And Meanwhile, Driving Down To Kentucky…
This was about 2 pm, Saturday, driving down, what I assume to be, I57, near the town of Mattoon. The kids are on their way to grandma’s with their dad. No one confirmed location for me, but the fastest way south is 57 from here. My daughter took this picture while it was happening. It’s a really good picture. Especially from a moving vehicle. She said it was only a funnel cloud when they saw it and she got a picture of it going back up. But I like this one. Very impressive. Then it hailed and rained so hard they couldn’t see and then it cleared. She texted, word for word, “It’s done now. Clear as a bell perfect now!” She sent a picture of the blind windshield but it’s just a grey square that kind of looks like smeary, foggy rain. This is the next picture she sent:
The girl takes good pictures. I almost feel bad that while the kids are driving through weather and tornadoes, me and the BF are at the liquor store buying all kinds of alcohol for the BBQ we are going to later, and then something for the rest of the weekend. Without children. Eh. Life. I took equally stunning pictures of the new wines I just bought to try out, and then later, post and share my opinions with you, good people. Let me end this with the last two pictures she sent me, because they are also really good, and she knows that I LOVE pictures of the sky and clouds. And you probably, secretly, like them too or you wouldn’t have kept reading! It’s OK. I thank you! Thank you thank you every day! It’s a peculiar world, this blogging, internet place; big and diverse, the way I like most things, but still managing to feel close and intimate, like we are all sharing this life through our words and images, the way we are taught that we could, if we lived in an ideal world. Hmm. Not one drop to drink yet, I swear it. Anyway, the sky…I’ll take the pics (or my daughter will), and you can look and move on. No one ever has to know. But we’ll know. Here is the first, with her comment, also word for word, “Look at that fat ass cloud.”:
And the last, below, is just one of the sky. I assume it’s off to the side. It’s very pretty for some reason. Good color/contrast and lighting I think. If I don’t get back here tonight, be careful all. Weather or not, Saturday in the summer can be tricky. Stay safe. Later.
Day Off (Yesterday) With The Kids
Imagine how many pictures I can take of nature type things. Now multiply by 2. My daughter and me taking pictures all day?? Oh yea. There’s a lot. A. LOT. Just waiting for their moment to shine via the internet. Plus storm debris from the nasty little burst we had roll through here yesterday at exactly 6pm. Gotta go to work right now though. I mean, I have to work some of these days or the BF is going to kill me. And I will be off again for the next 2. (Sorry honey–I’ll call in a bit to explain!! Don’t be mad!!) But, I have to do CPR Re-Cert, so it’s still like work. That’s a lot of italics in a short post. I better go. More later.
Uh, Let’s Get Back To The Post List Before We Get Side-Tracked Again
These are the weird “pillow” clouds I took 50 pictures of, from just before the raging storm, last week. You can’t remember? Well, there was a storm. It was raging. I took pictures of clouds. Hmm. That sounds like almost every other post on this site every day. Well, then I guess we are all caught up. I tried to pick the best cloud picture I could. I spent actual, real-world time–minutes and minutes, maybe half an hour, going back and forth, through all of them. A serious, non-joking number of about 15 to 20 actual photos. Here’s the other one I narrowed it down to for posting purposes:
You can see why I went for the first one, right? It is clearly the better picture. Right? There is something VERY wrong with me. Right? Later.
Cool Word of the Day!
Thunderbolt (noun)
Definition: A single discharge of lightning with the accompanying thunder; An imaginary elongated mass cast as a missle to earth in the lightning flash; A flash of lightning conceived as a bolt or dart hurled from the heavens; A person or thing that resembles lightning in suddenness, effectiveness, or destructive power; One that acts with sudden and destructive fury; Vehement threat or censure; A startling, forceful action.
Also: The name of my brand new phone! (HTC ThunderBolt) For the first time in my whole life, I actually have something that may be considered the most advanced, modern, up-to-date, piece of techno-gear out there. Until next week. (With the fastest speeds on the best network…4G LTE with Verizon Wireless–and no, they do not pay me.) Anytimewastingtechnology…
This phone is the OTHER thing that prevents me from studying. (uh huh–excuses) Takes a lot of time to learn a whole new way of doing things especially when it’s just so damn cool. Easily distracted. What’s worse…or better I guess, is I can actually use my phone to study now when I’m not at home! Which also means…I can played Bejeweled from it too. Technology is awesome.
Thank goodness I still have power! Oh, and Bejeweled is EVIL!
That was a fast, violent storm! Ripped right through here, shaking the trees and trying to knock out our electricity. TV was down for a while, but the power just flickered off, silently waited, then hummed right back on! Scary!! How would I ever have been able to continue to play the game that is sucking away every minute of my free time?!?
