Blog Archives

What's Growing On My Porch!!

2/26/2014

I so love where I live!! It was 77 degrees yesterday. My flowers are happy, I am happy! Starting on a new painting project soon. The last week of March I'll be traveling with my son and his two daughters back east. I only get to stay a week this time, but for the first time ever, all of my grand daughters will be in the same place at the same time!!! Grammy can't show up empty handed so I'm making them each a special gift. While I'm there, we will plant flowers in pots indoors, to be transplanted outside once the ground thaws and is ready for flowers. Can't wait!!!

First open Orange Blossom of the season!! Smells so good!

New Azaleas!

Piper's Lithodora!

Happy Begonias!

Purple Shamrock! I didn't know Shamrock's were available in two colors either!

Just one of my Pink Star Jasmine. The flower buds haven't opened yet, but there are thousands of them. Pic was taken at eye level.

Hard to see detail, this is a Happy Wanderer, clusters of tiny purple flowers.

Bougainvillea, finally on the mend.

More Azalea's, sooooo much sunshine!

What's Dragging Is Me!

2/20/2014

The days seem to be dragging by, every one pretty much like the previous. No, what's dragging is me. I'm off my game. I didn't do New Year's Resolutions this year when I was in the "all things new and every thing is possible if you plan for it" stage. I was still trying to recover from oral surgery during that time. That bit of space between when the old year ends, and the new is just beginning but hasn't fallen into a rhythm yet, is special. There's magic in it. The inner reflections are deeper, purer, and not rushed. Now that we've been in the swing of things for some time, it feels like that window is gone. Hmmmmm, I wonder, is it too late to try and recapture some of that magic and lay out a game plan for the rest of the year? I feel stuck. And I haaaaaate feeling stuck. I need some high adventure, some fun, some action! Ah haaaaa, football withdrawals!! Orrrr, two of my daughters not getting along, that's always a major bummer for me. Could also be, I have so many stories/writing projects in the works, that I'm not really making steady progress on any of them. Ok, time to re-group, re-structure and organize!!! It's also time to see if I can find any recorded football games - I need to get fired up!

"Mr. Demise, Meet Mr. C.R."

2/15/2014

Well Valentine's Day came and went - good riddance I say. Valentine's Day is no fun when you don't have a "special someone", or when the one you love is being a pain in the ass. I had a multitude of errands I had to run yesterday. During football season my car radio is tuned to NFL news or other football talk. Since football season is over, the sports stations are talking baseball, basketball and hockey. Eeeeww, eeewww, eeewwww - not a fan. So driving around I tried to find music I liked. Ha! Friggin love songs on every single station! Even the Spanish speaking and Vietnamese speaking stations! Could not escape the love songs. Eventually I turned to Christian radio, all I got out of that was guilt. Couldn't escape the visual signs of love in the air either. It was all over the place. There was a friggin flower/Valentine's Day stand on every corner! If it wasn't a full blown stand, it was some little Mexican dude or dudette selling roses out of buckets. At one point, feeling particularly ornery, I had the urge to run my car right through one of those tents and scatter love petals from here to kingdom come!

Ah, I'm not really an ogre when it comes to love. And I don't hate Valentine's Day. I'm really a big softie and appreciate love in all its forms of expression. I think I was just having a bad day yesterday. It's almost a year to the day that I had to put my Ginger down. This is killing me. I've been in tears, or on the verge of tears for days now. I can't stop thinking about her and I miss her so much. A part of me died with her I think.

Piper and I had our own celebration of Valentine's Day. We went to the nursery and bought ourselves more plants for our patio. Flowering plants. I don't know where we will fit them in on our patio, we have so little room out there now as it is. But it seemed like a flower sort of day and we like the ones you can put in the dirt and let live on. We'll make room. We always seem to have enough room for one more flowering plant.

But here's how the day ended. As I was getting ready for bed, Piper called me from the kitchen. Her voice held the unmistakeable hint of anxious distress. I went to her immediately. As I came around the corner to the kitchen I saw her standing frozen in the hallway. She pointed to a spot on the floor in front of the oven. I looked. I saw a gigantic black mass. It took a full minute to register that I was looking at the biggest cockroach I'd ever seen in my life! This was the Ancient Mother of all cockroaches, and it was twitching it's damn radar antennae around in MY kitchen! What the "F" to do?? Stand there gaping for one. It was too big to kill. We didn't have tranquilizer darts or flame throwers. We didn't have a net, rocket launcher or grenade. We finally decided to get a box over the top of it and go from there - yes, that's how big it was! Long as Buntah, and Buntah is the length of the palm of my hand! That MoFo, was big enough to be transportation!

