Scavenging the August Doldrums

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability. 

Sam Keen

Here's how uneventful it has been this August. I got nothing to say other than it's still hot and I'm still sweating.

I've had my head buried in books. This month I've laughed my way through Europe with Bill Bryson reading Neither Here Nor There. Had a most interesting discussion with my book club regarding The Submission. Lived in NYC and the Dominican Republic with the wonderful Oscar Wao, and relished the short stories of Edith Pearlman in Honeydew.

I'm currently in Beirut with An Unnecessary Woman.

As for my television watching, Deadliest Catch has concluded their season. Jeopardy is on hiatus. American football has yet to begin (and the Green Bay Packers have lost Jordy Nelson. Sigh.) My next up Netflix disc will begin the third season of The Newsroom and I've received a recommendation for Death in Paradise, a British venture filmed in Guadeloupe that I can stream.

I'm clinging to my hammock, the AC, and the end of summer as long as I can for once Labor Day passes I must resurface and join the world.  Maybe.

This litany of my August actions has thrilled you beyond measure, I'm sure.

Forthwith is my August Scavenger Hunt brought to you by the lovely Greenthumb. Go visit her in Australia at her blog Made with Love

The August List

Walk

Horizontal

Square

Diversity

Rough

Bow

Joy

Forgotten

Crowd

Colourless

Friendly

Whatever I Want

Walk

Guess who I saw on my walk today?

Horizontal

Okay, our fence is still horizontal to the ground. It just has a challenging path.

Square

Nothing like a good old game of Scrabble.

Diversity

You got your purple flowers, your variety of green water plants and your pond scum. Diversity.

Rough

Yup, might be a little rough falling into that.

Bow

I think this magnolia blossom would make a lovely bow.

Joy

End of day and a reprieve from the heat. Time to jump in the lake and float in the moonlight.

Forgotten

Oops...

...forgotten in the fridge.

Crowd

Blues on the Green. Used to be a small affair in Austin, Texas. Few hundred people. This night? Over 30,000.

Colorless

Once upon a time, I would have considered this a colorless photo. But as I gaze at it now, the white, silver, black and varied shades of brown -- colors I used to not consider colors -- are most beautiful.

So, okay  how about this for colorless.

I'm certain some do-gooder French Impressionist or a large-hatted Dutch Master could find color in this. Not me. Although...

Friendly

My duck friend giving me a kiss.

Whatever I Want

Please, Julie? I promise I won't come back for an hour if you give me just a tad more catfood. See, I'm just very gently resting my beak on your leg.

And that is as creative as this August Scavenger can muster. Hope you are all doing well. What have you been reading and watching this summer?

Funk Busted

There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved.  

Charles Morgan

If I'd had something to say, I would have posted a blog in the past month or more. Still pondering all the comments made on my last post and lots of ideas have milled around my hayfever-addled brain. No order to my thoughts materialized. Instead of making something up, I succumbed to my funk. Last Thursday night, my funk busted.

There I was sitting in my chair, water glass on the table, TV off, reading a book about Central America and imagining a vacation when I heard the garage door open and footsteps coming into the house. I looked up and who did I see but my Ian, that Bama Boy standing beside my chair. Fall break and he had a few days off. Decided to surprise us.

I hadn't seen that face since the first week of August and, yes, I burst into tears.

After rousting his dad from bed, we had a toast to his arrival. Even after his 12 hour drive, we sat up talking into the wee hours. We covered the upcoming elections/Crimson Tide football/the Green Bay Packers/his two restaurant jobs/his friends/culinary schools/The Lucky Peach and much more. (Lost Dad after the first hour.)

When I get to bed after such conversation, my mind tends to ward off sleep--the words spoken revisited in my thoughts. I finally drifted off, content that kid was upstairs in his own bed.

Next day, we took a ride downtown Austin to eat lunch at one of the food trailer sites on South Congress.

Ian had a shrimp cole slaw cone

I had a soft Kerala Kokonu doso - squash, eggplant, zucchini, carrots and cauliflower in fresh coconut sauce. Cilantro chutney and Sambar - a lentil dipping sauce. Delicious.

