Somethings never change (even while we are changing)

(Do you remember when I posted this post on June 24, 2007, one year ago today? I've pasted it below to refresh your memory...)

If...you're happy and you know it spin a WEB.

If you're happy and you know it spin a web!

If you're happy and you know it.....

Then your face will surely show it...

If you're happy and you know it, spin a web!

(This spider has been webbed up on the gardenia bush and the top of my morning coffee patio chair since we got back from Switzerland. As long as he is happy, and willing to catch mosquitos, I am willing to let him have the back of the chair.)

Pretty mellow spider.

And the orange smile is just too cute!

Have a happy Sunday. And remember to smile while YOU are hanging out!

~~~

(Fast forward to today: Well lookie here, guess what!)

Smilie the spider is back!

Another song comes to mind, something about "we're all in our places with bright shiny faces..."

I have NO idea if it is the same spider from last year, or if she is the daughter of Smilie, but there she is, in the exact same location, on the exact same date, one year later.

I have no idea where she went during the autumn, winter and spring either. She didn't write, she didn't send even a post card....

I do wonder how many generations of Smilies have built webs on this particular plot of land. Like, since after getting off the Ark? Something to think about.

Finding something to think about really isn't a problem around here. My mind is mulling over what I want to take, sell or give away from all our possessions. That question would be a lot easier to answer if I knew exactly where we were going to.

The question of where we are going to shifts daily. Opportunities for interviews come from many directions, and ultimately we will have to trust God to give us work where He wants us to be.

Meanwhile we are going ahead with getting our house ready for sale. I'm taking "Before" "During" and "After" pictures.

The kitchen "Before":

Above: As seen from the living room

Walking into the kitchen from the living room/dining room .

Breakfast area.

(We keep two more matching chairs in our bedroom bay window area...easy to grab for extra seating when needed.)

French doors are next to the front door, entering the kitchen from the foyer. Cookbook book shelf behind rocker where I always dump my purse as I come in from the garage.

Kitchen desk and open shelving.

I culled about 3/4ths of my cook book collection a few years ago...the Internet has it all!

Looking from the breakfast nook back to the living room.

From the living room...Bernie is standing at the sink

DURING. This is the kitchen as it looks this morning. Yesterday the painters applied an oil based primer to the walls. The odor was potent, and opening all the windows in the 97 degree heat here was pretty icky.

Lucky for me I had to go to work all day...(smile!)

All the stuff from the sun room and kitchen is now piled up in the dining area and foyer. We are being challenged to establish new places for things like our keys, which have always hung in the kitchen right next to the garage door, and wallets, mail...all the stuff that we had designated areas for.

Communication is of utmost importance; we just hope one of us will remember where we decided to put stuff for now!

The sun room looks pretty crazy with the wall covering off...

Above: Kitchen counter art. Title: "Low Carb Snack"

With the kitchen torn up, meals are whatever you can grab!

I know this preparation process is going to go fast, and by Monday it will all be put back together and look fabulous.

No biggie...

I was putting away some small desktop family pictures and came across this shot:

Taken in San Diego about 14 years ago.

I had NO idea that June 24 2008 would find me in Texas, chortling over returning spiders and wondering where I would find myself living next!

Who is the smarter one: the ones who never leave their area, or the ones who leave, and leave, and leave...goes on adventures, and maybe will one day return to where it all began again?

I always thought I was a bit Hobbitish...wanting to stay in the Shire.

But after moving from San Diego to Oregon (for college), back to San Diego for 20+ years, then to San Jose for a year, Dallas for two years, and Houston for eight years...truthfully...I am ready for another adventure!

If we had stayed put in San Diego, where we were both born and raised, and where my parents were born and raised, what would our lives had been like the last eleven years?

No trips to San Francisco for the day, or hiking in the Redwoods, or staying in beach houses in Santa Cruz.

No Master's degree for me. (Being near a library school in Dallas made that possible.)

No trips to Hawaii, Alaska, Grand Cayman, Oregon, the Carolinas, Louisiana, Colorado, Utah, Florida, New England, Minnesota, Switzerland, or Canada. (Bernie's frequent flier miles made flights and hotels available for free or at greatly reduced rates.)

I would have tended my garden and never had known what I was missing.

Looking back on it all, I realize I was SO blessed by the situations that forced us to pack up and leave San Diego.

While at the time it seemed quite terrifying, looking back I see it was just the start of a grand adventure!

(Hmmm...this sounds a bit like a conversation at the beginning of The Hobbit!)

Millinery: Want to tie one on?

Gosh it has been a while since I last posted about millinery.
I just moments ago took a break from my get ready for moving preparations because I needed to look up brass doorbells (don't ask why...) on ebay,
and...

as long as I was there....

