This ain't for sissies!!

I am getting to an age when I can only enjoy the last sport left.  It is called hunting for your spectacles.  

          ~Edward Grey

How did we get from this...

to this?  I don't feel that old!! How does this happen???

     Yesterday morning I got up earlier than usual and went to a local farmers' market. There I purchased some beautiful tomatoes and a small basket of blackberries. The blackberries were an impulse buy-- expensive but they were perfect and big and looked wonderful. I was supposed to stop at the grocery store to get a few things too... we needed buns for the bratwurst I had planned for dinner. We were low on milk too. As I was leaving the outdoor market, I ran into a couple of the younger nurses I used to work with, and stopped for a nice chat. The morning was cool and sunny, a break in the heat. I was thoroughly enjoying being out in the early morning!

     After leaving the farmers' market I headed home, thinking a little about the nurses I had stopped to chat with and also about what I would do with the blackberries... driving right past the grocery store without a thought. 

     I discovered my omission later that afternoon when I went to start the dinner I had planned. Without buns, the only way to eat brats is with saurkraut, and Lanny hates saurkraut. Fortunately, I had 7 large, ripe tomatoes that I could use. I decided we'd have tacos instead. And, as a treat, I would make fresh salsa with the tomatoes I'd just bought and some jalapeno peppers from our garden. I also had an avocado in the fridge-- so we'd have guacamole too. I set about chopping and dicing up all the veggies needed for these two side dishes. Dinner was spicy and delicious-- we ate more than we should have. After dinner I got online and found what sounded like a great recipe for blackberry coffee cake.  I had hoped for a cobbler, but there weren't enough berries in the little basket, so we'd enjoy a coffee cake in the morning. With the left over salsa we could have heuvos rancheros. Smugly I thought, "I can surprise Lanny with a wonderful, laid back Sunday breakfast!"

     I got up bright and early again this morning. After feeding the dog, I put on a pot of coffee, then went to find the recipe I had printed up from online. The printer basket was empty... the recipe was nowhere to be found. Apparently I had neglected to actually hit the "print" button. That meant I had to boot up the computer and do the entire recipe search again. I managed to find it without too much trouble and actually print it up. I headed for the kitchen to gather up the ingredients for the coffee cake. There I discovered the empty milk jug-- and milk was a key ingredient. Well, as my Grandma Ruth used to say, "It's a poor cook who can't substitute!" so I considered what I could use in the place of milk. I finally saw a half full carton of plain yogurt in the back of the fridge and thought it would be about the only option. After all, lots of coffee cakes use sour cream, so maybe yogurt would work?

     I mixed up the batter, adding a little more yogurt than the amount of milk it called for, in order to thin the batter some. I put the whole thing together into the oven, and set the timer for the 30 minutes called for in the recipe. Lanny emerged from upstairs, hungry, so I set about making the eggs. "This should be perfect-- they will be ready at the same time!" I thought, congratulating myself on such fine meal planning.

     Sure enough, the time on the oven went off just as the eggs were ready. I tested the coffee cake with my cake tester and it came out "clean" indicating the cake was done. All I needed was to melt a little cheese on the eggs and serve it up. While the cheese was melting I gathered the plates, forks, and napkins and put them on a large serving tray. We were going to take our breakfast out on the deck-- a first this summer since it had been way too hot. This morning was another cool one-- just right for lingering over coffee on the deck.

     When the eggs were ready, I went to pour us a cup of coffee before putting the eggs on plates. That was when I discovered I hadn't turned on the coffee maker... Well, okay, we'll have juice with our eggs and coffee after. I turned the coffee maker on and went to cut the coffee cake. Unbaked batter oozed from the cut over the top of the cake... I was stunned. It was way too undone to eat. So, I turned the oven back on and put the cake back in. But for how long? It was so liquid I thought it would need a lot more time, so I set the timer for 20 minutes and carried our fast-cooling eggs and juice out to the deck.

