Lazy Day

After the frenzy of yesterday, I figured on more of the same during this Burger Fest.

Tired though I was, I got up at 6:00 to watch the hot air balloons lift up and serenely pass over my house as I drank my cappuccino on the deck. It is the way I begin every Burger Fest day, but that was not to be.  Breezy weather conditions kept the balloons on the ground.

It made sense to go back to bed and I soon did, thinking I would wake up in time for the Burger Fest Parade.  I must have been more exhausted than I thought because I slept through the parade, too.

Gary and I did go to a party at our friends' house where they provided us with a celebration lunch of hamburgers, hot dogs and bratwurst with potato salad and more, but then he was tired out.  He has been preparing his camper to take up north tomorrow and that meant working in the heat.  We soon came home and he took a nap as well.

I've been to many of the Burger Fest celebrations downtown over the years.  I didn't care to go again, especially alone, so I read a novel and worked on another writing project for a while, then joined him in what I thought would be a short nap, but that, too, stretched to two hours.

We woke to thunder.  There would be no balloon liftoff at 6:00, that was certain.  The rain continued so the evening balloon glow was canceled, too.

So ended the day, with not much happening.  I didn't mind one bit. I needed the rest.

If the clouds clear by tomorrow, there will be two liftoffs.  The balloons will go up at 6:00 and Gary will head to Lost Lake.  There will be solitary days ahead for me, time to reflect, write and garden.  

We'll have more energy for next year's Burger Fest.    

What a Day!

It was my turn to post a short story at Black Coffee Fiction and after all of yesterday's interruptions all I had was the roughest of rough drafts without a satisfactory ending. 

I was up at 5:30 to write.  By 9:00 I had the story done and e-mailed it to Betty for critiquing. 

Gary's nephew Angelo arrived to give the bathroom a second coat of paint. I chatted with him for a while, getting all the latest family gossip. I keep better track of Gary's family than he does.  Then I was off to the bank to do some re-financing. I put gas in the car to prepare for the day's adventures.  

At home I found  Betty's very useful notes but there was no time to do the revisions.  I soon was on the road again to go to Shawano to tell stories at the Birch Hill Nursing Home, one of my regular customers.  I told them "The Dogs Election", a Native American story that I only tell every four years during the Presidential campaigns.  

When I got home, I revised the short story and posted it at Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com   It's a prequel to the Love in the Decades series. It's a depressing tale of high school during the 1950s. It was the sad memories that kept me from approaching the story before.

I was just finishing when Chris called to tell me they were bringing my grandson to look at the hot air balloon rally which is held at the school grounds just two blocks from my house.  I looked at the clock and found out I had time for a nap so I hit the bed, wiped out. 

An hour later, I was ready to greet my family.  We went over to see the balloons but a brisk wind had kicked up and it looked like the balloons wouldn't fly.  We went to Gallaghers in Green Bay.  The pizza had just arrived at our table when Gary called.  The balloon lifted up after all and he was watching them float over the house. 

It couldn't be helped, so we ate leisurely.  It was sunset when we returned to Seymour and one glance at the school grounds told us the balloons were once more being inflated.  We had come back in time for the glow. 

Evan is now old enough to appreciate the giants above us and was disappointed that we could not go on the grounds for a closer look.  There was still too much wind.  

Still, the sight of those giants is always awesome.  We stayed until the last balloon was deflated. 

Tonight, this blog and then bed.  I am so, so ready for it.   

Another Unexpected Day

Today we were visited by a charming thirteen year old girl and I found her fascinating.

I write a lot of short stories, mostly about people beyond the teen years.  Two of my stories last year were about teenage boys.  I see a lot of these boys at our fitness center. I eavesdrop on their conversations so I think I can get their "voice" right when I write dialogue.  And of course, I raised a son.

