To A Butterfly

I've watched you now a full
half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! Indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed. How motionless! - not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!

~William Wordsworth, "To a Butterfly"

My Candlewood Cabin

First published 11-19-11 in my blog Postcards From the Heartland.

This is the cabin I rented for five nights in October for an artist's retreat. Just me and Beary. Dad was working the harvest, so he had to stay home.

I'm so glad I got to experience another Wisconsin autumn. The foliage colors were just spectacular.  Here in central Illinois, we don't have the variety of fall colors that they do farther north. Also, the hilly terrain with its dairy farms make for very picturesque sightseeing.

My cabin sat up on a steep hill, so I had to carry everything from the van up all those stairs. Halfway up the hill from where Beary is sitting (above) is the fire pit. The cabin was very secluded and peaceful. I wish I would have taken more pictures than I did, but the lighting was difficult inside. And being by myself with Beary, it was really hard to do any photography anyway.

I did do a little plein aire painting of the meadow that leads back into the valley where my cabin was located.  I also did a lot of reading, and took lots of walks with my dog. One day we made a long road trip around the lower Wisconsin River, and another day we visited a huge orchard for fresh-from-the-tree Golden Delicious apples.

Although there was no TV or internet access, the cabin came complete with a nice collection of DVD movies, music CDs, and a bookshelf of interesting books. The screened porch was nice, and the bathtub had a whirlpool.

I give this vacation hideaway a 5-star rating. It was absolutely beautiful and the hosts, Susan and Norbert were very friendly and helpful. Candlewood Cabins are located in southwestern Wisconsin, south of the town of Richland Center. If you'd like to see the inside of my cabin, as well as the other two beautiful cabins on the property, check out their website:

http://candlewoodcabins.com/

Revenge of The Squirrels

WARNING: This post may cause upset to animal-lovers and/or -activists. I would never harm a little critter like a squirrel unless I had a good reason. (I almost cry when I accidentally run over one with my truck on the road.) Eating up my garden is not a good reason. They NEED food, they SEE food, they EAT food. It is what it is.

BUT, chewing up the wiring in all of our vehicles IS good reason to get out the squirrel gun. They are stupid animals to think plastic, copper & whatever other man-made material wiring is made from, is food. Since they can't distinguish between organic & inorganic, right from wrong, their numbers must to thinned.

Selfie with bruise

I've bagged eleven now, and we've had a nice squirrel-noodle bake, but I just don't see how I can continue OPERATION: SQUIRREL PATROL when my squirrel gun does THIS to me!

And the painful bite of the tiny flying squirrel the other night (see below) is another sign to me that room should be made in the garage, for the vehicles' protection. New, automatic garage doors/openers would be ideal.  After all, that's what garages are for, right?

Service With a Snarl

First published 11-16-11 in my blog Postcards From the Heartland:

It's a good thing we don't exchange Christmas gifts anymore.  We decided years ago to drop out of that rat race. The holidays for us mostly start and end on Christmas Day when we go to Mass, and then gather with family for a feast. You can't believe how refreshingly easy getting through the 10 weeks of Christmas can be until you strip it down to the bare bones and celebrate "the reason for the season," without all the bells and whistles of brainwashed consumerism.

But even though I'm spared the hassle and expense of Christmas shopping, I still have to go to town at least once a week for groceries and to run errands. So I still have to brave the shopping mobs and the snarky store employees.

You'd think, in this age of austerity and joblessness, people would be so thrilled  to have a job, any job, that they'd at least be able to fake cheerfulness when dealing with customers.  On my end of things, I do my best to be cheerful, with a smile ready for those I come in contact with. So it kind of hurts my feelings when I'm treated like a "nothing."

Today I HAD to go to town. Couldn't put it off another day. I had library books overdue, the truck payment past due, a few things we needed from the grocery store for the long deer hunting weekend ahead, and I had a "$10 off a $20 purchase" coupon from *** that expires today.  A good time to stock up on toilet paper, half off!

At ***, I had to get out my *** Savers Card and my debit card, but I forgot the coupon in my sweater pocket. After I'd been checked out (by a chirpy, cheerful young lady, I should add) and paid up, I realized too late that I'd forgotten to use my coupon. The checkout girl had to send me to Customer Service.

Oh, no! Not Customer Service! Customer service must be the worst job in the world. I can't ever remember having a nice person wait on me in Customer Service in any store. And today was no exception.

The unfriendly young lady seemed all put out when I explained that I'd forgotten to use my $10 off coupon. I apologized and she muttered, "I'll have to ring it all up again." There were four items in my cart. Gimmee a break!

After she'd worked through the process, she shoved my money at me with a "there you go."  I smiled and said, "Thank you for your help."  Not just an automatic thanks, but a sincere thank you. She just turned and walked away.

