try insulting someone's spouse and computer or cell phone in the same sentence and see which they defend first and most fiercely :). There are times I would enjoy the convenience and sense of safety a cell phone brings but as I cannot reasonably afford one, I will have to take my chances and join the millions of people who lived before me and somehow survived for thousands of years without. I understand all the pros and advantages of the technology we have available and am not suggesting that we throw it all out. Not that I think there is any danger of that. I am saying it is incredibly addictive and we have given it the wrong place in our lives. It is no longer a tool but a companion. These time saving devices are sure taking up a lot of hours. No wonder people are depressed. The only Nature most people experience is their cool screensaver or The Discovery Channel. We are allowing it to replace our lives, sucking them up, making us into bumbling idiots if we can't find an electrical outlet or a wireless signal. A few years ago a friend of mine called to tell me about an exchange she had just witnessed, knowing I would love it. The women were discussing storing up canned food for an upcoming hurricane threat and power outages. One of the ladies knowingly huffed in disbelief and stated "I don't know why they are all bothering to stock up on canned goods, if the electricity goes out they aren't going to be able to open them!" Oh dear.
Why would I want to hear about gigabytes, hard drives, memory capability or how many bars you get on your cell phone? I don't want to talk about the "White Clown" or "The Relatives" on the latest reality show...because they aren't real. Let's discuss music instead of your MP3 Seashells. Let's take a walk by the river instead of checking the forecast on the laptop. I miss Life. The technology has stolen it. I needed to be reminded once again the dangers of blindly partaking of all the technology this world has to offer. It is good to remember I want my children to learn to play and learn without a screen. I want furry, messy, real pets, not virtual ones. I think I should slow down and be more cautious about what we embrace as living. This house needs fewer controllers and remotes and keyboards and many more books opened, canvases painted, instruments played and walks taken. Every hour I spend mesmerized in front of this thing are hours away from my children that I can never get back. Enough.

I want to live an 'acoustical life". Acoustical- "Of or being an instrument that does not produce or enhance sound electronically". Real, genuine, natural, pure, simple, true. A state of harmony. The quality depending only on my own skill and being satisfied with my own performance not the response of a fan club. Not dependent upon my vicinity to the nearest electrical outlet. Not plugged in, manipulated or enhanced by technology. Not too loud. A gentle life. No expensive equipment required. Nothing to haul around, keep dry, or protect from thieves. Travel lightly through this heavy noisy world. I am going to toughen up my bare feet and let my skin turn to brown leather, maybe buy a kayak or a motorcycle. I am going to focus more on living than on staying alive. Time's a wastin'!

The New Babies

These are our new babies! Aren't they cute? Their names are Butterscotch (Scot) & Chocolate Chip (Chip). Yes, I was hungry when we bought them. The names keep changing, so will let you know the final decision. I just overheard they are now Cynthia & Cookie. Guess Hank is STILL hungry since his is still named for a food. :)

Sunday Obsession

Check out my son Clyde-Pierre's band, Sunday Obsession! They are currently competing in a "Battle of the Bands". You can support these four young homeschooled starving artists with a vote of confidence by going to http://www.youngguns2008.com & click on 'help pick the winners', click on' Virginia', click on 'Sunday Obsession' then vote BEST! They really are the best, you can take my word for it. And they eat a lot, so they need to get famous. :) Love you Clyde-Pierre, Cody, Justin & Dillon. You are very groovy kids. Good luck on the contest. You guys have worked hard & deserve every vote you get. Someone needs to break it to your manager (who went to public school) that Harper's Ferry is in WEST Virginia. :)

