I Suppose I Could Have Gone With Flood Flowers As A Less Creepy Alternative
The rain is over. The water is as high as it can get in this area now, with all the rivers cresting and reaching their flood points on Saturday and Sunday. The water should start receding and retreating, back into its proper channels, to lie in wait for the next big storm to arrive, and let it loose once again from its muddy shores. Poetic huh?
Reality check. We sit high on the block so we never have a lot of standing water, but my flower bed does get full and floats the timbers onto the sidewalk and onto the driveway. I just put them back in place over and over until the rain stops. Small problem. However, I might have created a bigger problem with my car when I drove through all that stupid water the other night, although I am desperately hoping not, because now it’s making a weird sucking or blowing noise near the engine, I think, that sounds like a fan, or a motor that’s constantly spinning, or something that is trying to suck or blow air under the metal box that is covering the actual engine. It almost sounds like a hose is disconnected, and creating extra wind noise, kind of like a vacuum does when the suction isn’t right, or when you’ve sucked up something that doesn’t quite fit in the tubes and it’s blocking the path to the debris chamber. At any rate, I need to get my tired, lazy bum self, up, yet again, and haul my ass, and the money drain, over to the repair shop for a quick, “Hey, can you listen to this and tell me how much it’s going to cost to fix?” early in the morning. Staying up and posting this is not helping my anxiety or bad feelings about this newest problem with the car. And I haven’t even gotten around to telling you the last few problems that have already occurred. I’ve hinted. I’ve teased. I have pictures to illustrate. But work, and time, are conspiring against me. There’s too much of one and not enough of the other. I even took more dangerous pictures on the expressway, in the rain, to add to my current backlog of exciting and entertaining, but foolish and irresponsible, life story posts.
I’m tired. I have a headache. I just took my blood pressure pill and I should go to bed. Because I am old. To beef up this posting I am including a few more pictures from the rain. They aren’t really good, but now I can file them under “used”. I will caption them up here: 1. The sky looking like crap to the North. 2. The muddy puddle, in the back lot, of our stick inventory. 3. Some of the really wet sticks, that used to be brown, but now look red, for some reason, hiding a bunny. (That one is a bonus, like one of those puzzle pictures.) See if you can spot the rabbit! Brain games! Later.
I Call It: Green; With Branches. 24 Hour Rainfall.
I could also call it: We Pay For Spring In This City. 24 hours of rainfall. Really. I drove home last night through many flooded areas. Standing water up past the bottom of my car. It’s the deepest water I have ever driven through in a car. I was scared. But if you just keep going and don’t stop you have a fighting chance. Besides I could see ahead from 2 other cars that attempted it, how deep it really was. They gave up and turned out of it. Not me. Now I know why people get stuck. I did the same damn thing, and thought the same damn thing, “Pshh. I can make it.” I luckily did. There was even a police officer sitting off to the side in a parking lot watching all of us idiots trying to go through, probably just waiting for someone to get stuck and then he could shut the intersection down. Anyway, it’s still raining, and I hear worse weather is on the way. My daughters school just called to say they’ve canceled all after-school activities due to the impending weather predicted. I think I heard tornadoes and what not. I guess we are going to find out.
Which brings me to my other working title for this piece: Hurry Up Because You Have To Go To Work. Dummy. I really do. This was going to be quick. Ever the dreamer I am. Be careful and stay on the ground today. Later
Awww. 57 Degrees As The Car Drives.
