How's the View?

Laws are tightening up about talking and twitter and messaging while driving. We can't drink. It's not good to eat a meal. Changing clothes is, well, do-able, unadvisable. Where does taking photos fall? No one has passed a law or even brought it up to the radio talk show hosts.

I'll keep on snappin'. Once in awhile I follow an interesting rear. Here's one. A farmer with a sense of humor, driving crop to the Thursday night Farmers' Market at the fairgrounds no doubt.
Look at the bell pepper box! Hot Darn! Or as they probably say at their home, "El's Bells, Maw, close the barn door before the horse gets out."

You know, one of the things we rarely address is how our car looks from behind. And yet, think about the number of people who see that and get to know you, just a little. Perhaps it is a sensitive issue to some of you. It can be touchy. Just the other day husband told me my tail pipe seemed a bit loose and before I was too enraged I figured out he meant on my car. :-)

No disrespect intended

If you've caught up with other postings you know MomEva is in the nursing home. I really do not mean any disrespect by this but there are some pretty weird and funny things going on regarding her stay there.

First of all, she is copying my dad. Well, probably she is copying every old person who ends up in such a place (and this is a good one). But she has chosen to use his words, declaring today, as he often did, that I could take her home and take care of her. ARGH. Not likely. I could not pick her up, move her around, get her fed. Let's skip the personal stuff.

Next, she has decided her top teeth do not fit anymore. Yesterday she was claiming they were not hers so, of course, the staff was panicky and at the same time hopeful that they were/were not missing. The ones she had in her mouth when I arrived today LOOKED like George Washington's choppers. Upon further inspection, facilitated by her dismissing them from her mouth, I could determine they are indeed, hers. These now reside on the nightstand, perhaps as a warning to anyone who dare cross her - she'll knock their teeth out.

Then came the coercing to go to therapy. God help us, she only has a few days left of getting up and walking with all the assistance. Then it is straight chair time. The kind-hearted therapist sent for her today (I know in her pocket there was a 'short straw') generously offered to let her take a nap upon completion of her exercises. If looks could kill, this poor girl would be on a slab and this posting would be entered by yet another corpse for we both we're given the evil, slaying eye.

All this now being exposed I have to add that historically July 9th has been a good day for me. It started in high school when I had my first date. Miniature golf during the day, if you are asking. I made it my day. Years later I learned it was my never-known-outside-photos grandfather's birthday. aHA. Further justification of it being a good day. So I sought out something remarkably good each July 9th. This year I am still waiting and looking for that. Besides my adventures with Eva I drove thru a yellow turn light on a red straight ahead light make sense?), albeit, successfully. As if that was not enough while behind the wheel I killed a cat charging across the country road.

There are those I know who would tell me to stop while I am ahead and to look no further. However, I felt very rotten about the cat, particularly since my front passenger seat hosted a stack of deliverable Adoption Alerts from APL. Should I have left one at the scene of my crime? This humor is too dark for you? Go ahead, make my day.

Before I came to my own blog I stopped by Shawn's (see doodlegirl link) and then went on to her sister's. It is such fun to tour the country daily, going to visit them and then linking into some of the other people they know. They really know these other people so I am a blog-stalker!

Updates: I never found my Tilley, even after getting a new one. Did the dog eat it? I will be writing a letter to Memorial Medical Center's higher-ups regarding my mother's lost lower dentures "the unresolved situation". I had to throw that in as it gives closure to this entry.

ta-DAH

Song Titles and diversionary thoughts

Twisted as I am, the "titles" for my blog entries often start out as song titles. Must be my participation in choirs and choruses over the years that causes that quirk. I do my best to avoid using them! Besides when I need to know a song title I can't remember it. Go figure.

Why is it a person's mind gets jam packed with trivial crap, such as being able to visualize the inside of the refrigerator and tell another person exactly where the leftover onion is? Or recalling what the details of a job description from 19-- were? Or knowing what the name of a bookstore in Livingston, MT, or a coffee house in Charlottetown, PEI is?

Then, this same person, self-confessed and namely me, can't remember what setting to use on a camera, doesn't recall the book just finished (title, plot, or actual location!), and on and on. This process of store and recall is an issue that has been passed down through the ages, I'm convinced.

But, these days there is so much more to first learn, then store, finally forget and try to re-establish again. Much of it has to do with stuff. More and more I am convinced every person in America, regardless of status (what an ugly word), has too much stuff. We think about the wrong things all too much and by wrong things I mean THINGS.

We worry about what will happen to our stuff when our last day on Earth is over. We worry about our stuff that we leave behind when we go someplace on a trip. We worry about the stuff we take along. We worry about what other people think about our stuff. We worry about the value of the stuff we want to get rid of because there is too much. We worry about whether we should get rid of it and when we do we start to worry about whether we acted too quickly for we might need that stuff again.

When I see photos of so-called poverty stricken people in other countries I don't see much stuff. They are stuff-poor. They have challenges, don't get me wrong; I see that. But they have a freedom we don't have by not having stuff to manage. They turn their thoughts to caring for each other, for sharing what they have right then and there. They stand in line for a ladle of water-y soup not the latest WII game. There's no shoving. When they get to the counter they are glad to get anything and if it is all gone they are saddened but non-disruptive. Hopefully someone shares. And, there is always the next time, the next line, the next helping hand.

Not here, not so much in this country. All too often our caring doesn't extend beyond our own selves, our basements, garages, kids' suites (really), or closets. It could be that there is some justification to what is going on now as we are learning we don't have to have it all. The more subtle approach of teaching us to save then spend didn't work. Now that our country's citizenship has spent more than it should, not unlike the government itself, we are learning the hard way, like 5 year olds. We have too much, paid too much for it, no one wants it, and we are pouting.

Our country is young by comparison to many others. Our culture is also. I wish we could all look around and see each other, without our stuff. We are all ending up angry and short-tempered because we don't like what is going on with prices. That isn't going to help or make anything better. Maybe we need to learn from people with less stuff that life goes on, that we must return to inventive and THINKING ways to make good things happen, to exist, to assist, to rise above the clutter of minds and places.

Phew.

Whooooops

The pastor knows what I'm thinking. He has to since I didn't tell him I have a blog. It happens to you too. I know. You sit there and wonder "How does that person know? He/She is talking about/to me."

I take back my specific comments about Christmas and the commercialization. In a nutshell, I was reminded that no one and nothing can take Christ out of Christmas; the Bible says nothing specific about how we celebrate. So have at it, world: gift each other greatly! Sometimes being a dunce really pays off and this was a lesson that did so I'm leaving both postings up in hopes that someone else will "get it".