A Bit Whiny, I'm Afraid

Well...the terrorist is starting to come out. Yesterday Bear had some severe gastro-intestinal issues due to all the little things in the yard he's been finding to eat. Including bark from the landscaping.

This morning he ate the comb off my doorstop chicken.

Just now he drank out of my water glass.

I still like Bear. Very much. But Mensa Boy and I are both jammed up with work and projects right now, which leaves the guys to the puppy training in the evenings. They are not so good at it. And today I wasn't so good at it either, as I'm struggling with this virus I have and trying to get work done.

But...I knew this would happen and we'll gut it out.

I'm mad at work on this darn library festival again this year. Involved when I didn't want to be. But it will take place next weekend and then all will be over.

I'm realizing this is not really an enjoyable read. Some blog posts go that way, I guess. Sometimes I stick stuff up here because I know people will ask if a few days go by. Don't want anyone thinking I'm dying or anything!

Today Taylor said, "Everything is so hard." He's got a sore back, lots of hard work in 7th grade, and the puppy responsibilities. Tomorrow we'll take him to see our chiropractor extraordinaire. I've been thinking it would be good for him to go anyway. He has kind of a flat-footed gait and is sort of hunched over a lot. Since we've met out family deductible for the year, it makes sense to get him going now. Buddy Nannette and I will try to take him out to dinner Sunday. He's been wanting to go to a sushi bar.

That's it for now. Tomorrow I hope to spend a small amount of time at Art on Main in Fort Mill. Buddy Jenny's husband, The Naked Woodturner, will be there with his wares.

Here's some Total Momsense

Ready to Run Away with my Little Dog

[begin rant]My dear friend Chris is moving to Nashville

I have a very bad, sinus-y cold

The dog threw up in my car

I went to the credit union to deposit checks and found it closed. A quaint custom they have of closing on Wednesday afternoons. I hadn't even remembered that it was Wednesday!

My caller ID box is stuck on Spanish. It says I have "1 nuevas." Earlier today I had a call from "Fuera De Area."

[end rant]

Wherein My Pending Demise is Greatly Exaggerated

Last night my friend Cassie called me.
"What is WRONG with you?" she began the conversation.
"Uh. I have a cold. Other than that I'm fine," I replied.

She then told me that prayers had been offered on my behalf in church on Sunday (for some reason Mensa Boy forgot to tell me that), and then she proceeded to enumerate the number of things I have NOT been to in the last week.

It is true that I have been somewhat of a serial church skipper this past year. As I struggle with "this menopause crap," as my friends call it, it's been difficult to have the energy just about every other weekend. Sometimes I just go anyway, but other times I think about how there is basically just a scrolling screen saver across my brain that says "I want to be home. I want to home."

I do feel much better than I did last summer and winter. But I still have low-energy days, and they seem to happen most on weekends. Probably because I run around as much as possible during the week to get work done.

However, I have also been absent from church as I cover the new ones that are opening up here in our community. I am the de facto "church correspondent" for our paper, and so I cover quite a few church events and some of them happen on Sundays. Last Sunday I went to a service for a new church called "The Community Life Church of the Carolinas." The week before I went to the service now offered in our community by St. Paul's Episcopal Church of Fort Mill. In a couple of weeks I'll be going to the Presbyterians.

I've never been much for attending multiple services in a week. And especially not twice in one day.

So I've been gone from church a bit. It's noticed in a little church like ours, because we only have about 90 people in our services. And of course our family sits right in the front row.

Cassie also is breaking my back about Jazzercise. We opened a new location here and I just haven't gotten to it. I've been going, but my schedule as a freelancer is very flexible, so I still end up going to the other location, which has daytime classes, pretty much all the time.

But what really concerned her were the prayers on my behalf. "Do you think they are praying for my soul?" I asked.

"I don't know," Cassie said.

And then all became clear when I asked Mensa Boy about it.

"Oh yeah!" he said. "They think you have breast cancer!"

huh.

I guess someone misunderstood my Komen donation letter...where I mention the testing I had last spring. My point was how cool it is that we have all the modern technology. That even someone like me, who is hard to screen, can be screened for this disease thanks to the work of foundations like this.

So my dear church put together my absences and my Komen letter and came up with me dying of breast cancer.

I'm not. But I do have a pretty bad cold. I feel like death warmed over, but I'm pretty sure I'll recover.

Maybe.