It’s not really raining. And it’s not really 57 anymore. The temp is inching up again. And this wasn’t even today. I know that I should NOT be taking pictures, with my phone camera, while driving, on the expressway, in the rain. But I did. I saw the car ahead and sometimes you never know when you are about to drive past something cool. Be alert! The world needs more lerts! (That’s from an old poster I used to have about a billion years ago when I was young. It really stuck with me.) Anyway…it’s a picture I took and I really have no other use for it except to show my son and then delete it. So here it is, headlining a world famous blog on a semi-cloudy-sunny-sneaking-can’t-decide-if-it-should-be-dreary-or-not day. Man, I can really stretch out a sentence. Anyway anyway…
I’m about to go into the 3-part Tire Drama, I spoke of last night, told in HD Camera Phone Picture Quality Storytelling. That is a patented technique for my new posting style, basically more pictures so there can be less words, not successful so far, that I will let you adopt as your own for a small fee if you find it works for you too. Or just works at all. But here, you are getting it for freeeeeee….(Bedtime Story Style. Look it up.) Stay with me now, because, as usual, it will be a long and round-a-bout, drawn out, possibly all day and night, tale for the ages. In fact, you may not even see the thread or the connection in the beginning and will most likely forget the original idea for the story in the first place. That’s OK though. It’s Monday. And it’s Tax Day. I have a whole money post thing that I do. Truly. Today might be the day to update that, 3 years late, feature too. (Yes. 3. THREE. Years. Late.) It’s called “Found Money.” It’s real and it’s kind of interesting and cool, I think, but I am sooooo far behind. I have kept all this loose change, for 3 years, in different containers, (to tell each year apart), in my hall closet, without even tallying it all up! My whole family knows it’s there and just leaves it alone. FOR THREE YEARS! We even add the most current change to the most current container, and never disturb the previous ones. You know how when you live with crazy people, but you don’t realize that they are crazy, because you have never known them any other way, or even known any other people, for that matter, all up close and personal, until you spend time outside your small bubble of family, and suddenly realize that your normal is other peoples abnormal, but because you are deep in the crazy too, you just go along?? You know?? Well. Then you find that you have three years of loose change sitting in a closet that everyone is very careful not to move, or knock over and spill, or mix up, every single day, when they are just trying to get a towel out to take a shower. Thank you family!
So today may be our lucky day! The madness ends. Well, this one point of madness. Maybe. It’s not like I am counting that change yet. In fact, I haven’t even ended this long-ass post, and I have gotten so far off topic, and even started 2 new ones, maybe three, (I can work alot on very little) that I can’t even remember how I was going to end this thing. Tires. Money. Weather updates. Flowers. That’s four actually. And I really can’t (don’t) want to go anywhere right now anyway until I get my car back. Oh yeah. My car. The reason I don’t have it right now. That’s it. I found the start of breadcrumb trail! Lo and behold and the laundry shall never get done! More time a-wasting over here. Maybe I will just throw a load into the washer and switch the dryer real quick and then type some more. There’s no time schedule for crazy. I mean creativity. Later.
Gutter Love 3.
Before I forget. I will keep you updated as the newest pictures from the gutters come in. But now it’s time to end for the night. I have lots more to post. I really do. But I am tired and I have to take my car to the shop in the AM. That story alone is worth three posts. Seriously. It’s part of the “lots more” I was talking about. I even have them outlined in my mind, and on little blue post-it notes, with the pictures to match, all queued up in my folders on the desktop. And wait until you see what my phone camera can still do. I have some killer flower pictures that you will not believe and do not want to miss. Yeah. I typed “killer” to describe flower pictures. They are good though. I was actually surprised when I copied them onto the laptop. I even sucked in my breath a little at the clarity. Sometimes the light and angle is just right and you get perfection. But you can judge for yourself in the morning. You all have a good night now. Sleep sweet.
Gutter Love.
Number 2. In the new series I will be featuring every time my girl takes a picture of the rain gutters doing their job. The first one I posted was from Kentucky, (click here to see) and even though the shot looked familiar, I didn’t realize that she had already taken a picture of our gutter pouring water here at home. And then when I looked, we actually have three separate shots, thus inspiring this most current “new feature.” A thing I like to roll out every other day and then never speak of or address again. I’m even giving it its own category. Of course. Enjoy while it lasts. Later.
