Well, it looks like the whole house is all ish-kabibble once again! Geez! Everywhere you look right now are nice neat stacks of clean sheets, pillows (so many pillows), mattresses, bed frames, box springs and toss pillows. What a mess! This is what happens when you finally break down and buy a new bed! Woohoo! So exciting! It ought to be delivered some time today and we are so ready! Getting a new bed meant, for us means that the guest room bed is on it's way outoutout. Our old bed, which isn't very old really, we bought it here in Florida afterall, will become the new guest bed. It's a good quality very comfortable mattress and will be a comfortable nights sleep for any guest you ends up snoozing on it. The fellows who are bringing our new bed will take the old guest room bed away, huzzah, and that will automatically make the chaos in the living room much better. Mattresses and box springs leaning up against random walls looks so very, ummm, I don't know, dormitory between semesters or something. So the guest bedroom will now be sporting not only a nice, much newer, mattresses and box spring, but it also inherited the headboard and footboard that used to be in our room. Love that! I know that a head board (and/or foot board) is not strictly necessary, but I really like the way it looks. It seems more finished I suppose. Like when you are all dressed and then you put your shoes on. Now you are finished dressing :) HOWEVER, the guest room is NOT inheriting the old comforter. That thing is thirty years old and has holes in it. It's ready for the garbage. On the other hand, the original guest room comforter is in Fabulous shape and will continue to do it's job very nicely. So for those of you keeping score, Guest room has new bed, new headboard/footboard but the same comforter. Our new bed, (Squee! So Excited!) is not only a King instead of the Queen sized bed we've always had, but it's an adjustable King. Wow! Both the head and the foot go up and down. So Fancy! It's supposed to be terrific for aiding sleep for people with seasonal allergies, sleep apnea, indigestion, and snoring problems! And as a bonus, it's easier to watch TV or read in bed. Awesome! Because the bottom of it is one king sized bed and the top is two extra long twins, the sheets are sized specifically for that situation which means no more buying sets but only separates. That'll work. We did have to buy a new comforter though and that took stops at Multiple stores to find. It was so much more of an ordeal than I anticipated. First of all, our bedroom is an odd grey/green/sagey sort of colour. I don't dislike it but I probably wouldn't have picked it. On the other hand, we didn't really have the time (Or desire) to repaint the bedroom before the new bed came so we had to find a comforter that would go with grey/green/sagey. As it turns out, there aren't many colours that do. Another issue was finding a comforter that wasn't too heavy or dense so that Tim wouldn't be too hot. He's one of those people who is almost always too hot, so something lightweight. You would think a lightweight comforter or coverlet would be easy to find in Florida, a hot place. As it turns out, not as easy as you might think. Another issue was dealing with what was available in stores. The short time frame meant trying to not have to buy on line when you are at their mercy of when things are delivered. And worse, is it exactly what you thought it was from what was shown or written on line. So I think we went to 3 different stores, or maybe it was 4. Five? However many it was, it seems that the stores hereabouts believe that everyone should have a comforter with scenes/pictures/patterns that typify Florida. There were fish and palm trees and hibiscus and ocean waves galore. Sometimes the colours were just oceany - blues and greens. Other times colours one might consider as tropical - bright bright yellows, greens and oranges. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with ANY of those options except, they aren't us. I don't really want to sleep under the sea or in a Jimmy Buffet song. Obviously we finally found something that would do. That's what we settled on, something that would do. Neither of us hated it. AND it goes with the oddly coloured walls of the room. A very high standard indeed. So right now, there is nothing to do but wait. Tim emptied the rooms. I have done the laundry and cleaned the rooms (swept, vacuumed, dusted AND washed the floors). The kitties have done everything they could possibly do to help (read that as be in the way) and therefore, I think we are ready. And while I really hate the clutter and chaos of an ish-kabibbled state, I also know that it's short term and once the new bed is in place in our room and the old bed is in the guest room and the really old bed is gone, then I can put everything to rights and by tonight all will be well. We will sleep the sleep a people on new sheets, under a new comforter, in a new bed. Yay! Can't wait!