what harm could there possibly be in looking at the hat pattern that was on the ebay homepage under the banner "Ladyjillanna...you might be interested in this!"

Dang.

Ebay knows me waaaayyyy too well.

Isn't this adorable?
I especially like the matching hat and dress in black in the upper corner. That neckline has me in a swoon. Wouldn't that hat and dress be wonderful in a flirty floaty sheer floral fabric?
Especially for a garden party?

Sigh.

Maybe even as a Mother of the Bride or Groom assemble for an outdoor wedding? (sigh...nothing on that horizon yet....)

The pattern is from the 1930's and is available as a reproduction on ebay right now.
You can take a peek at the particulars and the bidding by clicking HERE.

Be sure to check out the seller's other fabulous hat patterns. Wowzah!

(must resist...moving...must resist buying more stuff..)

First Day of Summer (as per the calendar)

I feel like it has been summer for a couple of months now, but my desktop calendar begs to differ with me.
It says that TODAY is the first day of summer.
I am not going to argue with that chronological grid.
Instead I'm just going to post a few pictures to mark the official start of this season.

The main thoroughfare in my town: Those trees behind the traffic signals are crape myrtle in bloom.
Enormous aren't they?
Check out how big the trees are compared to the car on the road.
The myrtle leaves turn a vivid butternut blaze orange in autumn, then have lovely bare skin colored limbs in winter.
Then they pull out all the stops to dazzle us with pink,rose, purple, magenta and white blossoms in the summer.
It is interesting to think how much one would regret each passing seasonal phase if one didn't know more wonderfulness was soon to be expected!

Last night I went out to water some of our patio plants. Inside of one pot were two tiny mushrooms, about the size of the last digit of my baby finger. You can see the stem of the second mushroom at the top of the picture.
I had transplanted volunteer tomato seedlings in that pot; at the time I wasn't expecting the makings of tomato and mushroom salad to appear.

They were not the most amazing mushrooms I've ever seen.
(I frequently stop to take mushroom pictures.)

But the pebbly caps caught my interest.

They were kind of cute, being so small and all.

Imagine my surprise when I went outside this morning and discoverer my tiny photo subjects of yesterday had BLOOMED!
I had never thought of mushrooms blooming before.

I was able to get a shot of the mushrooms from the underside as well.
Another magical garden view available to be seen only when kneeling down.

Bernie flagged me that we have a new resident in our garden this morning.
One of the large yellow forest spiders has chosen to settle in along our back fence.
She is practicing her web building skills, creating various web structures in the holly bushes and amidst our crape myrtle tree's branches.

Ms. Spider (I'm thinking of calling her either "Golda" or "Summer") has made one beautiful web, but currently she is hunkered down in a more boxy shaped web effort.

She is still quite young, and maybe going through an experimental/modern phase of home design.

I think it won't be long until she will settle back into the traditional time honored rounded web shaped design.

I am so happy to have her right outside the window above our garden tub where I can watch her at work spinning webs without stepping out into the heat.

While Ms. Spider is tinkering with her home design, I am doing likewise.
This morning we ordered new carpeting. The eggshell colored carpet sample in corner is our choice, not too different than the color of the wool berber that we have lived with since we bought the place.

We ordered paint for the kitchen and the sun room yesterday.
The dots are the color of the accent walls in our house; I was trying to see which color would work best with that.
In the end I flipped a coin...and went with Relaxed Khaki.



When we moved into our house seven and a half years ago, we thought we would replace the then six year old kitchen wall paper.
It was in perfect condition, but seemed rather dark.
(It is a dark green, if your monitor is iffy on color exactness.)
The real estate agent at the time told us that the few people who had seen the house before us were turned off by the all-over-the-kitchen blast of color and pattern.



I loved the house and garden.
I knew I wanted this house the moment I stepped through the front door.
After looking at over a hundred houses, the wall paper in this kitchen didn't bother me at all at the time.
Plus I was too tired from moving and finishing grad school to want to go to the hassle of selecting new paper or painting.
I sure as heck didn't want to strip all that paper myself!

But it is now the six year old wall paper is thirteen year old wall paper.
New eyes seeing it will probably be even more turned off by the dark green color.
Say good bye to the vines, they will be textured and painted over with a nice neutral Relaxed Khaki next week.

Our sun room had wall paper that just THRILLED me the first moment I saw it.
I loved the woven grass cloth design, and how organic and restful it felt in the room with many tall windows and plantation shutters that opened to the view of our garden.

Our *bleep* cats thought it looked restful and organic too.

Just perfect for using to buff their natural organic nails.

I am actually a bit thankful that the paper has faded around the pictures on the wall.

Even if the cats had behaved, the paper would have needed to be replaced anyway.

Next week the room will be painted a soft buttery yellow called Jersey cream.

