Tuesday, March 30, 2010

you might be a middle ager if...

...getting the laundry room painted robin's egg blue brings on the happy dance

...you wonder if you are pregnant with your own grandchild or if perimenopause is simply cranking up

...the last thing you say to your husband at night isn't good night, but is the dog in the crate?

...you regularly have to take the weed wacker to your husband's eyebrows and the loppers to the hairs growing out of his nose

...you regularly *itch about CSS disease while scratching around for one of the half dozen pairs of reading glasses you own

List will be amended periodically. 

P.S. 56-year-old Mr. A nervously asked if I thought I was PG.  I told him I don't think so, but one thing I know for sure, if I am, it's his.  That brought him little relief, but the part about having our own grandchild made him laugh.  I told him we could give it to one of the kids and save them some trouble. 

Saturday, March 27, 2010

I'm so tired...


I'm so tired,
I'm so sore,
I ain't gonna do it for a nickel no more.
Fifteen cents is my price,
for a quarter, I'll do it twice.
Shoe shine!

Do you ever wonder where in tarnation things are filed in our brains?  A guy I dated in high school would recite this in a sing-song fashion and laugh at himself every time.  (I'm glad I met and married Mr. A instead.  :D )

Anyway, I am so tired, and it's highly possible I'm going to be so sore...but not from shining shoes...from pruning crepe myrtles, tea olives, lantana, bridal wreath, flowering crabapples, seven sisters roses.  Additionally, Mr. A pruned pines and Bradford pears.  I hauled the trimmings from all into the woods, a decent trek from any given point A when one is working on nearly seven acres.  When I typed out the list of plants and trees we pruned, it sounds like a lot, but it doesn't look as lush as it sounds.  All that is spread over seven acres and it still looks piteously sparse around here.

I also spent time preparing pots for plants, emptying soil from which the nutrients have been drained.  I toted a few plants from Mr. A's shop where they spent this awful winter to their destinations on the back deck and front porch.  I can't lift the rest, so I will bribe the 19-year-old who sleeps and showers here to move them.  I'll offer him a job paying $20 an hour and tell him if he completes in under an hour, I'll still pay an hour's wage.  It works every time.

I won't be paid a nickel, fifteen cents or a quarter, but the rewards in beauty will bring dividends all spring and summer.

Mr. A bought some loppers with a ratchet thingy inside which made the pruning easier, still we are beat.   

Tired is good.  I'm not complaining.  I will sleep like a baby tonight.

And I'm looking happily forward to much more of this type work.  I hate winter.  Did you hear me?  I HATE WINTER!  You won't hear me complain about the south Georgia heat!

But I am tired. 

Thursday, March 25, 2010

so pretty


flowering crabapple

stink and filth




The petals drifting to the ground at the behest of March winds resemble the closest thing to snow I'll see in south Georgia.  As beautiful as Bradford pear blossoms are outside my writing window, smelling them is an altogether different experience.  Think ammonia spilled on rotting fish.  I googled and found another blogger's thoughts on the tree:

"...the Bradford Pear tree is like sinful flesh of a not-so-serious Christian. Note:

1. It looks beautiful when in full leaf, but never bears any fruit - never.
2. In the Spring, it stinks when the leaves come out - the stench of it's glory is nauseating.
3. If it is not pruned, the branches grow into a complex system, rubbing against one another.
4. Left alone, the branches become heavy enough to split from the trunk.
5. The upper branches can only bear their own weight. No ice, snow, or wind with rain.

There are times when those who say they are Christians are eerily similar to this fruitless pear tree. Jesus said something about trees like that. Concerning a fig tree that was supposed to bear fruit, Jesus said, "...if it bears fruit next year, fine; but if not, cut it down." Luke 13:9"

This calls to mind another scripture stating the piteous state of what we consider our righteousness--"filthy rags." 

We have no righteousness apart from Him.  I need Him so.  I don't want to smell like a Bradford pear to my Lord.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Not a mushy I love my mother e-mail


The following is an e-mail I received from my 22-year-old son who will graduate in May from the business school at the local university with a 4.0 in finance.  I wish I could say his delightful language came from his father's side of the family, but I regret that it comes from both and back a generation on both sides.  His spelling and punctuation, though, is flawless, (quotation marks are mine).  Note there is no "dear mom" or "love, t---," very businesslike, don't you think?  This was the first e-mail I received from him after he returned from a week-long vacation to north Georgia and North Carolina. 
------------------------------

"So, I have literally had zero spare time since I got back. I used what little I had to look for a simple, economic-based explanation for why Obamacare WILL NOT WORK. You should really read the article below; it's so common-sense that it makes me want to vomit when I think that our Congress passed such bullshit."

Why ObamaCare Won't Work


Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Memory Lane


Rockin' the piano accordion

Oh, does this bring back memories of my father-in-law. Picture a sturdy, gray-haired old man in a small living room in South Georgia...playing the same medley.

Miss you, Grandpa Bill.

Maggie




MAGGIEATSHI*

And she's not selective about the source. With two pet cats plus various and sundry feral cats which frequent rural areas, she is well supplied. Fox, deer, whatever she can find, I see her nose go into overdrive when she senses her secondary, make that third-ary food source after Beneful and Meow Mix... On our evening walk, I see the familiar sniff and...gack, I'm making myself sick thinking about it...I walk over, yell, "Drop it!" then observe a little pile of Cocoa Pebbles. Yep, Maggie has added rabbit pellets to her poop repertoire.

"You made a first-class fool out of me, but I'm as blind as a fool can be. You stole my heart, but I love you anyway."

I didn't think my favorite singing artist from the '70s, '80s, heck, he's still one of my favorites, Rod Stewart, was singing about my Maggie May, but I reckon he was.

Love and hugs and good evening,

Mrs. A

Blog Picture Explained

"Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It is like an amputation, I feel. A limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done, I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before. It is as if in parting one did actually lose an arm. And then, like the star-fish, one grows it anew; one is whole again, complete and round--more whole, even than before, when the other people had pieces of one."--Anne Morrow Lindbergh in "Gift From The Sea"

I discovered this quote in my teens. It resonated then because of a loss of a teenaged romance. Ugh, learned a lot, regretted a lot, and truthfully I don't recall *which* romance was lost, but I gained a treasure in this introduction to Anne Morrow Lindbergh's "Gift From The Sea." This quotation still fits, even after the evolution of several more decades in my life.

Life is too short to revisit the teen angst territory right now but I reserve the right to change my mind later. I probably won't, though. Overall, I'd rate my life as incredibly blessed, but it is one that has pockmarks from a series of losses, beginning when I was just 11 years old. It is because of these losses, though, that I cherish the here and now and have a mad desire to notate and celebrate and preserve it any way I can--journals, handwritten and online, and my newspaper column.

1974--doting dad
1996--beloved grandmother
1998--coarse gentleman father-in-law
2002--best friend of 24 years
2003--mean ole mom
2008--precious mother-in-law
2009--bubba brother

Oh, how I wish it would stop! And it will, with my date. I'm not morbid, I promise. Because of this list, I will continue recording my observances and loves of my life for posterity's sake, like a mad woman. All writers are crazy, right? A Pulitzer nominee told me that.

The picture--taken in St. Augustine, Florida. I'm going to live there permanently some day, so help me. Check out the claw, do you see the enemy? Its claw took off that missing arm, there are supposed to be five, ya know. This blog is testimony that the Lord grows that arm anew, again and again.

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."--Jesus Christ, Son of God

Love and hugs and good day,

Mrs. A