(Many thanks to those of you who have donated to the Komen Race. I'd love to have more. It's not a competition of any kind--well, Mary of "Shoe Dawg Shoe" and I are kind of having a Komen pledge throwdown--but really? It's just a good thing to do. I'd love to have more of you contribute!)

Pants Death

The death of a favorite pair of pants is a tragic thing. I still remember when my favorite pair of light blue denim Eddie Bauer shorts bit the dust. They finally had become hole-y enough so as to seriously compromise my integrity as a mother. I never found a pair of shorts that I liked as much. (Okay. That was exaggerating. I have a pair of "Life is Good" shorts that I love more than just about anything in my closet. I'm really going to hate not wearing them this winter)

Today my buddy Sarah called to tell me that she had to give last rites to her favorite Gap pants. "Those pants always brought me compliments," she said as she poured out her heart to me on the phone. "And I put them on and found a hole."

Not a repairable hole.

She told me how those pants would feel good on bloated days...making her feel and look skinny. They went with so much of her wardrobe and were a joy to wear.

Oh yes, she hit the first stage of grief immediately: denial. But now it's been several hours and she has already worked to acceptance.

We're talking about a memorial now.

Alienation of Affection

Mensa Boy is very paranoid about germs. It's worse when he is about to go out of town. At my first mention of a viral-feeling headache the other day, he immediately took up his "you are a germy person" persona.

He now waves at me.

And so yes...I am snotty today. I'm remembering that I was hideously sick last year the week before the library festival too. But last year I was not sleeping...no good sleeping drugs were in my arsenal. This year I have sleep on my side. And I'm getting stuff done for the paper, so I'm able to take naps in the afternoon.

This morning it's an early-morning trip to the dentist. The appointment is at 8 a.m, which means we pretty much have to leave here in 10 minutes. It's not very far, but the traffic situation is really terrible, so we'll have to leave plenty of time for travel.

I read this article in yesterday's Observer and it resonated so strongly with me that I'm going to paste the entire text here. I've been a fan of Tony Campolo's for years now, but this is the best compilation of what he's about that I've ever seen. It makes me happy to know that we have some evangelicals that make sense to me. I'm particularly pleased about what he says about the death penalty.

THEOLOGY AND POLITICS

Trying to see today through the eyes of Jesus

Left-leaning Baptist author's article asked WWJD about Iraq?

TIM FUNK

tfunk@charlotteobserver.com

"What would Jesus do about Iraq?"

That's the question the Rev. Tony Campolo recently posed -- and answered -- in Tikkun, a left-leaning Jewish magazine.

Campolo is a left-leaning evangelical Baptist who's written 34 books on Christianity and social justice. He was President Bill Clinton's spiritual adviser. And on Sunday, he was in Charlotte to speak at Dilworth United Methodist Church.

In an interview, the Observer asked the Philadelphia-based Campolo what Jesus would do not only about Iraq, but about other issues dividing U.S. Christian churches.

Here are his answers, edited for space and clarity.

Q. What would Jesus do about ...

• Iraq: "I think what Jesus would have us do is repent. I would love to see (President Bush) go to the (United Nations) and say, `I really believed there were weapons of mass destruction when I asked for the invasion five years ago. I was wrong. Thousands and thousands of people have died, thousands and thousands of people are wounded and ruined for life. I ask for forgiveness.'

"I don't think you lose your stature when you ask for forgiveness. I think to be able to confess and to ask for forgiveness is a sign of strength. Jesus would have said, `Power is not the evidence of what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something better than guns and planes and armies. I'm looking for the kind of authority that people look up to.' "

• Gays and lesbians: "He'd love them and accept them. When we sing at my church, `Just As I Am,' I think we need to mean it." We shouldn't be saying to gay and lesbian people, `You have to become what you're not in order to be welcome by Jesus.' "

• Abortion: "I'm sure that the destruction of life in abortion would break his heart. However, I feel like if he were speaking to the church today in America, he would ask not the question, `Are you going to make it illegal and arrest women who have abortions?' I think Jesus would say, `What are you going to do to reduce the number of abortions?'

(A new survey reported that) 70 percent of all abortions are economically driven. You have a poor woman working on minimum wage with no hospitalization. She gets pregnant. She can't afford to have the kid, she can't afford to pay the hospital bills, she can't afford day care after the child is born. So she says, `I'm going to have an abortion.' Can Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives agree on one thing: that it's wrong for women who want to have their babies to have abortions? And that's about 70 percent of them. Then we can start talking about the other 30 percent."