I've never written a story with a young girl in it.  Teen girls don't seem to talk to me much.  At that age they seem to be in giggle mode, glued to their cell phones.  Here I had one captive.  She told me what she was reading and how much she wanted a Nook like mine.  We talked about our travels and where we wanted to go next. I showed her my photo in front of the Sydney Opera House, a place she yearns to visit. She hates camping and told me why.  She is a gymnast and we both gloried over Gabby Douglas's triumph at the Olympics.   She plays percussion and I play the piano. There were games she and her friends play that I've never heard of.

I would never use things she told me in a story, but I liked hearing the cadence.  Conversation is never easy to write, so we writers listen all the time wherever we are.  We are the world's nosiest people.

Meanwhile, I have a short story due tomorrow.  I know what I want to say but I don't exactly know how to finish the thing.  I will get up early and do my best to get it to final draft state when Gary's nephew comes to finish painting our bathroom.  At that point, I won't be able to write unless I grab my notebook computer and work on the deck.

At noon I present the story to Wade and Betty for critiquing and head to Shawano to do a performance at Birch Hill Nursing Home.  I'll be home by 3:30 for last minute corrections to the short story and post it by at least 4:30 p.m.

Then it's off to the bank to do some re-financing.  Then comes the Burgerfest balloon rally with grandson Evan and his parents.

Gary removed the bathroom door so no privacy for us until tomorrow night.  We will avert our eyes, I guess.

Change of Plans

There were plenty of things on my day planner this morning.  I got right to it, working on a short story and cleaning my office between bouts of inspiration.  I was in a hurry to get things done because I had a mammogram scheduled for the afternoon and garden work later. 

Gary reminded me that we had to go to city hall to vote in the primary election by absentee ballot.  We figure on camping at Lake Ottawa by election day on the 14th, this time in his camper and staying in one place for a couple of weeks. We voted, went on to ShopKo to get a few household items using our senior discount.

When we got home, I went right back to the computer, but soon began to shake and feel dizzy.  I thought I just needed something to eat so had an early lunch.  It didn't help.  The dizziness got worse so I took my temperature:  101 degrees F.   I was soon in bed. 

That is where I am now, typing out this blog on my little notebook computer.  

Other than the occasional mold allergy that is remedied by a nap, I haven't been sick in recent memory.  Oh there's that seasonal affective disorder thing that convinces me I am dying in February, but mostly, I am healthy.  I had forgotten illness gives me permission to be so, so lazy, reading a novel on my Nook, watching a movie on Netflix, and sleeping whenever I felt like it.  I could do without the sore throat though. 

I re-scheduled the mammogram.  I can't garden anyhow because a thunderstorm is rolling through.  

My temperature is back to normal.  Tomorrow, as Scarlett O'Hara said, is another day.  

Vegetables

Usually by this time of the summer we are grazing through the vegetable garden.  I expected to have lots of vegetables ready for the dinner table when we returned from Canada, but that was not the case. I picked a few green beans three days ago, and when we needed an onion yesterday, I pulled one out.

Before we left, we had drought and while we were gone, there was excessive rain which may have harmed the blossoms, but I also wonder about the shortage of honeybees.  I haven't seen many this summer. If our honeybees are disappearing, as they are in many places, we may not have as many vegetables in the future.

The zucchini that was just beginning to form seems to have been eaten, but there are more blossoms so perhaps by the end of the summer I'll have enough to make some breads and cakes to freeze.

Today I went to the farmers market and bought tomatoes and okra.

We do have some rabbits that might have been munching my squash but there may be another culprit. Just before we left for Canada, I glanced over to Elaine's house at dusk and saw a woodchuck, or groundhog.  It quickly slipped under her deck.  She was in Connecticut visiting family but I sent her an e-mail telling her about her new pet and suggested she call the city.

When we got back Elaine had a police department trap next to her deck with watermelon in it.  Gary said it was the wrong kind of melon. When he lived in Dixon, Illinois, he had lots of critters in and out of his house.  There were pet owls, skunks, and more.  Gary thought the best thing to put in the trap would be muskmelon.  We bought some and he cut up one of the pieces which is now in the trap.

