Colors of Spring

 

Don had a delightful post of spring pictures from his yard.  I love Palasso Pentossi (commonly referred to as Don and Scott's house) it's a place of peace, light and water.
 

What I missed from his post was a picture of the wonderful Morning Glories he USE to grow. Beautiful, but apparently a little too prolific. I could never get the seeds to germinate. I think Psam finally went and bought seeds                                      

The colors of spring are the light and greens of my hostas and ferns.  And the pretty little forget-me-not type flowers.

The greens of my Akiba vine dotted with it's small maroon flowers (it has never developed fruit, but boy it grows and grows and grows.)

My favorite orange tulips in the mids of Dutch Iris greens.  The purple buds of lilacs and fushia of the cyclamens on my deck.  I love the colors of spring.

Sith,

Cele

Talk Thursday: Ten Weird Things About Me – Redux

A great topic popped into my head on Sunday when I was doing my taxes. But I was doing my taxes so I didn’t take the time to write it down. I forgot what it was. So all week long I thought, became frustrated, thought a wee bit more, had a migraine… or three this week (really three migraines, what’s that all about), then I panicked a bit. Voila’ I will do a meme redux. How did I know that not everyone knew what a meme was? I love a good meme, some are dumb, but many are insightful.

So here are ten weird things about me – Weird is as Weird does.

1) My favorite color is more a combination of colors. I despise the color orange, you know like Oregon State / Beaver National - it in your face ORANGE. Yeah that orange, but I love cinnamon or vesuvius (it’s a color by Landrover – yeah the vehicle) or there is this ombre’d yarn that goes from this color to cinnamon to this amazing brick color – love it. But the combination I love the most is purple and green – I always anticipate the Rhody Parade so that I can get purple and green throw beads for my truck’s rear view window.

2) I have this bizarre memory. Usually if I read something three times, say it three times, whatever three times, I will remember it. Not necessarily verbatim, but I will remember it. So what does this mean? A lot of weird things…
A) It makes me fairly good at trivia – I can talk myself through a question to the answer probably five out of six times. And lucky me, if I kick it off with the Mahna Mahna song it becomes a radio show. I will have to tape it for you.
B) I can remember what I was wearing at strange times. Like the time my friend’s father tried to molest me in the sixth grade. Light blue plaid A-line skirt, white sleeveless shell, and keds.
C) I vividly remember things from age 2 or so, but I can’t remember first grade
D) My shopping list, if I write it down and forget the list at home I will remember all but maybe one item on the list. If I stick the list in my pocket but never look at it, all bets are off and I will forget the majority of the items.

3) I don’t do the celebrity crush thing that people do, Okay I know that’s not weird. Until I say, but there is this actor that is hot. I think I’d seen him in several things, but it wasn’t until I saw him in the Keanu Reeves / Charlez Theron movie Sweet November that I thought he was raging hormones hot – As Chaz Cherry. He’s still hot as Detective Brittin, just not quite as much.

4) I get migraines. I know many many people get migraines, but I can see mine before they hit. It’s called an Aural Migraine. Imagine a little flashy light that starts just off center of your vision say at ten o’clock, is slowly grows in a flashly, white light semi circle to about two thirds of full circle before it starts slowly ebbing its way back to nothing. And then the headache and puking start. I’m such a good mother I shared it with my daughter, just like my mother shared them with me; my sister can smell her migraine coming on. It’s because we’re special. What?

5) I lose words. I have this goodly size vocabulary, a passionate love affair that involves painting pictures with words. And then I lose a word – mid sentence, it was right on my tongue, then it’s gone – lose a word. I will focus on the missing word, obsess on the missing word until I get it back. I’m thinking this isn’t that normal.

6) I will clean all the toilets you want, pick up dog poop with a plastic bag, but I hate, let me say that louder, I HATE CLEANING THE BATH TUB. Enough said. Oh and the mildew on the ceiling of my bathroom. Hate it.

