One year ago today: May 2, 2018, the original lyrics.
Five years ago today: May 2, 2014, palm trees & puffy clouds.
Nine years ago today: May 2, 2010, a mainly couples flight.
Random years ago today: May 2, 2013, does music require talent?
Begin with a flattering picture of the “hot patch” looking toward the future site of Paradise Gardens. This view is ground level, showing the small flower test area to see what grows. They’ve been pretty good so far. But the real surprise was the back fence. The tall flowers were not supposed to bloom until next year, but one of them did. I’ll get you a picture this afternoon. I was raking and working the leaf blower for four hours with a few breaks for iced tea. Enjoy the shade, because over half of it starts disappearing pretty soon. I’m going to trim what I can with the electric chain saw and a ladder.
Next, I measured out the back yard for how many post holes I’ll need. At least eleven. Agt. R says he has a digger I can have, so I arranged it for tomorrow. I got a dollar says it won’t be there, set out in his garage for me. But, you watch. With him back at the club, he’ll soon have those $600 weekends again, which was the situation underlying the spreadsheets designed to pay off his house by 2024, or something to that effect.
Here is a video of the sprouts, leaning toward the sunlight. This area is shaded most of the day, so I expected that. But it is still well-lit and bright enough for all the weeds in the county to take up residence. The kind of weeds which sink roots so deep, they break just below the surface when yanked, and keep coming back. Gramps is the mostly blind and deaf old squirrel I’ve been feeding. He’s territorial enough to keep the punk squirrels away from his grub. He prefers salted popcorn, but not white bread. He won’t touch GMO corn and neither should any living creature. He is okay with crumbled doggie treats, the kind that have no meat. But the all round favorite for all the birds, including our occasional bluejay, is peanuts. I only buy them on sale at the feed lot, they have a warning not for humans. I wonder about that.
Penn State dormitory.
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I’ve made an effort to feed but not tame the animals. That can only be partial, because they’ve grown used to me working in the yard. They still scatter, but at their own pace. And they’ve learned to just wait things out if I’m raking leaves. Well, this morning, I bagged some leaves and plunked in the lawn chair. I snoozed a few minutes and was wakened by Gramps eating popcorn not twenty feet away. That’s as close as he’s ever been. When I moved, he started, but then stared at me for interrupting his brunch before, what is it squirrels do? Scampering? Yeah, that’s it.
That’s quite the flower, first of anything I’ve ever grown like it. I planted 18 of these around the yard, so there is a slim chance I may have a colorful summer yet. Yard work attracts me. I neglected the house for it. I wonder if the late bloomer is really me. I used to wonder about people with a life-long knack for this type of work. This is a first for me, and at my age it would be more like a what’s-left-of-life-long. I did not mention that I am obligated to sent these pictures back to Tennessee. It’s got to do with my misreading the offer to bring the turtle here. I honestly thought she was joking. You don’t just hand somebody a pet you’ve had for 90% of your life unless . . .
And that’s the unless that counts. She has always trusted me implicitly. I suppose it threw me because people do change and I always thought of trust as something to be gained. I didn’t recognize it when it sailed right through me. Now, I’m slowly seeing the pattern, that the turtle being here is a commitment—on her part. We can never stay apart as long as in the past if JeePee is here. Besides, I set the standard for his Sunday spa double wax. Now my feelings are unchanged (you take that any way you want) but I’m now qualified to say the way to a woman’s heart could be unintentional and but through the way you treat her turtle.
Ouch, you didn’t have to kick me that hard!
Neener, neener, my liatris is nicer than yours.
This next item is definitely unique enough to be bloggable, but grab any grains of salt you have handy. Initial reports from Miami are that JZ’s horrible old “girlfriend” had her foot amputated. Both messages are blurry, but something to do with trouble with her other boyfriends, which makes sense if you ask me. Anyway, JZ’s concern is the gal (thank goodness) but on me future role in stopping him from having you-know-what with a girl with only one leg. Unfortunately, the plan of last month to introduce him to a friend of Reb’s has been scratched. In no uncertain terms.
My last-ditch plan is still to get JZ out of that environment. I’m not the sort to diagnose my friends, but observing behavior is in my realm. I’ve noticed how attached he gets to women who even act like they want him in return. Hence, my conclusion that he needs a woman to grip the reins. That should not be hard to find, but he does have a personality that deflects such people in general. Many people have noted we are chums because we don’t step on each other’s toes. Maybe it is time he met a woman who bosses him around. What do you think?
