Rambling

 10 days of nothing much, it seems.  Time for a ramble.

After all my peopling of the previous post, I've managed to pull back.  I had my chiropractor appointment followed by a visit to Gill, but that's it.

The possums finally started to eat on their own.  I had to force-feed them for 8 or 9 days, which is really unusual.  So they weren't growing much or gaining weight.  But they're taking off now.  Funny that they have different personalities.  Angelo (did I mention that Ebaida and I named them after painters? Suzie wanted to call the one that stayed hidden all day Vann - so that became Van Gogh.  The rest are Michelangelo, Frida Kahlo, and Georgia O'Keefe, collectively known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Possums) - is a chonk, about a third bigger than the rest.  Van is the smallest but also the liveliest by far.  Georgia is very shy and tends to go limp when I pick her up.  Frida is alert and curious.

Cactus.  There is an area of the yard where prickly pear cactus keep cropping up.  Three decades now Bob (and now I) have dug them up and tried to keep them under control.  Doing that cleanup again has been on my eternal Things To Do List.  But today I looked out - and they all have pretty bright yellow flowers, so they get to live awhile longer.  Maybe they'll even put out fruit.

I managed to lock my keys in the car at work - for some reason when I got out of the car I tossed my keys and phone in my purse and started to take it - that's what I do when I go anywhere but work.  At work I just stuff my phone and keys in my pocket.  But I had that brain fart - and I grabbed my phone but left the keys.  It wasn't the first time I've ever locked the keys in the car, but it's been many many years.  Not a disaster - I called AAA and they came out within 20 minutes and opened up the car.  It wasn't until later that I realized that calling them had been my first thought.  For 48 years my first thought would have been to call Bob to come rescue me (and I did the same for him a few times).  Are automatic habits starting to fade, even a little?

I'm still hanging out in the woods and stream as much as possible before summer hits.  I've been delighted to realize that the ice storm apparently made a dent in the tick population.  I'm still getting a few - but I'm picking off one or two instead of a dozen.
Had to take an art shot looking up in the trees.

I had a blast from the past when a woman on FaceBook posted a sign from a diner that her uncle used to own (she was asking if anyone had any pictures of the diner itself.)

Oh, my.  I spent many an hour and had many a meal at the Mecca in the 80s and 90s.  It wasn't a retro diner so much as one that hadn't changed for 20+ years.  Most famous was Clyde's fried chicken sandwich.  Clyde would take a piece of toast, smear on mayonnaise, add lettuce and tomato, and then put on two pieces of fried chicken (bone in!) and balance the second piece of toast on top.  The technique for eating it was to deconstruct it, having the toast, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on the side.

So there I was, suddenly going down memory lane  - and it hit me that I was going down that lane by myself.  No one to turn to and say "remember the Mecca?"  But finally I remembered going there with our friend Warren.  He left Tallahassee 30 years ago, but we exchange a few emails a year.  So I sent him the picture, and remembered his first time eating that sandwich.  He never fully woke up until at least 3 in the afternoon, so in his sleepy state he didn't notice how lumpy the sandwich was (nor the wing poking out of the side), picked it up, and tried to take a bite.

Here's another artifact from the past.  Recently I've been using an Indian spice blend called garum masala.  It's a finishing seasoning that you sprinkle on toward the end of cooking that gives an undefinable flavor (probably because it has at least 15 different ingredients.)  I wanted to put intin a salt shaker to have on hand, so I dug one out of the cabinet.

 

I started cooking for Bob when we were both still living in the dorms.  Instead of buying a box of salt, we filched a salt shaker from the cafeteria.  When we used it up, we'd take the empty back to the cafeteria and filch a full one.  We continued the Great Salt Shaker exchange even after we got married.  When we left Tallahassee, we took the final salt shaker with us.  Which means I've had this for some 53 years now.  I get sentimental.  Remembering 19 year old me cooking for her new boyfriend.

Make Do And Mend:  saying from WWII, along with "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."  Even though I'm now financially secure, that's how I was raised, and how I'm comfortable.  Today I was washing my sheets (my much-loved linen sheets, now four years old) and noticed a few small holes.  My wobbly cat Stumbles often has what looks like (but isn't) seizures when she sleeps, and she had tiny but very sharp claws.  No problem - I got out needle and thread and sewed them up.  But I wonder how many people do that?  It's amazing how many people don't even know the basics (I see notices on FaceBook of people asking where they can get a button sewed on).  You get a hole in something, you toss it and get a new one.

I did, however, buy something new this week.  Now that's I'm spending more time in the so-called guest room (the only guests I ever have there are furry ones, currently the possums) I noticed that it was in dire need of a good cleaning.  That took a couple of days.  I took down the curtains to wash them.  I got those from Rob and Jeff one time when they were redecorating (a rather foreign concept to me; I never really get around to decorating, much less doing it more than once).  They were rather dirty and cobwebby, sun faded and had some chewed holes where they got too close to Dingo's cage.  They were inexpensive Walmart curtains to start with, and I got them as hand-me-downs at least a dozen years ago.  So at least for this one time I decided to forgo sewing up the holes and actually got some new ones (and try to remember to keep them away from Dingo's cage.)

One last random thought - am I the only person who was bird-watching at the dump?  Today was my trash day, and as I drove into the transfer station (sounds nicer than "dump") I saw at least a dozen birds flitting about.  Aerial acrobatics  - diving and twisting in the air.  The swifts have returned for the summer.  At the dump?  Well, what do you have around a big dumpster?  Flies, and plenty of them.  An all-you-can-eat buffet if you're a swift.   I enjoyed their flight; it seemed like everyone else just dumped their trash and moved on.

But that's the sort of thing I live for now - tiny wildflowers, unexpected birds.  Things that no one else seems to notice.