Happy happy joy joy

Děkuji,Leni.

Hiking Trip

A couple of Sundays ago, we hiked an easy 8 km to Raven Cliff Falls and back. Next time I want to take the longer hike to the suspension bridge above the falls.

Then we stopped to look around from the top of Bald Mountain

where it's possible to feel rather small in the great scheme of things.

Goose Reason to Go for a Walk

It's hard to get motivated to go outside when you have a new gaming system to play on. I was pleased that a walk and the opportunity to see some baby geese still beats out electronic entertainment.

Gifts

Bram saw this little racoon family today as they trundled along under the footbridge over the spring. By the time I got my camera, one of the babies had scampered away and the mother had retreated to safety up a tree with the other one. I confess I was filled with unaccountable joy at being allowed to see them. It always feeds something deep inside me to see a mother care for her babies even though today, that joy was tempered a bit by my feelings for the mother as she trembled in her fear and determination to keep her young safe.

I am grateful for gifts such as this, for being allowed to see that regardless of how I am feeling or how I think my world is, somewhere there is actually quite a lot going along that is just as it should be. It gives me some faith that things for me will eventually be as they should be, too.

They Have Legs

And they are going home today. It takes a lot longer than I thought for tadpoles to become frogs, and the time has come, though we won't be able to see their complete transformation, to return them to their home. I suggested that we put them in the little creek that runs behind our house, but Bram was insistent about the "environmental hell that would reap."

Is it your birthday, too?

My posts here are getting fewer and farther between. I wish I could say the same for my use of cliche here. Here's my cake, with 38.5% of my age worth of skinny sparkly candles on it. You can do the math. What? Did you think I'd just say it out loud? Je stači až jsem stara, ano? Please note that the cake is outside on the porch. Bram expressed some concern about a fire hazard even with the relative few candles.
This morning I bought a cake to share with my friends at the Pacolet Senior Center tomorrow and will collect my share of birthday hugs and good wishes from them then.
I had lunch at my favorite Thai restaurant and in the afternoon, snow cones made by Bram followed by this lovely tasty cake (with lemon pudding filling). For dinner, either the steakhouse or my favorite Mexican restaurant. Beer or margarita? Decisions decisions.

Yes, It's Me

And no, I didn't land a modeling job.

New Family Members

There are nine of them: Kameshia, Rachel, Morty, Alex, Bettykins, Walt, Lenička, Není zač, and Ička. My novena of fishes.

Our Current House Guests

Bram spent a good bit of his spring break exploring the canal behind the beach house. He found a Congo eel, whom he named Carl and who promptly bit the dust. Then he caught about 15 tadpoles. I agreed that he could bring four of them back home with us. And here are three of them, all lined up for their photo op (the fourth one is very small and very shy). I wonder if they feel like some kind of political prisoners.

My Own Personal Auto Bahn

I admit it. I have favorite words, and lots of them. In Czech, one of my favorites is kniha-book (and another, knihovna-library). In Spanish, it's mariposa-butterfly. And in German, well, nothing rocks my boat like auto bahn. I like to pronounce it like this, ow-toe baahn when I pretend I'm on it. I was thinking about this word on last Monday as I cruised along I-85 at a happy 155 kmh to get to Athens to the dentist. I thought about other words I like the sound of like ryby-fish, and trascocina-closet, and pamplemousse-grapefruit. The dentist trip wasn't as bad as it could have been. I nearly fell asleep (yes, he's that good, and that is why I drive two and half hours for him to fix my teeth). And to make my life ever so much better, I spent time before the dental appointment with Nancy and her son Anthony (an absolute charmer, whose self confidence is not only endearing, but enviable), and later, had coffee and more time with Nancy to talk. I forget how good it feels, how positively soul-reviving time with a friend can be. I've felt better all week because of it, even though I got a speeding ticket on Wednesday. And that time, I was thinking only of words like time, and late, and hurry.

