Weird thing I saw in Reno yesterday: Man riding in a powered wheelchair across the street, smoking a cigarette with a bright turquoise and yellow parrot on his lap. It was a beauty.
Weird thing I saw in Reno today: Human roller skiing down the street in front of a school, dragging an automobile tire behind her, which was attached to her waist with a thick rope.
Weird thing I saw in Reno several years ago: Man walking downtown with a ferret on a leash, but the ferret was riding a tiny skateboard.
One day I will get photos of these things.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
15 October 2014
Yesterday I went out to get my shoes from my car. They had socks tucked in, so I sat down on the stump in my driveway and put my shoes on. It was cool, but without the hard edge to the chill that we sometimes get in the morning. It felt kind of balmy, like a southern California morning marine layer. The sky was a soft blue with white streaks of clouds. I like this kind of morning. As I put my socks on, I noticed bees on the ground in front of me. One was clearly dead, the other was still right side up with her wings tucked in. I brushed her with my shoe lace, and she rolled from the weight of that, but settled back into position. But she never moved, that I could see.
Once I was done putting on my shoes, I came into the house, got a plastic spoon, took some sugar from the canister and added water to the spoon to make a sugar solution. It didn't all dissolve, but I figured it would be sugary enough. I poured a little bit on the ground in front of the 3 bees out there, but they didn't react. Two of them were dead, but I ended up holding the spoon up to the one I thought was alive. I saw some little antenna like things at the front moving, but I could tell if they were just swirling in the sugar water. I gently took the spoon away, and thought I saw some movement. I ended up using a twig to brush the bee into the spoon. Unfortunately the bee flipped over and was on her back in the sugar water, but I carried her through the house to my back deck which had sun.
I emptied the spoon into the big pot of dirt, and made sure the bee was upright on her feet. She seemed to move a bit. I left the spoon with the remaining wet sugar next to her in the pot. I took my daughter to school and then walked the dog in the cool, humid day, although it was already a little warmer than I wanted for a walk in that time of day in this time of month. I saw bees buzzing around the remnants of lavender and other flowers. When I came home, I went out to my deck to check the pot, and the bee was gone.
Last night was very windy, it kept waking me up. We had the fan in the window, and I had to take it out because it was causing our door to slam in it's frame, even with towels trying to keep it from moving. And then, even with the window open and the fan on, it actually wasn't very cool in the bedroom. But it is cooling off and is going to continue to get cooler, and I was thinking of the wind and the cold and the bees. Pretty soon I won't be able to help them at all, so I hope they can find somewhere warm to weather.
Current weather conditions, according to weather.gov: 56˚F, 47% humidity, winds steady at 8 mph, gusts to 17 mph.
Once I was done putting on my shoes, I came into the house, got a plastic spoon, took some sugar from the canister and added water to the spoon to make a sugar solution. It didn't all dissolve, but I figured it would be sugary enough. I poured a little bit on the ground in front of the 3 bees out there, but they didn't react. Two of them were dead, but I ended up holding the spoon up to the one I thought was alive. I saw some little antenna like things at the front moving, but I could tell if they were just swirling in the sugar water. I gently took the spoon away, and thought I saw some movement. I ended up using a twig to brush the bee into the spoon. Unfortunately the bee flipped over and was on her back in the sugar water, but I carried her through the house to my back deck which had sun.
I emptied the spoon into the big pot of dirt, and made sure the bee was upright on her feet. She seemed to move a bit. I left the spoon with the remaining wet sugar next to her in the pot. I took my daughter to school and then walked the dog in the cool, humid day, although it was already a little warmer than I wanted for a walk in that time of day in this time of month. I saw bees buzzing around the remnants of lavender and other flowers. When I came home, I went out to my deck to check the pot, and the bee was gone.
