How Low I Have Fallen

I worked all day.

It is dreary outside.

I have no idea what we are having for dinner. Soup perhaps.

And I am falling back on a blogging thing that I swore to myself that I would never do.

Throwback Thursday.

Of course, I could actually say that I have been doing “throwback” posts all along with my Pictures From the Crypt series (another one coming next week, it has been too long). So perhaps I was actually the FRONT RUNNER on this thing. Yes! I choose to look at it that way and not succumbing to the masses.

Given half a chance I can justify anything.

The curl! It slays me. And look at the size of my cranium!! I look like Mandark from Dexter’s Lab.

And now, instead of finishing this blog post and going to cook dinner I have spent the last 20 minutes watching Dexter’s Laboratory videos on YouTube. Distracted? Who gets distract……

Look! There’s a chicken!

What Are The Symptoms?

I am a creature of habit. I may have some strange habits but they are mine.

Everyday my alarm goes off at 5:45a. I roll over, turn it off and ignore it.

Then HHBL’s alarm goes off about 6a and I get up because I have this insane need to get up first. I must be first into the bathroom.

No, I am not competitive. Why do you ask?

I get up. I grab my phone. I trudge into el banyo, grabbing my glasses so that I can actually see the screen on my phone and I sit done on the royal throne to take care of stuff. Every day the same. Everyone checks their email on their phone as they pee first thing in the morning right?

Never mind.

This morning was just the same as every other morning. 5:55a I am up and in the bafuni (bathroom in Swahili….I think) and doing my thing. I pee, I read emails, then I put my phone on the set of shelves that sit right by the porcelain bus to keep it safe from accidentally taking a swim and as I am stretching my right arm out…………I see it.

Whastha? my sleepy little cranium asks. It is like some sort of round black thing stuck to my right forearm. I touch it with my finger. It is not all that big, about the size of end of a used pencil. It is hard. It is black.

I flick it a bit with my finger nail but it stays in place. Guys I am freaking myself out right now as I write this.

I flick a bit harder and it flips off my arm and onto the floor. I look down between my feet…..

And that black dot is moving just a bit.

SHIT BALLS!! (sorry).

I did not scream because I was too freaked out. Sort of like in a dream where you know you want to scream. You are trying to scream and yet nothing comes out. Yeah, just like that. When I had finished with the whole morning routine I grabbed a tissue and picked up the small, black dot of a thing to take a closer look.

Larissa, have you guessed what it is yet???

It was……a very live tick.

HolycowHolycowHolycowHolycowHolycow. Did it bite me????? There is a spot on my arm!!! Did that come from the creature or from me flicking it off me. What are the symptoms of Lyme Disease? How fast do they appear?

AAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

A TICK!!!!!!!!!!!!

The question is where did he come from, other than outside obviously, and how did he get inside. The possibility is that he might have hitched a ride in on Max the Magnificent but I am not sure that is the case. I don’t roll around in the grass all that much these days and I haven’t been tromping in the woods in recent memory. And the even more disturbing thought is that he was on my arm for who knows how long

AS I SLEPT!!!!!!!!!

Obviously the sheets are being washed even as we speak. And I have cleaned the bedroom to within and inch of it’s life. Sort of same reaction that I had when I looked down at Cartoon Girl’s lovely long hair when she was in Kindergarten and realized that she had a raging case of lice. How fast and how thoroughly can you clean a room.

I may never be able to sleep again.

Another Strange Obsession

I should most likely say that this post has absolutely nothing to do with the crash of MH17. That is a horrific situation that can have no humor attached to it.

This is not about that.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way so that I do not get angry emails…not that I ever do get angry emails, but if I did then this would hopefully forestall that.

Where was I? Oh yes, I remember.

Everyone likes to read about plane crashes don’t they? I cannot be the only one who will sit, with rapt attention, through all the episodes of “Air Disasters”, right?

Right?

Hello?

Fine, I will start with a short story. Many years ago in a house far, far away. Well, not that far away actually but in the scheme of my life it was two houses ago. As I was saying, many years ago when the progeny were little they were not given unlimited access to any kind of screen time. They are old enough that when they were growing up “screen time” meant sitting in front of the TV. We had a computer but no one would have thought that you could use it for anything other than work. Windows hadn’t been invented yet.

I think I rabbit trailed there. Anyhoo…..