     Lanny had gotten the good deck chairs out of storage (it has literally been too hot to sit out there all summer, so they have remained in storage!). The sun was so bright he opened the umbrella, another first, only to have dozens of wasps which had taken up residence underneath it to fly out at him. Fortunately, there was no stinging incident, the wasps dispersed after a minute or so, and we could sit down and enjoy our lukewarm eggs. They really were pretty good. The two of us talked happily for quite awhile, and then Lanny asked if the coffee cake was done yet? Good grief, I had forgotten the coffee cake!  I leaped to my feet and ran for the kitchen. Sure enough, the timer on the oven was chiming away, unheard by the aging folks on the deck. I pulled the coffee cake out of the oven and while a little too brown around the edges, it was baked through and smelled heavenly.

     The coffee was also done, so I cut the cake into pieces and put two on plates, then poured us each a cup of coffee. Lanny helped me carry all this out to the deck. The coffee cake was indeed delicious, none the worse for the milk substitution and not overbaked as I had feared.  It was, however, too hot to eat for a bit. We sat and admired it for another 5 minutes! The meal had not been the seamless, elegantly presented affair I had hoped for. Between my forgetfulness and my hearing loss it was a minor miracle we had anything to eat at all.
   
      I found myself musing on the foibles of growing older... Bette Davis once said "Growing old ain't for sissies..." and I quite agree.  Lanny and I, however, are lucky. We have each other and we are able to laugh with each other over stuff like this. I do find myself wondering how it is that life has passed by so fast lately. It seems like we were newly weds just a short time ago, and now we are arthritic, deaf, and forgetful. Oh yes, and very, very happy!!

Lanny's smile says it all-- growing old together really isn't all that bad!!

  A man's age is something impressive, it sums up his life:  maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves.  A man's age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories.   
          ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944, translated from French by Norah Purcell

The world according to bumper stickers

“Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car.”

          ~George Carlin

     When I was about 5 years old, my family took our first vacation together. We lived outside of Buffalo, NY at the time, and we journeyed to the far north country of the Adirondack Mountains in New York State. There we visited three theme parks-- Story Land, Frontier Land, and The North Pole. These were 1950's era tourist destinations for the bazillions of families with boomer children like my sister and I. What I remember, aside from a few incidents involving my sister, a goose and a stage coach "robber", was that at every location, while the family was inside the park enjoying themselves, some guys were out in the parking lot slapping bumper stickers on all the cars in the parking lot. Cheap advertizing for them, bragging rights for where they'd been for the tourists.

     I was reminded yesterday by my mother of the bumper sticker I had on my first car. Well, it was my second car, but the first one I got new and had to pay for... Anyway, as a sort of gift to each of the graduates of my nursing class, the University of Michigan School of Nursing gave bumper stickers to us. They had a white background and said in red letters "Be somebody! Be a Nurse!".  I placed this on the rear bumper of my little red mustang and drove it to my first job. Out in the parking lot of that place of employment it rained hard, and literally washed all the lettering off my bumper sticker. What was left was a blank white sticker. The glue that stuck it to the car was apparently made of better stuff than the ink, so it remained on the bumper of the car until I traded it in several years later. And that struck me as symbolic of the permanence of bumper stickers... I used to tell people I was so apolitical I even had a blank bumper sticker.

     My younger son, however, had a car covered in them. The back bumper and to some extent the windshield was covered in stickers. Some were promoting favorite bands, a few espoused mild political commentary. His car was one you noticed driving down the road, that is for sure. We have all seen cars like his-- covered in commentary, sometimes witty, sometimes angry.

     Anyway, I was thinking about bumper stickers today (we have been totally housebound in the terrible heat wave and drought here! I have thought about more important stuff and now moved on to the sillier topics...) and realized that a good bumper sticker can brighten your day a little. Some are political, some are rude, but the clever ones can make you smile. So, for your enjoyment, in case you too are too housebound to be out looking at the ones that are actually on the bumpers of cars, here are a few of my favorites:

                           

This one was on my son's car

Haiku poetry lovers will appreciate this one...   The OB nurse in me appreciates this!   Love this now that I'm retired!! On a steamy hot summer day, after dozens of days just like it, finding humor in simple, silly things can brighten my mood. I hope these helped brighten yours too!

Norma Jean and Ernestine Jane

“We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.” 

          ~Marilyn Monroe

      All the heat lately has led to some interesting "entertainment" at our house. Neither of us likes really hot weather, both of us wilt in it. Sunday I sat in the living room and watched old movies on TBS. Well, one old movie anyway... it was "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell (whose real names were Norma Jean Mortenson and Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell-- not quite the same ring!).