I think it got cloudy and rainy by late afternoon, cooling down enough for me to put in a couple of hours on the guest bedroom. Listening to Boss Hogg, cussing the Tampa spin on the news, and hitting my thumb with the hammer, a stage I should be long past. But man, that is one pretty flower.
ADDENDUM
As is typical with Sony equipment, that missing battery compartment cover causes other problems. I’m affixed an elastic band to keep the battery pressed against the contacts, but this prevents the flip screen, which is also the on-off switch, from closing completely. In turn, this drains the battery unless you carefully remove the elastic every time. Up yours, Sony. Another annoyance is the zoom button. It is located exactly where your hand naturally fits when you pick the unit up. Every other time you find you have zoomed and have to fix that before shooting. Up yours again Sony. They put some pin-head feature like zoom where it is too handy, but if you want to shoot pictures instead of movies, you have to open the camera and press four buttons. So much for spontaneous captures.
During the hot afternoon, I threw on another DVD. It seems every so often a misleading title gets into my collection that turns out to be another boring damn religious theme. Boring, because they all end the same. Listen to me, I have seen and met people who were sincerely let down by religion. I don’t buy the excuse that it was always that they didn’t believe enough or that it is always some mysterious way. I have yet to see any of these Jesus-people make a movie about the times it all didn’t work. However, I will concede that in the past ten years, the acting has improved fantastically. They are actually finding people with a little bit of talent.
Anyway, the point I’m making is they are starting to title these movies in a way that deliberately disguises that it is about religion. Worse, I’m finding a few that you don’t know until well into the drama before the theme crops up. Any religion that has to resort to these tactics is not good enough, and that’s that. Maybe they are stupid enough to think people out there have never heard of God and need to be tricked into getting the message by using subterfuge.
I’m also watching a lot of movies with 1930 through 1950 themes. That’s understandable because I skip over those until that’s all I’ve got left. The movies are too “clean” for the way it really was. We lived in a lot of small towns where people were still living like that in the 1970s. Trust me, not every man in the street was in a suit and wearing a hat. People still walked a lot of places, including over to the next town. It was dusty and much as I like seeing the restored old cars in these movies, in real life it was often 90% old wrecks on the road. They were repairable and people kept them longer.
Corniest has to be the music and portrayal of stereotypes. I became a teenager well after The Beatles had arrived and by then there were already no clubs or radio stations that played that cacophonous jazz. Well, maybe there was, but not around my crowd. Years later I realize my generation was one of the most complete breaks with the past that happened until the Internet. And the wired-in break wasn’t with the past, it was more with reality. People who by the millions who cannot read or write properly, deny evolution exists, and think it possible to be part-time socialists can only rule—and be ruled—by brute force.
I’ll tell you another custom I was not sad to see disappear. Who remembers what “cutting in” was? This was a holdover from some earlier age where if you were dancing with a gal, another man could tap you on the shoulder and say, “Mind if I cut in?” Being polite, you were supposed to not mind. Whether or not the lady minded was not part of the custom. After all, she was only dancing, right? This is what passed for etiquette, because if Tom cuts in on Harry, Harry can’t cut back, he has to wait out the dance at the sidelines. This, I believe, is the type of diplomatic protocol that causes world wars.
Now, you were not supposed to mind when somebody cut in. But yeah, I minded and I’ll tell you why. Because I always asked the prettiest girl to dance and was often first. Imagine the scenario. A room full of toughs, like my brothers, who did not have the testicular fortitude to ask any girl to dance. But these bastards have no trouble cutting in. Ah, now you see the real game they are playing. They are chicken-shits to a man until they see a female they perceive as receptive. I did note how that crowd never, ever cut in on somebody bigger and tougher than themselves.
Not only did that routine pass out of favor almost overnight, but by the time I was 18, it became one of my rules to not date women who even entertained passes from other men when she was out with me. I’d complete the date, take her home, and never speak to her again. Let me put a number on this. I’d say this has happened in my life around, gosh, that is not an easy recollection. Say between 25 and 30 times? There were exceptions, when I really liked the gal and mentioned that it bothered me. So, I did date some of them a second time. But I cannot recall any of them behaving. I remember those ones by name. Judy, Sandy, Elizabeth, Julie, and Annie.
The worst was Julie. You couldn’t go to the can without coming back and finding some stranger invited to sit at your table the rest of the night. She considered it some kind of joke. That struck me doubly curious when I found out I was the only guy who took her on dates in the past ten years. You’d think she’d be on her best behavior. We saw each other a bit over the next few years, but never again on a date.