The progeny had an hour of TV watching a day. This meant that even if you were in the same room with the TV on but it wasn’t the show you wanted to watch but you just happened to be, inadvertently of course, piggybacking onto your sister’s show but you REALLY weren’t paying attention, HONEST…..your hour of TV had been used up.

Go out and play in the dirt.

Sure you can have a hammer and nails. Just don’t nail your sister to the garage wall and no one had better get ANY blood on their clothes.

But that one hour a day did not include movies, or at least some movies. If it was a musical, no problem. You can watch The King and I till the cows come home, if we had any cows that is. I used to sing “Part of Your World” in my sleep they watched The Little Mermaid so often. If it had Charlton Heston in it, you were good to go. Ah Charleton Heston, how we loved him.

Parting the sea in The Ten Commandments, “Behold His mighty hand!”

Driving a chariot in Ben Hur, “Your eyes are full of hate, 41. That’s good.”

Running a circus in The Greatest Show on Earth, “Your veins are full of sawdust!”

If a movie had Charleton Heston in it then most likely I let them watch it. Well all except for maybe Touch of Evil. That movie even creeps me out. But most anything else with CH in it was a thumbs up.

And that is how, in 1992 we first encountered the movie Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232. Just a little made for TV movie with CH, Richard Thomas, James Coburn and a cast of other TV actors telling the story of the 1989 crash of United Airlines 232 in Sioux City, IA in 1989. For some reason, when it was on the TV for the first time, I hit the record button on the VCR and recorded that movie. And a cult following was born. They watched that tape over and over and over again. I watched that tape over and over and over again right along with them. We were so attached to that particular tape that when HHBL had a short, two day business trip to Rochester, NY and all of us went along  because there was a pool at the hotel, I took that tape along with us (because they wouldn’t be separated from it even for two days) and watched it in the VCR that the hotel so kindly let us rent from them.

And then when we went home……I left it at the hotel in the VCR.

I didn’t think that we would survive the horrible upheaval that happened when it was discovered that the tape had been left at the hotel. Wailing and gnashing of teeth! Rending of clothes! Weeping and moaning. I called the hotel as soon as the loss was discovered but by that time the tape was no where to be found.

We went into deep mourning. No more Charleton Heston playing Capt. Al Haynes saying the immortal lines, “This is the hottest damn tricycle in the world!” and “Pull up…pull up…too fast….too fast…!” Would we ever get over the loss? Slowly life returned to normal. The girls got older. We continued to spout odd lines of movie dialogue and when it happened to be from that particular movie we had a moment of silence.

And then I discovered Amazon.

This was still back in the days of….dial up service. Remember a time when it took 30 seconds or more for a page to load? But Amazon was just the most amazing thing. It was mostly books and VHS tapes back then. I was noodling around on day and typed in “Rescue of Flight 232”, which was always what WE had called the movie….and a page loaded with a movie called “A Thousand Heros”……..it was our movie. So what if the only place it shipped from was Australia. I ordered it, once I figured out how to do it.

This is it. In VHS form only because it is impossible to find it on DVD. Or at least impossible to find it on DVD in a format that will play in the US. We have no VHS player here at Chez Knit but that doesn’t matter. I still kept it just in case. It was my only link. There was no DVD available.

Or at least that is what I thought……until today.

For the love of Peter, Paul and Elvis Presley! It DOES exist on DVD.

Oh thank you thank you thank you YouTube. I was watching a clip or two from the movie, just to relive old times you know. Like having coffee with an old and dear friend that is parted from you. Too strong? OK, I had a few minutes and thought I would indulge. And as I was watching the plane crash sequence for the 1000th time I noticed that the clip had been uploaded by something called Classic Movies….so I clicked on the link, hoping against all hope that they could help me. I mean, if AMAZON didn’t have what I wanted how could anyone else help me (insert sarcasm here).

And there it was. The DVD version of A Thousand Heroes for the reasonable price of $14.95. I couldn’t get my credit card out fast enough. Oh postal service work your magic. Bring my DVD soon.

Why am I waxing rhapsodic about an idiotic movie about a plane crash that happened 25 years ago…..July 19th, 1989. Yes, do the math. That would be 25 years ago this past Saturday.

And while I am dogging the mailbox for my DVD I will read this…….

I was first on the waiting list at the library. The book even smells new.

Obsessed? Who is obsessed.

I just like a good story.