74 Degrees. Posting From The IPad.
Sitting outside enjoying the warm. Although the temp is starting to go back down again. Still high sixties, so I can stay here for awhile yet. I thought I would try and use my son’s technology to post faster and more efficiently. And outside! This keyboard is weird and keeps hitching on me. I got the title ok and I was even able to take that pic above and put it in here, but I seem to be having trouble with color, bolding, italicising, and even punctuation and spelling. Auto correct and my lack of understanding on how to highlight a word and change its appearance is really slowing me down. Good thing I can spell real good and grammertize correctly or this would be a mess. I think I need to stick with the laptop for now. I already lost this post once accidentally tapping the wrong button and using touch screen to try and zoom or whatever. Luckily the tech support for this site is smarter than me and auto saved my original draft. So here it is. Again. You wouldn’t have wanted to miss this stellar post I am sure. Besides all my good pictures are on the computer. The IPad is nice, but it’s awkward to hold and too big for my hands to take alot of pictures. I’m trying to capture a picture of the very red cardinal that is chirping loudly in the tree in front of me but I can’t seem to spot him. And I can’t keep maneuvering this big flat thing around the backyard. I look like an idiot and my butt crack keeps hanging out when I bend over, but I can’t pull my pants up because I’m afraid I’m going to drop this toy and break it if I don’t use two hands. The problems of the new world, I tell ya. OK I am done now. My fingers are actually kind of cold and my kids are going to be home soon and I want to have a drink so I can pack in more good time fun on my extra bonus free day off before they get home if you know what I mean and I think you do I am talking to everyone with kids that never seem to leave the house for longer than a school day but since you have to work anyway it doesn’t really matter wink wink end of long run on sentence. Prob TMI but maybe most people drifted off there in the middle of that thought like I did. I did give this sad, plain, unadorned post its own category. I creatively named it, “IPad Posts.” Like it even matters, separating them from the others. You can easily spot them because they look like boring crap. I don’t know what I am doing on this thing. I will learn. And I will return. Ooooooh. Drama. Later.
66 Degrees. And Flashback.
I don’t want to be repetitive and post another picture of my daffodils, so… So spring. So cliche. So here is a winter snow pic that my daughter took. I was just scrolling through all the shots she took at the height of our winter and this one is good. I hate to wait until it snows again. So enjoy the memory and the good fortune we share, to live in an area that changes seasons so dramatically and abruptly. FYI, the L/C belongs to me. (Low census.) Hopefully they don’t call and ruin my day off now. Gotta go and lose these kids for the afternoon. The BF is breathing down my neck to get out of the this house. Now. Later!
View From The Front Door
It’s creeping up out there! 61 degrees and rising! Sunny. Sunday. I may be off of work. Can’t call until after 12:30 to be sure. It’s always nice to have 2 days in row. But we take what we can get. Soak up it up people. Spring in our big city only lasts one day at a time. And usually in hours. Winter/Summer. Transition phase in progress! Later.
I Call It: Sitting On Patio With Coffee, Before Work, First Of The Year. Subtitle: Spring In Repose.
It’s Monday. It’s 67 degrees. It’s very windy. (Like, very windy. So much so, that I layed the basketball hoop-thing down because it was creaking and swaying quite loudly while I was sipping my coffee.) Also, one of my tree trunk branches seem to be rubbing in the high wind and making that “limb-falling” sound I have grown to know and dread every time I hear it outside of a Forest Preserve or designated woody area allocated to our world for walking and enjoying nature in its most natural of habitats, the places where all the trees can gather and hang together and lean and fall on each other, or the leafy ground, as they wish. NOT my backyard. Please! Can I get one fresh, new spring day without any tree droppings? Can I get an Amen? Hallelujah people. I am willing all the “high-air” objects to stay there today. Amen.
That’s a picture of the sky facing forward from my chair. Obviously you can’t see the fast clouds moving, but they are. And those are my daffodils. Right on time. In case I never said it before, except that I say it EVERY year, daffodils are my favorite flower. The most faithful of flowers. Hope and trust and loyalty. If a person could be a flower, I guess I would be a daffodil. We share the same qualities if you go by the “meanings of things”. Plus, they are so pretty. Or just shy of pretty…huh? Huh? See what I did there? And they sometimes smell good. Just like me. Yes, I said sometimes.