     I remember Jane Russell as "The Full Figure Girl" that hawked Playtex bras on TV back in the early 80's. By then she was past her prime and reduced to selling underwear. In this movie, made in the mid 50's she was in her prime... a young, beautiful, very shapely brunette who could sing and dance well. Had she been the sole star of the movie, she would have had many fans for that performance. But she was paired with Marilyn Monroe, and when placed side-by-side with this Hollywood icon, she couldn't hold a candle. 

                                   

     I was struck with how gorgeous Marilyn was. Truly a great beauty. She too was shapely, and beautiful to look at, and could sing and dance fairly well (though not as well as Jane Russell!). But what set Marilyn Monroe apart from all the other Hollywood "bombshells" of that era is very hard to define. 

     One could say she exuded sex, and she did. One could say she was every man's fantasy, and I suppose she was. But even I can see there was something more to her... and I can't begin to describe what it was. We will have to settle on Marilyn's Mystique and leave it at that.  But after watching her in this movie I got to thinking about it.

     I am convinced there are people who have what the French refer to as "je ne sais quoi"-- that hard to define quality that sets them apart in some way. We all have talents and gifts... but some of us have them in excess, or perhaps have one talent in excess. The trick is figuring out what talents and abilities we possess and making the most of them. Marilyn Monroe clearly understood what talents she had and made the most of them!  We all know people who are working in fields they are ill-equipped for, who struggle and just don't do well. I suspect these people don't really understand what their talents are. I remember a few young nurses who thought they loved nursing or who thought OB was the specialty for them, but they just couldn't meet the grade. Usually when they made a switch to something else they blossomed. 

     Maybe we all can't be Marilyn Monroes, but I suspect we all could do more with the talents we do possess. I am finding as a retiree that finding my next "thing" has been hard... there are lots of things I wish I could do, but I still haven't found anything that sets me apart, makes me feel unique or that I am giving of myself again. But the journey to find it is underway and I am having fun in the discovery.

Healthy, wealthy and wise?

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.

          ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Despite the smile, hiking in the Grand Tetons made the pain in my foot almost unbearable.

     Lanny and I were talking at lunch today about the past 12 months. It has been a time for me to deal with some major health problems, and I commented that I think at long last I have them behind me. For now anyway...

     Last July I suddenly was hit with extreme fatigue. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced, including the times I was pregnant. I could hardly get out of bed to the bathroom. I remember having to sit down halfway through blow drying my hair. I also remember being very. very frightened that I had something life-threatening. I literally thought I was going to die... After a ton of tests, I was diagnosed with (of all things...) mononucleosis. Yup, the "kissing disease"! What I didn't know was that mono can infect your liver, which is what had happened to me, and the reason why I felt so awful. I was told the mono would resolve on its own, that I needed to allow my body time to rest and be patient, but eventually I would be back to my usual energy level.

     It was well into September before I could say I was "healed", and I was so glad for that. But at about the same time my foot, heel and lower leg started to hurt. Rest didn't help. I went to the podiatrist, who suggested Achilles tendonitis. More rest, anti inflammatories. No better. Eventually I had an MRI which revealed a bad heel spur that had torn my Achilles tendon. This would have to be repaired and to prevent a recurrence the heel spur would have to come off.

     The surgery was December 8th. I was in a splint, then a cast for 8 weeks or so, then a boot for months. Then a brace. I overdid it and got put back in the boot. After that I wore the brace all the time for a long, long time.

Here I am in my fetching holiday cast...

     Finally, only about a week ago, I realized that the heel was not causing any pain, and while sometimes it tightened up a bit, I could walk without any brace quite well. For longer periods too. We cruised through an art fair for over 4 hours and my foot did just fine.

     There is a lesson here, and it may sound so obvious as to be trite. But it is an important lesson for me and after struggling for a year, I am listening...  One should never take one's health for granted! If you have your health, you have everything. When you lose your health, it doesn't matter what else you have.  And recovering from illness or surgery takes a lot of time. And when it is time to rest, trying to overdo will only undo the healing. And finally, I have learned what an impatient, lousy patient this nurse is!!