• The death penalty: "(If you support capital punishment), you cannot believe in the Beatitudes -- `Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' You cannot say, `I'm going to overcome evil with good.' You cannot say all those things that Jesus said and believe in the death penalty. When you say there's going to be a death penalty, what you basically say is that there are some people who are beyond redemption. There are many times I feel that way. But I'm sure Jesus never feels that way."

• Muslims: "He would love them. Jesus said some very interesting things. He said, `Other sheep I have who are not of this fold.'

"I know I'll get in trouble for this because I'm an evangelical, but (in deciding who gets into heaven), the questions (Jesus) asks on Judgment Day are not theological. I wish they were because I'm an evangelical.... Here are the questions -- the only descriptions he gives of Judgement Day. `I was hungry: Did you feed me? I was naked: Did you clothe me? I was the alien, the (immigrant) from the other country: Did you make room for me in your country? For if you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.' I think there's a wideness in God's mercy that's greater than mine."

• Young people: "Jesus would say to them, `Youth was made for heroism and not for pleasure. And the church has been entertaining you. What I am here to do is call you to sacrifice all that you are and all that you have for love and justice in the world in my name. I want you to live out your life heroically for my kingdom and not get sucked into the dominant values of the culture.' "

This n That

First, the Komen Race. I'm getting pledges already and have met the $125 goal that they automatically put on my site! Cool! Thank you. I have not listed it, but I think my personal goal should be $700. I raised a little over $600 last year. But this year I sent the notices out a little later, and I haven't done any talking about it around the neighborhood, so I've been reluctant to go on record with the goal.

But thank you, Candy J, Julia, Sheryl B, and Steve P, for your donations! Sheryl is giving in honor of her Mother, who is currently battling cancer...not breast cancer, but mantle cell lymphoma. I've not heard of that before. And also in honor of Elaine Lidke, a mutual friend we have that currently has breast cancer. I didn't know Elaine was going through this. Our prayers are with you, my friend.

So keep the pledges coming, folks! I'll have this little link up here every day for the next three weeks.

The puppy training is going quite well. He's notified us more and more that he wants to go out, so that's a relief. The main thing is that he's so darn quiet. If someone is in the kitchen area, it's noticed right away and all is well. But if not...then we've got trouble. For two nights now he's woken us up with a couple of yips while he's in his kennel. We get up, take him outside, he does double duty and then goes right back to bed. I'm grateful that he's telling us, grateful that he goes right back to bed without saying anything, but not really excited about losing the sleep. The first night, Mensa Boy heard him. That's good because MB falls right back to sleep immediately. Last night it was me. That's bad, because I lost about 90 minutes of sleep after that. Once I wake up in the middle of the night, it's pretty hard for me to get back to sleep. I do learn a lot about the world that way, though. I listen to the BBC.

Julia asked if we are having him go potty in the same spot every time. Not by design, but yeah...pretty much. The bad thing is that it's right there on the edge of the patio. So we could have dead grass right there instead of in a less conspicuous spot.

She also asked if we are using clickers to train him. We are using treats. Mainly because he doesn't eat much. And he really likes treats. If we used clickers then I think we'd have to have several of them around so everyone could use them, and they'd get lost, etc. Treats are easy because the bag is right on the counter and we all can grab handfuls for our pockets. Also? I suspect the clicker would bother the pack leader...ME! Sharp loud noises like clicking tend to wreak havoc on my nerves.

Enough about the dog.

This weekend I had a chance to go hang out with some guys from our community there were competing in a BBQ competition. The competition was to benefit the Anne Springs Close Greenway in Fort Mill. Our guys, who have a team called "Pork O Butts," invited me to tag along, help out, shoot photos and in general just be underfoot while the prepped their butts and ribs Friday night and then took them off the smoker for judging Saturday morning. We had a great time. They are wonderful guys and even promised to share their rub and sauce recipes with me. They've agreed to let me print the rub recipe, but the sauce one...NOT! So I'll devise a sauce of my own to print with the food story I'm writing for the paper.
I haven't found out yet how they did.

Here is the gang getting their pulled pork ready for judging:

And here are some ribs on the grill:

It's Time

It's time for the Susan G. Komen Race in Charlotte. Last year, thanks to your generous contributions, I was able to raise more than $600 for the Susan G. Komen Foundation as a member of the Jazzercise team.