It Just Seems Wrong

I just have to say this. It just seems like an offense to be sick in the summertime.

I never like to be sick, it ticks me off. I hate feeling unwell. Wintertime is when you expect to get sick. It is cold and wet and raw outside. Being sick in the Winter still sucks but you sort of expect it. It isn't as much of a "hardship" to curl up inside and drink hot tea and stay in bed, knitting and watching Netflix as you attempt to find your health again.

But being sick in the middle of Summer?

That is just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Yesterday was the 4th of July and I had the energy to do exactly one thing, go to the Indians game and stay for the fireworks afterwards. Believe me when I tell you that I did myself NO favors by doing that. My voice was already iffy by yesterday afternoon and then I spent the evening talking and yelling at the top of my rapidly dwindling voice to try and make myself heard over the sell out crowd.

This morning.....is not good. I sound very similar to Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Thank goodness I do not yet LOOK like Marlon Brando but I might if I don't get better and start walking again.

That is the other thing that I resent about being sick, the fact that at the moment walking any distance is not something that I can do well without huffing and puffing. We walked into town to get hamburgers on Thursday and it liked to kill me coming back up the insignificant hill leading to Chez Knit.

Whine, whine, whine.

Today it is off to the West Side Market to buy my annual sampling of liverwurst plus maybe some popcorn and frest fruit and some meat and most probably some pasta from Ohio City pasta as well as possibly some olives from the olive vendor and perhaps a fritter from Fritter Mountain. Also perhaps some bacon and who knows what other delicacies that we might find. Then it will be on to lunch, I think, at Market Garden Brewery where hopefully I can have some microbrew to kill this infernal bug. Then church in the evening and finally.....

I will curl up in bed and die.

I hate being sick in the summer.

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Embrace the Middle Aged Chaos!

There are benefits when you get to a place in your life where you don't actually care all that much what others might think of you and your occasionally strange behavior. That isn't to say that I don't have moments of total and complete rock bottom non-existent self esteem periods of time. They happen, but they don't happen all that often. I got to about age 40 and said to myself, "If someone doesn't like me.....F*** it! I don't care."
Not even I can write that word on my blog. I might USE it on occasion (it is part of my favorite swearing phrase that I use ONLY when alone) but I cannot actually write it on what could be called a family blog.

Where was I?

Oh yes. So, this is how far I have come in not caring what others think of me.

On Monday afternoon I had to privilege of taking this fellow's Senior pictures. 

 
Long gone are the days when you went to a studio and took pictures like this......

Please shoot me. Can there be a more awkward photograph in the Senior picture pantheon of ackwardness? That is my, "Please just get this over with before I kill you" smile. You can see it in my eyes. You can also see the, "Oh my gosh I feel so awkward and inadequate" feeling in my eyes. It is there.

But now a days......because I really don't care what others think of me for the most part....and because I can.....I wore these beauties for the photo shoot.

AND I had my jeans rolled up a bit. 

AND I had clogs on, although not my Crocs.

I love being a 54 year old who can wear what she wants and say PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT! to the world.
Poor Luke was probably just hoping that we would get the photo shoot humiliation over with as soon as possible. Especially considering at one point I had him standing in the middle of the road so that I could take some pictures there.

I say......

Embrace the Middle Aged Chaos!

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An Anniversary That Should Have Been Remembered

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the start of the Rwandan Genocide. I only saw one small article appear and that was in a UK paper. I looked yesterday, here and there, to see if anyone remembered. And I saw nothing. Nothing in my local paper. Nothing in the national papers that I read online. 60 Minutes didn’t cover it. CNN, MSNBC and FOX, all were silent on it. We have no problem remembering the anniversary every year of the death of Princess Diana.

But we can’t seem to be bothered with this.

Just like we were all silent before and after April 6, 1994. I include myself in that group, by the way. If asked, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you where Rwanda was on the map let alone be able to distinguish who was killing who. It didn’t really hold any meaning for me in my small and child filled life at that time. We do not want to remember.  We do not want to be reminded because if we do remember April 6, 1994 and what happened that day and in the following 100 days, when between 500,00 and 1 million people were killed, then we will be reminded that genocide does not happen in a vacuum. President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane wasn’t just shot down over the Kigali International Airport and then people said, “We have to blame someone! Let’s blame the Tutsis!” The road signs for the genocide were all there for people to see if they chose to look. People did see, they just chose not to act. The increase in importation of machetes and guns and grenades and knives. The rise of the Hutu Power movement. The arming and training of the interahamwe.  Previous genocides in 1959, 1964 and 1990 were all smaller in scale, just a precursor if you will, to the 100 days of 1994. But no one did anything about them. And if no one does anything about smaller genocides then bigger ones will occur because the perpetrators think they can get away with it.