I HAVE NO free time! If I am not studying for the giant test I am about to take then I should be doing house things. Laundry or whatever. Or even posting here. Or going out of the house and breathing fresh air. Anything but wasting minute after minute criss-crossing and swapping gems for absolutely NOTHING! Nothing real anyway. No one is dropping off money checks or free meals or anything. And at the end of the week, all my hard work, building up those high scores, is just washed away! Wiped clean as if I never played the game at all. I tell myself that my brain is just processing all the study information. You know, like when you dream at night, you are incorporating and integrating all the days events for future reference. To be smarter. What a huge load of donkey poo!
Bejeweled is Evil. And I need an intervention.
Severe Weather Wednesday
It’s all about tornado’s, fierce lightning strikes and those crackling, rumbling, low-in-the-throat, crashing, thunder rolls. And what’s worse is when the wind picks up out of nowhere, a leaf here and there, a branch on the roof, another branch…a limb…holy hell! And your BF’s friend is trying to do you a favor and fix your WW II, rooftop, chimney pipe that is crumbling to shit, but it’s pouring down rain and the clouds are moving fast across the sky looking like they are taking aim directly at the soaking wet guy kneeling on a high roof holding sheet metal pieces, a screwdriver and a drill. Not good. Pretty damn scary actually.
I appreciate the attempt, for real, but I can’t have him being killed in the effort. Rain is one thing, this was another.
And the day started out so…semi-sunny. Storms were predicted. I went to school. Got the final info before the real work begins. Have some assignments. Reading. The usual. I feel good though. It’s the same at school, semi-sunny then storms. (To definitely mix metaphors. See Zero Effect) Mind set is what they talked about today. (And by “they”, I mean all our teachers that we met today, the speeches, the handouts, and the rundown of the schedule and how the classes are actually coordinated. All the good stuff before you are bumping around in the halls looking lost and feeling like a failure. Graduation will never come.) “They” said, “Think of yourself as the nurse. In all future questions, studies, clinicals, tests…you will be referred to as the nurse. The program doesn’t ask what you will do in two years when you become a nurse, it asks what you will do right now as the nurse. That’s a tough mind game. But not as tough as this, also told in a story, (from my memory to the page):
“An evil wizard was always trying to get rid of the beloved prince. The wizard was always thinking of ways to outsmart the prince and show him for a fool to the rest of the kingdom. But the prince was smart and he knew the wizard was always tricking. One day the wizard had a plan that couldn’t fail. He would hold a bird in his hand and ask the prince if it was dead or alive. If the prince answered alive, the wizard would crush the bird to death and show the dead bird proving that the prince was wrong. And if the prince said dead, the wizard would let the bird fly away to prove his error. The plan could not fail. So the wizard, in front of all the kingdom, said, “Prince, is the bird in my hand dead or alive?” And the prince thought about it, knowing he was being tricked somehow, and answered the wizard finally, “It is what you make it.”
“This adventure, and it is an adventure, you are about to embark on, is only what you make it. You hold in your hand the power to make it anything you want. To give and take what you will from the next few years. How much effort or how little effort you devote to this goal. It’s all up to you. No one can force you to participate or not. You will have in your hands the power to care and to comfort, and the power to heal the sick. But you will also have the power to make someone even sicker and to possibly even kill them if you are not very careful. Is it scary? It should be. But it is worth all the sweat, every drop of blood, and every shed tear”
So they say.
Truly.
I may not have it written word for word, but that was the basic story and summary. The woman who spoke it is very powerful, but quiet to listen to. She is very calming, while at the same time, managing to scare the poop out of you. But I feel that it’s all true. Why would they lie? It’s hard. But the reward is great. That’s what they say. That’s all and that should be enough. Everything else after is extra. I believe it. I worried about the whole life/death, mistake/error, kill the patient thing, and the teacher said that we should be worried. We should always be a tiny bit wary and prepared for what could happen, because anything can happen at any moment and at any place. Now isn’t that comforting? Luckily, amazingly, and more miraculously, it’s a wonder things don’t go bad more often than they do. It’s a fine line.
But I think that is enough for tonight. It’s late, and my kids have their first day of school, and I need to get up to be with them. My daughter is fine. Same school, same friends, same schedule. She’s the top class now! But my son is in Jr. High. New school, the bus (again), new classes, new schedules, new teachers, new students. Small fish in the big pond!
So, the weather is calm right now, the storm has passed for the next few hours. They say the morning might be rough, but then smooth sailing through all next week. Is this a weather report or a damn soul-searching, reflection-on-a-life-yet-lived, or what? I need to lighten it up with some kind of image. This is just the thing to restore your faith in my (ill-advised representation) sense of humor and shallow/callous self.