Last night was very windy, it kept waking me up. We had the fan in the window, and I had to take it out because it was causing our door to slam in it's frame, even with towels trying to keep it from moving. And then, even with the window open and the fan on, it actually wasn't very cool in the bedroom. But it is cooling off and is going to continue to get cooler, and I was thinking of the wind and the cold and the bees. Pretty soon I won't be able to help them at all, so I hope they can find somewhere warm to weather.
Current weather conditions, according to weather.gov: 56˚F, 47% humidity, winds steady at 8 mph, gusts to 17 mph.
Friday, October 10, 2014
8 October 2014
I took my dog for a walk with my daughter, and it was about 72˚ F as the sun was setting. If it hadn't been for the changing leaves, I might have thought it was August. The leaves have been so late to turn this year, and I honestly have not really seen much color until the last week of September. It's not uncommon to see leaves changing as early as August, just because of the nights getting cooler.
It was a walk that wasn't really that long, but we went down this one street that seemed to have so many interesting things. The last time we walked down this street, we got into two conversations and got invited inside a house. I have a lot of photos to share, but not sure how to easily do that. I'll add them when I figure it out.
Friday, August 22, 2014
22 August 2014
Today was my younger daughter's first day of elementary school strings. She carried her cello and her music stand into school this morning.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
1 July 2014
I am shaky today, even as I am boiling the water for the coffee I don't need. I'm angry. I find myself feeling angry frequently these days, not out of control anger that eats me up, but the kind that lets me say all the things I think, but don't say. I kind of pull my punches when I talk to others, I try to put a good spin on it.
::half an hour later::
I can't even write a tiny bit, not even a tiny bit. How can I ever write my thoughts. I can't. I have children. You don't get to have your own anger or your own thoughts when you have children. Instead of forming my anger at the larger issues in the world into words, I am looking for my teenager's extra pairs of glasses. She broke her main pair, and can find neither back-up. Meanwhile, I have had to plunge the toilet and clean up a pile of trash all around. I've found 4 empty eyeglass cases and a case with reading glasses. I've also found 2 pairs of sunglasses and 4 pairs of 3D glasses from the movie theater.
Children are mind control, they make your anger focus elsewhere. No wonder every society wants people to keep on just having children.
Screw it, I'm just going to Facebook.
OK, now the kids, my 10 year old and her 10 year old friend, are eating the potato salad I just made last night. But they are going to leave a lot behind on the plate, like the girl did last night. EAT WHAT YOU TAKE!!!
So this is what I was going to say earlier: We live in a world where we constantly flout God's word in the Ten Commandments in regards to killing. We start wars, invade countries, kill thousands. We support regimes that kill their own people, corporations give money to organizations that support the killing of gays, or that make money off the backs of slave labor. We deny the privilege that racism, classism, sexism gives us, and we keep on exploiting people for our own benefit. We criminalize people then use their criminal status as a reason to kill them or otherwise deny them of human rights. People walk around with firearms strapped to their backs and use the words Second Amendment Rights as a euphemism for killing someone who steps on their property. This is a lifestyle choice that constantly denies what God has told us about killing; it demonstrates an unrepentant heart. We deny what Jesus has told us about feeding His sheep, about Love being the greatest of Faith, Hope and Love. And then we are going to argue that a hormonal contraception that suppresses ovulation and makes it easier for the uterus to resist implantation is murder? That is irrational.
::half an hour later::
I can't even write a tiny bit, not even a tiny bit. How can I ever write my thoughts. I can't. I have children. You don't get to have your own anger or your own thoughts when you have children. Instead of forming my anger at the larger issues in the world into words, I am looking for my teenager's extra pairs of glasses. She broke her main pair, and can find neither back-up. Meanwhile, I have had to plunge the toilet and clean up a pile of trash all around. I've found 4 empty eyeglass cases and a case with reading glasses. I've also found 2 pairs of sunglasses and 4 pairs of 3D glasses from the movie theater.
Children are mind control, they make your anger focus elsewhere. No wonder every society wants people to keep on just having children.
Screw it, I'm just going to Facebook.
