SUMMER'S HERE TO-DO LIST

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NEIGHBORLY ADVICE

One of our neighbors invited us to a barbecue this weekend. Not really knowing any of these people, I hated going without John, but knew he'd be pissed if I weaseled out. As usual, he was right. I had a pretty good time once I was there.

Not only did I get to see a really neat house with a great courtyard garden, I also got to chat with several old-timers who have lived in the area for years and years. You learn so much more from them than you could ever glean from the internet! One thing I learned was that my siblings and I were absolute idiots for risking the largest of our two low-water crossings, that scary night a couple of years back, even though we watched another vehicle ford it safely.

One of our neighbors is part of an international team that studies and tries to educate people about flash floods. She told me about an incident back in '97 where there were two school busses. The first one made it over a crossing just fine. The second, following right behind, got swept away. The problem is, all it takes is a slight change in current - a little gush of water suddenly coming 'round the bend from somewhere upstream - and in the blink of an eye, it's all over. She also warned us never to go through any crossing if you can't actually see the roadbed through the water. You may think it's just a trick of the light, but there's always the chance that the bed itself has been swept away - just as that huge culvert pipe was swept out from under the highway near us, a day or two before our incident.

I tell you what. If we ever have a week of rains like that again, I'm staying high and dry right here in my little aerie. You won't be able to pry me out of the house with a crowbar!

HOW I SPENT THE 70'S

Yesterday should have been the most boring day ever, but wasn't. I hate the weekends when John's not around. They really shouldn't feel any different from my weekdays, now that my work is here at home, but they do. On weekdays I feel lucky to be home alone. On weekends I just feel...alone.

Lex and I were planning to meet up, take in a movie, but she ended up having to work, so what was I to do on a hot, sunny Saturday? Go to a farmers' market? Go fetch a truck-load of compost? Work in the garden? Knit some presents? Finish changing out my closet? Paint that dang wall? Rework those dang bookshelves? Well, at least the bookshelves were inside, where there was AC!

One thing I found, in that pile of stuff from the townhouse, was a couple of fabric-covered photo albums which coordinated nicely with my bedroom decor - the kind with slotted loose-leaf plastic sleeves for pages. They were each no more than a quarter full - one with photos from the nursery where I worked, the other with landscaping projects. All of that seems from another life now - one I can't see myself ever returning to - so into the trash the photos went.

While staring at the bookshelves, wondering where to start, my eyes fell upon a whole shelf-full of those horrible photo albums from the 70's and 80's - the ones with the thick cardboard pages and the "magnetic" film that is supposed to peel back, only after a while, it doesn't. I hate those suckers! That's when it occurred to me that about five of those albums could fit into one of these modern ones.

Soooo, that's what I did...all day yesterday...and some of today. My back is aching, and my fingernails are bloody (multiple puncture wounds from trying to peel a thousand photo corners away from their gummy backing), but what fun I had, day-trippin' through the 70's!

Now it's on to the 80's!

Photos:

• Newly-wed in Indonesia
• Yearbook staff in H.S.
• Under the dryer - trying to make curly hair look straight
• Discovering Wimberley - dorm advisors get sent to 7-A Ranch
• Meeting soon-to-be best friends, Paula and Tim, in Bahrain
  

BEGINNING OF THE END?

Sooooo, top kill didn't work. Am I the only one who keeps flashing forward, wondering what future generations are going to have to say about us, and how we killed the planet?

HARVEST TIME!

It may not look like much to you, but it was more than enough to make me giddy!

HOW WE MET

I went digging through the archives this morning, to find this for you. It's the first part of a story called Circle of Love, which I wrote for one of the Story Circle Network publications. I posted the entire story - which talks about the seasonality of love, and the stages a marriage goes through - here on my blog, a couple of years ago. Today I'll just post the "how we met" part, for those of you who are newcomers:

Did I ever tell you how I met my husband? When I first got to the University of Texas, I took a job in my dorm’s cafeteria. I had only been there a short time when my roommate caused a rather embarrassing incident. She was quite the head-turner, with glossy hair falling down past her tuckus. She was also very nearsighted, but too vain to wear her glasses. When going through the cafeteria line together, I had to describe the food choices to her, since she was unable to see them. One Sunday, she looked up at the guy serving us, and said in her deep, sultry voice, “Hey Gordon, that was some date we had last night.” I jabbed her with my elbow, but was ignored. She leaned forward, and dropped her voice even further. “I had a really, really good time!” “Ahhem! Pardon us please,” I said, then shoved her down the line, growling “That wasn’t Gordon numbskull, that was John!” Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw John staring at us, with a cocky grin on his face. “Well, great!”, I thought. “Another one bites the dust. That girl is irresistible!”

The oddest thing happened though. Usually, when working in the kitchen, I cleared trays that came down the conveyer belt. Suddenly I began finding little notes on them, and when I glanced out the tray-feed window, I saw that same cocky grin. The notes were fairly corny (under a bowl of peaches I found one that read “What a peachy girl!”) but I’ve always been rather fond of corn. Top it off with a mischievous grin and twinkling eyes? Well, I was a goner in no time.

THE MOST DANGEROUS ALBUM EVER RECORDED

In addition to my little robot clock, I got one other special gift from John this weekend - the CD version of the most dangerous album ever recorded. We still have our original vinyl version, but had never been able to find it on CD - until now. John finally came across it at Half-Price books recently, and even though it was an outrageous 25 bucks, he snapped it right up.

So, why do I call it the most dangerous album ever recorded? There are two reasons. First of all, it can make the most stalwart of girls go weak in the knees. Second, it's not just a recording, it's a magic time machine! I popped it into my Mini's cd player as I was heading out of Houston yesterday, and suddenly I was no longer in my car. First there was the smell of patchouli coming from somewhere, then I could actually see my 17 year old self standing in the doorway of John's little garage apartment, just a few blocks off from the UT campus. I'm gazing in wonder at the black-light posters, the orange-crate bookshelves filled with albums, stereo equipment, and water pipe, and that little twin bed covered in an exotic Indian bedspread from Pier I (which I later turned into a great dress). And that music! What on earth is that haunting melody? In a quavering voice, I'm telling him "Nice girls don't go into boy's apartments!" Hmmmmm. Guess I wasn't as nice as I always thought.

P.S. Many thanks to rateyourmusic.com for the above image.