Now it is just a matter of waiting.  As I told Elaine, if we don't catch the ground hog, at least we'll have our own spring weather forecast.

While he was at it, Gary checked out her deck and found wasp nests. He waited until dark.  Just now he came back from releasing a wasp bomb.  I hope the ground hog doesn't get sick from it.

Photo selection

In some ways, getting photos printed was easier prior to digital cameras.  We mailed the entire roll of film to a processor, waited for the postal carrier a week or two and then selected the photos out of the results, throwing out the blurry ones.  Because of the expense we took fewer photos.

These days, we can record hundreds of photos, slip the memory card into PC and go about picking the very best of the lot.  That, however, is so time consuming.

Tonight, because of a good print offer at Walgreens, I set out to make my selections from photos I've taken since May.  (I ordered January through April when Walgreens last had a good deal)  I'm going into Appleton tomorrow for a meeting, so I can pick up the prints on the way.  Sounds  easy, but it took me over two hours to select, edit and order.

Son Chris always wonders why I just don't save the photos on a CD or memory card so I can look at them on my computer.  There are a couple of problems with this.

First,  technology changes.  I've gone through large floppy disks to smaller disks to CDs to memory cards.  Who can say where the technology will go?  I no longer can look at photos I saved on disks.  Printed out photos will still be useful a hundred years from now.

Second, I could and do look at photos on my computers, there is something charming about browsing through the 39 photo albums on my shelf.

I carefully label all the  photos and add some of my columns, the ones I think my grandson might find interesting. Pieces of memorabilia go in there, too.  The entire year's album will be finished on New Year's Eve.

I began putting these together decades ago and will continue to do them this way until I die.  What Chris does with them then is up to him. I expect most of my archive will be thrown out.  It is his right and I won't be around to care.  

While We Were Gone

It takes a day or two to recover from a trip.

The first problem is sleeping.  Oddly enough, I couldn't get used to the quiet.  I live in a quiet town in on a quiet street in a well insulated house.  There were no sounds at night.

While we were on the trip around Lake Superior, we were mostly on the main highways, including the Trans Canadian Highway 17.   With two exceptions (Laura Lake and Crescent Lake) our campgrounds were near those roads and we had to get used to the noise of trucks and trains. Odd that we had to come home to find silence.

When we left, northeast Wisconsin was in a drought.  Lawns were brown and I was worried that my potted plants weren't long for the world.

As we were leaving Seymour, I noticed several people outside a neighbor's house.  I knew he had cancer and was very sick and wondered if he were worse.   When we came back, I found out he had died that day.  His wife told me that just before he died, she told him to tell God we needed rain.  It started to rain right away and Seymour had as much rain in two weeks as it had in the three prior months.  The whole garden is now a jungle I must fight through.  Weeding begins tomorrow.

While we were gone, a California physicist who was the last scientist who held out against the idea that global warming was occurring and said if there was climate change, it wasn't caused by humans, finished a study commissioned by the Koch Brother.  They, no doubt, figured they were paying him to agree with their anti-science stance.  Instead, after looking at all the data, he now agrees with all reputable scientists.  

Of course, I knew this all along, and my okra is proving it.  I've planted okra for the past few years because I like it in soups but it has been almost impossible to find in Wisconsin because it needs a longer growing season, like that in Kentucky.  Mostly, the okra experiment has been a failure, but each year, the plants have gotten a bit bigger.  Last year, I managed to harvest two small pods.

When we came back, the first thing I checked was the vegetable bed.  The okra is in flower which means the pods will form soon.  By the end of August, I should be able to harvest them.  

Tonight, we drove to the Manzke farm where Gary keeps his camper.  When we left, their lawn was stubble.  Now it is a lush green.   Their crops, which were near to failing, are now growing and should be fine if the rains continue through August.  They came just in a nick of time.

So starting tomorrow, it's back to the usual routine:  gardening, writing, blogging, exercising, walking, seeing friends and family.  Everything is as it was.

Until the next trip.

