CHRISTMAS EVE 2011

Though the cornfields across the road are brown, the lawn is still green.

No shoveling on Christmas this year.

Merry Christmas From Connecticut   :}

THE MOVE FROM THE HOOD...

Apparently  the son packed everything....

Ready for Occupants....

"I picked the smallest crate Mom, can I ride alone, huh?  Huh?  Can I?"

The sun set on our latest home....

The son was hungry so he made frozen  onion rings.  The package said to separate the rings on the pan.   Should I be worried....

The wreath made it through it through the move, no plug outside so it found a home on a door knob.

HAPPY  HOLIDAYS.

DECEMBER 7, 1941

Still living in INFAMY.

THINK I FINALLY GOT IT...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3r_1OGrlTg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Cut and paste into URL line in case it doesn't come up as a link       :}

MOVING AGAIN...

But such a pleasant move at that.  The son and I are headed to the shore where we belong.  FINALLY.    It may have taken two years to work our way back down to the sea, but as always the wait for anything worthwhile is a joy.     While we unpack please enjoy one of BOB?'s favorite pastimes.....  his infamous  HIGH-FIVE, and now if you will excuse me, I really need to find the box my clothes are in.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3r_1OGrTg&feature+youtube_gdata_player

Hope Ya'll had a great Thanksgiving.

As usual new Technical Difficulties have cropped up during the move  (despite I might add, The Son's insistence is has something to do with operator error...  ahem...), please cut and paste the failed link into your URL line to make life easy, and BOB?  happy.  I'm working with a handicap here, borrowed computer happens be a misbehaving MAC.

VETERAN'S DAY

Dad With A WWI  VETERAN

THE TWENTY-ONE GUN SALUTE

AFTER THE PARADE

1967

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HAVE SERVED, AND THOSE SERVING NOW.

WHO WOULDA THUNK IT...

That a little storm like this....

Would cause a total power outage lasting five nights and six days.

The police were out in full force collecting gobs of overtime, oh and watching for miscreants, while the Governor basically cancelled All Hallows Eve.

There were no stores open, two hour lines for gasoline where there was power until the tanks went dry, all the while the son was packing sealed bags of snow into the refrigerator.   Luckily we had tanks for the camp stove and cooked on the porch.  His booster pack lasted the entire outage to recharge phones, which allowed us to watch NETFLIX on his fancy phone.  I should not fail to mention our coldest night was 29 degrees.  The warmest 42.  Inside.   Um, hullo?  Texas? Are you there?

Yes, we have two types of stoves. When the supply of canned propane ran out, with no place to buy more, we switched to liquid fuel.

Luckily we had a friend who did not lose power a hundred miles away, and who was the recipient of this Thank You gift, for a chance to warm up.

We spent most of our time snuggling with cats, they with us, and each other...

The Great Gatsby with his charge.

The son's friend showed up two days ago with a care package.  Chicken cutlets and toilet paper.  Which reminded me of the day before tropical storm IRENE hit.  I was walking into the grocery store while people in full panic mode were marching out with carriages loaded with groceries, but the best was a middle aged guy with a cart full of beer and toilet paper, a big grin plastered across his face.    Evidently this is a guy thing, like putting the roll so that the toilet paper flows over the top and not from beneath.  I may have to seriously research this oddity now.  Well anyway,  we apologized for the messy place, they said theirs was worse.   Halfway through the outage the main drag had power partially restored.  A grocery store, Dunkin' Donuts and the Post Office opened.    Everyone was polite waiting in line forever for coffee, and plugs were made available at all locations for phone charging and warming up.   While cooking on the back porch the day after the Post Office opened,  we heard not one disparaging word from the normally cranky postal workers.  In fact one jovial sort was heard shouting to his buddy, " I waited in line for forty minutes, got a tankful of gas for the car and a pack of cigarettes.  I'm good."     Well okay then.

All in all it was a humbling experience, while bringing to light...

How much we rely on electricity.

Now, more than ever, I want a shack in the woods with a wood stove, oh yeah, and a chain saw.

How many people did not fare well due to lack of being prepared.

My NORTH FACE  jacket is warmer than the COLUMBIA.

How genuinely afraid people become when the entire city is without power.

Now that life is a bit warmer it's time to start cleaning house.  We are back to normal, the dishwasher is running a load, our near-frozen joints are thawing out, while people are out on the sidewalk in the sun laughing. 

The only problem left to solve is the one involving Elliot - The Worrier - A.K.A. The Musical Cat.  He is not trusting this for it must seem to him by now, a temporary thing.

He remains a basket case.....     :}

ON THE BEACH

Way out past the point normal beach-strollers turn back...

 I found this delightful collage on a flat rock...

And added another claw.

WHILE I HAVE BEEN BUSY...

http://www.youtube.com/user/wpockl?blend=8&ob=5#p/a/u/0/Ld58rI23mm8

The son has been as well.  Meet Edgar, the ATTACK CAT...    :}

TRUE CONFESSIONS.. - PART ONE - THE B & E

"You are a bad influence on your sister."

"She's EIGHT years older than me."

"Worse yet."

As fate would have it, I had worn my FREE dog food T-Shirt that day, little did I know...

It all started out, well, innocently enough.  My sister had just survived the one and only surgery they would assault her body with in the name of a cure, and while she waited to physically heal enough to endure her first attack of chemotherapy with radiation to follow, I thought she should have a bit of a respite.

We arranged the usual meet halfway at our parents place.  By now Dad had long since given up on maintaining the old New England Farmhouse.

Dad would strip and paint one side per year.  In 25 years he had painted the entire place, including the three story attached barn, twice.

You are now being served...

Instead, he and our mother had decided to opt for the 55+ mobile home community in an outlying area, far away from  city traffic, in fact just far enough out of the city to be inconvienant for 'drop-ins' should my sister or I be shooting by on the highway.  Oh they enjoyed our company surely enough, simply   'BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.'

Our kids would be watching our parents to make sure no funny business went on while I took my sister out to dinner.  The problem arose when we all arrived at our destination far too early.  It was summer, but the popular vacation area we grew up in didn't sport the usual bumper to bumper traffic on week days back then.    It was at this point in my life I would discover that the combination of my sister and way too much time on her hands was a dangerous duo better suited to her husband.

While we sat on the steps of the shed -  my sister's old Raleigh poking out from the doorway - Dad snapped our picture (she was in the process of admonishing me to "Sit up straight, would you.").

She then decided  we should take a stroll around the park to see if there was anyone about we could  get to know.  Yup, we did that back then. Give us an hour tops and we could tell you who lived where and their entire life story within a mile radius.

As luck would not - for me - have it that day, there were no 55+ out and about.  Not even a stray cat wandering by.  We walked round the roadway that swirled through clusters of mobile homes of varying age but all in pristine condition, while the sun shot sharp glints into our peripheral vision from huge, blue glass balls sitting in pedestals on perfectly mown lots.  We chatted about our lives, her illness, everything we hadn't been able to cram in during our late night-rate phone conversations and oh everything was just as peaceful as it could be until...

I figured out I no longer felt a body moving in stride next to me and wondered how long I had been chatting away to myself.  A full 180 later I discovered my sister was twenty feet behind me standing stock still, staring at something.  I sauntered back to her position.  "What cha lookin' at?"    Big mistake. 

What she was staking out was a gigantic, brand spankin' new double-wide, still in two pieces, large strips of clear plastic sheeting covering what would soon be the interiors of someone's new home.  Her eyes were all glazed over, her tone that of a Stepford Wife.  "You know they deliver these things with all new furniture in them."    Uh oh.   I knew this mode.  Our mother had sent me to Boston with the charge card to have my sister take me shopping for school clothes.  I had seen my sister throw herself into a physical fight over the last pair of size 10's that she wanted with another like-sized female in Filene's Basement.   I stared at her, then at the new double-wide.  Things were about to go south here pretty quickly and I didn't even have one of my kids to throw in front of her while shouting, "Think of the children."

My sister. The Princess. In her, "Oh, lets go for a five mile walk on the beach." style outfits.

"I bet you it has one of those new garden-style tubs in it...."    The emphasis, as always, was her way of making an outright 'dare yah' out of what normally would be a rhetorical question.  I had learned that years ago.  The hard way.  "I simply must see the interior."   "OK, sure, it's clear plastic. We can see through it, right?"   "Righto," she replied as she marched in between the pieces.