I can date my Rwandan awakening to a small used book store in Lahaina on the island of Maui. I don’t even remember the name of the store, it is somewhere on the main street I think, or it was in 2005. We were on vacation and were spending some hours wandering around downtown on our first day there. A used bookstore! Sweet! I went downstairs to check out the books in the History section and there, on the bottom shelf was a book with the longest and most arresting title that I have ever seen.  We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch. That is a mouthful of a title and I was intrigued. Rwanda? Genocide? I sort of remember something about that but not much. The book was a whopping $2. I bought it and was forever changed. Since that first book HHBL and I have read many if not most of the books that cover the Rwandan Genocide. We have visited Rwanda and would go back in a heart beat.

But we must never forget what happened there and our responsibility as a nation for the genocide. And yes, the United States holds responsibility. I am currently reading Leave None to Tell The Story by Alison Des Forges. Written in 1999 for Human Rights Watch it is considered the most unbiased and detailed account of the genocide. This is what Ms. Des Forges writes about international responsibility:

The Rwandans who organized and executed the genocide must bear full responsibility for it. But genocide anywhere implicates everyone. To the extent that governments and peoples elsewhere failed to prevent and halt this killing campaign, they all share in the shame of the crime. In addition, the U.N. staff as well as the three foreign governments principally involved in Rwanda bear added responsibility: The U. N. staff for having failed to provide adequate information and guidance to members of the Security Council; Belgium for having withdrawn its troops precipitately and for having championed total withdrawal of the U.N. force; the U.S. for having put saving money ahead of saving lives and for slowing the sending of a relief force; and France, for having continued its support of a government engaged in genocide. In contrast to the inaction of the major actors, some non-permanent members of the Security Council with no traditional ties with Rwanda undertook to push for a U.N. force to protect Tutsi from extermination. But all members of the Security Council brought discredit on the U.N. by permitting the representative of a genocidal government to continue sitting in the Security Council, a council supposedly committed to peace.

April 6, 1994 is an anniversary that we should remember. Not to celebrate but to be reminded that even friends and neighbors can kill other friends and neighbors simply because their identity card says one thing and not another. If genocide continues to rear it’s head in other parts of the world (Darfur, Christians in Iraq and Iran and Egypt, North Korea) then we continue to bear responsibility for it.

Below are other blog posts on the topic of Rwanda.

We must remember.

Genocide Made Real

Rwanda (this post contains a small reading list of books that I would recommend on the subject)

Maybe I Shouldn't Have Said That

Do you remember yesterday when said, " I didn't get sick in Peru".

Do you remember those words? I remember those words very well. I wrote them. I hit the "post" button. I went to do my grocery shopping and getting ready for our weekend house guests......

And by 2p I could no longer claim that I hadn't gotten sick. You know that point in time in the sickness curve, right at the beginning, when you think something just isn't right. You can't put your finger on the issue but you know there is something a bit "off", a bit out of kilter, you don't feel quite yourself.

Yeah, that feeling. There is a bit of rumbly in my tumbly and not in a good, Winnie the Pooh sort of way.

I take my temperature, 99.8F. Well that is just a bit elevated but not too bad. I continue to work through my list. The next time I take my temperature it is 100.3F. That isn't the right direction for it to go but I will just keep going. A bit after that I took my temperature again and it was up to 101.1F. Well that is disturbingly disappointing.

And then Mt. Vepoovius erupted. Oh delightful. Thank goodness I buy toilet paper in bulk.

Joy

Obviously I called Cousin Jon and suggested that it might not be a good time for he and the family to arrive for a visit. If it were me, and I was starting out on my Spring Break vacation, I might not be too happy to arrive at my first stop and find the hostess/cook locked in the bathroom having some quiet, or more likely not so quiet, time to herself. Call me picky or something. They will come for a visit in the summer when the plague has moved on from Chez Knit AND we don't have the possiblity of 4-7 inches of snow over the next 24 hours.

Double joy.

