7 Quick Takes (Vol 39)

Hey there, remember to click on the picture above to be whisked through the world wide web and over to Jennifer's site to see what all the other Quick Takers are doing. And now, on with the show...

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So, I might have mentioned before that The Engaged One is spending a semester of study in Uganda. She has a blog and if you are at all interested in what she is doing and learning you can go over there to see. She is certainly having experiences of a lifetime. Just click on her name above and you will be swept through the vast world wide web to her words. Last week I shamelessly plugged Cartoon Girl's site and this week it is another progeny. Be glad that Shoe Queen doesn't have a blog!

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And just like that they are gone.

Yes, the hummingbirds have "left the building" or at least the area. It is always such an abrupt thing that sometimes I miss it. They will be there one day, zooming around, tweeting at each other and sucking down the nectar. And the next minute they are all gone and my feeders hang quiet and forlorn. I am not sure what the signal is for them to go but they seem to all leave at once. I will leave the feeder out for another week or so just for any stragglers but I am fairly sure that I will not see any after this point until they show up in the Spring. I will take my feeders down, wash them and put them away for next year. And then, around April 15th, even though it will still be cold around here, I will put them back out. I won't see any hummingbirds for a while after that but then, one day out of the blue, there will be a male hummingbird who will flit to the feeder. The males always show up first, just to scout out the territory. Good bye my crabby little hummingbird friends. I will see you next year.

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Oh this poor plant. Oh this poor, poor plant. It looks so bad and wilted.

Let me say right off the bat that I didn't make this plant all willty (is that a word? I say yes). I was driving past one of the neighborhood houses on garbage day and this plant was sitting out by the curb. I retrieved it from their driveway, slinging it into my car and hoping that none of the other neighbors were observing, and took it home. I figured it just needed a good dose of watering because the leaves themselves were still in good shape just droopy.

Well, I am stymied. I have watered and pampered and talked to it and still....it droops. Does it have depression issues? Has it been listening to too much of the blather that comes out of Washington? Does it need potato chips? WHAT IS WRONG!!! I am good with plants but this one is just being recalcitrant. Don't you just love that word. Roll it over your tongue.

REEEECALCITRANT!

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How small a world is it! So HHBL and I were at a dinner/meeting last night. We sat down at a table with several other couples whom we didn't know. Chat, chat, chat. Small talk, small talk, small talk. At some point we mentioned that our two younger progeny attend Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL.

Blonde lady: Oh I know Wheaton College. I grew up in Wheaton.

Me: What! I grew up in Wheaton too! Where did you go to school? (always the first question that you ask)

Blonde lady: Oh I went to St. Francis. What year did you graduate? (always next question)

Me: I went to WCHS and graduated in 19-- (you didn't really think I was going to tell you did you?)

Blonde Lady: I graduated in 19-- too! Did you know......

and we were off talking about the good times. It is a small world.

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At what age are you too old to wear an ankle bracelet? Or is it not age that determines whether you wear one with style but how your ankles look? I think perhaps the latter. At the diner mentioned above I observed two different women with ankle bracelets (and this was a small crowd so that was odd). It is hard to tell but I would think they were around the same age, 55-60, but the ankle bracelet looked VERY different on the two women. On one it was great and "hip" and on the other woman....not so much. It may have been that they had on, specifically their shoes, that made the difference. The "hip" woman had on great little mules with kitten heels (I just lost all the guys on that one) and the other woman had on VERY sensible "grandma" shoes. I say "grandma" shoes because they were just like shoes that my 98 year old grandma wears. I think that sensible shoes and ankle bracelets don't mix.

For that matter sensible shoes and toe rings don't mix and therefore I will be avoiding sensible shoes for as long as possible because there is no way that you are going to make me take off my toe rings. They don't come off very easily anyways.
Ignore the stubby toes please, that is just the way it is around here. I have stubby, sausage toes. Hey, how did we get on talking about my toes anyways?

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Conversation between HHBL and I after we got home from the above mentioned dinner/meeting. I should probably set the scene for you. We walked in the door and looked into the laundry room where Maxwell's House is (get it Maxwell House, yeah I hate it too). Max is in his house, just sort of laying there like he thinks that we are goig to be fooled into thinking that he has been in there the whole 9 hours that I have been gone.

HHBL: Oh Maxwell, you have been a bad boy. You got into the garbage again. Hey Love of My Life he got your M&M wrapper out of the garbage.

Me: I didn't have M&M's today. In fact I haven't opened up that package of M&M's yet!

HHBL: Oh?

Me: looking frantically at the kitchen counter where my package of M&M's, my FREE package of M&M's had been residing, waiting for me to open them with my afternoon coffee tomorrow. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Yes, I know that chocolate is bad for dogs but who knows when he actually ate the M&M's and he seemed OK so like the uncaring humans that we are, we went to bed. But we let him sleep on the landing so incase he had to barf up something (on my oatmeal colored carpeting) we would hear him.

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Do you sometimes sit down in front of your computer and then think, "I have absolutely nothing that I can think of to blog about!" It has happened several time recently and it was rather disturbing. But I got over it as you can see. That is why I general have a number of posts "in process" so I don't get caught with nothing to write about. Blogging is hard business.