Of course, for dinner, we had to visit our favorite Mexican restaurant. Last summer, Ian and Jordan worked weekends and Jacob and Chelsea during the week. Could never get everyone together for a family dinner. Wait a couple months and problem solved.

Here they all are, plus Jordan's lovely girlfriend, Leigh. Lots of fun.

Happy Dad.

A quick trip to the lake proffered a Packer game with Ian in attendance and...

a visit on the dock from both a heron and Great Blue Heron.

A most welcome visit. Thanks for coming home, Ian. See you at the Alabama/Texas A&M game in Tuscaloosa. Roll Tide and Whoop! Will have both flags on hand.

Tuition Sluts

The Rose Bowl is the only bowl I've ever seen that I didn't have to clean.

Erma Bombeck

I know many of you are not football fans, but I am. I have my specific teams like my Alma Mater -- Michigan State.  My parents lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin for 31 years and my kids attended Packer summer practice camps countless times. Packers are my pro team.

My husband, Bob, graduated from University of Colorado. I don't feel much loyalty there. But when my kids went off to college, Bob and I  found ourselves rooting for teams we never would have considered in a million years. Never did we picture our legs hooked together with a stranger or our arms swathed across the back of whomever stood next to us while we swayed and sang "Saw Varsity's horns off." Or that we'd say "Whoop!' after another Fighting Texas Aggie first down.

Then, there we were in Flagstaff, Arizona watching the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks take on the likes of Montana State while we counted as Louie the Lumberjack did pushups on a trampoline to match the score. Not to mention that although the school colors are navy and green, the athletic colors are navy and yellow - verboten to a green and white Michigan State fan. (U of Michigan is blue and yellow - oh, sorry. Maize, she writes with a sarcastic shrug of her shoulders. I don't like Wolverines.)

No surprise that when youngest son, Ian, went off the the University of Alabama, we became fans of the Crimson Tide. We've just had to face the fact that we are tuition sluts. We cheer for whoever is taking our money.

Banner year for Crimson Tide and Green Bay Packer fans. Tide plays for the national championship Monday night. Packers - three games from repeating as Super Bowl champs.

Tomorrow night Bob and I will wear our Alabama shirts and plant ourselves in front of the TV in the Green Bay Packer Hall of Fame (basement.) After each first down, we will shake our shakers on the Roll Tide count. 

First Down Alabama - Roll Tide.

Just sayin'.

What to Do, What to Do...

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.  

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As many of you know, we've had a drought in Texas this year. Lately - a few intermittent days of rain. This past weekend, cold and rain dominated the forecast. I relished its arrival.

 

How does one spend a cold, rainy Sunday afternoon during Christmas season? Hmmmm.

Stay in bed. Surround yourself with hundreds of catalogs (that have your postman hating your guts), a laptop, and a credit card. Start and complete all Christmas shopping while tucked in the warmth of a comforter.

Get the bread machine going while getting out of bed to make a new cup of tea.

Keep it going, all day long. The scent of a sweet bread filling the house. Oh, yeah. Switch from tea to wine and get your journal out.

Relish the beauty of the loaves before wrapping them to give to your friends. 

 

Set up the tree.

Go downstairs and watch the Green Bay Packers.

 Prrrrfect day.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Speed, strength, and the inability to register pain immediately.
Reggie Williams, when asked his greatest strengths as a football player

A long awaited Sunday has arrived. The Green Bay Packers play in the Super Bowl today. Now I know that many of you could truly give a crap about that, but this is the big time at my house.

As many of you know, my parents moved to Green Bay 30 some years ago. I drove my kids up north every summer to stay for a few weeks and most often we hit the summer training camp for the Packers. We'd spend hours at Lambeau Field, watching the players.

During Packer Camp, the players walk with the kids, ride their bikes, and sign endless autographs. Bleachers are set up beside the outdoor practice field and rarely a seat opens. Lots of standing and through the years we watched the likes of Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers, Reggie White, Sterling Sharpe, Robert Brooks, Gilbert Brown, James Lofton, Ty Detmer, William Henderson, and a mass of other men that took the time to thrill my young boys.