~~~~

So it is here with us on the first official day of Summer, in the year of our Lord 2008.

It will be our last summer in Texas.

Our house will be going on the market the first week in July and we hope to move to either Salt Lake City or San Diego by autumn.

~~~~

Both Bernie and I are searching for positions in those areas; his position with his company ends August 3rd.

There are a lot of changes ahead for us and the need for positive expectations and prayerful supplications is great.

We are excited that God has a plan for us even if it is not yet fully apparent.

Like the mushrooms, such plans are generated out of view, then appear as tiny things, and then suddenly, become apparent to all who would see.

We kneel to see the wonders, and rise to take on the challenges in faith.

And make preparations for those changes that lie ahead.

Aunt Lou

Our "Aunt Lou" begonia is going great guns in our garden right now.

The blossoms as seen from below.

(You have to kneel down on the ground and look up to see the pink blossoms that hang downward in large clusters.)

Up close each blossom appears as if they have been sprinkled with fine crystals.

Fairy sparkles, as any right minded little girl (of any age...) would say.

Isn't that a magnificent flower cluster?

I love how the leaves are red as seen from back, and green with white freckles as seen from the front.

Now for the story behind this plant.

Bernie's grandfather had but one sister...known to one and all as "Lou", even though when she was born in January of 1883 in Illinois, she was christened Clara.

That's Lou with her brothers in the center of the picture above.

This name switchero was a popular past time back then. Clara (aka "Lou") had a brother named Ira who went by Cat. Ira was Bernie's grandpa, and he's the guy on the far right leaning over his wife in the plaid dress. Her name was Bessie, real name Nancy Jane, and she was Bernie's grandma.

I digress.

By the time Lou had grown up and married and settled in Sacramento California, she had a begonia in her garden that she used to snap pieces from and hand off to friends and relatives.

One day one piece of the begonia got snapped off and handed to her nephew's wife; who is now my mother in law. My MIL Barbara stuck the cutting into a pot in her garden and let it grow.

It would grow a bit every year in Barbara's garden in San Diego and bloom.

Barbara gave a cutting to me for my garden in Texas. A piece about six inches long.

I stuck it in a pot.

It grew.

Oh my how it grew!

No one had ever seen an Aunt Lou cutting do what this one did!

We gave a cutting of our plant to Jeff to grow in Salt Lake City.

He stuck it in a pot and kept it inside, next to a sliding glass door in his living room.

It grew and thrived as well.

Pieces of Aunt Lou's begonia are in family and friends gardens in many cities and states.

Isn't that cool?

I think so.

And I thought you would too.

If it were possible, I would invite you over for a visit today, hand you a cold glass of ice tea, and we would visit a bit. And then when it was time for you to leave, I would go outside and snap off a piece of my Aunt Lou begonia so you could have some in your garden too.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Who knows. Maybe some day it will happen.

A walk in the woods on Father's Day

It has been awhile since B. and I have walked together through the wood. It's been too hot, we've been too busy, life piles up.

I sometimes wonder what I miss on the days when I don't take a walk.
Along the side of the path on this day was this little flower.

A pink tinged lily, about five inches across, a solitary bloom amidst the brambles.
It is good to consider lilies; they last but a day, yet their beauty is displayed as though each flower was to last forever.

Tiny things go about their lives as well. B. saw this oh so eensie skink. When it ran it looked like a squiggle swimming across the ground.

The grasses in the meadow have begun to go to seed.
The curlicue fronds suggest an Arabic script spelling out a praise of life and creation.
~~~
It has been very hot here and I cringe to hear the weather reports of "Gulf Moisture" fueling the storms of the Midwest.
Houston had a flood in 2001, from a Tropical Storm named Allison. I know what it is like for neighborhoods to be lost, and for businesses to struggle to regroup from the deluge.
Then there was Katrina.
We saw first hand how a flood can forever altered what people thought their life would be like.
~~~~
Now the floods of the Midwest...
I just want to say that I am praying for everyone in the midst of many waters and the economic fallout that we all may be called upon to endure.
~~~
These are challenging times on many levels and for many people in many places.
I believe in considering lilies, how they toil not, nor spin, yet God provides for them, for the sake of their mere one day existence.
~~~
If these thoughts seem a bit heavy it is because right now we too face challenging time, less challenging than the challenges many people face and more challenging than the challenges that other people face.
Such is life....
~~~~
I find encouragement in considering the glorious lilies on this site.
Gotta Garden is recording the lilies that are now blooming in her garden daily.