Yo-Yo Weather

It's rainy and dreary here again today, but let's not talk about that. A couple of weeks ago, the weather was perfectly wonderful for a few days. On a Saturday, we went to Greenville, about 65km away, to the zoo, which was unbelievably crowded. Thanks to the sunshine and warm temperatures (26C), I didn't mind it at all. Or maybe I was just desperate to get out of the house and out of town for a few hours. In the zoo, I asked myself the usual question, "what's my favorite animal here today?" In fact, my favorite zoo animal hands down is the hippopotamus, but they don't have any in Greenville. And I played the game of trying to figure out which of the animals looked the most like I felt. The anit-social elephant covered in red mud, her backside to the crowd? The other one, clean, facing the crowd head on and up close? The chimpanzee seated against the bars of her cage, her outstretched hand imploring visitors to offer her a cracker? The small leopard lying along a long in the sun? The turtle, too cold now that the sun had moved to find a warmer spot? I never did decide on a favorite for the day (Really, what can compete with a hippo?). And as for which animal was most me, maybe the leopard, feeling nothing more than gratitude for the sunshine.
After the zoo, we drove downtown for dinner at Sticky Fingers Rib Shack, where they serve, you guessed it, ribs barbecued any way you want them (and the best wheat beer on tap I've had since Brno). All I can say is you come to visit, I will take you there; you will eat great ribs, you will learn your blues name and you will love it all.
After dinner, we walked a few blocks to Reedy River Falls Park, where besides water rushing over massive rocks, the river winds through miles of paved pedestrian paths dotted with grassy areas, woods, and flowers.
There were children (and a few grownups) rolling down grassy slopes, blossoming hyacinths, daffodils, crocus. People lolled about on the grass or on blankets, reading, enjoying their feasts of picnics and private music or kisses (though none for me). We watched two boys good-naturedly try to retrieve their football from a whirlpool at the base of the falls, and for a half hour, maybe less, all of my hopes were fastened on their success and I lost sight of my own troubles. I wasn't the only one who cheered with real enthusiasm when they finally got the ball and launched it back across the river.

It's No Big Deal to You, but

for us, even a tiny bit of snow is a thrill. And this much, well, this much means no electricity for about 18 hours and no school or work for two days. And for me, a lovely reminder of my Brno, though in Brno, the white silence wasn't devoured by the sounds of gasoline-powered generators.

Sunday

I had to go save these from being further beat down into the ground by the rain and the precipitation expected tonight.

Evolution, Trilobite Writers, and Jell-O

I found this list in Bram's backpack a few weeks ago and came across it again on my desk last week. Yes, my desk hadn't been cleaned off in ages--still hasn't. It's a pretty common thing for American school children to make a list of what they are thankful at Thanksgiving. Here's Bram's list of ten things for which he is most thankful
1. Family
2. Anything related to Jurassic Park (except knock-offs)
3. Friends
4. A brain
5. Jell-O
6. Holidays
7. Good books
8. Prehistoric life books
9. Evolution
10. Universe
(This list is NOT put in order of which I like better)

What's not to love about a kid whose grateful for Jell-o and evolution? At the moment, though, he isn't happy about anything because his English assignment isn't going well. The assignment was to write a children's book, but he has written and is illustrating something somewhere between a comic book and a graphic short story about a writer who's a trilobite. It's going to be good when he's done, but he's upset because his drawings today aren't his best.

How Rich is This?

Or how stupid?
See this machine? It's purpose is to count your change for you---for a fee! I get it that some people like to come home and put their change in a jar and then cash it in or deposit it at the bank to see how much they saved kind of by accident when the jar is full. But how rich or busy do you have to be to not mind paying 8.9 cents on the dollar to have a machine count your change? The thing is, the people I usually see at this machine certainly don't dress or act or talk like they have so much money and so little time that they have to pay to have their money counted.

In the malls here, there is a place where you can literally throw your money away by watching it wind down a large funnel and down a hole and into the collection box below. I wish I had been the brilliant person who anticipated this easy way to make money. I don't have a photo, but you can understand what it looks like if you imagine a large black plastic funnel that is about a meter and half in diameter, set with the narrow end down onto a circular wooden base. There aren't any signs or instructions, but people here seem to know what to do. Walk up to the thing, stand a coin up on its edge on the outer edge of the funnel, and watch it roll in concentric circles before it falls through the hole in the center. I try to imagine such a thing in the middle of some public space in Brno and I just cannot. What Czech would throw money away like this? I have an idea what use just about any beer-drinking male would find for such a thing, and the only thing it might have to do with money is saving the 15kc charge at the public toilets.

The Only Ones

I was a little afraid of dead things when I was child. Once, when I was telling my father how scary it would be to live next to a cemetery, he said in that flat voice he usually reserved for answering stupid questions, "Why? THOSE are the only people on the earth who won't hurt you." Along the route to Bram's school, there are two cemeteries: on the west and east on the way in, and on the east and west on the way home. I notice these cemeteries not because there is a house right up against one of them or because I am feeling miserable or hollow (though I often am), but because what I see first are the flowers that have blown off the graves. For some reason, it really bothers me to see them there, ripped from the resting places of somebody's loved ones and lying like so much trash in the ditch and along the roadside. These days it's mostly red poinsettias or blue things or some kind of fluffy yellow spidery-looking flower I don't recognize. I would like to stop and to put them all back, but of course I can't. And that bothers me more than it should. I am sorry for the living who brought the flowers to the cemetery and how they must have felt about leaving first someone they loved and then the flowers and for the oblivious dead who now thanks to the wind, appear to lie there unmissed and ungrieved. But then, THEY are the only ones on earth who. . . .