0 Comments
Happy Day After Mother's Day!! This is how my Mother's Day began. Sweet cards and my favourite cinnamon roll. Yummmmy! So Wonderfully Bad for me! I got emails and phone calls and texts and IM's and oh my goodness so many good wishes for a Happy Mama's Day! Tim took me (and my camera) to Spanish Point for my Mother's Day Outing. I know that means little to nothing to you but Spanish point is a wonderful place, just two towns north of us (maybe a 15-20 minute drive). About a hundred years ago, a phenomenally wealthy woman from Chicago named Bertha Palmer fell so in love with, what is now the Sarasota County area of Florida, that she bought some 14,000 acres of land! (which is now roughly a quarter of Sarasota County). She carved out 350 acres along Little Sarasota Bay to build her winter home which she referred to has her winter cottage. So naturally it was a freakin' mansion! She preserved the existing homesteaders buildings, including a chapel, and repurposed some of them into things like a guest house and homes for her own servants and grounds caretakers. She also had magnificent gardens created. Interestingly, her winter home called, The Oaks, no longer exists. But many of the other buildings do and they continue to be lovingly cared for. Bertha's beautiful gardens, including an aquaduct (!) are being slowly reclaimed. In short it is a beautiful place to wander for a bit. Currently the gardens and walkways are dotted with oversized samples offamous landscape Photographer Clyde Butchers work. I am a fan :) Soooo since I took a bunch of photos anyway, I hope you don't mind if I share a few . I lumped them together by category so they are no representative of a linear timeline of the walk, just FYI. Let's start with a few butterflies. There are gardens galore so naturally there are butterflies. And now they even have a small butterfly house! Kind of naturally segues into gardens doesn't it? Some of these gardens are formal, some are definitely less formal. All of them are beautiful :) Part of the formal garden is watered via aquaduct! It was so unexpected but absolutely wonderful. Here are a few photos of it: And of course, since this property is right there on Little Sarasota Bay, there are water pictures next. Just a few, I swear! A little bit of one structure, a cute little rustic gazebo, appeared in one of the water photos in the previous category so lets call the next category "structures". A rather loose category that includes buildings of all sorts, pergolas and more. Some quite grand, other's more humble: We walked down paths, boardwalks and picked through barely distinguishable trails (new area not ready for prime time) and went up and down endless stairs and paths of all sorts. Here area few: And then there was the art. Clyde Butcher was inspired by Ansel Adams and at one point in his career decided to focus solely on black & white landscapes. His work is amazing! You know how some music or writers or painters just seem to speak specifically to you? Well that is how I feel about most of Clyde Butchers work. I am endlessly wowed and inspired by him. He actually lives in Florida by the way. He and his artist wife live on acreage in the Big Cypress National Preserve where they are not just artists, but also reknowned conservationists. Sadly, because I am not anywhere near as good a photograph as Mr Butcher, and didn't notice until it was too late, you will see My reflection and occasionally Tim's too in these photos. Dang! Oh well, here they are and I hope you enjoy Mr. Butcher's work! Anyway, it was a wonderful Mother's Day! I hope yours was even better though I'm not sure how that would be possible!
Ya'll in the mood for another Photo Safari Report? Well ok then! I am calling this one the Two Eagles Hike because, obviously, we saw two eagles. But more on them later. I think I'll begin with my one and only black and white photo this time 'round. It looks so dramatic in black and white! Just a tree and some clouds in colour, but remove the colour and pow! Drama! It wasn't a very long hike but we did see some very cool, far less dramatic things as we covered our miles. I think I'll start with the birdies. There was a very nice variety so instead of giving you multiple photos of one sort of bird (yawn, boring) instead it will be multiple bird photos each of a different sort. Except the eagles. Maybe I ought to start with them. Ok the Eagles Story. This particular preserve Joy and I have hiked a few times before. The first time we also came across two eagles that were, surprisingly, perched high in a tree that we walked directly under. So these massive, totally silent birds were right above us. It was a wow! We were hoping for a similar experience this time around. But sadly when we walked under those trees there were no eagles. Awwww :( Then we walked a little further and in the distance spied the nest, but it had clearly been abandoned and was kind of beginning to fall apart. Dang. We thought maybe the eagles had moved on to another area. Ratz. So we continued to hike. Further down the trail as we went merrily along, Joy suddenly came to an abrupt stop. She peered into the distance and so I looked too but i saw nothing special. She brought up her camera and said, "Yes!" with such glee that I did the same. And there is was. Well one of them was Well, we figured, where there is one, there must be the other, so we kept looking and of course, once again, it was Joy who found it. The other Eagle! And a few minutes later, we found the new nest Yay! We were so very pleased to learn that they hadn't decamped to another, unknown, spot! We can watch the progress now and perhaps eventually see baby eagles !! And then watch them grow :) Very fun! The rest of the birds were absolutly wonderful but not nearly as exciting. No insult to the birds intended of course: Otherwise let's see, we saw some interesting trees: We did see a lot of rabbits but I only got a picture of one so he will serve as the representative of them all which is a terrible responsibility! Sorry Bunny I spied some Spanish Moss hanging from a vine looking for all the world like laundry drying on a line: A few pretty wildflowers and interesting silver greenery: Then two shots of the same butterfly on a flower because I couldn't decide which picture I liked the best: It was only a 3 miles hike so not a really long one but it was long enough to enjoy being outside and hanging out together and taking lots of photos. It'll do. I will leave you with one of my accidental photos. I wonder what I was trying to take a picture of when this happened? HAHAHA! Oh well, stuff happens.