I thank her for her efforts to show us all the glories about her garden!

~~~
It astonishes me to see the many variations of day lilies in bloom.
I had no idea...
And it amazes to me to realize that each picture that she has posted is of a lily, no matter how glorious, which was created to bloom for only a single day.

Father's Day! And here is another dead animal....

I don't have a lot of pictures of my dad and me from when I was growing up.
Dad usually manned the camera so he wasn't in many of the pictures.

Whenever he was in the picture, usually he was holding something he had caught fishing or killed while hunting.
Yellowtail, bonita, marlin, deer, bob cat, geese, ducks, turkeys, pheasant, coyotes...the list went on and on.

I joke with him whenever we go through the family album:

Here's a picture of us kids, there's a picture of you with a dead animal...another of us kids, another of you and a dead fish....

Usually our pets got into the pictures too.

So here we have the perfect picture of my Dad, my brother and me, a dead fish that Dad had caught, our Siamese cat and our tortoise.

Ah, those were the days!

My dad, San Diego's Sportsman of the Year several times over.

He got trophies for that.

Dad...I just have never found the right trophy to give you for being my Father of Each Year each and every year of my life.
Probably just as well...I don't think there is a shelf big enough to hold a trophy like that anyway!

So here's my love and thank you for all the years...and hope you are going to enjoy your (Grand) Father's Day tonight!

When you went to London, what did you see?

Some folks go to London to see all the traditional sights:

Of course you wouldn't want to miss this sight:

(That's my mom...oh yeah, and some famous rocks...)

My mom and I got to go to London together, just us two girls, in 1986.
She called me up one day and asked me if I wanted to go with her to England.
I said "YES!"
She said "Well, what about the kids?"
(Referring to my two children, her two grandchildren, then eight year old Laura and six year old Jeff.)

My answer:

"WHAT kids????"

And with that, away we went.

It was October, and the London news papers ran articles commenting on the unusually fine fall weather.
I wasn't the least bit surprised.
Wherever my mom goes, the weather is always just lovely.
(If you want to travel and have good weather, check with June Dustin and match up with her travel schedule. Frankly, travel companies would be wise to pay her to travel with them...there would be no complaints about the weather that way.)
When we flew home, there was not a single cloud in the sky between London and San Diego.
There was a note of that fact by the pilot when we landed. He had never seen such a thing before.

Another funny well known fact about my mom: Wherever she travels, she always makes friends with cats.
She has been all over Europe, North America, Mexico and the British Isles.
Her travel photos are a nice mixture of scenic and historic places.
And local cats.

These two London cats were lucky enough meet Mom, and get a cuddle as well.
I'll bet those cats bragged about that for awhile.
It is also a well known fact that any cat that my mom owns is a very lucky cat.
Frankly, I think anyone who meets my mom is lucky.
She is one sweet and caring lady.
And today is her birthday.

I'm hearing the people out there say:

Happy Birthday!

And all the cats out there say:

PURR...Meow!

(Happy Birthday Mom with lots of love from all of us!)

Here we go again....

Wherever Bernie is perching...

Our two cats are also perching.

Which would normally be fine, except right now, right outside the office window...

These two mockingbirds are also perching.
And they DO NOT like having two cats looking out the window at their tree!

The birds spend ALL yesterday afternoon bouncing around the tree, squawking cheet chee-t cheekk-up
at the two cats, who frankly couldn't have cared less.

It was a long, long noisy afternoon.
I think I will encourage the three guys (Bernie, Tiggie and Hart) to take the laptop into some other room this afternoon, and give those poor birds a break.
Even if they don't need one, I certainly do.
Gads those birds are loud!

Fashion as Diversion

I try never to look while someone is jabbing me with a needle.
Yesterday while the nurse was busy missing my vein on the first try, I was busy keeping my mind and eyes occupied with looking at the fashions in one of last April's fashion magazines.



Is this a yummy corset or what??? Just wide black piece of lace wrapped around a cotton sundress, then tied on with a ribbon.
Fresh and glam all at once.
Must find out when you can get lace that is that wide!



Then there was this amazing dress. Smocking for grown up girls.
Isn't it lovely to see dresses with such amazing details?
Wouldn't this be incredible on a wedding dress?
And those sleeves...can they be dropped to make this an all season frock?
I am in love with this design!

(The needle stick was because I had my colonoscopy done yesterday; all is well! Or at least the injury is healing well.
It was necessary to put me under while the scope was being done, which of course meant having an IV inserted in a vein. I am a "hard stick", that is to say, it is rare that the medical personnel hits a vein on me on the first try.
I try never to look while all this jabbing is going on.
This time I paged through an old magazine.
It worked, I hardly felt a thing.)

Prom Dress take 2: Meeting Lovella's Challenge

After I posted this picture of myself in my Senior Prom dress, my fellow blogger and dear friend Lovella decided to up the ante.



In my post I mused about today's high school graduates, and how we could still celebrate graduation if we wanted to, by painting our graduation years on our car's back windows.
A simple user friendly suggestion.

Never trust a Mennonite...they look sweet and innocent, but they are really wile crafty gals.
Lovella later emailed me and said that my post had inspired her to get out her graduation dress, and to try it on again.

She didn't have a prom dress, there was no dancing for her back then, dancing which could lead to you-know-what according to her church at the time. I danced; I must have done something wrong because it sure didn't lead to anything more than a gentle hug from my date. Fine with me...he was my brother's best friend and when no one asked me to the prom, he took pity on me and offered to be my escort.

Anyway...Lovella then merrily emailed me that she had tried on her dress, it fit perfectly, and she was going to post a picture of herself in her graduation dress today.

Humph.
Will see about that...

I marched straight into my guest bedroom and pulled my prom dress out of storage.
Unzipped it, and stepped into it.
It was a tiny bit snug in the hips, but not too tight.

Ta-dah! It still fits!
Well, almost. The ta-ta parts have gone from girlish to matronly, whoo hoo...cleavage at last.
I couldn't zip up past my rib cage.
Like I care...if I had had ta-tas back then, I probably would have had some guy asking me to the prom. Silly me, silly times; no Victoria Secrets to secretly add alluring curves to those who were lacking.

Lovella's lovely yellow dress was sewn by her mom, my pink gown was likewise sewn by my mom.

That tradition has fallen by the wayside in my family; my own daughter's prom gown was a stunning black dress created just for her by a professional seamstress. My alteration skills just were not up to the challenge.

Lovella has posted her encouraging and thoughtful reflections on her post today, as have other bloggers with fond memories and pictures of their prom/graduation dresses.

I hope you will visit her site, she has a message for all of us that shouldn't be missed.

And I hope you take a moment to see some of the other dress links on Lovella's site.

****

Bernie is out of town right now. We had talked about taking a picture of me in my gown with him in his tuxedo escorting me to the prom as should have happened all those years ago.

We planned to put on some music, and dance to the songs that bring back memories of our high school years, at different school and at different places in our lives.

It would be lovely to dance with him in this dress.

And to see if maybe the Mennonites were right about what dancing would lead to after all.

The Old Swimming Hole

According to the calendar, it isn't quite summer yet.
According to me, summer is here, and then some.

For me, summer is when the temperature soars to over 80 F for a week.
Or in our case, over 90 degrees for several weeks.
Yup...when the old temperature reading hits 94 degrees everyday like it did last week, spring time is officially over and done with for another year.