Yes, a "you're welcome" or "have a nice day" was expected. Even a "no problem," the younger generation's version of "you're welcome," would have been nice. But to just turn her back and walk away meant I wasn't welcome.  I was just one more annoying customer she had to deal with.

I know I shouldn't let rude people steal my sunshine. But I walked out of the store feeling like I'd been spit on.

I would write a letter of complaint to the manager.  But I had to do that recently when I was shorted 5 Vicodins of the 16 my dentist had prescribed for pain after a procedure. I would have just picked up the missing pills next time I was in there and went along my merry way, but the person who waited on me neither apologized for the inconvenience nor even said thank you!

So I made a big deal by writing a complaint to the pharmacy manager and enclosing all label info so she could track down the person who shorted me, just in case that person might be in the habit of shorting folks on "the good stuff." I mean come on!  If you can't count out 16 big pills correctly, you shouldn't be working behind a pharmacy counter, right? Anyway, if I write another letter to the manager, they're going to think I'm just some cranky, old troublemaker.

So....to get it off my chest, I've blogged the daylights out of it.  And now I feel better. :o)

Mad Mom

First published 11-15-11 in my blog Postcards from the Heartland:

NOTE: Originally I posted an essay I wrote a couple years ago, when I was just about at the end of my rope. It was dripping with maternal angst, which is amusing now, not so much back then.

 




But then I got to thinking: I shouldn't be airing dirty laundry. It's not like it wasn't funny...but all mothers go through spells of feeling unappreciated, I guess,  So I'm taking down this post, and I'd just like to say:

I LOVE YOU, MY FAMILY!

. . . WARTS AND ALL . . .

Tangled Up in Blue

First published 11-13-11 in my original blog, Postcards from the Heartland. 

"Tangled Up in Blue" 24"x24" on hardboard, collage

This is one of those paintings that just didn't work out at first, but turned out to be one of my favorites. I started it when I was still taking classes at LLCC (grad. 2006).  Basically, it was just different blocks of blue acrylic paint with some texture added. Blah! 

On my sad, last day of school I was carrying it out to my car and a fellow student, who knew I didn't like it, said, "Hey, I'll take that if you don't want it." But I decided to keep it and use it as a base for a collage.

It's a heavy piece, 24" square on birch plywood. The horizontal and vertical strips are cut from woven-plastic shelf-liner. The small squares on top of the strips are 1-inch squares of watercolor paper painted different shades of blue.  There's a sort of ruffled valance across the top: the elastic band from a pair of my husband's boxers --- with a butterfly perched on it in the upper right corner. The brown rock shapes were torn from a slick Jeep brochure. There's some bits of Japanese rice paper, a very special (to me, anyway) chopstick embedded in a pile of strings (which was something that unraveled in my clothes dryer???), and four corn dog sticks, which I use as paint stirrers. Can you find the little dragon on the bottom right corner? It's a raveling pulled from a favorite pair of old blue jeans.

AN “OH-NO” SENIOR MOMENT

First published 11-12-11 in my original blog, Postcards from the Heartland.

Last week I was at the grocery store, unloading my shopping cart onto the check-out conveyor belt, like I’ve done thousands of times in my long and illustrious career as an everyday American housewife.  

I was quite proud of myself. The cart was only about a third filled, so this quick stop for a few things wasn’t going to cost me an arm and a leg.

As I was waiting with my now empty cart, behind a woman who was taking way too long to write out a check, I started rummaging through my purse for my checkbook.  I wanted to be ready with my debit card when it was my turn to pay up.

Suddenly an uneasy-queasy feeling came over me.  I knew in an instant that I’d left my checkbook at home.  In my mind’s eye, I could see it lying there by my computer, where I’d accessed the calculator to strike a reasonably accurate balance.

Great day in the morning! I’d forgotten my checkbook! What a helpless, sinking feeling to ruin my day. Since I live ten miles out in the country, it wasn’t like I could quickly run home and get it.  I had maybe $2 in change in the coin keeper in my purse.  Before the checker could start ringing me up, I was putting my items back in the cart to return them to their proper shelves.

When my son worked at the grocery store, he told me the items people changed their minds about and put back on the shelves are called “orphans,” because they are rarely put back where they came from. It was common to find a bag of cookies sitting on the shelf with furniture polish or a package of steak tucked in among the loaves of bread.

Well, I wasn’t about to just start scattering orphans all over the store. And I wouldn’t think of simply abandoning my cart of groceries and sneaking out. That’s just not right! I mentally inventoried the contents of my cart and formulated a plan to put them all back exactly where I got them. And to do it in an organized manner, so I wouldn’t have to back-track all over the store.