OK, now the kids, my 10 year old and her 10 year old friend, are eating the potato salad I just made last night. But they are going to leave a lot behind on the plate, like the girl did last night. EAT WHAT YOU TAKE!!!
So this is what I was going to say earlier: We live in a world where we constantly flout God's word in the Ten Commandments in regards to killing. We start wars, invade countries, kill thousands. We support regimes that kill their own people, corporations give money to organizations that support the killing of gays, or that make money off the backs of slave labor. We deny the privilege that racism, classism, sexism gives us, and we keep on exploiting people for our own benefit. We criminalize people then use their criminal status as a reason to kill them or otherwise deny them of human rights. People walk around with firearms strapped to their backs and use the words Second Amendment Rights as a euphemism for killing someone who steps on their property. This is a lifestyle choice that constantly denies what God has told us about killing; it demonstrates an unrepentant heart. We deny what Jesus has told us about feeding His sheep, about Love being the greatest of Faith, Hope and Love. And then we are going to argue that a hormonal contraception that suppresses ovulation and makes it easier for the uterus to resist implantation is murder? That is irrational.
Monday, May 26, 2014
26 May 2014
I downloaded the blogger app for my phone, and attempted to compose a new blog entry. I thought I saved it as a draft, but I can't find it anywhere. However, I found two other drafts.
Monday, January 27, 2014
27 January 2014
It's 5 am and I can't sleep. It's too quiet, the silence is loud, but it's not the right kind of white noise. I can hear a train in the distance, first its plaintive whistle and then a steady noise that seems to indicate a far-off roar of cars on the track, but it seems impossible that I could hear that, even at this low level.
At this time of day, there is nothing awake but me and the giant Remorse monster…and the child who woke me up at 4 am, who will be very sad when she has to get up in 2.5 hours. Now I'm keeping her awake, with my keyboard tapping and requests she find some sort of classical music on her father's iPod. The railcar noise is gone.
I've been able to keep the early morning remorse at bay for awhile now, I thought maybe I was getting over it. But lying alone, in the absolute silence, I could find the creature again. I can't type out what I was thinking, however. Just the process of retrieving the Mac Book Air, having to say words like Mac Book Air, and now the fact that Christmas music is playing lightly in the background, since the Robert Shaw Chorale is the only classical music on this darn iPod, other than Für Elise, which we've already heard, well, it all takes me out.
My thoughts before were running with the idea that came upon me earlier, based on something I heard at church, yesterday it was, about a man talking about how hard it was when his brother died. I would be so sad if my sister died, but more than the sadness of her passing, it would be a mourning for all we had lost. All the things I gave up that I really didn't want to give up. I normally feel that It is what it is, and things are as they are, and who can say what is best. I resolve to stay in regular communication with my family, but even with the ability to video chat, we just don't. We don't talk on the phone, we don't e-mail, we don't have video conferences. The most we have is tenuous Facebook connections, and an occasional phone chat when we realize it's been awhile. On some level, I must not think there is a point in maintaining these long distance relationships. The relationships can't be what I really want, and what I want is to see and talk to people in person. Instead, all the people I have in my life in person are people I barely know. I get their company, and they mine if they choose it, but it feels very much like happenstance.
Für Elise is playing again. I'm angry, because this isn't what I wanted to write, what was in my head was so much more eloquent, but I change my mood just by moving to try and capture my thoughts.
I've spent a lot of time at 4 am in months and years past trying to imagine the other life that I gave up by my choices. I try to imagine the people and life I would have had staying in Virginia. I can feel badly for the people I would never have met here, but then if I had stayed in Virginia or California, I would have had a whole different set of people filling the same niche. Or maybe we would have died in a car accident on the way to the hospital to have our first baby, who knows. One thing that happened right before we left Virginia was that my husband's childhood best friend bought a house near our house. We would have been much closer to them with that geographical proximity. Now our only connection is through the Christmas card they send every year.
