The monsoon has started

Thursday, July 10.2013.

This was the look outside my office window that morning, the sky looked like a lot of days in our home in Clinton Tennessee, we had a house on the Clinch River and every evening we saw the fog roll in. I loved that time of day. When I looked out Thursday morning I remembered those days. For us in the middle of nowhere Arizona it meant that "perhaps" we'd finally get rain, we've been in a drought for years . Sure enough after a while the rain began, by Tennessee standards it was laughable, it did not last five minutes and could not be called a downpour. But we were grateful to get the dust out of the air. I had heard thunder which was so much nicer in Evergeen, Colorado where we lived at 8200 ft. there it was THUNDER, but still it was better than nothing. I hoped for lightening and the noise of booming thunder, oh well, hope is a good thing. I knew we'd get more rain later, after all we need it, the East had more than their fair share and they didn't need it at all. We needed it to put some big fires out, but nothing. Of course here in our town it can rain up on the hill where we are and not downtown or the other way around.

If your garbage can lid wants to fly off into the wind....LET IT!

On the second of July I was supposed to drive my husband to the doctor. I was outside waiting for him when I saw the lid to our garbage can take off into the wind...I ran after it and stumbled and landed face first into the rocked hill between us and our neighbor. Of all the crazy places I landed on the outer edge of my eye, had it not been for my sunglasses I would have lost the eye and would have if the glasses had broken, talk about good luck. Of course I had a violent headache, tossed my cookies a couple of times and spent the week nauseous. Now here it is later and my eye is purple and yellow, it's like a ring under the eye and the colors are not bad. The purple reminded me of a glaze I used to put on my pots, it was called nuclear purple, that is an exact description of what my eye looks like....nuclear purple.

I must say that's what it looked like before it turned more purple and yellow, and wow do I have grey eyebrows?

I am the Museum of Art or not, depends who's lookin'

In the 70's I volunteered at a drug abuse center in Solon, Ohio.(I was in my thirties) We had a mandatory group with a psychologist once a month. In one of them we were told to pair off and discuss the following points.

What kind of tree are you?
What kind of building are you?
What kind of cookie are you?

There were a few more, but I don't remember them. I was partnered with a shy lady, she was so lifeless that she could have stood against a opaque wall and no one would have noticed her.

When she was asked to answer the questions based on what tree, building, cookie, etc. I had given her. I only remember what she said about me being a building, she said: "I see her as the art museum, but you are not always in the mood to go three." I LOVED it and howled. When I had to answer the same questions about her I told the group that I saw her as a "Vanilla Waver", she was offended and that's the last thing I wanted to do, even thought I figured she should be tougher or not stay in the group. I explained to her and guess to the group, that a vanilla cookie goes with anything. Not sure she was appeased. Ah those were the days, I was in my thirties and you can figure out how long ago that was.

This photo was taken at the Narita Airport (Tokyo) in 1987 when we came back from China. We ran into some soldiers who carried several babies from Korea to New York. They lamented that they wished they could hand them directly over to their respective new families instead of a social worker. I often wish I could  have made contact and told this baby girl how much she was treasured on the way from her homeland to her new family. I hope and pray she fared well.

Arizona is burning

Here I thought that all my blogs from previous times were gone, erased by none other than myself, stupid, but....I found them again, don't ask me how, I clicked here and clicked there and voila I found them. It's like finding friends you haven't seen in ages.

What's new? Arizona is burning, in the Yarnell fire 19 Hotshot Firefighters lost there lives, it makes every day small problems fade into the distance. Now the Hualapai Mountains are on fire now as well, you can find photos on ABC15 here. I'm posting one here and hope that I don't get in trouble, but it they put them out there anyone can copy them and that's what I did.

It is a tragedy, not only for the lives lost, the homes, and let us not forget the panic the animals must feel and those that don't have time to escape. It's time to say a prayer, not only for the 19 lost and their families, but for the disasters all around usl.

I'm back to blogging

I don't know why I ever stopped, I loved a lot of what I had written and one day I thought "who is going to read this crap" when an answer didn't come to me I erased it all. Like it so often happens in life, we regret something we did in the spur of the moment. I never thought what I had written was exciting enough, not when I read other blogs, so here I am, a couple of years later writing again. I've written journals for the past 50 years and here and I offered to read it to someone, no one was ever interested, but when I turned my back, I discovered that they read it on the sly. I could never understand "underhanded and sneaky" but guess some people thrive on it, so what the hell. I'll begin again.

These are two of my three daughters, we were at the Chicago Zoo at Christmas time several years ago, and as always when I'm with the two of them we laugh and have a ton of fun, who knew it could feel so good and provide memories for a lifetime. I'm crazy about these two women.