We found a box, but now who was going to do the actual capture. Well, as the parent of the house, you automatically draw the short stick by default. As the only parent, it is your duty to render the house safe for habitation no matter the size or shape of the foe or intruder. I gathered my nerve, snuck up on it as close as I dared, I could feel the wind generated by the spin of it's antennae, then dropped the box. Got em! But now what?! I looked at Piper. She looked at me. We held our breath and neither of us moved. We could it hear scraping frantically at the sides of the box. We feared. Piper found something heavy to put on top of the box. I decided it would be better to resolve this issue during day light hours. We got supplies from the kitchen for the rest of the night and morning - neither of us were going back in the kitchen as long as that box with the roach was still in it - then went to bed. You wouldn't be surprised to learn neither of slept would you? Well we didn't. We just knew that bastard was going to wait till we closed our eyes to call on it's King Kong strength then toss the box off and come after us.

Eventually, this morning I found a piece of cardboard larger than the box, and thin enough to slide under it without having to lift it. That part worked out alright, except that I could hear the cockroach and feel it fighting back. It was terribly traumatizing. With the cardboard in place, I carried it out the door, across the street behind the Critter Control business to meet it's demise. "Mr. Demise, meet Mr. CR. Do your duty!" I held my breath, leaned down to the ground, slid the box off the cardboard and turned to run all in the same slick movement. It was an impressive move. Mr. Demise took over immediately, as that MoFo Mr. CR came out with a broken neck. I thought I'd heard a snap at some point! Anyway, I left it there in it's final throes of death twitching. Left the box too, tossed the cardboard in the dumpster then came home for a decontamination shower of blanching hot water and Clorox! It was the only way I could get my skin to stop with the creepy crawlies.

My Baby Likes Her Cuddle Time

2/8/2014

Buntah napping with me.

Just in case you're having a hard time believing our Toad Buntah really does love her family cuddle time. Piper snuck this picture of Buntah and I napping together the other day. She has her blankie, I have mine. She's so cute! And she's NOT slimy! And no I don't have warts.

Been crazy busy this last week, good thing too cuz I was getting really bummed about football season being over. We have an apartment inspection coming up in a couple days. We've had a pre-inspection inspection and then a whole slew of maintenance men in and out of here bringing toilet seats and cabinet doors up to par. Piper has also been helping a friend with a Valentines Day project. The friend has been here almost daily after school hours for a week.

And rain - we've had a good bit of rain. Which is not a problem. The WORMS that come crawling up onto my porch and into my house are a problem - a BIG problem for me. Geeesh, two days ago, I opened the front door and three worms fell off of it into my entry way. Could hardly take a step outside without stepping on one. Spent an hour trying to get them off my patio without actually touching them. To do that one has to employ a pie server. You scoop them up, then flip over the wall back into the grass. Then the little bastards are so slippery wriggly they fall off easily. It's very nerve wracking for me. Yes, I deal with worms every other day when I feed Buntah. But I never touch them with my bare hands. I'd have to cut my hand off if I did. No, I carefully pull them out of their plastic dirt tub with a plastic fork. Then I drop them in water for a rinse, then toss them to Buntah. She takes care of things from there. Yeah Buntah!

FOOTBALL WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME

2/4/2014

Hanging Up My Jersey

2/2/2014

Well, that's it. The artwork below pretty much sums it all up for me tonight (I put these together in Photoshop). The Super Bowl was a huge disappointment. I like a good game. I like a close game. 43 to 8 is a wash out. It was painful and embarrassing to watch. It was not football at it's finest. It was a bummer close to a great season.

So, sooooo, now what? This is my first real experience with Football Withdrawal. This was the first season I've been ALL IN. Never missed a game, watched videos almost daily, read articles almost daily, surfed Yahoo and Bing daily for anything NFL related, kept up on players injuries even. Now I don't know what to do with myself. Well, OK, technically I do. I have a book to finish illustrating, started writing another one, and oh yeah, still need to find a job! I guess I'll be busy enough, just won't have games to look forward to every week. The games were my joy, they were my release, my escape, my venue for venting pent up frustrations. (There's NOTHING passive about the way I watch football.) So this week, when I do laundry, I will wash my San Francisco 49er's jersey - my #7 Kaepernick jersey - and hang it up for next season. Better go to bed, I'm feeling the jitters coming on!

What's Growing On My Porch!!

What's Dragging Is Me!

"Mr. Demise, Meet Mr. C.R."

My Baby Likes Her Cuddle Time

FOOTBALL WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME

Hanging Up My Jersey

Author

Archives

Categories