I'm a little late with this as the light snow pretty much disappeared yesterday even though it was about 12 this morning when I got up. The weather mostly went around us again.  I'm grateful. I went to sleep in my sweats last night, too lazy or tired or both to get another blanket out for the bed.  Before I turned in I went out on the deck and looked up at the sky.  Clear as a bell and a zillion stars in every direction.  Our local owl was performing its vocalizations.  I could hear the noise of the little stream that runs across the front of my neighbor's yard by the sidewalk.  No other sounds.  I was really glad I'd insulated myself up in my wool socks and heavy bathrobe and gone out for a look.  It puts winter and days of freezing temperatures into perspective.

Weather Wonderings

Monday on my birdless bird watch, I took a picture of Bennington Lake, an artificial lake put in by the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control.  It was finished in 1942 same as me.  It has hiking and horseback trails, places to picnic, and a boat ramp for motorless boats.  This is the lowest water level I have seen since I moved here over a decade ago.  This is 52 acres of water, close to town, was 52 acres, now it must be about 20 or less.  Someone has been making "donuts" in the nearly dried mud. 

We seem to be getting peculiar weather, warm and dry alternating with cold and dry.  All of February's average rain fall fell in about three gully washing days and disappeared.  The snow pack has failed to materialize, the Blue Mountains get white and then it all melts off.  The Walla Walla Valley is situated in a weather anomaly, right now snow is falling heavily around us, but only lightly here.  I saw a National Geographic map of weather changes and it had us marked to become wetter as times goes by and we have had two cold soggy springs so far, vegetable gardens suffered.  I guess I will continue with xeriscaping of my yard.  Will I have to give up tomatoes and peppers for carrots, lettuce, and beets?

Birding!?

The sun came out today so two of my grandgirls and I took the binoculars and camera out to do the bird watch thing.

 

We ate our pre-hike donuts and apple juice in the nice warm van and decided which way to walk.  We went upstream on the nice graveled path between the river, some farmland, and an old orchard. Nuts! No ducks, or herons, or anything. The magpie that flew over us as we were driving in was the only feathered critter we saw. Then wind came up and showed us we were woefully underdressed to walk or wait. Not one complaint was uttered by these cheery kids even though it was apparent their grandmother was trying to turn them into popscicles. We turned back, climbed into the nice warm van with the heat on high.  After drinking more juice we drove up to Bennington Lake where the wind was less of a problem. We saw plenty of hikers and a couple of horseback riders but not one bird, too cold? I don't know. Still we had a great time. We took pictures of each other and the mountains and got into the nice warm van. Home we went to eat pizza and watch Harry Potter do his deeds once more.

On Wisconsin

Today I stand with the teachers, nurses, and all public employees of Wisconsin who are fighting for their rights.  Wisconsin Leads Way - NYT

Good News

It's time for the yearly physical again.  This isn't me in this picture but this is the booth they put you in to test your pulmonary functions.  When they shut the little plexiglass type door it makes me feel like I'm on a quiz show waiting to come up with the answer to the million dollar question.  Today I got the right answer. 

I've had asthma all my life and for a decade or so I've had some mild underlying emphysema.  That worries me, our Mom died of complications of emphysema.  But today I found out that my asthma is only very slightly worse than it was when I started coming to this office 10 years ago, and that the empheysema is no worse at all.  A much fun as a million bucks would be this is the better prize.  And, the frosting on the cupcake, I weighed in at eight pounds away from my ultimate weight loss goal.  I was so buzzed I went to the gym and wore myself out and came home and napped for three hours.  What a party girl.

Happy Valentine's Day



My first date was a Valentine's Day tolo.  Does anyone use that phrase anymore?  Anyway, it's a dance that the girl does the inviting.  I was tall, over 5' 8", skinny, weighed about 105.  At the ripe old age of 12 I looked about 10.  In March I would turn 13.  We had just moved again, from Sunnyside, Oregon, into SE Portland.  My hair was very long and my Mom used those headband thingys to keep it back off my face; I was inept (still am) at doing any hair stuff.  Because of that the other kids called me "Alice" as in Alice in Wonderland.  Or maybe I was off in Wonderland, who knows?  Funny enough Alice is an anagram for Celia, but I digress.

Roy shared home room with me, an art class with a fabulous teacher.  Both of us wanted  to be famous illustrators when we grew up.  Magazine illustration was very big in the 50's. Roy was 13, tall, skinny, and blond like me.  I think people would have had no trouble thinking we were related.  I loved to dance, practiced in my room alone every night, still had the rudiments from dance lessons in grade school.  I was just dying to go to a dance, our school held them every week.  It was clear by February the possibility of anyone asking me to a dance was teeny to remote.  I sat by Roy every day in the back of the room and it was easy to ask him what he thought about dances.  He looked at me and said, "Oh I can dance, I just don't think anyone would go with me." I told him I would, and just asked him straight out to go with me and he said "Yes."

It turned out Roy, like me, only lived a couple of blocks from school.  Almost the same couple of blocks.  So all the parental units decided we could walk to the dance on our own.  Except for a frothy white strapless formal left over from an overdone grade school graduation the previous June, I only owned one dress, a green cotton jumper with little tiny flowers on it. I wore the little white bolero sweater that covered up my bony little chest when I was wearing the formal.  Mom did my hair with a green ribbon, Alice style again.  Roy came to "pick me up" that Saturday night and off we strolled.  I had a wonderful time, and I think Roy did too, as he asked me to the next one and we kept going for the duration of the school year.  Alas for me, the family fortunes required a move to Seattle at the end of school: Dad went to work for the state of WA working on salmon research at the University of Washington.  I liked my high school and was not very happy about leaving it, or Roy, or moving again either.

