Mutiny in the Bounty

I am first apologizing for both Rachel and me.  Her kids are out for summer holidays, and she’s feeling pretty good – so there’s no holding still to read or write.  Not with Levi and his little brother running wild and free.  And me?  I’m still fighting with the book thing and the wedding thing and the genealogy thing.  We don’t even see each other.  But we are inseparable in heart.  So if there are long silences, please forgive. And if you need us or just want to chat – PLEASE do get a hold of us.

The dishwasher is dead.  I know.  I know.  This simple declarative is suggestive of so many things: my kitchen is teeming with appliance viruses?  I have been secretly poisoning the appliances one by one – in hopes of getting new ones (Oh, please let me spend money on THAT).  First the fridge – the box that saw my kids through their last years of childhood – the one that has held food for, first the children themselves, then their children after them.  Hauled away.  Gone.  Pffff – ptooey.

We will have to hand wash the dishes for another almost three days.  Can a human being suffer more? (Rhetorical question, sardonic in tone.)

I am waiting for my long time buddy Kathy to show up so we can go over her CLEP test and I can explain the mysteries of “analyzing and understanding literature.”  Except, after reading the passages and the incredibly abstruse questions that follow them, I am not sure I qualify.  I will write more on that and stick it over at the other blog.

A week or so ago, Chaz loaded a lovely spectrum of tangerine into her hair, bright at the scalp, delicate toward the tips.

Brain?  Oh, yes.  I carry it in here.

She wasn’t pleased.  She’d meant it to be cherry red.  She only had one shirt she could wear with orange hair.  Evidently, she has plenty that would have gone with the other color.  So two days later, she corrected the mistake.  It was a pretty glorious red.  But the hair seemed more comfortable as a tangerine, and isn’t that the way life goes?

Huddled with the sibs.  Cherry red.

Sometimes it occurs to me to wonder what people think of me as a mother, hauling around a crazy woman with neon hair.  But I know Chaz down to the ground, and thus I know there are few people who have stronger hearts, characters and dedication to her philosophical, religious and ethical convictions. So it doesn’t occur to me that often.

He knows her, too.  But I suspect there are times when he wishes he could affix a neon sign to the top of his head reading: NOBODY ASKED ME WHAT I THOUGHT.

I want to thank the truly true friends who followed me over to that book site I’d slaved over for months.  Here’s hoping that, little by little, it goes slightly viral.  Or maybe not.  Maybe I should just go to the library and spend the rest of the summer lying on this couch reading.  Holding still.  Unlikely.  Patience has never been my suit.  Notice I didn’t say “strong suit.”  I meant, “I don’t have any.”

Now, I’m trying to remember what day it is.

But I do have a story (this blog is already longer than ANYBODY ELSE’S ON THE PLANET, AND I’M COMING UP WITH A STORY?????)  And I don’t even have any pictures to entertain you with while you’re slogging through.  So maybe I’ll save it for a new blog.  I could do that.  I AM going to do that.

next day, adding photos: I can’t remember which story I was going to tell.  Roll eyes at self.  So I will show you more pictures.  As I have said, as I drive home in the Suburban, thus being taller by about two feet than I usually am, I notice things I don’t usually see.  I noticed this as I drove past my own yard: a flash of crimson in the ornamental pear tree: