Live Oak Trees

One of the most beautiful features of living in our area are the Live Oak trees. Every where you go along the coast you see them.  The Live Oak is the state tree of Georgia and there's no wonder why, often covered in Spanish Moss they are magnificant.  Frequently growing 65-85 feet tall and living more than 200 years they are one of the wonders of Savannah.

There aren't any on our prop

erty but the neighborhood

 is full of them.

In the city of Richmond Hill there are a number of these majestic oaks and one of the finest stood near the Ace Hardware Store.  Stood that is until Saturday when we received our more than 4 inch drenching.  Lightning didn't hit it (though there was plenty of that) it was just that the ground was so drenched from the rain that day and all the previous week that the wind was able to split  it.  Only part of it is down so there hoping to saw  at least part of it and I'm hopeful too, I enjoyed seeing that tree each time we went to Ace.

Football Season

Another football season has rolled around, a season I use to look forward to eagerly.  I was a huge fan, even bought a tv that had screen within a screen so that I could watch 2 games at a time.  When we were stationed overseas I'd get up in the middle of the night to listen to games on the radio.  But those days are long gone.  I watch football in dispair. No more Stabler, no more Plunkett, no more defense that every team feared. My mighty team  who thrilled millions is beyond woeful. They're so bad they don't just suck (pardon my French), they blow.  I can't even watch them, it's too painful.   My only hope is that some day soon its owner will die peacefully in his sleep (I'm not completely heartless) and someone who understands the game, knows how to draft players who actually want to play for the team, knows what the West Coast Offense is, will buy the team.  Until then I'm just a sad, Raider fan who now follows the Colts and the Giants, really like the Manning brothers, I remember their poor father playing for the Saints and the fans wearing bags over their heads.

Dreams

I was reading Patrick Rothfuss's Blog (he wrote The Name of the Wind--a great fantasy book) where he was talking about a dream he'd  had, pretty funny.  And it got me thinking about dreams.

Scientists think we all probably dream (though many people deny they do),  in color about 85% of the time, with older people more apt to dream in black and white and more women than men dreaming in color.  I'd read somewhere that people who grew up without much tv or black and white tv were those who were more apt to dream in black and white.

Mac says he doesn't remember his dreams much and those he does remember are usually in black and white. Recently he remembered one that featured a hermit crab that was partly a crawdad (a symbol for me perhaps?).

 I always dream in color and usually remember most of my dreams at least for a short while.  Recurring dreams for me include: the ability to fly--a very common dream, being out and about without my shoes (never naked, just no shoes), surviving after a nuclear attack (too many atomic bomb drills while in school---duck and cover), and finding a treasure. 

Different dream books interpret these dreams in different ways, I just enjoy them, other than the bomb ones.  When I got my first pair of glasses as a young child I wanted to sleep with them on.  When asked why I said," So I can see my dreams better."

Jeans

When you're short and round it's next to impossible to find good looking jeans that fit. Notice I said good looking, you can always find long, baggy ones that you'll have to chop off and hem before you can wear them.  But there are d**n few jeans you can take off the rack and just wear.  And of course  I'm short waisted which makes the search even harder.  A number of years ago I stumbled across Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans.  Now with a name like that you'd expect them to be very expensive and designed for tall skinny models.  But truth be told they start at about $18.00 and have sizes to fit nearly any shape.  They come in short, medium, tall, petite, regular cut, skinny and stretch.  Actually all of her jeans have a bit of stretch in them.  That's what makes them great.  If you order a pair and they fit well and then you put on a few pounds, no problem, the jeans stretch.  And they don't lose their ability to stretch as they grow older.  I wear my Glorias until they fall apart and that generally takes about 5 years with me wearing them constantly.  Then I cut them off and make them into shorts and wear those until they finally dissolve in the washer.  I've had many a short, round lady come up to me and ask where I buy my Levi's and I always tell them I don't wear Levi's I wear Glorias.

You can find them at Beall's  or JC Penneys, Sears use to carry them but I'm not sure if they do any more.  I bought my first ones in the store and since then I just order online their sizes stay constant.  My daughter, who is even shorter than me, 4ft.10in. to my 5ft. loves them too.  I'd be lost, or naked, without my Gloria's.

Floods of Biblical Proportions

And God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water the fire next time.  Well I don't know about that because it rained yesterday, no, I mean it really rained!  During the week we'd gotten nearly 5 inches and then yesterday the heavens opened up and in less than 2 hours we got more than 4 inches of rain. Lordy it was coming down in sheets with thunder and lightning to match the deluge.

I looked out the window and saw that the lagoon had flooded into out yard and our boat was ready to leave, while our dock (on the right look carefully) was under water.  The plant I had sitting on it looked like it was getting ready to float away.  I called Mac and he waded out to the boat, the water was ankle deep half way across our yard, and pulled the boat back.  In the picture it is still sitting in water but not in danger of floating away.  My poor yard!  