All Creatures Great & Small

It has been a really great week. I have been able to spend a lot of time outdoors & have got to hang out with a lot of animals. On Saturday we had two other little boys spending the day with us. I took them down to the river to hang out and see what we could see. First we found a little baby snapping turtle, way up on the bank in the gravel several yards from the river. I figure a bird grabbed him for lunch then dropped him. He was all dried out, but still alive. So we carried him down to the river & put him back in and he swam away happily. We may regret this decision when we go swimming in the river this summer. Then we walked down to a little peninsula where a stream flows out into the river to look for snakes. On the way we saw Virginia bluebells and wild violets. Frogs were singing loudly until we started playing near the water, then they would pop up their heads and look at us and sing, then duck back under. After the boys assuring me their mothers would not kill me or them if they got their shoes wet, the boys started trying to catch the frogs. I started to realize what was happening by the time they started making their own observations and comments, but by then it was too late. "Look! That frog has TWO heads!" Mating season. They had waded right into the middle of a pool full of mating frogs. Dozens. The boys were thrilled. The frogs, not so much. Everytime they would pick up a pair of frogs, slimey strings of frog-sex goo would ooze between their fingers. Then they would see tadpole eggs hit the water. The males were dark green and the females bigger and reddish. So this little tidbit of information I tried to casually share sparked a whole new set of inquiries about the males on top. Oh boy. I was thinking I probably should have had parents sign some sort of consent form had I known I would be conducting a sex education class in the middle of the river. I left them to discuss their findings amongst themselves. I heard one little boy say this was the best day of his life. I finally convinced them to put them all back gently and leave them in peace in fear of wiping out an entire generation of frogs. This week I also got to go to Catoctin Zoo with Hank, Wolfgang & some homeschool friends. It was such an amazing day and I got some great pictures. The group left at 2, but we stayed until closing time. Being that close to the monkeys, especially the Macaque family, and looking into their eyes straight to their soul was an unbelievable experience. They sat in a bunch and groomed one another using their little tiny fingers & hands. HUGE pythons came up to the glass, flicked their tongues against where our hands were pressed. One started banging his head against the corner seam of the glass and when Tayva & I heard it creak we ran out the nearest door...quickly. The lioness and white tiger were so regal & dignified. Wolfgang loved the baby goats and spent all day hanging out with them. We got to touch and learn about a baby alligator, a hedgehog, a chinchilla and an Amazon parrot. Canada geese walked around everywhere & one got between me & Hank when I raised my voice at him for walking off & started hissing at me, we were all cracking up. Then a goose attacked another goose right over Wolfgang's head and pulled a big tuft of down off the offending goose's butt. That's when I realized there must be a nest he was defending. Sure enough the female was sitting on a nest right beside the lake. I picked up the tuft of downy butt feathers and put them on the ground beside her then she started using them to line the nest! She stood up & I got some great pictures of the eggs. Wolfgang and I went to Harper's Ferry & crossed the river on the train bridge then hiked down the canal and sat out on a huge rock in the river. Then we hiked up past the church while the bells were ringing on up to Jefferson Rock. We met several new canine friends and watched the pigeons build nests. We stopped by Petco on the way home to say hello to all the kittys. A very sad part of the week concerning canine friends was finding out our friends had to say goodbye to their family dog, Alice. She was a good soul. Goodbye sweet girl. My dogs seem very sad this week, I guess they know. But our young friend Annie is very happy this week , congratulations to her on getting a new baby calf of her own named "Sprinkles". :) I need to come hug your cow, Annie! :) While at a pet store today we saw baby guinea pigs 2 for $5 so we came home and got a cage set up. It appears I am getting up early to go buy two guinea pigs, so I have to go to bed now. We may also get to go visit my friend Luna's campsite during the full moon this weekend! It has been a week full of lots of sunshine, fresh air, many hours at the river & best of all we made many new animal friends. My favorite kind.

Happy Birthday Tallulah !

Today our little Tallulah turns 23. That is so hard to believe. And I now look up to her....and not just because she is taller than I am. Tallulah decided many years ago how life should be lived and unlike most of the rest of us she is actually doing it. She is a world traveler, a beautiful gypsy, a talented actress, passionate performer, loving daughter & loyal friend. She filled our lives with Sesame Street, Shakespeare, trips to the airport, musicals, dancing, and colorful people. And that was just THIS year. Before she could walk, she was off and running. Places to go, people to meet, roles to perform. When she was a toddler, she came in my room & shook me awake and ordered me to, "Get in dee kidgen & fix my bwekfast". She has been keeping us all in line ever since. She has walked alone through the streets of Bethlehem for breakfast, gone swimming in the Dead Sea, lived in more states than I have even visited, cruised to Belize, built houses in Mexico, performed Christian drama across the country and collects people rather than stamps. When she was a teenager, instead of heading to the mall with her paycheck, she took it to buy food to take to a homeless shelter to treat them all to a nice dinner. She is now completely on her own, put herself through a year of college, comes home regularly to visit and has never asked us for any help. She always responds to her slacker useless parents with respect & love & as of yet has not pressed charges for all her childhood trauma. She does however threaten to write a book. :) (I really AM sorry about those damn ducks, Tallulah, I really thought the bag was tied.) For a kid with absolutely no money, she sure lives a very rich life. She finds art & beauty in everything she sees. She attracts the most amazing & interesting people as friends! I borrow her friends for my own when she isn't around. I would feel honored to be able to say I simply knew this extraordinary person, but to be able to say she is my daughter and even more incredibly my friend is too unbelievable to put into words. So, I will just say I am extremely grateful to have such a daughter. It is definitely a fluke...or a genetic mutation. My daughter is a mutant. A magical mutant that still reminds us all to believe in fairies, to read Winnie the Pooh, to make candied violets, to hold on tightly to childhood while simultaneously being the most responsible sensible adult I know. How does she do that? I have never met anyone that has such a strong desire to always honor God in everything she does, every decision, every purchase, every step she takes. I want to be her when I grow up. Happy Birthday Shoogey, we love you and miss you here at The Burrow. It's gonna be so much fun to have you home this summer. Love from Henry, Gaston, Pierre, Wolfgang & Little Hank.

