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Tuesday rains and coffee
More spring rains have arrived, which makes us drought hardened Texans cautiously hopeful that the long, long drought is broken. Most of the trees we have planted survived because I assiduously watered them with expensive water company water, even though we planted drought resistant varieties.
But with great pleasure this morning, I set here with my coffee watching the sheets of water fall past my window. It messes with my plans to do some serious pruning of the trees along the front walk, but I am certain another day will appear to do it.
I have been receiving lots of invitations and suggestions to tour Israel, both from friends here and friends there. I wouldn’t have to pay housing fees, and could be driven in comfort from place to place. But some revolting afflictions of old age beset me, and Rusty is not going anywhere. My visit to Israel will be postponed until the day of the coronation of the king occurs. Rumor has it that a new, faster and more comfortable form of transportation will be available then as well.
So I am resigned to remain here in my adopted home state, civilizing a feral plot of buffalo grass and scrub oak. But that is OK .. it is just the way I planned it. A place that snows occasionally, but no one owns a snow blower, and the county doesn’t own a salt truck. The natives have never seen such implements. If God causes it to snow here, we let God remove it. But the curse side is mowing. In spring, we mow weekly. Five hours on a riding mower each week until the hot July suns make the grass grow dormant. Then we get a break until late September.
Not much else is happening on the homestead this day. It will be a long day of whimsically musing, ubiquitous coffee cup warming my fingers, and unfocused gazing out on the rain soaked verges of retirement haven.
Good morning!
~r
Have a memorable Memorial Day!
“Happy” Memorial Day?
Better, perhaps should be “Have a memorable Memorial Day!”
So the day arrives … unfurl the flag and put it out … feel good about remembering the sacrifice others made for us.
Perhaps we should wonder if we would be as worthy if called to make that sacrifice.
There is a contingent in the US that thinks preserving their own hides is a more worthy ideal, and they continually congratulate themselves for their lack of patriotic standards.
Some have reminded me that the time used to be called visiting day, when you went to the graves of love ones and cleaned them up. I like that idea too, and some old gravesites around here do not have professional grounds keepers to maintain their cemeteries, so graves are still maintained by families.
Anyway. It is as good of a time to remember our own mortality too.
Good morning.
More low grade zen
Time is like walking through a Slinky™, with each coil a year. Along the length you find oddly colored loops that are the prophets warning. The slinky has a beginning in eternity, and an ending in eternity. It walks down the celestial staircase in measured bends.
Time begins at the top landing, and each step down the case is one iteration of time repeating itself, rectilinearly stretching and compressing like a python. But one day, the traveler comes to the end of the coil, and steps out into … what?
… I stop to remember
Fort Logan National Cemetery. My parents are interred here, as well three friends and one beloved mentor. Of memory blessed be they.
Even on Memorial Day, the place maintains a hushed spirit. Row upon row of identical white headstones stand in silent military precision as far as the eye can see. There is peace here. Even the birds softly sing their lovliest songs from the trees.
I have reconciled myself with the passing of family and friends, but the last visit, I watched three aged comrade-in-arms from the Viet Nam era go unerringly from one headstone to another to honor their dead.
I wept.
Headstones are for the living to remember. The dead care not.
Tuesday too’s
A cool 68° dawn today, and a hazy sun lights up the landscape with a soft brilliance. Today is brunch day since Snookums goes to work. Actually, it isn’t a job, though. She volunteers at a local food bank as a checkout on Tuesday afternoons, so we brunch at Noon. We are not early starters anyway, and breakfast is at ten on most days, so a couple of more hours is not a major problem.
I admit that I am a lazy cook. I buy Bisquick™ to make many of my favorite recipes. Tomorrow, I’ll make Impossibly Easy Sausage Breakfast Pie, a Betty Crocker specialty. The main reason is that Bruin Hilda, the ever perky blond rehab “counselor” (read slave driver) chewed my butt out for not eating breakfast yesterday, and made me sit in front of all the smirking geezers on treadmills to eat three graham crackers before putting me on the torture implements. And I forgot to take my blood sugar … geesh! You’d think I had kicked a puppy or something. So … I’ll make this up ahead of time. It can also be cooked in muffin tins, and nuked for breakfast, and eaten on the way to sweating under Bruin Hilda’s loving lashes.
Not much else going today. I think this will be car cleaning day. My vehicles become tool trucks if I am not careful, because it is so much easier to toss tools into the back of the van or pickup than to schlepp them back to the house. And it has been awhile.
I am really getting the itch to write something. That is a good sign, but at the moment my soul is agitated. Don’t know why that should be, but I suspect that the reason will out itself at the proper time. Usually it is because I am either procrastinating or in disagreement with the spiritual goads.