And by this morning....HHBL was infected as well.

Triple joy.

So take my advice. When you come back from a trip to a foreign country and nothing major has gone wrong and you have had a great time and arrived back in one piece along with all your luggage PLUS lovely baby alpaca yarn, don't glory in the fact that you didn't get sick.

The vacation sickness gods don't like that.

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Oh My Achin’ Back

It started out as such a nice evening. Dinner on Saturday evening with friends. Great Lakes Dortmunder and a fabulous bowl full of Pad Kee Mao. Laughter and catching up.

And then the garage door didn’t open all the way when we got home.

It was cold. We were tired. The garage door rose…….3/4 of the way up and then stopped. Hmmmmmm. The garage door opener has been on an individualistic kick of late but generally hasn’t given us all that much trouble. It is 17 years old and teenagers can be a pain in the backside. Maybe it was just something blew across the little light beams and stopped the upward motion.

I so hoped it was just that.

But when I got out of the car, HHBL’s Prius to be precise, I could hear the garage door opener motor humming away…but the chain was not moving.

Oh dear.

Google explained to me that it was most likely a gear in the motor that was now bad and would need to be replaced. Yeah, I am not doing that. And it was Saturday night which meant that no one else was doing that either until sometime during business hours on Monday or later. It was REALLY COLD on Saturday night and I didn’t even want to stand around in the garage, the unheated garage, discussing it.

So we went to bed, after letting Max out but before putting the garage door down, and just figured that we would have to manually open and close the garage door until whenever it was fixed. It has been close to 15 years since I actually had to open and close a garage door manually in order to let the car or the dog out. I remember now how much of an absolute pain in my big, fat bahookie that little chore is.

Sunday morning arrived. 6:30a I am putting on coat and boots and gloves and taking the darn dog out to do his morning “stuff”. Rats, I have to open that darn door, which I do without really thinking about it. Max finishes his morning deposit and we go on with the rest of our day……

I sit down on the couch for a bit of time to read and then decide that I need more coffee. I go to get up……..

Oh, OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOH! My lower back has decided to stiffen up like a Russian general with a chest full of medals. Oh Lord have mercy upon my back. Suck it up an be brave Deb. It isn’t anything.

I am still trying to tell myself that today.

Currently Mr. Ibuprophen and this amazing little thing are my BFFs. Do you have one of these? It is a “microwave corn bag”. You heat it up in the microwave and it provides blistering heat to whatever portion of your body needs it for up to an hour (or longer). I whipped this one up this morning because I needed a slightly smaller one that my normal corn bag. We will be BFFs forever.

Or at least until my back decides that it isn’t going to try and make my life eternally miserable.

The thing that really bugs me about all of this is that I am usually SO CAREFUL about my back. I threw it out the first time when I was in my 20’s and a patient decided to go dead weight on me without giving me prior warning. I caught her before she hit the floor but my back went, “SPROIG!”. Oh that was a pleasant experience. As was all the lovely Restoril that I was provided by the pharmacy. Just as an aside. When they say take 1 or 2 tablets…..take only one at a time. Unless you love being in LaLa Land.

So take care of your backs folks. Or else you are going to have to get someone to help you put on your underwear in the morning.

Consider this your PSA for the day. You can thank me later.

2013 Year In Review

Here it is, the year in review. Can I just say that I am SO ready for 2014

Shoe Queen matriculated from the college of her choice.

There also might have been a wedding.

I might have started but definitely not finished a 365 photo project. We will see if I can do any better in 2014. Hope springs eternal.

 

We traveled here and there.

Nashville

Naples. I SO want to have the guts to wear tights like this with WHITE shorts and black heels.

Chicago

New YorkTucson

 

And I might have actually done some work that people paid me for!

I am always so tired after photographing a wedding. And then I look at the pictures and want to do it all over again.

There might have been some baseball. Is it summer yet?

My wonderful dad went home to be with Jesus. I miss him every day.

I got to hang with my oldest friends in the world. We have known each other…..Well never you mind how long we have known each other!

We might have sold a house and bought a house.

I might have spent an egregiously large amount of time taking pictures of cow butts at the fair.

And Bonobo breast self exam

There might have been some ornamental stealing that went on. Where are the police when you really need them!

And that was my year. Have a wonderful New Year. I will see you in 2014.

That Is Four Eyes To You

The day has finally arrived.

The time has finally come.

I officially have glasses that I am supposed to wear all the time.

Oh guys this is going to take a bit of getting used to. After having them for a total of 6 hours now I have come to several conclusions.

1. It is really, really, really nice not to have to take my cheaters off the top of my head ten thousand times a day so that I can read something or work on something. This is especially true in the car.

2. Having these things on all the time plays havoc with my depth perception at times. When I am walking out and about it almost feels like I am going to step off a curb or something. It threw me off several times in various parking lots today and I am sure that the other store patrons, who are already crabby, weren’t all that thrilled by the crazy haired woman who stopped in the middle of the row and made sure she wasn’t going to fall down a rabbit hole or something.

3. I had to have Chick-fil-A today to celebrate.

4. The “seamless” lenses are definitely different and will take some adjustment on my part. Different parts of the lenses are for different distances.

5. Right now I have a bit of a headache, which I was expecting. This will get better. And my friends in the “eye field” tell me that my eyes will eventually train themselves to use the glasses efficiently.

6. My biggest fear?………Losing these things. It isn’t like I can just go to Walgreens and buy another pair. But if they are on my face all the time then I guess it won’t be an issue…..I hope. But you know I am going to have a spare pair of cheaters in my purse just in case.

I sorta……….

Kinda………

Like them.

Nevah Again!

I do not like spending time re-inventing the wheel. I do not like to waste time. Wasted time is time that I could have been drinking a craft beer or knitting or both.

I drink craft beer because I have finally come to the realization that it is OK to pay $10.99 for a six pack of something that tastes so very delicious.

I knit so I do not kill.

Wasted time means that someone, somewhere, is going to get on my last nerve that would have been soothed by fiber and IPA. And we wouldn’t want that.

And so I have decided that never again will I sync my iPhone or iPad with the iTunes on my computer.

Nevah!

There really is no need to do that. I use iTunes Match to manage all my music on my phone and iPad. I can manage all my apps right on my devices. The only time I really need to sync a device with the dratted iTunes is when I want to put a non-Audible audiobook on my iPod. I never put non-Audible audiobooks on the iPhone, I just use the Audible app.

Nevah! Nevah! Nevah!

Everything came to a head this morning when iTunes, AGAIN, totally screwed with all of my contacts on my phone. All I wanted to do was to have Outlook add a couple of Contacts that were not on my phone. That doesn’t sound so hard does it?

Oh wait! We are talking Apple here. Sometimes things just don’t make sense.

Duplicates! Contacts put in the wrong place in the alphabet. Contacts missing completely.

Information run amok!

Nevah! Nevah! Nevah! NEVAH!

I then had to spend, on a day when I had other things planned, too much time putting Contacts to rights. Of course I had to be home because the roofers were replacing some shingles that had detached themselves from Chez Knit in the “Big Blow” last month and so I had to be home…..

But I had OTHER things that I needed to do rather than having to fart around with my screwed up Contacts. I use my Contacts every day. They are my lifeline when I am out and about. Or when I am not in the woman cave in the basement where my computer is located.

Darn you iTunes.

And so, even though it is really a duplication of effort (and I REALLY hate re-inventing the wheel) I will be putting new contacts into my Outlook on my computer AND in my contacts on my iPad. That means that my iPad will then seamlessly and without hassle back the contacts up to the cloud and then gently drop them down into my phone, just where I wanted them to be.

Take THAT iTunes syncing.

The Last

Yesterday these leaves were all blowing happily in the wind. And today they are all gone.

Winter is coming.

Fall Revelations

One of the things I like best about Fall? Seeing the bird’s nests that have been hidden all Spring and Summer slowly reveal themselves as the leaves fall.

Four days ago this tree was full of blazing red leaves.

And today, almost all are gone and I noticed the nest for the first time.

One Or The Other It Seems

In the wise words of The Knitmore Girls.

I can be smart, or I can be pretty.

Smart being just what it implies. And I am usually that.

But sometimes I am pretty, which in this instance is the opposite of smart.

Today was a pretty day.

I needed to do some banking tomorrow. I need to make a deposit and it happens to be a bit of cash. In order to do that I actually have to fill out a deposit slip. That doesn’t seem all that difficult does it.