Evidently the clear plastic sheeting had not faired well during its transport to the final frontier.   It was so cloudy we could only see the shadowy outlines of the interior, and only that thanks to the sun shining through the exterior windows on the outside walls.   We stared.  Well, I stared, what I failed to notice was that my sister's stare had turned into that, "This is not what I had envisioned," glare.  I felt a movement beside me and watched as my sister's hand slid up the plastic sheeting.  For one silly moment I thought oh, she's just wishing, until on its way back down I watched in horror as one of her perfectly manicured fingernails was etching a large slit in the plastic.  "Oops." she dead panned at what must have been by now my saucer sized eyeballs.   "Um, you know where I work, right?  RIGHT???"

Mr. Berry & Me. Circa 1988

"Oh silly, you know them all."      "Might I remind HRH I work in a different state now, I never worked in this area, and it's not like one big family? We don't all know each other." 

"Well then, there's a hole in the plastic, let's just make sure everything inside is okay." While synapse between my neurons were crashing into each other in utter confusion, I watched in terror as her classic KEDS, with the little blue rubber square on the heel, slid through the opening of her own creation.

I began to ask myself where this side of my sister had been all my life, as freedom from the free side of the bars flashed before my eyes.  Until scenarios I had, up until now, just considered normal -  sort of - brought themselves to the forefront of my brain.  Like the time she took me white water rafting on the Saco River. When I was 10. 

Dad took the photo.  No one was getting HIM into one of those things.

At the time I had just considered it another one of my sister's attempts to murder me for coming along eight long years into her perfected nest of our parents home and she had to begin retraining them all over again.

Darn.  Can't just leave her in there alone, besides, where I came from I would be considered a LOOK-OUT.   I clambered in through the slit after her.   "Wipe your feet," she said primly.   "On WHAT?  The not-NEW-anymore carpet?" but she was already wandering through the living room into the kitchen oogling the new appliances.   "Oh Joni, look at this would you?  It's like something out of Ozzie and Harriet."     "Oh, did they get arrested for a B & E too?"   "Oh stop it would you, nothing will happen."    Famous last words as our mother used to say.   When we had seen every inch of the side we were in I felt secure enough to say, "Okay, We Came, We Saw, We're leaving, there are no Chesterfield sofas here..."

"No, the bathrooms must be on the other side."   Oh silly me, I had forgotten about the freakin' garden tub.  You know the drill.  The 'accidental' slit was made on the opposing side, and we were in.

More poignant photos flashed through my brain, such as this one Dad took on a side trip to our World's Fair vaca.

And this one, where WAS my Tree-Huggin' sister anyway, who killed her, hid the body and replaced her with this, this, well,  prospective criminal?

My reverie was interrupted by the imposter cooing, "Ooooh, just come and see this tub."  I raced to the end of the side with such speed it began to shake a bit , so that when I arrived at the master 'suite' to find my sister flat out in the garden tub pretending she was surrounded by a bazillion strawberry scented bubbles, she said, "Oh, be careful, remember it's not anchored down yet." 

"Sure I can see the headlines now, 'SISTER DUO CAUGHT RED HANDED AFTER TRAILOR TOPPLES OVER, FILM AT ELEVEN.'  Now lets get out of here you're scarin' me."

By the time we arrived back at our parents 'manufactured home' I thought I had wiped the horror-stricken look off my face, yet somehow our mother always knew.   "What have you done." 

"Um, why do you always ask me that anyway?"  as her scanner started to sound a tone for an auto accident on the lake road.  I paled.   She walked away muttering.  My father, sittting on the couch made the sign of the cross. 

My sister sighed and smiled.

A LITTLE LIGHT READING.....

Before finishing the story of the B & E.  Yes, it's exactly what you think (not really, er, well, sort of...), and yes, the statute of limitations has run out.....more importantly yes, my sister "The Princess" was involved....   :}

SAKONNET POINT RHODE ISLAND

Courtesy D. Hochberger

My new mantra....

Summer is NOT over...

Summer is NOT over...

Summer is NOT over....

BED-HOG BED-SIDE READING...

Just now and then The Great Gatsby leaves his bedside reading next to the bed where I trip over it, further delaying my hike over him and to my place in the bed, plastered up against the wall,  when usually I feel a long white boat shoe stretching out, gently applying pressure to my spine, letting me know I so totally already have quite enough room on the bed, Thank You.