My old nemesis, my waterloo, my stumper of all time, Akashiac, the manuscript in the bottom drawer of the desk, is yammering to get out. I have put it away as being too much of a heavy slog, but new themes have started arriving in my fevered brow. I must write. If I don’t, my life seems to unravel. Can’t have that!
So … as it stands, a pleasant good morning to you all!
~r
Fireflies and Prayers
The first night of 2014 that I can comfortably sit on the veranda and watch the sunset, and the fireflies rise. There is something magical about fireflies and dusk. A feeling of peace envelopes me as another Shabbat begins. The neighborhood falls into silence as the first stars appear, the dogs stop barking, even the traffic seems to pause.
Too soon, something breaks that magical moment, and I fall out of the eternity into the eternal now. Tonight it was a teen coming home, his auto roaring around the curves and the sub-woofers at full rumble. So much for magical moments. But then, if magical moments persisted, they would become common.
One new addition to my summer evening ritual are holy incantations said softly. A special moment for reflection, even musing. So much of my spiritual life is done with others, and I am not complaining. But there is freedom in a moment of reverie on the veranda, accompanied by quiet streaks of light from the lightning bugs.
But back in the house now, Snook in the living room watching CSI, me in the studio, Annie-Annie, our black stray something or the other fast asleep on the daybed, tablet put on the charger and my world back in order. Time to kick off the sandals, take some medicines, and crawl into bed for the night.
As we say here in pick-up truck heaven, night y’all!
~r
Lane Hog
A mighty prince of a fellow am I
I always obey the law.
And drive in my private lane on the left of the freeway
At exactly the speed limit, not more, not less
And studiously ignore the one finger salutes
From those angry souls who pass me on the right.
If you would drive at exactly the limit too
My world would be perfect for you as well
See? See?
See how much better I am than thee?
The Mills of God Grind Slowly
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.
There was a time that I knew when things got too rough, I could go home.
Then one day, home was not, and would not ever be.
Stoically, I trudged on, for such is life, for one day too, I shall also be not.
To our mothers everywhere who once were, but are now not.
May they once again be.
The nothing box
Friday morning dawns dripping from the midnight rains. It has been a slow starter today for me. I was up much of the night with the tornado and violent storm alarms from the weather radio and cell phones. It actually didn’t seem all that stormy to me, but maybe because of the long drought, an actual rainfall is something worth over reporting. But all that is forgotten with the yellow sunlight dappling the lawn as it filters through the dark greenery of the acacia and pecans.
And joyful thumpings reverberate through the house as dogs excitedly and tennis balls hit the kitchen floor. Time for a bit of ball chasing outside, and of course, the reward afterwards. Kippur the budgie scolds me, wanting me to put some noise on. I scold her back, telling her I demand two cupful’s of quietness with the morning infusion.
Today is Bruin Hilda day again. I am happy to report that my doc is elated with my glucose levels, and a loss of twenty pounds of sedentary excess. And my hip sockets and knees are grateful that the exercise machines aren’t so excruciating.
Not much else is going on here at the homestead. Still awaiting that morning when I can sit out on the front stoop with the laptop and coffee. Of course, Friday being preparation day, Snookums will soon busy herself baking challah bread for Shabbat, I will go down for an hour or so to prepare the shul for the day of rest as will Shamash’s all over the world.
And the first cup is empty, the sun has climbed another 7½° in the sky, and I will luxuriate in my ‘nothin’ box for one more cup.
Good morning!
~r
All in the name of Allah
Thursday morning appears with slate gray skies, scattered rains and a humid 75°.
I was eager to sit out on the porch with my new tablet and type out a missive this morning, but the light rains put an end to that today. Not that I am complaining about the rain, mind you. We Texans don’t bitch about something as precious as rain. Most of us would be so elated with a good long weeks soaker.
I am a little late in penning this missive. It seemed to take a bit more coffee to thin the blood this morning, so I idly let the newsfeeds scroll by without comment. I am reminded of the Merry Minuet.
They’re rioting in Africa
(whistling)
They’re starving in Spain
(whistling)
There’s hurricanes in Florida and Texas needs rain
Read more: Kingston Trio – Merry Minuet Lyrics | MetroLyrics
School girls captured in the name of Allah. Captors cursed in the name of Allah.
Pelosi the hairy wants fairness in the Ben Ghazi hearings.
Senator Reid says some billionaires are evil (Koch Bros.) and some billionairs (Sheldon Adelson) are good.
Harvard students plan to hold a Black Mass. Cool. As long as it isn’t a Catholic Mass.
So goes the world outside my window. But I sit cocooned in my $49 Office Max Executive chair, coffee cup warming my fingers.
Mornin’!
~r
Rusty's Armory 