The foundation was formed in 1982 by Nancy G. Brinker, who promised her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, that she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer forever.

We all know of at least one person that has had breast cancer, died from it, been treated and cured of it, or is currently dealing with it. But most of us are not aware that we directly benefit from the efforts of this foundation whenever we have a breast cancer screening, such as breast exams, mammography, ultrasound, and breast MRI. The Komen Foundation is a grassroots organization dedicated to raising awareness of this disease, as well as offering grants and fellowships to further research. In 1982, the U.S. Government funded $30M in breast cancer research. Now funding is in the $900M range. The five-year survival rate for breast cancer, when caught early before it spreads beyond the breast, is now 98 percent (compared to 74 percent in 1982).

This past spring I found myself personally grateful for the work of this foundation. I have very severe fibrocystic breast tissue. The situation is so complicated that routine mammograms really cannot adequately screen me for suspicious lumps. Digital mammography was discussed and rejected as being not much better for my situation. I was referred to the Blumenthal Cancer Center. Dr. Richard White, who is a surgeon ("that tries not to do surgery!"), recommended twice-yearly breast exams, once-yearly mammograms, and a breast MRI every other year. He arranged for my insurance company to pay for this costly test. I thought of organizations like the Komen Foundation and how they have not only funded the research that went into the design and implementation of all these preventive screenings, but also how awareness of the importance of this screening is such that my insurance company instantly saw the value and approved the expense.

All is well.

I am participating in the 5k walk this year to honor and remember these breast cancer victims and survivors that I know: In memory of my grandmother, Pearl Edith White, who died in the mid-80s. And in honor of these survivors: Pam Gonnella, Nannette Carnes, Leslie Hoffman, Kathy Paulson, Linda McCorkle, and Marcy Valenty.

I invite you to support me in my walk this year. Click on this link to donate and, if you have a breast cancer survivor or victim that you would like honored or remembered, please send me an email to let me know. Thank you so much for your time and commitment to fighting this disease.

Chauffer

Chauffer
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic

Nate drives Taylor, our latchkey guy Fred (foreground), and the neighbor boy Jack (other side) to school and back each day. It's been very helpful to me!

However, yesterday he called after school got out to say his car wouldn't start. He'd left the lights on. "They didn't call me up to the office," he said. "They called the guy in the spot next to mine."

To my credit, I did not tell him that it's his deal to get those lights off, and not the school's responsibility to be sure they are off.

He did get another student to give him a jump, so at least he got the problem solved without parental guidance!

Love Notes

note
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic

I found this note in my car Monday afternoon after Jazz.

And then this came to my inbox yesterday:

"When did you move to South Carolina, and are you ready to move back yet?

Michelle Maher, Partner
The Cleveland Company, Inc."

Aren't I lucky?

Training

Training a new puppy is not just about training the puppy. Really about 80% of the learning is with the people.

Bear is learning "sit." And he has scratched at the door a few times while we are going out. But the guys in my house are still learning about keeping him in sight, and how to deal with his mouthy-ness. It's coming along. The accidents we have always occur when there is more than one person in charge of the dog. If it's just me and Bear? No issues. But as soon as someone else comes home we have accidents. It's the humans needing training.

It's been a busy week already, with a couple of interviews for stories yesterday and lots of library festival stuff. The big event is September 29 and I'm already planning an escape to the beach for when that is over. I also need to get my email out about the Susan Komen Race Oct. 6. I should do that today. Last year I raised over $600. I'd like to do at least that this year.

More Churching Around

It's another week. There are random murmurings that we could cool down and get some rain for a few days. I sure do hope so. Everything is just so dry and we are all so tired of summer now.

Of course, I'm working on a story about water conservation in the home. If it runs next Wednesday while it's raining, that would be ironic.

I went to visit the new Episcopal service here in our community last night. It was a very nice service. I told the pastor/rector/priest...whatever she is called...that I had never been to an Episcopal service before. I said, "this might be the last Protestant service style I hadn't experienced before." It was a very nice, contemporary service. I shot photos for the paper and will write a story about them in the next couple of weeks. She's going on vacation, so I'm to get together with her next week sometime.

They also are another church that takes communion every service. I'm not a big fan of that. My favorite Lutheran church does too. It's the only thing I don't care about with them, too.