However you spend this weekend, be happy, be healthy and have fun! Wow! That's a lot of stuff, eh?
For the past few days we have had the absolutely delightful pleasure of enjoying the company of people we adore that live out of state. We Had Such A Good Time! We did so many fun things, ate at least a zillion meals, talked and talked and walked, laughed a lot and just relished every single moment. What did we do? It was more what didn't we do to quote Ferris Bueller! Let's see, hmmmm. We did so much cool stuff! We went to a science museum, toured historic homes, went to an aquarium, perused a wonderful used book store, collected shells on the beach and played an awesome mini-golf course. And that was just in two days! Most of the rest of the space in each day was filled with laughter, food and conversation. Really it was about perfect. Brysco was happy to meet our guests. Wyatt not so much. He hid for the duration. I'm pleased to say that he has recovered fully from the experience and is back to being his goofy old self. And today we are back to our normal usual ordinary lives which is a little hard after so much fun and excitement. And honestly, the minute our guests drove away, we already missed them so much. But we have great memories now to add to the memory file that I can pull out and enjoy all over again when I start missing them too much. I wish the weather had been nicer. It was a little warmer and more humid than was truly ideal but at least it didn't rain I suppose. I wish they could have stayed longer. I wish we saw them more often. I wish I had carved out more time to spend with each of them individually just to catch up one on one. But I'm overjoyed with the time together that we did get to have. It was a great weekend. One of the Best. I don't know what you did this weekend, but I know mine was better ;) Hugs all 'round. "The Shadow Knows" that Joy and I were back out hiking this week so that means this must be another Photo Safari Report!~ I struggled with what to call this one because there doesn't seem to be one predominant theme of photos so I think this one is just the Mostly Randos Hike. Lotsa Rando photos this time 'round. Which is just fine. We skipped last week so we get what we get. (Thank you to Joy for the above photo by the way) It's getting warmer and just a smidge humid now that we've enterred the merry merry month of May, so we decided to hike Sleeping Turtle Preserve quickly before the rainy season starts. Two reasons: It tends to flood when it rains and, really because of that, once the rain begins the mosquitos are rampant and they think that Joy is a tasty treat! Got to get in there before the rain falls every year just so we can say it's been done. It's a preserve of much greenery, trees upon trees upon trees! There could be giant scary predatory carnivorous and hungry wildlife within an arms reach of us and we would never know because the foliage is so thick! Which is the exact same reason it's hard to photograph birds. They were all around us, we could hear them, but they were very VERY hard to find. Little buggers were hiding in the foliage laughing. I didn't get much but here you go: The trails were beautiful, of course, and for a change we didn't have to wade through any streams or jump across any large puddles or creeks, or even build any frond bridges! For a change we just moseyed down the paths. Actually we did climb into (and therefore out of) a few ravines that would normally be full of water and had to duck under a couple of gravity defying leaning trees and the step over (sometimes climb over) large trees that had already fallen. But comparatively, that's nothin'. We did notice that while some of the trails were still nicely cleared others were so overgrown that occasionally we wondered if we had taken a bad turn and lost the trail. No worries, we figured it out. We always do. Probably because it was such a lovely sunny dry day, there were scads of non-mosquitos insects: spiders, bees, butterflies, dragonflies, bugs I don't know what were AND a dung beetle! Didn't manage to capture them all, still saw them and that counts. I probably got more botanical shots than anything. Partly because botanicals hold still which makes them much easier to capture but also because they are so beautiful, in every stage of life. Some of these have gone by, some are in full bloom and some have no actual blooms. All of them are beautiful. (Same goes for people!!) I will break it up into two slideshows just for convenience sake: I don't want to forget my black'n'white shots. Only a small handful today: And of course by now you know you are nearing the end of the Photo Safari Report when I get to the Rando Category. I probably have too many of them here so I will try to whittle it down to a more manageable slideshow. Here we go: We had a great time on the Mostly Randos Hike. Hope you liked the pictures!