I remember many a moment where a very large player would reach over the crowd of adults or older kids to take up my young son's football to pen his name. I remember when Robert Brooks was engulfed in a sea of supporters shouting his name for an autograph. My oldest, Jacob, said, "Mr. Brooks, may I have your autograph?" The player stopped and reached back and signed Jacob's Wheaties box.

Perhaps one of the most memorable signings occured with a 5 year old Jordan, now 22. After Ty Detmer handed him back his autograph book, Jordan burst into tears. My mom and I gathered around him, worried as to the problem. "They're all writing in cursive," Jordan cried.

Downstairs at the lake house, youngest son Ian put together a collection of Packer memorabilia. Jerseys, newspaper clippings my mom sent him. The signed footballs and helmets. When he lived at home, each weekend he'd put the Packer banner next to the team they played that week. If it wasn't going well, he'd put the other team's banner into a closet and shut the door.

Today, we have a big pot of beer brats cooking.

Expecting a crowd of 10. Jacob's searching Austin for cheese curds. We've got potato chips and French Onion dip. Potato skins. Bob and I are deciding which jersey we'll pull off the wall to support the team.

Two things will be missing in this quest for Super Bowl greatness - Jordan and Ian. Jordan's up in Montana attending a job fair and that Ian boy, the creator of our basement decorum, is at the University of Alabama. Doesn't seem right that he can't be here with us today, but we plan to Skype him in for a little bit of time. Frequent calls to my mom in Green Bay and my brother, Jordan, in Sheboygan will have the phone lines rattling.

You are hereby welcomed to The Texas Green Bay Hall of Fame.
(We have no idea how that speed sign got there.)

To all you Steeler fans out there, Sorry. Just gotta believe about the Pack. Come join us in the Texas Packer Hall of Fame.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday everybody.

Onward to the New Year

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

My oldest son took the above photo down at Zilker Park in Austin. The city has put up this tree of lights for as long as we've lived here, probably longer. When my kids were little, my husband and I would take them down to the park and we'd stand underneath and twirl.

When my son sent this photo he took this past Christmas season, I recalled those nights of twirling with my little boys. Those recollections brought me joy and I closed my eyes and whirled in my mind, the events of the past year swirling with me. After a year of extreme highs and lows, I welcome the new year in hope of a steadier stream of events.

Alas, rather than further lament over how to write my first post of the year, I've decided to "butt in chair" and type away. If this lands all over the place, so it goes. The new year has arrived; I'm happy about it.

Of course, I don't know if life this year will accommodate a level stream, but I can hope.

This morning, I have the house to myself. No teaching job today. Middle son and husband off at work. Youngest son safely ensconced in his dorm room at the University of Alabama after sliding in between the South's snow storm and freezing cold. He left yesterday morning at 5:30 taking the southern route through Baton Rouge and arrived in Tuscaloosa in 12 hours. Proud of that boy doing that all by himself.

Seems odd to have him gone again although I didn't see him much while home. He worked landscape and made his money for books and expenses this next semester. Had a good lesson on how if he were to depend on that income to live, he'd have to give up certain things like electricity, entertainment, and food. (Great fodder for school success.)

Middle son currently living at home substitute teaching in the day and painting the YMCA at night. Decided that working on a for profit trophy deer hunting ranch argued with his sense of wildlife preservation and conservation. Eagerly pursuing a wildlife job anywhere in the country, but employed in the meantime.

Still his presence here means my husband and I are not empty nesters. That transition has been put on the back burner. We still can't run around naked.

But today, no one is home and I won't tell you what I'm wearing. Instead, I'll begin my first blog of this wonderful new year with some photos from our holiday. Get this first one going and hopefully the ideas and words for getting back on track will arrive.

The Christmas card I sent this year, ala A Christmas Story. I want that lamp.
The other card I sent.
One of my favorites that I received.
The mushroom crab cakes I made up. No recipe, but to die for.
My granddog getting intimate with our splurge for dinner.
The dinner table filled with Swedish meatballs and potato sausage, lefsa, cucumber salad, and the lobster. A white dinner.
Me with the kids. Husband had to take the picture.
Chelsea's new socks.

Happy New Year everybody. I'd like to share my list for the new year, but, I don't have one. However, do cheer for the Green Bay Packers Saturday night. Go Pack!