     SO... listening to my body and to this rather loud lesson, I am working hard to take better care of it for the time I have remaining to me. Lanny and I are trying to get more exercise. We are trying to eat healthier. We remind each other to take our meds. We try to get consistent, good sleep. And we are trying to live life each day as fully as we can, making memories as we go, so that when our bodies finally do break down we will have a boatload of memories to keep us going.

The Drought

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

          ~Thomas Carlyle 

     Where we live in Indiana is experiencing a terrible drought. We have not had any rain in almost 2 months. Additionally, the temperature has been breaking records-- 8 days so far at or above 100 degrees.  From our house we have watched storm clouds pass over, sometimes even with thunder and lightening-- but no rain. Our town and those around us all have lawn watering bans. We never have watered our lawn since there is almost 3 acres of it. But this year I have had to water our flower boxes every morning, and about once a week I tend to the other flower gardens with watering. Most of our flowers are either stunted or dried up a long time ago-- pretty much the only flowers that seem to enjoy the heat and dryness are the roses. The usual infestation of Japanese beetles has not occurred-- but we have more than usual bees and wasps buzzing about the yard. And just this week I discovered some deer had come out of the woods to munch on my drying hostas...

     The farmers in our state are reporting devastating damage to the crops -- usually soybeans and corn. Most of the corn grown in Indiana is used as cattle feed, so the price of beef as well as any product made from corn will likely skyrocket next year. Additionally, the farmers' markets are showing less produce and what there is available is smaller and a lot more expensive. My own garden will likely have very few tomatoes, and the green peppers are much smaller. We have had a bumper crop of cucumbers though!

     With crops destroyed, our farmers will suffer. With higher food and meat prices, the people who are struggling financially will suffer too. And with the high temperatures outside, the use of air conditioning will cause a huge increase in power usage. In Indiana that means burning more coal, which will bump up the cost of our power. And the burning of coal can have pretty negative health effects on the people who live close to the power plant.

     With all this misery around us, it may not seem like an important thing, but there is another consequence of this weather that I am just discovering:  it causes us all to stay indoors and that isolates us from others. We haven't seen or heard from our neighbors in weeks. We don't want to go outside during the heat of midday and early evening, nor do we want to expose our cars to the stress and damages of high heat and air conditioning running constantly. That means we have been staying home a lot more.

     And that means we have been isolated. Lanny has done just about all he can tinkering on our cars. I have been knitting like a fiend, but not much else. And over time, we have gotten more and more grouchy. The joys of summer-- sipping lemonade on the deck and gardening and driving around in the convertible with the top down-- are all slipping away from us unused. We can't stand the thought of being out in that heat, so we just stay home.

     That has made me think some about isolation and how important it is for us to get out with other people, and to get out in God's world some. It is no wonder to me that disabled people who can't get out may be depressed. Why elderly people afraid of falling on ice get depressed in the winter. Why parents with small children may be a little crazy sometimes... and why we are so grouchy!

     Predictions are for no real let up in the heat or drought until September. We are going to have to come up with some creative ways of dealing with it here at the Bertram's. Wish us luck-- or send us rain!!!

Aging gracefully...

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

           ~Robert Browning

                           


     Last night Lanny and I went out in the car around 9:30 to celebrate something I never thought I would celebrate. We went to the Frost Bite, our local ice cream stand, for our favorite ice cream in a chocolate coated waffle cone.  When we had them served through the drive through window, we carefully drove across the street, as always, and parked in the lot by the bank to lick them until every last drip and morsel was in our tummies... We were celebrating the last night of my sixth decade here on this earth.

     Now many may ask, why would you celebrate this? Why not just wait till the next day and celebrate my birthday? The answer is a little hard to admit...

     I am struggling with the idea of turning 60. That has always been the age at which one is officially, undeniably Old. And while I enjoy this period of my life very much, I do not want to be old. I can tell people I am retired, can share that I am a grandmother with anyone, but I do not like to admit that I am indeed old. Never mind that every morning when I get up some joint or another hurts. Never mind the stack of pills by the bathroom sink. Never mind all that white hair that has snuck on my head when I wasn't looking. I am a Baby Boomer, and we are forever young. Right?

     Wrong! No one is forever young! 