7) There should be a frustrated medium in me trying to get out. But instead it is apparently dormant. Huh? Yeah, I thought you’d say that. All of my life I have been told I have a gift. I have Master Numbers, 38/11/2. I have been told by people who give readings that I should be giving readings, but I’ve yet to figure this crap out. If you have ability, shouldn’t you be in touch with it?

8) I can watch trashy housewives that make no sense, singing star wannabe’s who ignore advice until it’s too late (have you been watching Phil Phillips – I want the album), people hunt ghosts, talk to the dearly departed, and jousting hotties, but I hate watching a scripted TV show with holes in the storyline, ill-plausible solutions to a crime, and bad dialogue and acting. BTW, I still don’t like reruns.

9) Every person who means something to me in my life is a song. I will hear that song and they are with me. Some people like Psam have a multitude of songs, but that is logical she’s my daughter. Examples:

A) Ducky – Second Chances
B) My Dad – King of the Road
C) My Sister – Cracklin’ Rosie, or Wild Wild World
D) Burp – Little Red Riding hood / We Will Rock You
E) Don – Istanbul Not Constantinople
F) Different childhood friends –
1) Angel on my Shoulder
2) Natural Man
3) ABC
4) Alone Again Naturally
5) The Chipmunk Song
6) Gads that list could go on and on

10) It drives me crazy if the light switches in the hall way are left up instead of down. Ducky will walk into the hall from the living room, flick up the light switch, take four steps open the bedroom door and flick the light switch at the end of the hall up to turn off the light. It’s a short hall, WTF? Oh, and I want my vacuum cleaner cord wrapped nice and neat in a circular motion not all crazy eighted, nor twisted like your extension cords.

Thank you very much,
Cele



10 Weird Things About She Who Is Know As Cele – or When in doubt refer to number seven (originally posted in July 2007)

How on God’s Green earth do you blog 10 weird things about yourself? I mean isn’t my weird just someone else’s normal? Like my “unreasonable” fear of snakes? There are, like ten people out there who really like snakes. Now that is weird. In fact it’s just unreasonable. So your weirdness is my normal frame of thought…er you don’t like snakes do you? I’m really stuck on what is weird.
1) I don’t like talking on the phone. End of story. Well not really. Ducky is a phone addict. He talks to everyone on the phone, all the time. There are two things about Ducky that are a given, when he walks in the door, gets up or mows the lawn the TV is on. And two, if I am gone for more than ten minutes he will call people.

2) I hate reruns. I remember the plot, the dialogue, and what I can’t remember I will guess. Whereas, I despise watching TV shows over and over, I can watch a movie multiple times (as long as there is enough space in between viewings), and books? I’ve read Lord Of The Ring at least seven times. But not TV shows, and I can’t abide stupid demeaning humor – so that lets out 7 out of 10 shows.

3) I am now in my fifth decade and I still don’t feel like a grown up. When does that happen? I am a mother, a grandmother, and married three times, when does growing up happen?
(And no, that doesn’t explain two divorces.)4) Hobbies burn hot for me and then I burn out, never to go back. I once crocheted twenty five afghans for presents in two years time. That was 14 years ago, I’ve not done one since. I did stained glass at the beginning of marriage number two. Anyone want to buy a grinder, foiler, an assortment of glass cutters, lead came, and soldering irons? How about a box of skeins in various levels of depletion.

5) I love social climate Reality TV. Survivor (except for those friggin’snakes,) Big Brother, even The Surreal Life. It’s watching psychological warfare and strategy. The worst at the games, is the student of the games. Suckas

6) My mother named me Tanglefoot because I can’t walk straight, or remain up right. I fall, trip, slid, you name it I can tangle my feet around it. And I once dreamt of a career as a dancer…a roller derby queen(yes, despite being a tanglefoot I was very adept at skating, and my hipchecks were da bomb - literally, have you seen these hips?)….a marine biologist (no fancy footwork required but 8 years of zoology - I don't think so)… and a cosmetologist (that was a $4100 nightmare. Did you know you can get hair splinters, and the friggin' hurt?)