I was hurt when my niece said she would never abandon her nieces the way I did. But I did abandon them. That was always my biggest regret, that and losing the closeness to my mother. What if i could have been a stay at home mother in Virginia, that would have been something. I could have spent a lot more time with my mother and my mother-in-law. But it's too late, they are dead or dying. My nieces and nephews are adults now, the influence I had hoped to have in their life is gone. I feel that their life did get harder when I left.
My thought earlier: I was left to make the choice. My husband left the choice to me, and I chose what I know he wanted. But what I really, really wanted was for HIM to make the choice that I wanted. He put the buden on me. I don't like that. Then again, when we moved to Nevada, the burden was on me. I said no. But then he was sad and kept talking up moving, so I said yes on the condition that we would have a second child (that same anxiety-ridden child who woke me from sound sleep at 4 am, thus precipitating all of this). What a way to have a marriage, what a way to have a child.
At this time of day, there is nothing awake but me and the giant Remorse monster…and the child who woke me up at 4 am, who will be very sad when she has to get up in 2.5 hours. Now I'm keeping her awake, with my keyboard tapping and requests she find some sort of classical music on her father's iPod. The railcar noise is gone.
I've been able to keep the early morning remorse at bay for awhile now, I thought maybe I was getting over it. But lying alone, in the absolute silence, I could find the creature again. I can't type out what I was thinking, however. Just the process of retrieving the Mac Book Air, having to say words like Mac Book Air, and now the fact that Christmas music is playing lightly in the background, since the Robert Shaw Chorale is the only classical music on this darn iPod, other than Für Elise, which we've already heard, well, it all takes me out.
My thoughts before were running with the idea that came upon me earlier, based on something I heard at church, yesterday it was, about a man talking about how hard it was when his brother died. I would be so sad if my sister died, but more than the sadness of her passing, it would be a mourning for all we had lost. All the things I gave up that I really didn't want to give up. I normally feel that It is what it is, and things are as they are, and who can say what is best. I resolve to stay in regular communication with my family, but even with the ability to video chat, we just don't. We don't talk on the phone, we don't e-mail, we don't have video conferences. The most we have is tenuous Facebook connections, and an occasional phone chat when we realize it's been awhile. On some level, I must not think there is a point in maintaining these long distance relationships. The relationships can't be what I really want, and what I want is to see and talk to people in person. Instead, all the people I have in my life in person are people I barely know. I get their company, and they mine if they choose it, but it feels very much like happenstance.
Für Elise is playing again. I'm angry, because this isn't what I wanted to write, what was in my head was so much more eloquent, but I change my mood just by moving to try and capture my thoughts.
I've spent a lot of time at 4 am in months and years past trying to imagine the other life that I gave up by my choices. I try to imagine the people and life I would have had staying in Virginia. I can feel badly for the people I would never have met here, but then if I had stayed in Virginia or California, I would have had a whole different set of people filling the same niche. Or maybe we would have died in a car accident on the way to the hospital to have our first baby, who knows. One thing that happened right before we left Virginia was that my husband's childhood best friend bought a house near our house. We would have been much closer to them with that geographical proximity. Now our only connection is through the Christmas card they send every year.
I was hurt when my niece said she would never abandon her nieces the way I did. But I did abandon them. That was always my biggest regret, that and losing the closeness to my mother. What if i could have been a stay at home mother in Virginia, that would have been something. I could have spent a lot more time with my mother and my mother-in-law. But it's too late, they are dead or dying. My nieces and nephews are adults now, the influence I had hoped to have in their life is gone. I feel that their life did get harder when I left.
My thought earlier: I was left to make the choice. My husband left the choice to me, and I chose what I know he wanted. But what I really, really wanted was for HIM to make the choice that I wanted. He put the buden on me. I don't like that. Then again, when we moved to Nevada, the burden was on me. I said no. But then he was sad and kept talking up moving, so I said yes on the condition that we would have a second child (that same anxiety-ridden child who woke me from sound sleep at 4 am, thus precipitating all of this). What a way to have a marriage, what a way to have a child.
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