Church stories are starting to pile up. There is a small mission-minded church that's been meeting at a local neighborhood clubhouse and they now have found a more permanent home. I'm to find them and write about them. And the Presbyterians that I wrote about this summer will start services in October.

So I will be quite ecumenical in the coming weeks.

Are They Just Lazy?

Do they think we just won't notice that all their covers look the same? That we won't think "Wow, they probably saved a lot of money sending this photographer to this one beach and having her shoot several covers all at once."

And of course the titles on the cover are all same-y too:
"[whatever] after 40"
"lose # pounds] in [# weeks]"
"Breakthrough [whatever]"

Sheesh! If this magazine weren't packed with such great articles, I'd scrap it. But I even have prepped some of the recipes.

Check out The Daily Bear. This is another blog devoted just to a photo-of-the-day thing for our pound puppy. I would have just added a page to this site, but apparently you can't do that in blogger. So there is a link there on the right you can check. The thumbnail of him will stay the same, but you should see a new photo there every day. Or at least often. I'm trying to shoot him every day to chronicle his changes, but also to work on my photography skills...portrait shooting, speed shooting, etc. There will probably not be a writing every day there, more likely just a shot and title.

Baby's first Boutique Shot

The Rest of the Story

The dog.

It's been crazy around here, and the dog is really only 1/3 of it. But to ease your curiosity, this entry will be just about Bear.

We've been kind of murmuring about a dog for most of the summer. Many of you know that we lost our beloved Soya 3 years ago. At the time, Taylor was about 9 or 10. He said, "I don't ever want to get another dog because then they die."

Just in the last few months he's been mentioning a dog. Mensa Boy has not been a big fan, but said he wouldn't stand in our way. Nate has been supportive, but not really pushing it.

Taylor and Soya were pretty close. She was mostly my dog, but she always spent a lot of time sleeping next to Taylor as he watched TV or played video games. He would talk in her ears.

Nate will be graduating from high school next spring and going off to college and that will leave Taylor here as the only kid. Also, our carpets are in bad shape and need to be replaced.

So it seemed like no time like the present to house train a puppy.

Bear was owned by a family in Chester who tried to surrender him to the Lancaster Animal Shelter. They would not take him because there are so many surrendered, found, or taken every day that they can't also take animals from other counties. The woman sounded like she didn't want to go "all the way" to the Chester pound. So B.J, a volunteer, said she'd foster him.

He's about 13 weeks old, according to the vet. (note to self: have Taylor pick a birthday)

He's very cuddly and for the first two days he was quiet and slept a lot. He was also crawling with fleas, which we had killed before we even let him in the house. We took him the local vet and they gave him a magic pill that killed them all in about 30 minutes. I just gave him another pill today and put on some Topspot. We also had him tested for a skin condition, which he passed, but we have another culture working for ringworm. He's got a spot on his front leg that he's been chewing on.

Buddy Sarah loaned us two Kennel Cabs, one he just fits in now, and another he can grow into. He's very good about it. We let him out, tell him he's going to bed, and he sleeps all night. Hasn't said a word for 2 nights. Each morning he goes straight outside from there. I suspect we are in the honeymoon phase with that.

He's not a great eater. In fact, I suspect all the food he's getting right now is what I put in his little Kong. So I put puppy food in there rather than treats. His foster home fed him scrambled eggs for breakfast. At my house, dogs eat dog food. So he's going to have to get over this pickiness. NO ONE is allowed to be a picky eater.

His personality is starting to come out now, and I suspect we will be referring to him as "the terrorist" soon. Tomorrow I'll have to take Taylor to a bookstore to find a training book. We'll need to keep a firm hand on this one. We do, after all, suspect that he's mostly Jack Russell Terrier.

My circle of buds have been teasing me now, saying they want to get me a pooch purse. A big, flowered, pooch purse. HA. They are soooooo funnnnny!

My assessment of this whole thing is now I've given my adversaries (and believe me, there are adversaries with this library thing) a pretty good response when I tangle with them:

"I'll get you, my pretty! And your little dog too!"

Two New Additions!

A sweet little car:


A sweet little puppy:

Water Restrictions

Our county has finally enacted water restrictions. We've had water "suggestions" since I've been here, but this is the first time I remember being given restrictions with promises of consequences.

I'm fine with that. In fact, I've added some other water-saving measures here at home. And part of that is due to my cyber-friend, Psycho Anita. Here is her post about being cheap...with dental floss and water.