Fears and phobias and dreads, oh my! We all have them. Everybody has something that is, to them, if not downright scary, at least makes them uncomfortable. Maybe it's a fear of heights, that is a very common one. Perhaps crowds make you feel a little unsettled. Or Spiders? Snakes? The darkness? Water? Whatever you particular fear is, I get it. I sympathize with how it makes you feel and I understand. I would never dismiss how you feel, I would never just tell you to "get over it" or whine about how inconvenient your phobia is for me. All things, by the way, that at one time or another have been done to me. Even if I don't completely understand why you are afraid, I would accept it as true. I said that with such confidence didn't I? And I absolutely, truly, sincerely mean every word of it. Or at least I did until recently. Strange things come into my feed online and a short time ago a little video popped up with a youngish person (I'd say mid 20's) with an engaging smile. He gazed very comfortably into the camera and then said, with no hesitation that he didn't understand why "old people" had an obsession with punctuation. "Old People" use it all the time, even in texts! He was clearly baffled by this phenomenon. He finished up by saying that he didn't understand punctuastion and that he was, frankly, terrified by it. Terrified. By Punctuation. Really? Well at first I just assumed (though one should never) that perhaps he wasn't properly introduced to the concept of punctuation in school and that he was describing it as being terrifying as an exaggeration just for the sake of impact in his video. But out of curiousity I googled it and did a YouTube search and sonuvagun! He is not the only young person who is afraid of punctuation and Confused by our (our being us old folk) insistence on using it. It seems as if this fear, or at least discomfort, is a thing now. My initial answer to the Why of it all (why do you use punctuation?) is.....for clarity! It's all about communication! Communication, the clear and unmistakable exchange of thoughts, ideas, requests, comments etc. is key to every single relationship you will ever have. To break it down further, there is a huge difference between: 1) Let's eat, Grandma and 2) Let's eat Grandma. And just in case you didn't understand that difference (which breaks my heart) Number 1 is an invitation to Grandma requesting that she join them for a meal. Number 2 suggests strongly that Grandma is the meal, or at least the entree. Big Difference. That's why we use punctuation. But it seems, according to these articles which primarily are in the form of videos, punctuation comes off as being "hostile". Which is the opposite of proper communication. When I write and use punctuation and yes even in my emails and texts, I absolutely use punctuation. A properly placed comma can mean the difference between a dinner guest or a guest as dinner. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Hostile and Frightening. Well, I know that often we are frightened of things we don't understand and that fear can cause people to be defensive which can present itself as hostility. Could it be that these young people were never taught how to use punctuation? I know that nobody teaches Sentence Diagramming anymore which is a dang shame. It's the difference between understanding how a combustion engine works and knowing how to rebuild a combustion engine. And further, it explains a LOT of the writing I see nowadays. Oh I cannot just blame the current batch of younger people. Understanding how to properly communicate via the written word began falling apart even when I was in school. Even when I was in college I noticed it. One of the things I did in my college years, to earn a few bucks here and there, was to help people with their term papers. One very nice and honestly very smart young fellow, for instance, asked me to look over a paper for him. The very first sentence stopped me in my tracks. I said, "Oh dear, this first line here, which ought to be your topic sentence, isn't even an actual sentence and is, instead, more of a phrase. " His response was, "Of course it's a sentence...see? There is a period at the end." And in his mind, that was the definition of a sentence. When I explained that a sentence requires both a noun and a verb, (or subject and predicate) he looked at me blankly. Another wow. He could tell me a million or so things about his subject and he knew his topic inside and out. He just had no idea how to write it down in a way that everyone who read it also understood his topic. Wow again. So I suppose it started a long time ago and it's only continued it's long downhill slide until here we sit, punctuation-less, attempting to desperately communicate. I'm not a good texter anyway. I have no idea how other people fly though texting. It takes me forever, I hit the wrong dang buttons, have to go back and correct my spelling and still, thanks largely to an over-eager and often incorrect, auto correct, have to then send a follow up apologetic text to explain what I actually meant. I do not use acronyms often and the only sorts of emoji's I utilize are smiley faces, sad faces, confused faces...anything face related. I know that some people send texts that are soley comprised of emojis. I do not even pretend to understand that. Although if you are punctuation averse, I suppose it would be a draw. I am guessing that a hieroglyphic text does not require punctuation. Ancient Egyptians did not use punctuation in their written words. But of course their civilization is now lost to time. Just sayin' There is probably no connection there. Anyway, I'm trying, really trying to understand this fear of punctuation. By the way, I checked and there is currently no actual term for a punctuation phobia. At least not yet. Perhaps soon as it becomes more common. I understand fear of bears, or flying, or even public speaking. I can wrap my brain around fears of needles, fears of clowns and even the fear of fears. But I'm not there yet with the fear of punctuation. I'm working on it. Meanwhile, please note my liberal use of all sorts of punctuation in this post. The way I see it, communication is difficult enough. Anything I can do to make myself clearer, my message more easily understood, I will do. Up to and including a period at the end of the sentence. If that comes across as hostile, then obviously I am not communicating very well at all. My apologies. |
AuthorYup, this is me. Some people said, "Sam, you should write a Blog". "Well, there's a thought", I thought to myself. And so here it is. Archives
May 2024
Categories |