Wiggleworm Captured by Professor

Do you ever wake up and wonder whose life you are living and why? Do you ever look at your spouse and think, 'what was I thinking?'....don't answer that, your spouse reads this blog too. Mine, however, does not, so I am safe. How do you make a life work with someone that is so different from you? And why does it seem that every marriage is being lived mostly for only one of you. I know some are fortunate enough to carefully consider each other's dreams and likes and dislikes but I knew I was in deep trouble the second day of my honeymoon. He had decided we were going to the beach. Okay. Visions of scuba diving, hang gliding, parasailing, day long boat trips danced in my head. I look over at Gaston, lying motionless on the beach WITH A TOWEL wrapped around his entire head & face & think to myself, 'uh-oh'. So from that point on, my life was nothing like the life I had known growing up. I suppose the first clue was probably the wedding itself when he is out posing in his tuxedo while several people were busy trying to pry my hands and feet off the door frame I had grabbed onto refusing to go out there because I had changed my mind. Most of our wedding pictures are of the groom, not the bride. He had thoroughly enjoyed picking out his tux, I pointed to a dress and said, "that one, let's go". As soon as I could escape from the reception, I ripped off the dress, put on my bathing suit and went swimming. The old baptist ladies were appalled and I finally had some fun. I had absolutely nothing in common with the person I had just signed a lifelong contract with. I am restless, constantly bored if I'm not moving. One of my nicknames as a kid was "a wiggle-worm in hot ashes" because I couldn't be still ; Gaston's nickname was "The Little Professor", because he just sat there, watching. Now he sits there, sleeping. I need about 4-5 hours of sleep, get up in the middle of the night to see what I am missing. My most comfortable temperature is in the forties, fifties means time for shorts, sixties and seventies I start sweating & feeling downright tropical. After that, I'm gone. Gaston needs it to be eighty and above at all times. I have the car windows down in the winter, he has them all rolled up tight with no air on all summer. He sleeps with 3 blankets freezing to death and I sleep with a fan blowing on me. I want to live in Alaska, he wants to live in Florida. I want to camp and hike and be on boats; he loves hotels, jacuzzis & body building at the gym. I could live for days on saltines and potted meat and he loves all you can eat buffets. I know at this point I have lost all sympathy from my female readers. I have the perfect husband, he cooks gourmet meals, he shops, he makes me stay in hotels and go to nice restaurants, poor me, right? It's true, I know. But you gotta remember that I grew up with The Crocodile Hunter kind of men for a Dad & Brother. I was surrounded by wildlife at all times and spent as much time on boats as I did on dry land. I was always with my dad. But I think my extremely unsheltered childhood is a story for whole other future blog post . :) So everyday I still try to make peace with the fact that I am married to a man who sits with his legs crossed at the knee, smokes a pipe and discusses books & film & who won't camp at the beach because he will get sand in his hair. I am abrupt, short & to the point, no nonsense, and he, shall we say, is not. I love to spend hours alone never speaking a word to another soul. He can't even stand to watch a movie alone. As a matter of fact it is impossible for him to watch a movie alone because I am the one who has to get everything connected and turned on. He can't hook up a VCR without me. His passion was for religion & culture, I came from a world filled with science and nature. Let the games begin! He loved Billy Graham crusades, I took the kids to hear Jane Goodall speak. I guess we turned out some pretty interesting well rounded kids because of it. We finally agreed to give up discussing politics because we were about to kill each other. No doubt, Gaston has made my world bigger and my life richer. His kids probably don't even know that he is the reason their lives are filled with movies, classical music, dancing, good food & most of the traditions they enjoy every year. I would slip right through every holiday and never notice it. When I met him, I only ate meat & potatoes, ("what do you mean chinese restaurants don't have steak or burgers?") & I thought classical music was boring and had seen maybe 3 movies that weren't Nature documentaries. I love whiskey, he loves fine wines and imported beer. He loves French cuisine, I love Jacques Cousteau. I love hound dogs, he wants pedigreed poofballs. I thought he was joking about paying money to build muscles in a gym. I guess I just assumed that all guys messed about in boats & built cages & caught wild animals & dreamed of a cabin in Alaska. He probably thought all women loved to dress up, put on makeup and go to the theatre. So for now, I try to remember to enjoy Gaston's world while still somehow holding onto who I am as well. His kids love their dad so together we stay, trying to blend these two opposing souls. There are definitely advantages. For those occasions twice a year when I need a hairbrush, I always know who to ask.