Back to School

Our county's kids went back to school a couple of weeks ago, and the surrounding counties have slowly started back too.  Only Chatham (Savannah) waits until September to start.  I'm a retired teacher (and I've finally stopped having nightmares---the worse one was where I was teaching a class of third graders how to smoke and drink), many of my friends are teachers or are looking for teaching jobs.  Bless their hearts, I was once an enthusiastic teacher, ready to save the world one child at a time, the slogan of one of my principals.

I taught for 14 years, 1 in Georgia and 13 in California.  The one year of teaching Kindergarten in Augusta, GA is still one of my happiest teaching memories.  I taught in an school that was probably 95.% African-American (though they were still called Blacks then) and poverty was the norm not the exception.  But they were amazing kids, eager to learn, discipline wasn't a problem, the parents were caring and helpful.  I was sorry to leave, but we were moving home to California and I was looking forward to teaching there, it had to be more progressive and innovative than Georgia.

I had known we'd eventually go home to California so along with my major in Early Childhood Education I had done a minor in Spanish figuring that would help me get a job there, and it did.  My first teaching job in California was a Bilingual Second Grade class.  Most of the children was of Mexican descent, some newly arrived (illegal) with no English, some had been born in California of Mexican (illegal) parents who spoke English and some good old regular kids.  I had an Aide (Lidia) who was a native Spanish speaker and between us we taught the class. 

After a couple of years in Second Grade I had a class I liked so much that I moved up to Third Grade with them, and then the next year I shared them with my husband Mac who was teaching 4th grade and we both did a 3/4 combo.  It was great.

I enjoyed the kids I taught, but not how we were supposed to teach them.  When I taught in Georgia we turned in lesson plans each week that included lessons based on the  core curriculum we were supposed to be covering.  In California no one turned in lesson plans, you taught what and how you wanted.  When I was given my books for my first class they included Spelling Books but I was told I didn't have to teach Spelling if I didn't want to.  We didn't teach phonics, it was all Whole Language.  In 3rd and 4th grade you didn't have to teach Time's Tables because memorization was a no-no.

Needless to say we were "educating" a generation that would not be able to read, write or do math.  Towards the end of the 90's the pendulum swung the other way and all the old fashioned things we had done in Georgia when I first started teaching were now "in".

The teachers hated it, no more Fun Friday when they ran videos and played games all day.  No more teaching thematically and the curriculum be damned.

I thought it was great, with Godzilla sitting on my desk, the classe's bathroom passes in an alligator's mouth and a drawer full of chocolate I had been teaching all along.

Singing in the Rain

Started out to do our walk today but it started raining so we thought we'd have breakfast first and then try again.  We usually walk before breakfast because if you wait too long it gets so hot you turn into a puddle of hard to define body parts.  So back home for coffee and to wait for sunshine.  Coffee drank, sun appeared and off we went only to get absolutely drenched, I had to wring my clothes out before I could put them in the dryer. 

 I'm getting bored with rain.  We knew when we moved here  we'd have to put up with high humidity and more rainfall than we were use to, Hemet, CA where we'd moved from had averaged about 7 inches of rain a year.  While living there my skin had dried out, cracked, wrinkled and aged oh so nicely.  I resembled an elderly horny toad.

Then one fine day after seeing the sun for 700 days in a row I turned to Mac and said,"I'd like to live where they have 4 seasons, where summer has a smell."

And so we moved back to Georgia which does have 4 seasons, with winter being mild, and summer does have a smell, usually that of pine trees on a hot summer day.  But unfortunately this is one of those years where rain has ruled the weather.  My yard never completely dries up and the lagoon is lapping at our backyard.  The thing I smell most this year is mold.

Thought my skin has stopped cracking, my wrinkles have filled in a bit (that's not cosmetic surgery that's fat),  I'm now growing webbing between my fingers and toes.  And like the little froggy in the picture I'm doing a lot of really bad singing in the rain.

My Adventures in Wallyworld, Not to Be Confused With Wonderland

There's a d**n good reason why I do most of my shopping online and my latest trip to Wallyworld has brought that home.  Now I don't intrinsiclly dislike Wallyworld like many others do.  I use it for quick shopping of items that I want to buy cheaply.  I don't mind Wally being cheap, I want it to be cheap.  And I realize they don't pay their workers much and you get what you pay for.  But if you want a better paying job stay in school or go to college, that's what I did.  Now  all that aside, I expect to run into Wally do my shopping and be out of there quickly, before I catch something (and the way Wally has looked lately that would be some south of the border disorder).  When we went there Monday I was already grumpy, I don't know why, can't be because it's rained forever, my yard is soggy, my house is a mess, my back aches, I'm old and Obama wants to cut Metacare, so all I wanted was an "in and out"  experience of very short duration.  Unfortunately I also needed a watch, having bought a really cheap one the last time I'd been there, cheaper than Timex, and I had discovered that I couldn't see the numbers  or tell time with it. So  I stood at the jewelry counter where all the precious and semi-precious Timex's were locked up (Timex's would definitely be #1 on the list of items I'd steal if I ever took up shoplifting at Wally) and waited while the clerk, excuse me, sale's assistant, took care of the man in front of me who didn't have a clue as to what he was buying or was supposed to be buying so he had his cell phone out sending pictures to someone so they  could help him out.  After he had made his decision, refinanced the national debt and made his purchase the sale's associate slowly glided over to me as if lifting her feet would cause an inbalance in the universe so she must proceed accordingly.  She unlocked the display case containing the precious time gear, retrieved a Timex, slowly put it in a box, and disappeared from view without leaving the counter.  I waited nearly 10 minutes till another associate from another department wandered behind the counter, was handed a Timex box by a disembodied hand and I was finally able to make my purchase.