Another milestone

Some time tomorrow, after writing 718 posts on this blog I will pass another milestone with my 20,000th "hit".  I wonder what country will produce that reader.  The statistics for the past week show:

United States                                                    198
Russia                                                                23
Canada                                                               15
France                                                                  5
Germany                                                              4
Poland                                                                  3
Australia                                                               1
China                                                                    1
India                                                                      1
Japan                                                                    1

Once in a while, I get a response from my readers but that is so rare.

Meanwhile, I have another blog I share with Wade Peterson and now Bettyann Moore.  Wade has just posted his latest story at Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com  There, too, we have regular readers from all over the world, yet we get few comments.

Because I know how much bloggers like to get feedback, I make it a point to leave messages at all the websites I regularly visit.

Tell me who you are!  After almost two years, my curiosity is getting the better of me.    

Wheels

For two weeks, Gary drove his van on our Circle Tour around Lake Superior.  He would deny this, but I had no real choice in where we went.  He was in command.

Is there a woman who never had the experience of planning on seeing some road side attraction only to have her man drive past it and then say, oops, we missed it, and go on?  In my mother's box of photos, I found many blurred trip pictures and thought, why keep them?  Now I see she had to shoot pictures of places while the car was moving.  

There are places I might liked to have seen on our trip:  waterfalls, a lighthouse, a cove.  One day I wanted to go to someplace and Gary asked me what I would do there.  "I don't know," I said, and he thought that wasn't a good answer, but isn't serendipity the heart of a trip?  I like the unusual, the complete surprise but you don't find that until you go off route.

My last performance of the tour was at a retirement home in Sault Ste Marie.  I asked the women about their experiences.  They were the same.  One after another had a story to tell about her husband driving past places she would never get to visit. 

Today, I got into my own car and took off to do errands around Seymour.  I didn't come home for two hours.  I found more and more places I wanted to go, even if they were local.  That car was freedom.

Now, I think about my old age.  At some point, I will have to surrender my driver's license and depend on others to take me where I want to go.  What will that be like? Could I live without my freedom?  As long as I could keep walking I would be fine.  As long as I could take a wheelchair for a spin, I would be fine.  But when that is gone?

Every nursing home has an alarm system for residents who try to escape.  That would be me. The idea of being locked away is abhorrent to me, even if those in charge have the best intentions.

I think I will start investigating how to disable alarms.

Circle Tour – Day 14 – End of the Road

The last performance on the tour was last night. Most of the performances went well, but last night's was exceptional, with an audience that was with me every step of the way, laughing and applauding. I've received an invitation from all the venues to come back and I may just do that in another year or two.

Gary packed up this morning and we were on our way home. Before we left Ontario we had to stop to get our Canadian money exchanged for American. At one stop, I heard an American talking to a cashier about Canada's “funny money” a slur he took as great comedy. He was taken aback when the cashier calmly informed him that the Canadian dollar is now worth more than the American greenback. So who's got the funny money now?

All I had left was some Canadian change because I'd already swapped bills with Gary. I had $6.25 in change for which I received six American bills. The odd pennies and nickles left went into a box for charity. It's much easier than trying to use it in the USA.

Then it was across the bridge to the American side. As usual, we sat on the bridge in traffic for a long, long time, watching the ships go through the Sault locks.

We finally reached customs where horror of horrors, we were detained and our van searched. It was only a spot check but just the same, as we sat in a waiting area, I reviewed all my past sins from hiding a candy cane I'd snitched behind my grandmother's couch when I was six or seven through six decade to the present day. Gary says we weren't there long enough to review all of his sins. We were soon released and sent on our way.

Then the all day ride through the Upper Peninsula and into Wisconsin. We began to see flags on lawns, something you don't see in Canada where patriotism has nothing to do with a piece of cloth. We had never seen big religious billboards there either. Now all is revealed: Jesus died for our sins and abortion and homosexuality are evil. Life is much simpler in Canada. And more fun, Gary says.

I will have to write up my thoughts about this trip, but that will have to wait until tomorrow when I've rested up.