I have to go. Shower and work. The BF gets to be off because he got a flat tire. Lucky! But if you are reading this (when you really should be outside, though…come on people, it is gorgeous! Go out, then come back in and finish this) and you want to comment or send me your favorite flower with a meaning or just a quick word, I would love to hear it! Something to look at later tonight when I get home. And if you are really fancy and high-tech, you can send a pic. That would be cool! Alright, have a good one out there today. Stay on the ground and don’t let this wind carry you away! Later!
Happy March 32nd!
Just kidding. There is no snow. What a jokester I am. I actually took current, up-to-date, real-time pictures of the backyard and that table, to show you what the outside really looks like right at this moment. 5 pm Central time. Midwest America. It’s not warm today. (We only get the stuttering sixties at this point in the year.) It’s back in the 40’s again and it feels cold. But it’s sunny. Warning! The pictures below are uncut and unedited (for time) and are not very pretty. The yard is a sticks and stumps mess like a graveyard for bark parts or the lost world of tree limbs and branches. And all that sunshine blazing down is just lighting up the debris like a Christmas tree. Look here! Crap attack! You will NEVER be free of the Park Forest Tree! That may be a little dramatic, but you really have to live here to know why that is so scary. And true. Read back a bit on this site or just click over on the right there to “Tree Trouble” and you can see what I am talking about. I dare say I may have had an above average amount of bad luck in the breaking/cracking/ falling down department of tree instant removal and upheaval. They like to fall in my backyard. And they like to fall slowly. One piece at a time. Every few months or so. We started out with 3 very large 50 year old trees with many many branches limbs sticks and leaves. Now we have 2 tall “trunks”, at best, that still give me a run for the money when the wind blows too hard. They barely have proper branches on them anymore. Maybe a few limbs, that are very high up and thin, but that still sway on a windy day like drunk gymnasts trying to land on the roof of the house if they could only get the right arc. It’s ridiculous and my own private natural ghost story. The Tale of The Malevolent Maple Tree! The Evil Box Elder! The Horror of the Hackberry! The Horror of the Hackberry is right. That’s the tree ID that is presently lounging around all over the backyard in various shapes and sizes, providing a fine winter home for all kinds of bunnies and squirrels and skunks and probably opossums and racoons. I think those last two actually live up in the tree, but I can’t be sure and I do not have time to check. I see I have gone on and on like I always do and this was supposed to be quick and fast and funny. April Fool joke and all that.
Anyway my original point was to mention that I had been looking back at some of my earlier postings (4 years in March!) and I was pretty funny if I do say so myself. Go ahead and read some vintage posts if you have some time. You will not be disappointed. I also noticed that I had written about the BF’s birthday at that time and even posted about wrapping his present in the Jewel Foods sales paper. Which is what I did again this year! I thought I was so clever. Turns out I am clever. And I have been for at least 4 years, maybe more! Ha. I took a new present pic:
It’s like a birthday/posting/cheap present wrapping flashback. Now, the BF is on his way and we are going to dinner and celebrating the big 4-0 one day early. Presents and cake when we get back. Yes. I made a cake. He doesn’t even know! It’s his fav I think, at least of the cakes that I make. It’s the “Better Than Sex” cake that I also mentioned many years ago. That cake was only presented in a written description posting. This year I have pictures of the process and the results. That cake weighed 10 pounds I think. I will weigh this one before we cut it and let you know. Ok. Better go.
Thank you to all my new friends and followers! I appreciate the time it takes to find or stumble on something new, give it a few minutes to sink in and then actually do the work to “like” and “follow”. I mostly “like” back and “follow” when I get here. Which as you have seen from these last 2 days is like, once every 2 months. So sad. And I like hearing my own voice and seeing my own words. I think that is also pretty obvious if you have spent even one minute of time reading just one of my posts. They get “wordy”.
Ok. Really now. Here’s the real-time pics of today. Enjoy the evening and I’ll be back. I see some long spring days ahead of me, typing deep into the dark warm nights. Later.
just shy of pretty 