When we went to the zoo, so many days ago, (more pictures, I swear.) we got a few pictures of the lions. The animals were really animated that day. Like, ALL of them. It was weird. I have video of the apes and they were acting crazy. (You Tube soon, I swear.) Usually they just lay around looking like they all want to commit suicide, but for some reason, everyone was jacked up and pacing or jumping or chasing or playing…whatever the various species to do to get us humans close enough to attack. And the lion was working it! He was walking back and forth in front of this “viewing” window. Right against the glass. Stopping, looking, staring (evilly and maliciously) most likely devising some way to get from where he was to where we were. Well, not us, exactly. We were waa-aayyy in the back, trying to figure out what the lion was up to. The lady lion was trying to get a ball out of the water. But the man lion had something cooking. You could just tell. Stevie would barely let me take the pictures I took because she was sure that the lion was about to chuck it all, go for broke and try to bust out of that glass and kill us all.
At any rate, when you think about it like that, these pictures are kind of funny. The people are so colorfully dressed and so interested and amazed by the lion being so close, that I have no doubt, any one of them would say they were completely surprised and shocked that the nice little kitty would try to hurt them, even while he was chewing on one of their legs or ripping out their intestines. But you judge for yourself.
Curious animal/performer/vegetarian, aka, Alex from Madagascar OR bored/angry/ bloodthirsty, carnivorous lion, hell-bent for destruction?
Look into his eyes and then decide.
Oh!! Isn't he cute?!?!
All I see is: lunch, lunch and more lunch!
Won't all those colorful clothes, torn to shreds, covered in blood and scattered all over the ground, add that extra oomph! to the news story later when they pan the scene 50 times for our sick sense of viewing enjoyment??
Snack time! You know that lion is NOT posing for a picture. He's thinking, "I could get a head AND an arm."
The picture BELOW ↓, was taken after he walked away from the window to go take the ball away from the lady lion, in between canvassing for people. She would get it out of the water and he would roll it back in. But not that last time. He finally quit that bitch and took the ball and rolled it right off the rock wall, into the protective moat that separates the people from the lions. Then he went and laid on a rock. Playtime was over. That’s when I took my picture.
Dumb-ass, crazy humans. I'll kill them all as soon as I get big enough.
Feel better? Me too!!
Sweet dreams! Goodnight! Don’t let the man-eating lion bite!
Yo Soy el Pan de Vida
I am the bread of life…uh huh.
What are you doing today??
Saturday. Happy Weekend! Just trying to get in a few posts and cracks at the church, so that I can be struck by lightning later at the party we are having for my niece after it turns into a thunder-tornado-rain disaster. It’s sunny and 68 at 9 am in the city. It’s supposed to storm but let’s all ask God to hold it off. One of his devoted graduates is having a party! Come on! Please?? Pray with me now….
Anyway, the above pic is from the church song book. I thought it was kind of funny. All the songs, excuse me, hymns, were about eating and food of life and drinking the blood…and I was SO hungry. My niece’s school uses Wednesday masses to have major celebratory type events. This is from the “ribbon” ceremony. (All 8th graders get a ribbon to take with them into high school. It symbolizes a bunch of things but I was busy taking the pictures and missed the explanation.) Who does an entire Mass, with extras, on a Wednesday morning, at 9 am, during my Regis, Kelly, and Breakfast Burrito time anyway?? Selfish.
Then, one week later, on Wednesday, (again) we are back in the Church, having another Mass, but this time, the actual Graduation Ceremony is attached to it. It was long and it didn’t start until 7 pm. Morning. Night. These people are all over the place.
But she made it! Got a few awards and a diploma, so it’s on to High School! She’s doing the Public School for this round of edumacation.
All jokes aside, the party is today. Hopefully it stays nice! Come out and have a drink—you might see a one-in-a-million lightning strike! You can stand next to me!
Congratulations Jesse!
Below is a pic of Jesse, in action, walking out of the church, from the ribbon ceremony. You can see the blue ribbon in the right of the pic. I like it better than the “formal” pictures.
And then there should be a graduation picture, and one with the sign. Proof! See you all at the par-tay!
Obviously, we have a few problems in our family.
Rainy Days
1. Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head / B.J. Thomas
2. Rain King / Counting Crows
3. Feels Like Rain / Buddy Guy
4. Rain On The Scarecrow / John Mellencamp
5. Fool In The Rain / Led Zeppelin
6. Like The Rain / Clint Black
7. I Can’t Stand The Rain / The Commitments
8. Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain / Willie Nelson
9. Here Comes The Rain Again / Eurythmics
10. Songs About Rain / Gary Allan
11. Who Let It Rain / Aubrey Collins
12. Kentucky Rain / Elvis Presley
13. Stand In The Rain / Superchick
14. Alabama Rain / Jim Croce
15. Singin’ In The Rain / Gene Kelly
16. Smoky Mountain Rain / Ronnie Milsap
17. The Rain / k-os
18. Only Happy When It Rains / Garbage
19. I Love A Rainy Night / Eddie Rabbitt
20. Have You Ever Seen The Rain? / Creedence Clearwater Revival
21. Purple Rain / Prince
22. November Rain / Guns N’ Roses
just shy of pretty 