Well, it is when I have to do it. You see, several YEARS ago my bank went through an acquisition and name change. That meant that we all got new account numbers. And the implications was that we all needed to purchase new checks to go with those new numbers. Of course we could use up the checks that we had, I was assured. But I had just purchased an entire BOX of checks and I didn’t want to purchase more. The bank already makes money off of me and they don’t need any more thankyouverymuch. I use very few checks, working mostly on a cash or credit card system, mostly cash. And since the whole bank name change and new account number switch over I have had GREAT difficulty remembering the new number. So I wrote it down in a special place where no one would find it…….

Not even me evidently.

It was coded in a special place in the iPhone and somewhere else. And evidently I hid it so well in my office that it is still hiding and ALSO my iPhone ate the place where it was stored there.

So that meant I had to call the bank and talk to not one but TWO very nice and by the sound of their voices very young men who had to walk me through the process of finding my number.

Like I said, pretty not smart day.

And my guess is tonight those young gentlemen are going to go out for an after work beer and have a very good chuckle at the OBVIOUSLY pretty but not smart woman who cannot even remember her own bank account number and hasn’t ordered check and therefore doesn’t have preprinted deposit slips.

I need a beer.

Nature Bustin’ Out All Over

I know that I complain about the Frozen Northeast Ohio, that place in which I have resided for low these 28 years.

And in January there really is something to complain about.

But just now…..well, Fall has been really rather nice. There have been some chilly days. There has been some rain. But over all we have enjoyed lovely weather, blue skies, sun.

It makes me nervous.

HHBL and I are trying to take advantage of the fact that we live in one of the BEST places in the country, in my humble opinion, for getting out and enjoying “nature”. We have been taking the time to soak up the sun and the beauty before Mother Nature whacks us upside the head with snow and cold and gloom.

Here at Chez Knit we sort of sit at the confluence of three separate, and fabulous, park systems that offer us a basket/bucket/boat load of recreational opportunities. There is the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, an entrance of which sits a mere 10 minute drive from the house. Then there is the Cleveland Metroparks system, otherwise known as the “Emerald Necklace, an entrance of which sits a mere 5 minute drive (or 15 minute walk) from Chez Knit. And finally there is the Summit County Bike and Hike, also within easy distance. We are over abundantly blessed.

Yesterday was one of those days where we couldn’t miss the opportunity to spend some time on the Tow Path, which is part of the National Park system, which was closed during the shut down….but everyone just went around the barrier.

You can pick up the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad here at the park. Good to know for the next time that HHBL gets me to take one of those 25 mile bike rides. Ride down to Akron, take the train back, put the bike in the car, go home and die.

My bridge photography was sadly lacking and boring yesterday. Needs work. Needs better light. I am yawning just looking at these.

Nothing like a bit of graffiti humor. I was hoping for something by Banksy but I had to settle for this.

It was a beautiful day for bikes. And the path was very busy with them. Some have bells to let you know they are approaching. Some people tell you. Some people just whiz by and scare the every loving daylights out of you.

And then there are the dogs. I could have just sat myself down on a park bench and taken photos for an hour and not seen two dogs that were a like. Big dogs. Small dogs. Old dogs. Puppies. Well trained dogs. And not well trained dogs.

And then there was Bernie.

His sweet owners didn’t think that it was possible to get him to sit still long enough to get a photo.

I love a challenge.

Just watch out for the drool.

There is the occasional fisherman on the banks of the river. Not sure what he would be catching AND I am not sure if he is allowed to keep it even if he did catch it.

I don’t understand fishing.

Fishing zen and I are not acquainted.

Snakes. Why did there have to be snakes. And believe me when I tell you that the picture of the snake skin doesn’t do justice to the size of the thing.

Are there anaconda’s in the Frozen Northeast Ohio?

Then there were the Wooly Bears.

There were a whole heck of a lot of them, scurrying across the path. You would think that they don’t move that fast but you would be wrong. The folk lore goes that you can predict how severe the winter is going to be by the proportion of brown and black in the Wooly Bears strips. More brown, milder winter. More black, buy another snow shovel. I saw a range of stripe sizes so I am going to say that our winter weather will be just a schizophrenic as usual.

And finally, as we ended our 4+ mile walk, we heard the train comin’ round the bend.

I can’t understand why all those people down at the other end are looking at me in that funny way. Haven’t they ever seen a woman with a camera kneel down and take an off kilter picture of the side of a train before?

What is so odd about that?

I love living in a place where it is so easy to find the road less traveled.