His is, after all, a literary cat......

BED HOG

25 POUNDS on a QUEEN SIZE

No wonder I'm up late so often....   :}

IF YOU'VE EVER WONDERED......

Just how HUGE those fire engine truck tires truly are....

I have a 36" inseam. The truck tire is up to my waist.

LOCAL HURRICANE HEROS

His qualifications...

With CT. Senator Richard Bloomingthal

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

The Next Day

Thw Weeping Willow Faired Well....

And ALLLLL Over the News We were WARNED

To STAY INSIDE...

Which is why I found this Hilarious....

Hurricane Gear.

Power is nearly restored to all parts of the state, streets and roads are cleared of debris and on to the next.  Due in tomorrow.

FILED UNDER - ASTUTE OBSERVATIONS

Bunny & Edgar

Dogs have Masters.

Cats have STAFF.

THE SON'S HURRICANE VIDEOS

Um yes folks, while I was on the coast pet-sitting with no power and no shower for forty-eight (count em 48) hours my son was 120 miles away driving around taking videos.   Kids.   Huh?

http://www.youtube.com/user/wpockl

NEWPORT RHODE ISLAND STORM SURGE

Courtesy D. Hochberger

COMPASSION... CAN BE FOUND EVERYWHERE - ANYTIME

Today's FYI: German Officer Josef Schultz who refused to be part of a firing squad in 1941 and was killed along side 14 civilians.

WHY ARE THEY ALL SO ...... YOUNG?

Married to a Lunatic Look

Well if you ask me there were far too many GOLDEN HANDSHAKES goin' on at DMV these past years.  You know the routine, get the top of the step union people with the fat checks out, along with their burnt out attitudes which made them so easy to talk to on an almost human level...

Divorced from a Lunatic Look

I had driven the 50 miles  (yes folks, one way) to have my license renewed.  I should, at this point interject that I drive this far as it is the least busiest motor vehicle department in the state.  At 8 AM the parking lot was empty, which should have been a clue.  But no.  I had to park, march up to the door to find a sign announcing "CLOSED.  NEW HOURS NO LONGER INCLUDE WEDNESDAYS."    Wonderful, did anyone think to up-date the WEBSITE?  Nah.

Arrived at 8:15 AM the next morning to find at least 150 vehicles in the lot.  Joy just seems to follow me wherever I go these days.  More like clings to my butt for dear life.   Once inside, the normally non-existent line announcing RENEWALS ONLY was a good fifty people long.  People already looking tired and cranky, looking well, sort of postal.....

I got in line with my little leather envelope of paperwork when a collective groan crawled through the line and made it's way to my 'only had one coffee' consciousness.  An announcement had been made from behind the counter serving my line.  When it got to me I was advised by the worn out elderly woman in front of me that the laminator machine was broken and it 'would be a while.'


Another form of excitement was going on in the large part of the waiting area for registrations.  The part where you take a deli number, usually in the 300's, and discover your number is in the 700's.    A slightly hysterical motor vehicle employee was saying in a loud tone, obviously to ward off a few hundred inquiries, "I DON'T KNOW WHATS GOING ON. HOW WOULD I KNOW????"  Evidently there is one switch to unlock all the cash drawers, and said switch was malfunctioning.  My line heaved a heavy sigh of relief.  As long as they could take our money we would walk out of the place before the week-end. 

Like the Lorrie Morgan song says....

I'm Back Among The Living Again.....

It took a while, but the laminator machine was repaired and my line began moving, people getting pictures taken, names called to come and get the new license.  My turn.  "Sit in chair TWO please," says a little girl who should be in grade school.  I smiled and said, "OK, I'm old, give me a second to rearrange the wrinkles please...."    Before I had gotten halfway through my request I was hearing the snap of the camera lens and hearing, "Go take a seat and wait for your name to be called; NEXT."    That sick feeling was already a full blown acid bomb in the pit of my stomach as I began to imagine the movie star mug shots seen the the supermarket tabloids at the check out lines.

And soooooo, as my sister used to say, it was without trepidation I posted those past years photos, because the BLUE DRESS makes up for them all!