The experience was humiliating. I felt like a petty criminal who had decided to go shopping with no money, got caught, and had to put all the stuff back. It only took half the time to put it back as it did to shop for it, but still, it seemed to take forever.

And all the while I was trying to figure out the logic of having my debit & credit cards, as well as any cash I may be holding, all tucked into my check book.  I mean, I may forget my checkbook at home, especially if I’ve been writing out bills or balancing the account.  But I’ll always have my purse with me. Doesn’t it make much more sense to carry cash & plastic in a special pocket in the purse, as far from the checkbook as possible? Then I would never face this humiliating annoyance again.

The trip to town wasn’t a total loss, though.  I had accomplished some other important errands before I went to the grocery store.  It’s just that on my way home, my face burned red, like I was being slapped all the way back home for my forgetfulness. 

I decided not to tell my family about my misadventure.  No need to worry them…

UPDATE 10-25-14: OK. MEDIC ALERT: This is probably my first panic attack ever, in Nov of 2011.  But I've never been back to town when I didn't have some way to pay for stuff at the store either. Learned my lesson well!

Consolidation

I have three blogs, actually.  But this is where I typically hang out. One of the three is a book blog, but since I can't read anymore, I might as well pull the plug on that one.

My original blog, Postcards from the Heartland, goes all the way back to Veteran's Day, 11-11-11. There are three years of blogging there that I'd like to keep, so one of my new projects is consolidating the two blogs to THIS one. I figure I may have some new readers who will never see the older posts on the original blog (I mean who has the TIME, right?), so we'll see how this goes.

Lookin' Out My Kitchen Window

So Many Years

We attended the funeral of my step-father on Wednesday. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, because I've been kicked out of the family for over 20 years now. I was never notified of his passing: first clue that I WAS NOT WELCOME there, at his funeral.

I won't speak ill of the behavior of the others. But I did connect with my mother. We exchanged our sorries and felt very bad for all the years wasted. I read in her eyes such sorrow, fear, and desperation. She's a widow now, frail and used up from the care of her dying husband. I hope the girls take good care of her. I pray for the reconciliation of all involved, as I've been doing for years & years.

"So Many Years" poem by C.C.

I got home, exhausted (I'd attended the viewing the night before too), and wrote this poem.  It kind of puts things into perspective when you realize how stubborn pride can keep a family apart for two decades, while a grandson grows up without his grand- parents or aunts in his life.

Flying Squirrel Girl

Photo used; in public domain:
<a title="By Steve Ryan [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFlying_Squirrel.jpg"><img width="256" alt="Flying Squirrel" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Flying_Squirrel.jpg/256px-Flying_Squirrel.jpg"/></a>

Okay, this is stupid. I admit it right up front! People, DO NOT pick up a wild animal!

The other evening Katty came to the door with her latest offering, a flying squirrel. It didn't look too hurt, and it was so little and CUTE --- I lured Katty away with a can of Little Friskies, and then got a glove and went to pick up the little critter.

It scampered up my leg like it was a tree, up my back and onto my head! When I tried to grab it, it leaped to a porch post. The next time I made a grab, I came away with a handful of miniature Tasmanian Devil!!! 

It bit through the glove on my right hand and took a good bite of my nearby, exposed left hand. Then it wriggled loose and skittered away into the lilac bush. Okay, you ungrateful little ****! Good luck on your own!

But that isn't the end of today's SQUIRREL SAGA.
I was left with two bleeding fingers.  

DO SQUIRRELS CARRY RABIES?????

It was 8 in the evening, so PromptCare had just closed. I called my clinic's Tele-Nurse.  She was all excited: "Go to the ER & get a rabies shot!!! It's a wild animal; it could be carrying rabies!"

While I had been waiting for Tele-Nurse to come on the line, I had googled the subject.  I found the very knowledgeable blog  of an ER nurse of over 30 years experience, who in his spare time is a "squirrel rehabilitator," who has been bitten countless times and never even had an infection --- heck, my little squirrel should have been incarcerated in a maximum security unit! He reassured everyone that: 

#1: Squirrels do not carry rabies. They don't associate with animals that do, and if caught by one, they'd be eaten. 

#2: He's never seen a case of human rabies caused by a squirrel bite.

That was good enough for me, but then the Tele-Nurse comes on and starts up with the ER & rabies shot!

So, instead of driving 15 minutes to the nearest ER, get checked in (with a $25 co-pay & billing to my insurance company), and then have them turn me away because YOU DON'T NEED A RABIES SHOT! --- I called ER and asked, "Do I?"

The woman who answered the phone put me on hold while she went to find out.  She came back with good news. No, the CD protocol (we have a lot of those lately due to the Ebola scare) was NO RABIES SHOT NEEDED FOR SQUIRREL BITES. Squirrels are not rabies carriers. She'd even checked with a doctor on duty that night.

WHEW!