Now, there is no point saving the water that runs from the shower before it gets hot. Our hot water heater is upstairs, right by the bathrooms. We get virtually instant hot water. That is not the case, however, in the kitchen sink.

So I've instituted a policy whereby all water that runs in the kitchen is saved and taken to the plants in the back yard. We put a container over the garbage disposal (and I haven't told the guys yet that I want to them through food scraps instead of using the disposal...you know, I bet we use a gallon a water every time we run that thing.), and I've put the dishpan in the sink. Dishwater is to be poured on the trees and bushes. The water in the small sink where the disposal is located, is usually rinse water, hand washing water, vegetable cleaning water. Pretty clean. So we are using that outside too.

And I've turned off the irrigation system altogether. We were only running it 3 times per week, but our grass in the front is still burning up and going dormant. So we've decided to just let it go for a while.

The only thing I'm not so sure of is that we are supposed to be putting on fertilizer and crab grass preventer again now. Since we can't water it in, we've elected to skip these applications. We'll try to be diligent about pulling lawn weeds.

All of that said, buddy Cassie told me this morning that Gaston County, NC has instituted some interesting water restrictions. Instead of using the even-odd watering rule, they are putting in place a system where folks on the East side of a main highway water on three days each week, and folks on the West side water the other days.

Their thinking is that it's too hard for some folks to figure out whether they live in an odd-numbered house or an even-numbered house.

Do I need to comment here that it's funny that the officials would figure that people who don't know where 1,3,5,7,9 are odd numbers would be able to tell what East and West is?

By the way, I live on the "left side" of my subdivision. Whenever I say "North side?" People don't know what I mean.

Guest. Yet... not.

It's been a surreal day. I will write about it here, but if you find this entry gone in a day or so, you'll know I've removed it because I thought better of it.

I've spent the day as surrogate mom and wife for a friend and her daughter. Husband/Dad is in the hospital overnight for observation after a reaction to medication.

As the little girl (Sammy) and I drove in my friend's car to the grocery store, I was struck by how much everyday stuff I needed to learn about my friend and her family. How to work the DVD player in their car. Overwhelming fear of accidentally locking the keys in the car with 4-yr-old daughter inside, as the temp rose to nearly 90 degrees.

Entering the grocery store, Sammy and I launched into negotiations concerning cookies. We were there to pick up a ham and some celery, but considering the trauma this little girl had undergone earlier in the day, as Dad was seizing in the hospital and she was whisked away, I decided cookies were definitely in order. An everyday conversation I could have had with my own children, but was having with someone else's just as easily. A basic mom-skill, I guess.

Cookies chosen, we drove our cart through the deli. She pointed out the free cookies that were available at the counter there. "She can have one," the deli worker said. "She knows." I explained that I was babysitting that day. (slightly concerned that someone might wonder why I had a child I didn't know much about with me. on a holiday. obviously not a typical daycare day)

As we were standing in line at the register, I realized that the ham was on special and I didn't have customer loyalty card for that particular store. "Hey! I do!" I told Sammy. There it was on my friend's keyring. I had stepped right into her role as the family consumer.

We went out to the parking lot and I told Sammy to get into her seat and buckle up. Immediately I began to worry about leaving her there while I returned the cart. It's been many years since I've had a kid that age. What do you do? Take the kid to the cart return and walk her back to the car? Leave her in the car while you return the cart? Why didn't I park closer to it? What did I do so long ago?

The rest of the afternoon passed fairly uneventfully. Sammy and I made potato salad. She took a nice, long, 2-hour nap. I laid down, but really ended up fielding calls from other friends. We picked up my friend from the hospital and had a nice supper.

They are visiting Dad in the hospital now. To calm Sammy's fears. I took a shower and am hanging around in my pyjamas. In someone else's house. Typing on someone else's computer.

I feel like a visitor, but not really. I'm very comfortable here. It is a little odd to take a shower in your friend's master bath, padding through her bedroom where she and her husband sleep. She insisted I use her bath, as the main one is full of toddler decals and is not as clean as she would like right now. Using the squeegee to get the water off the glass of her shower (they need a wider squeegee. Mensa Boy would never stand for one that small. But then, he will probably never use theirs. Of course, yesterday I would never have dreamed I would!), I thought about how odd it was to be in someone else's personal space, with all their personal products around. Earlier in the day I had to open her husband's medicine chest to get his prescription information for the hospital. It felt perfectly normal.