     Last night I looked back over the last 10 years, my sixth decade, and did a mental inventory of all the experiences I have had. 10 years ago it was very hard to turn 50, but not because of the actual age. I was in the middle of a devastating divorce and living alone in the house that had once been full of people and activity and even love. My kids had grown and left and then my spouse did too, and I was alone and <WHAM> I turned 50. All that angst covered up any hesitancy about my actual age. However, over that decade I learned to live on my own, to enjoy being single, to function well as an individual and then I found meaning in a fabulous job and best of all, I found love again. Had I known 10 years ago where I would be  now, I would have marched with my head high, happy and eager to get going.

     So, we celebrated all that I had achieved in the last decade and talked a lot about the coming decade. Retirement has brought on new possibilities for creative endeavors and traveling, and thus far anyway, we are both healthy and raring to go. We have plans made for trips, and we are both engaging in creative pursuits that had been shelved for lack of time back when we were working.  We have each other's company and we are discovering that we really, really enjoy one another.

     With all of that going for me, I guess we better celebrate the beginning of my seventh decade today... And guess what? We are!!

Happy Birthday, Elsie!

We should all have one person who knows how to bless us despite the evidence, Grandmother was that person to me.  

          ~Phyllis Theroux

     Today is my Grandma Elsie's 116th birthday. She was my mother's mother, and had a major impact on my life growing up. I have written about my paternal grandmother, Ruth, but wanted today to pay tribute to my other grandmother. She was of another time, and even when I was a kid seemed hopelessly old fashioned. Now that I am a grandmother, I find myself wondering if it was being old fashioned or was it a lifetime dedication to some very basic ideals that we sometimes forget.

     Elsie was the youngest of 5 children, born to a second generation German piano cabinet maker and his wife. She was reared in a home where German was spoken, but went to school and played with friends who spoke English. Her family lived in the city, and was not poor. But they were not wealthy either. They were the product of the American dream-- that ideal that says America welcomes anyone who comes here that is willing to work hard. Buffalo was full of German immigrant families just like hers. They were the foundation of an industrial economy that thrived there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

     Elsie graduated from high school, which was considered an achievement, especially for a girl back then. She went to work in an office at the JD Larkin Company, a soap manufacturer and company that started the concept of putting "premiums" (or coupons) in their products that could be redeemed for other products such as dishes, toiletries and even light fixtures and furniture. Her position was a source of pride for her because she supervised the work of other women in an office. Her office building, now gone, was one of Frank Lloyd Wright's early designs.  She worked there, lived at home, and enjoyed a busy social life well into her 20's.

     When she met my grandfather and married him, she stopped working and immediately set about the work of maintaining a home. My grandfather was an only child, whose widowed mother depended on him for her support, and she moved in with them right after they came home from their honeymoon. This woman was a burden for Elsie -- a highly critical mother-in-law who doted on her only child and resented this new wife who had "taken him away" from her. But Elsie, who was an incredible peacemaker, learned to live with this and raise her family amidst it.  She had two children, my mother and a son, Donald.

     Elsie was active in the women's groups at the local Methodist Church, and was famous for the stuff she sent in for bake sales and such. My uncle's boy scout troop looked forward to her donuts when they had bake sales too-- they always ensured a big profit. Elsie was a homemaker who kept not only a clean, tidy house, and served delicious food, but who excelled in handicrafts. She helped me learn to knit and sew. She did copper work, made jewelry, did embroidery.

     I used to love to visit she and my grandfather when I was a kid. We lived about an hour apart-- just far enough that it felt like a journey to a little kid. And when I was invited to spend a week there, either with my sister or alone, I was excited for weeks before hand. Watching her do her usual chores around the house was fun-- she had a "system" for doing dishes that involved using the sink and a tub of rinse water. I loved the glasses and plates and silverware she had-- it was "old" and way more beautiful to my young tastes than the everyday dishes my mother had. Her kitchen was tiny-- yet out of it came delicious food in abundance.  We always ate at the dining room table with a linen table cloth and linen napkins that were held in decorative silver napkin rings. She had this little device that she used to sweep up crumbs from the table after each meal that fascinated me-- I fought my sister to get to use it.