In our neighborhood however, summer officially begins the first day that the neighborhood pool is open for business.

AH yesss.....
To get the pool, all we have to do is ride our bikes down the street one block, and then peddle on through the woods (about a five minute ride) and then go across a wooden bridge that spans the small bayou.
Once we get to the pool, we find a lounge chair in the shade, take a dip, and then kick back with a book or a magazine.
Sweet.
The pool even has adults only swim for part of every hour for the grown ups who don't want to dunk with the kiddie set.

We went to the pool yesterday, on a Saturday, at 4 pm and practically had the pool to ourselves.

A couple of families from our block were also cooling off with their kids.

There is a baby wading pool next to the pool house. The tiny tykes were splashing around with enormous paintbrushes that they were using to create drawings on the pool deck using just plain pool water.
Clever idea, wish I had thought of it when I had tadpole sized kids.

On the other side of the fence is a wonderful playground.
No one was playing there at all.
It amazes me how blessed we are with things for kids to do, compared to the rest of the world.
I wished I could have magically transported kids from trouble places for a day of fun with us.

What a pity to have a playground like this and yet there be no one there to enjoy it!

The blue water slides at the side of the pool was a new feature for this season.

We asked the teenage lifeguard if adults could go down the slides too.

He said yes.

Bernie was busy swimming laps when I decided it was time to give the slides a whirl.

I carefully climbed the steps up to the opening of the straight slide, wondering if I would knock my head or clunk my back if I tried it.

(The caution adult mind is an annoying spoil sport at times...)

I whooshed down the slide with a hearty scream.

(What fun is it to go down a slide without screaming?)

Bernie swam over to me.

"I heard you scream before I saw you come out."

"Yeah, I know. Screaming is part of the fun."

"Yeah, you are right. You've got to scream if you want to have all the fun."

I gave the twisty slide a try next.

(Secretly worried about how low the exit point was to the edge of the pool.)

I had hardly gotten whee! past my lips when I was already rocketing into the water.

Bernie was waiting in the water near the edge of the pool.

"So it was fun?"

"Yeah!"

"Which one did you like better?"

"The straight one."

"Really?"

"I just like coming out higher above the water. Come on, let's both go down the slides together, you take the curved one, I'll take the straight one."

We pulled ourselves out of the pool and walked over to the slides. Bernie climbed up and out of sight before I had put one foot on the stairs.

Just as I grabbed the hand rail to start climbing I heard the lifeguard speak.

"Ma'am...only one person on the slide at a time."

"Oh. I'm sorry...I didn't know."

"You will have to wait until he is through the slide before you can go."

"OK."

(I felt rather foolish that as a 54 year old woman I was being admonished by a kid probably not even old enough to drive....)

At that point Bernie came whooshing out the end of the slide head first and careened into the water with a huge splash.

"Sir...."

Bernie righted himself and shook his head.

"Sir...it is against regulations to go down the slide head first. You can only go down the slide feet first."

"Oh. OK. Sorry. I didn't know."

We sheepishly climbed out of the pool, under the watchful eye of the polite young man in the lifeguard chair.

This is getting to be a disturbing trend. Bernie and I have always tried to live in a law abiding, non-rebelling fashion.

Lately thought, whenever we get around holes filled with water, we some how find ourselves in trouble with the law.

I scarcely know how this can be.

(We didn't bother to point out to the young man in the red suit that obviously you actually could go down the slide head first just fine, and the correct word to use should have been "may" instead of "can." I figured we should just lay low and stay out of trouble, we've got a long summer still ahead of us, and the last thing we need is to be blackballed from the neighborhood swimming pool just for the sake of semantics!)