7) My sister says that she can chart her life by which name I was going by at the time and what new name I gave her.
a. Debbie – no offense, but there were six Debbie’s in my kindergarten class. Who in the heck wants to be part of a six-pack?
b. Debi
c. Debby
d. Deby Everyone wants a six-pack, but of a different ilk.
e. Then I moved to my middle name – at age 16, ah much better.
f. And Cele, is shortened version of
g. Celebrindal, from Tolkien’s Simarillion. So are you now lost? All who wander are not lost. Wrong book, right sentiment.

8) I can’t hold a grudge. Can’t do it. Life is too long to be unhappy, and far too short to not be happy.

9) I frequently know when the phone is going to ring and often who’s on the other end. I either see their face or I think their name. I can often hear the Jeopardy – double jeopardy jingle before it plays.

10) I have many acquaintances, but very few true friends. When I make a friend, it is for life, whether they are talking to me or not. This causes me to get screwed over on occasion, but you can only be hurt if you give your heart. So to me… Heart / Heartless The choice is a no brainer to me.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: Caterpillar

Coming home from McDonald’s Friday night I seriously considered writing a blog about the sad part of a caterpillars life and why I should not like to be said bird fodder: A lack of Micky Dee’s fries. Yes, when you’re hungry on a Fast Food Friday and you’ve been striving so very hard to stay on your diet, hot out of the fryer McDonald’s fries with a generous helping of vein hardening salt is to die for. Obviously I had no idea how to approach caterpillar as a topic.

Except for something that happened on Easter Sunday, something I’d been mulling over and rehashing all week long, brought me an epiphany about my mother. The worst part is that I’ve been saying this all along, but I guess the totality hit me. My mother is all about dying. Honest.

As a daughter, she was dutiful, loving, and ardent about paying forward family traditions. As a sister she was the strong one, the sister who was the older, the stronger, the dependable one. As a wife, she left her well appointed home to live with a man for the rest of his life, that at best her mother called “White Trash”. She got my father out of debt, saved her coupon money to build a portfolio, and kept our family solvent. As a mother she gave each of her kids the best of herself – she was a Girl Scout leader, a member of the PTA, she was a Den Mother, worked the snack shack at baseball and softball games, to say the least she was involved in each of her children’s lives.

In the early 1970’s my parents bought a trailer park and moved us to Oregon. My father renovated the business grounds and buildings, my mother made it a full functioning business, giving herself to it twenty four seven three sixty five for more than twenty years. When someone in the park needed help remaining independent, my mother was there to help them – daily. Then they moved, my father’s health finally started declining at a rapid pace (please don’t smoke) and my mother became no only my father’s wife, but his care giver – that same old twenty four seven three sixty five until the day he died, over four years ago.

The only time she left my father alone is when we went to England for three weeks. Traipsing through the English and Scottish country side seemed to thrive in the adventure and history of it all. My father has long gone, and yet my mother has made only two trips to Georgia to see my brother. She loves living by herself for the first time ever. She gives two hours on Wednesday to the area library. The rest of the time my mom builds these amazing quilts (but they are never good enough to show in the local quilt guild events) and takes care of her property (five acres south of town) with Ducky’s help.

As a child I was fascinated with caterpillars, loved learning about its metamorphic journey to chrysalis and then evolving into the beautiful butterfly it was meant to be. As I grew, matured, evolved into who I’ve become I have seen the parallels of human life to the caterpillars’ metamorphous journey through its life.

Someday, I’m sure my daughter will be come concerned about my willingness to live life or lack there of. I hope she knows how to approach her concerns. But in the way of my mother, I have no idea how to get her to live. She is forever conscience about making sure everything is as easy as possible for us “kids” when she passes. She is concerned that she will have enough money to last her life… take my word for it, my mother turned her coupon money into a $300k portfolio and her property is work easily half a mill, even in today’s market. She is concerned that she will be come a burden, I could kick my brother’s ass for that one. She is concerned that her property is too much of a burden on Roger and I, my fabulous brother in law is responsible for that, honestly Cap and Crown guy has no reason to fear, we’re not going to ask him for help.