I could have finished my shopping without getting too much grumpier if it had not been for the fact that I spent the rest of my time looking for items I couldn't find.  This was not our home Wally, but we shop there from time-to-time, but I always have trouble finding things.  There is no logic to its layout.  Food was easy and if I had wanted to go hunting I'd have been ok, but shoes were nowhere near clothes and housewares was near electronics, perhaps because coffee pots and toaster are electronic.  I'm sure there's some Jr. Executive somewhere who spends all his time laying out the store, deciding where each department should be, placing  them in the most unlikely location, and then when people begin to learn the layout, reorganizing the whole place on the theory that if a customer is lost they'll wander through more departments instead of heading directly to where they want to go.

Anyway, by the time Mac found me I was tired, grumpier and ready to leave.  I'm going to have to stay out of Wally when I'm tired and refurbish my Spanish skills so I'll feel more at home there.  

Ima Needs

It's an Ima needs kind of day so here goes.

Ima needs some energy.  I don't want to start drinking Red Bull (which would have me whizzing around here like the Energizer Bunny on speed), but I need some energy.  I'm dragging so bad I'm leaving snail tracks.

Ima needs Congress and the President to slow down on Health Care reform, if it's that important lets take our time.  Our Doctor is of the opinion it will probably screw up a good system, and I trust my Doctor.

Ima needs to lose some weight she's beginning to resemble Jabba the Hut.

Ima needs a cleaning lady and needs to stop being too cheap to hire one.  Though Lord knows that if I got one I'd probably clean the house before she came so she wouldn't think we were slobs.

Ima needs her hair to stop falling out, nobody wants to see a bald old lady.

Ima need to find her sense of humor, she hasn't laughed in days and that's just not Ima!      

Hurricane Season

Hurricane season starts in May and runs till the end of November.  This year we've been lucky, no hurricanes, and until this weekend to named storms at all.  But it looks like our luck has run out.  There's a small storm out in the Atlantic they've name Tropical Storm Ana and behind her is Tropical Storm Bill.  Ana doesn't look too bad, will probably track along south of Florida,  we have storms as big as her all the time, but Bill looks bigger and stronger and they're predicting it will turn into a Hurricane later this week.

Then while we were all focusing on the storms in the Atlantic (where most hurricanes form) a sneaky little bugger known as Tropical Depression #4 has formed just south of the Florida Panhandle in the Gulf of Mexico.  They're predicting it will become Tropical Storm Claudette before it comes ashore later today.  Don't know how much rain we'll get from all this but I do know we've already had more than 5 inches this last week without

 any Tropical Storms which always drop more rain than regular .  We once had one that dropped 14 inches in a day here.

I've already warned (threatened) Mac that if it's going to rain that much we'll have to start some of the house painting we've been putting off.

Right now Ana and Bill look like this. 

Marie Antionette

Earlier this year Mac and I saw the film  "Marie Antionette" directed by Sofia Coppola.  I pick the films we watch and try not to subject Mac to too many "chic flicks".  But we'd both enjoyed "Lost in Translation" an earlier Coppola film and I was intriqued by the updating of the Marie Antionette story by using "modern" music and dialogue.  

I knew little about this Queen other than the often repeated line, "Let them eat cake!".  So I was very surprised to find myself feeling a lot of sympathy for her.  I think Kirsten Dunst did a fantastic job of portraying her, showing the young girl (15) who literally had to give up everything, right down to the small dog she'd brought with her, to become Queen of France.

Having seen the movie I needed to know more about her so I got the book "Marie Antionette" by Antonia Fraser.  The movie was based on this book and I began to work my way through its 544 pages.  I usually read fiction and find nonfiction, particularly biographies, slow going.  And such was the case with this book.  I can finish off a fiction book of this length in a couple of days.  But I've been at Marie for more than a month, footnotes and all.  I'm almost

 finished with the "Widow Capet" as she became known and find that the sympathy I developed for her after the movie was well placed.  Married to probably the most inoffensive King  France had ever hadm she was demonized, as was he, for problems for beyond their control.  She might have been frivolous, but truth be told she wasn't overly bright, but had a "good" heart and genuinely cared about those around her, and the citizens of France.  Ordered by her Mother Maria Teresa of Austria and then her brother Joseph the Emperor to meddle in state affairs she did her utmost not to.  What she cared about were here children (2 died young) and her friends.  But she became they symbol for all that was wrong with France, and there was much that was wrong.

I've really enjoyed the book, but the movie was easier going.