I did see Roy one more time.  The next year at spring break Mom and my sisters and I went to Portland to visit my grandmother.  WA and Oregon have different weeks for spring break even then so I took the bus over to my old school and tracked Roy down.  We had lunch together and said goodbye.  He hadn't known I was moving since I didn't know about it either as usual.  He said he wondered what had happened to me.  We promised to write but neither of us ever did.  Hope you are having a good Valentine's Day Roy.

Shady Pines Dancers

Got this link today from my friend Joy.  It's charming and funny.  Don't worry they are all dressed.  Turn on the sound and be patient, they start up slowly - like me.  Shady Pines Dancers

Dream Time

I had a restless night last night. My cold is leaving but asthma has gotten into the act. When that happens I wake often or am awaken by dreams. When my body is under duress my dreams are vivid and lively. Some are warnings, I was startled awake from a dream of living on an island off the southern coast of the United States in colonial times. It was early summer and too warm for my heavy long skirts, and to humid for my dream self to breathe well. Still asleep I told my dream spouse that I thought I was dying it was so hard to breathe. And then my eyes popped open and I realized that my shortness of air had invaded my dreams. So I trundled off to the bathroom and did the nebulizer thing and took a pill and went back to bed. Later I awoke again from an awful dream about something happening to one of my children. All that hard breathing makes your heart beat hard and sets up a certain amount of bad dream producing anxiety. So I stayed up for awhile and had a cup of tea and returned to bed in peace for the remainder of the night. I really like sleeping and usually my dreams are interesting if not fun. I'm better today. It set me to thinking about dreams though.

When I was younger and painting and designing stained glass windows, I practiced what was called active dreaming to get ideas. I'd try to relax before sleep and then think about the project I wanted to create and its elements. Often I would wake with an idea. I kept a journal by my bed to jot those ideas down before they faded as dreams are wont to do. Another decade later I was making my living as a computer programmer and found that technique worked just as well for me solving thorny computer problems. I'd wake in the morning with a big "I've got it!"

During my adult life I found myself dreaming of those people I loved who had died. They still populate my dreams but at some point in the grieving process I have had what I think of as the "goodbye dream." The person appears in my dream and says goodbye and lets me know it is time to get on with it. Some come right away, some take years. My parents are a good example. Right after my mother died I dreamt I was watching her cross a grated bridge from one side to another. Not very original I realize, but about 3/4 of the way across she turned around and shook her head "no," this wasn't my time but hers. She looked like she did when I was a little kid, 1940's hair, slim, in high heels and a big smile. She was happy. She was telling me to let go. My father was another story. In the intervening years I've dreamed of him often but nothing like a goodbye dream. Then last year about 8 years after his death, I dreamed of him living in a tiny but immaculate cabin (you have to know him, he fixed everything and liked, I think, to live simply) in the woods near a river. He had designed and was building a lovely pond that reflected the sky, the mountains, and the woods. He looked like he did when he died but he was dressed as he was when he was a young man exploring Alaska, and tracking the wild salmon. I woke up knowing he'd gone home too. He was content.

I took a class when my kids were tiny where we were taught active dreaming and to keep a dream journal. The plan was to take something out of it and tell yourself you are that thing, because you are, it all comes from within the self. My first try was with a large wooden desk I'd dreamed. I asked myself who I was as a desk. I was utilitarian, drawers full of records and flotsam, lovely wood but somewhat battered. I realized that I was stuffed with the things of other peoples lives and I was very tired. I was a young mother of a baby and a toddler and hadn't had decent sleep for a couple of years. I had lost track of myself completely, turning into the ultimate household appliance. That wasn't good for me, my husband, or my kids. I changed some things you can bet. I still keep a dream journal and I think it helps me to decipher what is really going on inside my heart of hearts.

Gung Hay Fat Choy

Meaning something like "Congratulations and be Properous."

My family was still in Honolulu when the year changed from 1949 to 1950. It seemed like a big deal to my 8-year old mind, the marking of a decade. It was the first time we kids were allowed to stay up for a New Year's celebration. It was fantastic, fireworks going off everywhere, people out in the streets banging on drums, pans, and anything else that had any resonance. Even an 8-year old could buy fireworks and I did. They were very cheap and no one seemed concerned about selling them to kids. For days we bought loads of long strings of Ladyfinger firecrackers, very cheap at the time. They actually packed quite a bang for a tiny firecracker. Then we'd get our matches at one of the many small eateries or markets in business at the time, or nick them from our parents, all of them smoked. It was odd we could have firecrackers but matches were forbidden in our house, or at least that's how I recall it. We'd light up the whole string or pull them off and light them one by one, joyously flinging them everwhere. Kids thought it was fun to break them in half and light the middle so it sprayed sparks like a sparkler. One of mine blew up in my hand and burned the heck out my index finger and nail. It didn't dampen my enthusiam for more than a couple of minutes. It was black for weeks. The nail is still crooked.

It's the year of the Rabbit which is supposed to be a gentler sign than the year of the Tiger (2010). I doubt the Egyptians would agree at this point. Still its just begun and I have hopes.