Why can’t she fulfill her dreams and travel? I want my mom to live. I want the chrysalis to morph into the beautiful butterfly I know that is cocooned deep down in side. Mom, spread your wings and fly, no for me, not for Pinecone, Butch, or Buddy, but for yourself – you so deserve it.

Sith,
Cele

Thirteen First

I found this on my friend Donovan’s Blog - as he said… If you're so inclined, you can play by posting in the comments or sharing a link to your blog or personal space on the internets.

1. First day of school.
There were seven kids in my neighborhood that were my age when I was growing up, we were all in the afternoon kindergarten session at Mesa Elementary school… I am still friends with most of them, the school no longer is… On that September morning Michael Taylor and I sat in my backyard and watched across the valley to the grade school waiting. A portion of LaMirada has a valley running through it, my family’s house was on the southeast rim, Mesa was on the west and the view from my parents Flagstone BBQ was perfect.

The noon lunch bell rang, our mother’s called and the wait was almost over. I remember what I wore, mom had curled my hair. But in all honesty I can’t remember whose mother walked us to the school, I know Pam’s mother drove her, Michael and I walked – six of us were in the afternoon session, the same class with Mrs. Espinosa. In my memory the six of us sat in two rows of three, Michael behind me with George and Jody Coyote on either side of him crying; I sat in the middle between Andy Miller and Pam and all four of them were crying, blubberous, teary sobs that beckoned for moms that had to be chased by the teacher out of the room.

I loved kindergarten, I loved school, and I loved my friends. Three or four years ago we got together in Vegas.

2. First kiss –
Honest I can’t remember if this was my first kiss, but it was a sad scenario. I was playing dress up at my friend’s house when her brother Keith joined us. He as a year or two older and oh so handsome to the young me. He kissed me, then he denied it. Heartbreak. But the reality is I don't remember how good the kiss was... so it must not have been bad, but it couldn't have been great, so it must have been blah....

3. First date –
Ronnie, of the black lashes and blue eyes. He was thirty minutes late and I was totally smitten, we went to a football game… I think. Did I mention I was smitten.

4. First car –
I didn’t get my first car until I was gosh nineteen, a guy I babysat for gave me his 1968 Bonneville. I had to get rid of it a few months later, but it was my first affair with power steering.
The first car I bought myself, a Datsun 200 SX with the white racing stripe.

5. First time –
Sadly, I should have pressed charges, but that's a whole 'nother story. The first time that I care to remember was when I was sixteen, we were on vacation and I’d known this guy for two summers. He was awesome and spoke to my need to be needed, wanted, and desired.

6. First break up -
Hmmmm, total heartbreak, I’ve never gotten over Ronnie, and the first time I was told I was the marring kind. How come parents never warn you about that line?

7. First ‘real’ job –
Believe it or not, my first two jobs were working horses. My cousin was a veterinary student and worked for one of the barns at Paradise Turf outside of Phoenix. For two summers I mucked out stalls and the exercise rings, twice a day, five days a week. I loved my job, I loved the horses, I even loved Arizona desert and the summer heat.

8. First time to lose a job –
Ha ha, I was seventeen and worked for a restaurant here in Florence, at the time I had two jobs, the other was working for a tourist trap giving horseback excursions through the Oregon Dunes, getting paid one dollar an hour.

This was back in 1973. You’ll remember I love horses, I love mucking barns, and I love working. The owners of both jobs were next door neighbors. In the small community paper, The Rainy Day Rag, (appropriate for Florence, Oregon don’t cha think?) a commentary was written about the kids that worked at my job were only getting paid a dollar an hour. I knew that wasn’t the minimum wage, but I took the job anyway. I got laid off from the restaurant two days later,
“Business is slow and we don’t need you right now.” Strangely, the next day the hired two new people.

Later I was told they thought I’d written the letter because I was the “smartest” of the kids in the barn, a nice compliment don’t you think? The sad part, they never considered that one of the editors of the paper was also the mother of one of the girls I worked with in the barn.

9. First time in love - Psam, don’t read this… I can say this with all honesty and lust…. Ronnie. He still lives in my heart. I regret we never had sex, I know he would have been great,
because he had awesome fingers…I know, TMI

10. First drink –
Boone’s Ferry Wild Mountain Berry. Oh, yum. I think I was seventeen. But really I've never been much of a drinker.

11. First Sign of a Backbone –
I have a backbone? I can’t remember an specific realization, but the time it probably felt the best is when upon the realization that leaving me was a mistake, I said… “Yes, it was. Live with it.”

12. First Ambition -
Believe it or not I had two ambitions, one to become a Marine Scientist, did you know that they need eight years of zoology? What’s that all about? I also knew I had nothing in the way of finance and I knew nothing about student loans.

The second was to become a professional dancer. First when you are almost six feet all at the age of sixteen, dancing is becoming less of an option. Second, you need talent and a lot more training than I have ever had. Music still sings in my heart , and certain songs and melodies will make my imagination dance in joy. Sadly my awesome girth keeps my feet from following.

13. First Realization of Mortality –
I don’t know if I ever had a first realization of morality.

My baby brother died the day after he was born in June of my sixth grade year. Maybe that was it, I’m really not sure. That was the first time I realized how family should be, it was the way
our family became. David’s death drew us together. From death can come good things and sometimes not.

When I was in junior high a friend lost his leg to cancer, he passed in our freshman year he lost his battle. Eric’s death was truly the first time I realized that people can die too early.

So now go read Donavan's List of 13 First, it's much better. If you do your own let me know...

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: "Why on earth does anybody live there?"

The Oregon Coast is heaven on earth, no tornados, and no poisonous snakes: snakes yes, poisonous, no. Yes we have rain, the occasional flooding, and once every great while an earthquake.

Now, while you might be more than willing to chance a tornado that will lift your house from Kansas to beyond Oz, but I’m not going there… Oz or Kansas (tornados and nasty ass snakes.) Give me an earthquake any day – and before you ask, yes, I’ve been through several good size quakes: the roller coaster quakes that bob you up and down, hurky jerky quakes that rattle your teeth, and rock and roll quakes that in all truth remind me of interior California’s rolling hills (it’s one of those “you had to be there things.”) I don’t do tornados.

You don’t have to worry that the earthquake alarm is going to go off, then wait for endless growing hours for the quake that may or may not come. Here angry dark clouds just mean buckets of more rain, not anxious hours of nail biting and self -flagellation because I didn’t buy a place with a root cellar (which on the Oregon Coast would more likely resemble an indoor pool.) And if you think I bluff, we had twenty, count them, twenty inches of rain in March.

Oregon’s rainy days and seasons make you appreciate, that much more, the hot days of summer. I know, I know… I live and work on the Oregon Coast where the average temp during summer is 75 degrees, then factor in the average 45mph winds…. Which with my unscientific wind chill calculation averages to an approximate 60 degrees. I’ll take it any day over snakes, deep snow, tornados, snakes, cyclones, hurricanes (scratch that, we have hurricanes), snakes, and swarms of itchy bitey bugs. I love Oregon, earthquakes, rain, and all. Our little snow in mid March did make for a pretty picture or two, made me realize why people on the east coast actually (get this) use the garage for their vehicles, but again, I will take Oregon anyday.
* * * * I ADOREGON * * * *
Sith,
Cele

April 2nd - Autism Awareness Day

The numbers are in and they are staggering....
One in eighty eight children have autism
One in fifty four boys have autism, boys are five times more likely to be diagnosised by an Autism Spectural Disorder than girls
One in 252 girl have autism.

The New York Times reported “The new report estimates that in 2008 one child in 88 received one of these diagnoses, known as autism spectrum disorders, by age 8, compared with about one in 110 two years earlier. The estimated rate in 2002 was about one in 155.”

Today is Autism Awareness Day.... please burn a blue light in recognition. Awareness is the first step in combating any disease or disorder, including Autism.