We were talking over supper today about how we never would have thought, 6 months ago, that one of us would be spending time at the other's home, caring for them and living comfortably there. And we marveled at these relationships we have.

They are home now. We'll put Sammy to bed and polish off this bottle of wine we have. We'll rehash the day, be amazed at how well we handled it, thank God for His hand in it. Life is Good.

We Rode and Rode and then Walked and Walked and then Rode and Rode Some More

It was a fun day. We took the day off from life and went to Caesar's Head State Park in the upper Northeast corner of South Carolina.

Our intent was to see Raven Cliff Falls:

Yeah. Not much of a view, huh? We walked 2 miles out on a wonderful
trail to what we were told in the literature would be a spot BELOW the falls. Well, we took a vote. And a poll of everyone who showed up after us, and we all decided this was ABOVE the falls. We were about a mile
away, too. This was taken with my longest lens, 200mm.

Huh.
But, we had a great time messing around on the trail. Here are my guys and then an attempt at shooting all of us:

Here is Nate doing his "Warrior Pose." And another of him being Dismal Boy at the Dismal Trail:

And here is the photo I took at a huge rock overlook in the park. This is for this week's Nikon D40 Challenge: "Edges"

The Party Had to End Sometime!

One of the revelers in my 3-day birthday celebration. This Sammy, Chris' daughter.

Today we will go out the northwestern part of the state and see if we can hike to some waterfalls. With the drought becoming so severe, I'm a little anxious about what we'll actually see, but the hike will be good and it'll get the guys out and breathing hard.

The weather has finally cooled to a pleasant mid-80s in the afternoons now. I'm very glad of that. I'm not really bothered by the heat, but it does make moving around outside arduous when it's close to 100 everyday. It's exactly like moving around Minnesota in January when it's 15 below zero every day. Really.

We are going to go either to Jones Gap State Park, or Caesar's Head State Park. I'm not sure which at this point. They are just 10 miles apart. Both have hiking and waterfalls. Because the guys don't get as much exercise as I do, I imagine we'll try to go to the one that will get us a waterfall quicker...closer to the trail head. I don't want to wear them out by having them hike 3 miles to a waterfall if they can reach one in 1.5 miles at a different park.

I plan to take my camera and shoot lots of photos. I have to figure out what to take. I can just take my entire bag, but it gets heavy after a while. I know Mensa Boy would be happy to take a turn wearing it, though, so I'll probably do that. (it's a backpack bag)

So, I'm trying to get those guys up so we can leave by 7:30. I imagine we won't get out by then.

It's been a fantastic birthday for me this year, and the 3-day celebration is the main reason why I haven't written. Here's brief account:

MB was working late all week. Deadline. My friends all stepped up to the plate a did a lot to make it a wonderful celebration.

Sarah and I went to lunch on Wednesday, Rena and I went to dinner Wednesday night, and the evening ended with a surprise gathering of my buddies that night. Cassie, Chris and Tambri were waiting at the Rec Center, where Chris and T had been signing up kids for T's dance classes. Cassie made a wonderful cheesecake and they showered me with serving pieces I can use to do my food photography. It was a fun hour of eating and laughing.

Thursday Chris and I took her 4 year old to the Lazy 5 Ranch in Mooresville. I'd never been there. It was a hoot! We rode a horse-drawn wagon while animals came up and begged for food. I shot a lot of photos, one of which is the ostrich photo I posted here the other day. Here's one of the giraffes taking a leaf from someone on the wagon:

Friday I spent the day on my favorite hobby: cooking. People always say to me, "too bad you have to cook your own birthday meal." But I love it! I smoked a pork butt I had rubbed the night before. I used a rub recipe from Southern Living's "Ultimate Grilling & BBQ Guide" that they put out this summer. I normally don't think much of Southern Living...especially their recipes...they tend to be too high in fat for my cooking and I've had more than one occasion where the recipe has just been plain wrong or unworkable. But I saw this guide at Julia's when we were in Minnesota, so I rushed around looking for before it was taken off the magazine racks in early August. I liked this recipe enough that I will use it again, and I will definitely try others, now the the weather is cooling enough to cook outside again.

That's it! Gotta get those guys up and hit the road! I leave you with this photo of some kind of duck I shot at Lazy 5. I wish I'd checked to see what it was. It's beautiful, isn't it? Maybe Raymond will google it and find out for me.