Honest Scrap: Ten Fun Facts All About Me

My new friend at Bee~Content Ranch has tapped me to reveal/share/impart/offer up ten things you don't know about me.

So. This is a blog game.

I am participating in bloggamy.
Safer than bigamy.

Since nobody I know in Real Life yet knows I have this blog, and none of you Out There knows anything about me, this should be easy. Right?

So why the procrastination? What's the holdup here, Junie Moon?

1. My income is from tax dollars. Imagine, if you will, my current popularity.

2. I have three dogs and one cat, all of whom sleep with me, two of whom need to be lifted into my bed at night at least once. If either of them gets too warm or decides for some other reason to leave the bed and then wants back in, I have to get up and pick them up and replace them in the communal bed.

3. I have ridden a horse twice. The first time I was so little that my legs stuck out straight and I slid off the side as we walked along. The second time, twenty years later, we went through the woods in April. The horse's hooves filled up with snow. We hit a patch of ice and skated for a while. I do not foresee a third horseride.

4. I have never known what to do with children. God, in His Infinite Wisdom, gave me none.

5. I would be ecstatic if I were given permission to hibernate from November until April.

6. Husband and I built a 1700SF house using credit card money. When it was finished we got a home equity loan and paid off the credit cards.

7. I left a solid career and waited tables for fourteen years, leaving only because I broke my leg. I think everybody should wait tables as a sole source of income for a year. It teaches excellent lessons in carrying on with a smile despite every difficulty.

8. I believe animals are smarter, more trustworthy, and more able to meet Life's demands, than are most people.

9. I know the difference between "comprise" and "compose," and that they are not interchangeable.

10. And, from the sublime to the ridiculous....I think apple cider vinegar is the A1 best remedy for acid indigestion.

New Year blessing

On my way home from work two days ago, I stopped at a friend's to pick up some candles (creme caramel scent...they're almost edible) that she had ordered for me. Kim is a grand storyteller; it's hard to leave her because there's always one more laugh to be shared. We stood near my truck talking for an hour, while the sun went down and the wind came up, and it got colder and colder.

By the time I set off for home it was full dark, although not yet six o'clock.

Two roads and two miles from home, I saw a moving mass of something a quarter mile ahead in the road. I slowed down, and when I was less than a hundred feet away I was able to make out a herd of whitetails, including some 2008 fawns with their rounded winter-fuzzy little heads. There were so many of them that I had to stop until they decided to split into two groups and make an opening for me to go through.

I drove on slowly, smiling. It's a nice blessing on my New Year.

From http://www.sayahda.com/cyc2.html:
Deer teaches us the power of gentleness, keen observation and sensitivity. Deer are in tune with nature and all it holds. They are sacred carriers of peace and show those with this totem how to open their hearts and love unconditionally.
Their senses are acute and they see extremely well in low light, giving them the ability to understand the deeper symbolic meanings of things. They can hear a twig snap in the far distance. Anyone who has deer as a totem has hidden clairvoyant and clairaudient abilities. They can see between the shadows, detect subtle movements and hear what is not being said. Call on deer to help you develop these gifts.

MiMau on a Mouse House

I've been aware of this mouse house for weeks.

One day I was wandering around down near this stump, making a ball out of burdocks, and decorating the outside of the burdock ball with milkweed fluff.

I thought it would be a nice natural Christmas decoration.

I happened upon the stump, and saw a whole pile of milkweed fluff caught, "from the wind," I thought, in a cranny on top of it. As I was adding to my ad hoc holiday decor, an alarmed field mouse popped out of a hole on the side of the stump and ran like water down into the stonewall below.
I was looting her roof insulation.

I gave the situation a few minutes' thought, and jammed my whole burdock and milkweed fluff ball into the cavity in the stump. The white patch to the right of MiMau's front paws is the weathered result. I see the stump's residents have made some alterations, too. Some of the insulation has been moved here and there to stop up drafty cracks.

On occasion, I stick some seeds from a nearby maple tree into the stump's crevices. It appears that the mouse family has appreciated that donation. The seeds are gone and only the "wings" of the seeds remain.

Beholder's eye

During the last warm season I found great peace in the beauty of nature.

With the onset of cold and dark and brown and gray, that placid joy faded. I tried to see the glory of the structure of the trees, rather than relying on the splendor of the color and sound of leaves, but my senses reveled in neither the sturdiness nor the intricate turnings of naked branches.

And then, the ice came...

....and coated every blade of grass,

every seedpod,

every stone and branch.

The fingers of the trees, silver-limned, became, once again, breathtaking.

Light, fractured in a million sparkling and glinting prisms.

In the quiet, a slight breeze,

the sound of crisp taffeta crinolines.

Everywhere I looked and heard, Beauty.


Just when I felt abandoned and hopeless.

That's how Life is.

A Good Fit

My third, perhaps fourth, attempt to blog.

My problem has been choosing the title before figuring out what I would want to write. My first title, clearly not an inspired choice, has passed from memory. The second was chosen in an excess of wry humor combined with a passing bad mood, and the third was, I belatedly realized, a flagrant attempt to copy somebody else's elegant and whimsical style. I don't know what or how I'll write but I expect I wouldn't be able to support a steady diet of elegant and whimsical.

The overarching attitude of my days is gratitude. I'm a sufficiently happy old broad most of the time. Life is good. Husband and I are healthy, so far as I know. We live in a place like the one that was lost to me when I was a child and that I mourned for years. Husband and I have achieved many of our dreams, not least this place where it gets dark and, except for wild critters barking, howling, hooting, and domestic critters barking at the wild critters and yowling upstairs for company, quiet at night.

We've just come out of an ice storm that took out the electricity for a few days. The woodstove kept us comfortably warm and we had enough food and water. What else is needed, really? Books. I have books. And I have candles, which I held close to the pages, and so I could read well into the darkness. 8pm was about the limit before it was time for bed.

I found that going to bed with the chickens felt pretty good. Even doing the few chores that are possible without electricity was soothing in the flickering halflight of a candle across the room. And the quiet! Almost pure peace.

I guess if two middle-aged people who've known each other for thirty years can happily cohabitate for four days without electricity, they're solid enough.