     Laundry day was great fun. Early in the morning she would gather the dirty clothes upstairs, including bedding, and I would help her send them from the second floor to the basement via a laundry chute in the upstairs hall floor. The sheets were the most fun-- I'd hold on to one end and let the other end fall as far as it would go, then drop it and watch from above. Her washing machine was "automatic" but it had a wringer attached to it. Grandma would load soap into the wash tub and fill it with hot water, let it run through a wash cycle, then she would take the clothes and put them through the wringer over to the second rinse tub by hand (imagine how heavy the sheets were!).  Then she would start the rinse cycle. When it finished she would put the clothes back through the wringer, and either load them into the laundry basket to take outside to dry or put them through another rinse. Then the clothes went outside on a clothesline that stretched from the house to the garage. When they were dry, we'd take them down, fold them into the laundry basket and put them in the kitchen where she would get out the sprinkling can. Most items required ironing, and most were made of 100% cotton (very little man made fabrics back then...) that ironed better if they were a little moist. So, each item got spread out on the table, sprinkled , then rolled up and placed back in the basket. The logic of drying items until they were stiff and then sprinkling them with water still makes no sense to me, but it worked well enough that Elsie did it that way all her life. Anyway, ironing was done the next day and was not nearly as fun.

     My grandmother was not a slave to fashion. She never once, in the 83 years of her life, had her hair cut. She wore it in braids looped up and over her head, very German style for years. When her hair thinned too much to do that, she pulled it back in a bun. She wore hair nets. She wore "old lady shoes". She wore house dresses and aprons. I thought she was hopelessly old fashioned but still beautiful! She never worried about diets either. I sorely miss hearing her extol me to "eat, Barbara, eat!" and when I spoke of being too fat she would snort and say, "You are JUST RIGHT!" Ironically, it is her body shape and tendency to gain weight in certain "problem areas" below the waist that I inherited. That never bothered her-- and I sure wish it didn't bother me...

My beloved maternal grandparents as I will always remember them-- elderly but smiling and together!

     Elsie died three days after my first son was born. I was here in Indiana at the time and not allowed to travel, so I never really said my goodbyes to her. She was a wonderful woman, from whom I learned about the importance of creating a warm, loving home environment. I learned from her about self-sacrifice for one's family, and also about expressing oneself creatively with the "home arts". I can still hear her wonderful laugh and her little German twang that would sneak out once in awhile.  I was tremendously lucky to have had her in my life, and she provided me (as did her daughter!) with a wonderful example of how to be a grandmother to my own grandchildren.

     Happy Birthday, Elsie!

    

It's too darn hot!

What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.

          ~Jane Austen (December 16, 1775 - July 18, 1817

Our backyard this afternoon

Same view pre-drought...

 
     Here in central Indiana we have had some blistering summer weather. We had virtually no winter, so a hot summer had been predicted. But no one thought it would be this bad... We have had a full week with high temperatures above 100 degrees F. We have not had a drop of rain in our area in over 5 weeks. Weather records for high temperatures and no rain are being broken almost every day now. The fields of corn, usually lush and ready to pollinate about now, are stunted in their growth and some are actually dying out in the fields. I have heard predictions that up to 80% of Indiana's corn crop is at risk of being lost. I have noticed a decided lack of produce at our local farmers' markets.

     The situation is serious, and threatens to become dire. Personal fireworks for the 4th of July were banned, and most towns around us cancelled the professional fireworks. There are bans on watering lawns. People are urged to pay attention to their elderly neighbors, who are at high risk for serious health problems when the heat soars. Community pools are jammed.  Reports of excessive numbers of car breakdowns have been heard on the TV news. It is on the tongues of the local residents whenever we meet one another-- which isn't often because no one is going out.

     Here at the Bertram residence we are holed up as if it were the middle of winter. I have started a new daily ritual-- The Watering of the Gardens. I water the pots on the back deck and front of the house every morning, and then pick a garden location for the day and set up the sprinkler there. I let it run for about an hour. I rotate garden sites every day-- sometimes the front yard, sometimes the back. Most of my plants are holding on, but a few are totally fried, even with the watering. And this morning I was later than usual-- instead of before 9 am I got outside around 10:30 am. The water in the hose was too hot to touch, so I had to let it run out before I put it on the plants! Our lawn is gone... it was reseeded in the back yard this year and was just starting to fill in nicely when the drought hit, and now all that new grass is not just dead, but crispy and almost black looking.

The front yard is no better...

This is a little astilbe flower that was growing in our SHADE garden... it is burned to a crisp despite frequent watering

Closeup of the grass... you can see remnants of the straw used this spring on the newly seeded grass. We'll have to try again next year?

     Our air conditioner is working fine, though the power bills to pay for it will be sky high. We do our best to limit other power usage, and to limit our water consumption a little. We have a well, and it has never given us problems, but recently we have had some issues. Like the time I was running two sprinklers at the same time (one in front, one in back) and then tried to wash my hands at the kitchen sink. That was too much stress on our system and we lost water pressure. We took that hint seriously, so have stopped washing dishes and clothes during the day, or taking showers when we are running the sprinkler. And only one sprinkler at a time.

     Holed up inside on otherwise beautiful days, when neither of us has any work to do is beginning to wear on us. We both have fits of boredom. Defying common sense, I have picked up my knitting and have actually read a couple books. I have NOT gotten to work on the sorting and such I need to do to put together a garage sale later in the summer... it is toooooo hot for actual work like that!!

     I think of the farmers who worry about their crops, and about the consumers who will be paying a lot more for meat and products that use corn in them (which is a lot more than you'd think!)  Our dried up lawn really isn't all that important compared to the livelihood of so many farming families. And to the families who will have to sacrifice something else to buy that food.  Or to those who don't have air conditioning and are suffering anything from cardiovascular problems, breathing issues to just a bad case of the hot weather grouchies. While warm sunny days are a delight, this is pure misery...

It's too darn hot!
It's too darn hot!
I'd like to sup with my baby tonight,
Refill the cup with my baby tonight.
I'd like to sup with my baby tonight,
Refill the cup with my baby tonight,
But I ain't up to my baby tonight
'Cause it's too darn hot

          ~Cole Porter from "Kiss Me Kate"

There was a little girl

There was a little girl,

            Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

            When she was good,

            She was very good indeed,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

          ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

     My granddaughter, Addison, age 4, is spending the week with us! I have been looking forward to her stay since her father asked if we'd watch her. Age 4 is such a special age...

     After 2 full days I am learning a lot about four year old girls. They are the ying and yang of creatures-- singing and skipping happily one moment and shrieking with indignation and rage the next. I had little boys, also charming creatures at age 4, but very different. At least my two boys were. Where they were all muscle and boisterous play, Addie is chatter and make believe. Where they communicated mostly in shouts and grunts, Addie is constant chatter. She talks about everything, questions everything, wants the whats and whys of everything. She has been my shadow, following me all over the yard and the house, chattering about everything, asking a million questions about everything. I love it!!

     Her capabilities have expanded so much since the last time she stayed here. She can brush her teeth by herself. She gets dressed by herself. She can sing a lot more songs, write her name, and recite her address and phone number. She is a whiz on the computer. And the iPhone. Her understanding of her world is exploding and it is so much fun to watch!

     She also has had a few... just a few, mind you!... moments where her rage fills our house with wails and leaves me completely frustrated with her inability to modify her reactions. I worry that she will retain some remnant of her anger and not want to visit any more. I really want her to have fun and enjoy being here. Grandmothers are not for disciplining, they are for spoiling... but at least this grandma has a few rules that she insists we stick to. And sometimes little girls have trouble with that.

     There was such an explosion earlier today, but by bedtime she had recovered not only her original happy mood, but went to bed willingly. We read 4 stories (we divide up everything by four-- her age!), had hugs and then she just snuggled in and went to sleep. 

     Part of me wants to freeze time and keep her just as she is, and part of me has enjoyed watching her growth so much I look forward to the next age. But really, 4 is a wonderful age to be. I am delighted she is staying with us so we get a sneak peak at her world!

     Here are a few glimpses into the World of Addie:

This little wind up train and cardboard track has been one of her favorites at Grandma's for quite awhile! 

Shopping!

A trip to the library allowed her to show off her computer skills. Age 4 and she knows how to "right click" the mouse!

Helping Grandma make cupcakes for our 4th of July party!