To all the boys I loved before...a long time before

Another boy I loved when I was in junior high. Looking at him now, I can't figure out why we were all crazy about him. He looks kinda...soft. Girly. Non-threatening. Well, that explains a lot!



 

I'd also like to point out that, yes, I owned the album.

Then there was this guy who I was deeply, meaningfully crushing on:

 

To be honest, this was one where I was way more in love with Luke Skywalker than I was with Mark Hamill. I was at the age where I saw movies multiple times, and the fictional world of Star Wars was as important and real to me as anything that was happening in my own boring life.

I had a thing for fantasy, so these guys were also on my list of Hot Star Fighter Pilots I Loved:

Dirk Benedict:



Richard Hatch:



Gil Gerard:

  

Excuse me while I go off in the corner and have a fit of the giggles over Gil and those awesome skintight gold pants!

Then there were the cop shows that I loved, and the cops that I loved too!


 





More later. By the 80s I was starting to develop odd crushes on unsuitably older (!) men who were not at all obvious objects of affection. Here's a preview:

A crowd of men and boys

Has anyone else seen one of the pictures in Newsweek from this week? It is a double paged spread of a crowd on a street of Pakistan. The crowd seems to be all men and boys, although there may be one veiled woman in the back, that figure is blurry and hard to see. They are walking down the street, wearing dusty sandals and a mix of traditional clothing and western jeans and t-shirt, with stones clutched in their hands. Some of them are shouting and screaming, one boy in the front has a face that is twisted in anger as he pulls his stone back to throw. They are protesting, supposedly, that stupid movie.

It just makes me feel a host of things. Sadness that the world is filled with so much hate. Anger that this group of people is out there having anti-American demonstrations, shouting "Death to America," for reasons that don't justify that kind of xenophobia. Frustration that in this day and age we still understand each other so little.

The same magazine has an article where a Western journalist spends a week with a Saudi woman who rarely leaves her home, has never spoken with a man who is not in her family, and is proud that her whole life is about pleasing her husband and raising her kids to support the exact status quo. She wants her daughters to grow up to have a life as limited as hers is. I cannot understand that at all, so I guess the lack of understanding goes both ways.

I am a news junkie. I listen to NPR, read websites, and try to keep up with what is happening in the world. Sometimes though, I think I should cut myself off from it all. The knowing doesn't make me any happier. It just makes me mad, and scared, and frustrated. And it makes me feel so small and powerless.

Oh Tuesday, you did not do me well

I finished another quilt top today and am sending it off tomorrow. After this I can get started on the bed quilt I am going to make for my parent's new bedroom.

My foot is still not healed, even after my third shot on Tuesday. The same Tuesday on which I was also rear-ended as I sat waiting for the woman in front of me to start going at the green light. She did not go and did not go, and I waited, and then blammo, I was rear-ended. Totally not my fault (I was stationary at the time I was struck) but I am still in the middle of having to call the insurance companies and arrange car repairs, etc.

It was one of those days when I shoulda stayed in bed!

Monday Monday Agony Monday

My usual masseuse was sick today, so they offered me a different one. I didn't know any of them, so I said, "Anyone, it doesn't matter to me."

So I got Andre.

Andre was a nice young man, Russian, with a very thick accent.  Andre also seems to have trained as a masseur at his local gym, or maybe his local prison.

The massage was very vigorous, he reached muscles I didn't even know I had.

I was already exquisitely sore from several hours of weeding on Saturday, which I did after my first yoga class in two weeks.

The combo of yoga and gardening left me stiff and sore. The massage loosened me up, but there were a couple of moments when I nearly screamed. I kid you not, this guy had hands of steel and was not afraid to apply them to my body with all his strength. I got tickled a couple of times, wondering what would happen if I started shrieking, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh, you are killing meeeeeee!"

All the boys I've lurved before...

When I was a little girl in SC with a rad pink record player I played the records of The Osmonds. I loved Donny.








That pretty much goes without saying. All the girls loved Donny. Heck, for all I know, all the boys loved Donny as well, I shall have to check with The Gays to see if they too had a deep love and longing for the Sweetest Osmond.

Then there was David, I lurved him.



At the age when I loved David, I didn't have any real idea of what sexy meant, but in my naive, unformed, podlike way, I knew that David Cassidy was sexy.

A bit later, when I was getting a better idea what sexy was... I liked this a LOT.



"Adam-12, Adam-12, Randolph Mantooth makes me feel all giddy and tingly in ways I feel difficult to explain!"

More to come!

Autumn evening

What a beautiful, beautiful weekend! Perfect early autumn weather and lots of free time.

Today I finished an interesting mystery: Midwinter Sacrifice by Mons Kallentopf. It's one of these Swedish police procedurals where the main character may be Malin Fors, a 30ish single mom - but the REAL main character is the harsh climate, bare landscape, and freezing winter of Sweden, and how it seems to have made the Swedish people hard and flinty themselves.

I was outside reading and realized that even though it was 72 degrees, I was feeling chilled because of reading page after page of freezing Swedish weather.

It was cool enough this evening that I got out my flannel pjs for the first time. It's not cold, but just cool enough that it's comfy to have the flannel on. I LOVE this time of year.

It was a smallish needle, but it was a needle

Years ago I broke a bone in my right foot. I had a cast for months and months, and before it was over I also had a DVT. But it was about 17 years ago, so that is history.

I do wonder though if the break led to some basic instability in my right foot. Three times in the last three years I've had plantar fasciitis in that foot. For the last month I've had a new and different type of pain in the ball of my right foot. Dr. W, my podiatrist, says it's a classic case of capsulitis of the second toe.

Plantar fasciities is the number one foot complaint. Guess what is the second most common? Yep, if there is a common complaint, I've got to get on the bandwagon. I am a joiner, a follower, one who does what everyone else does. At least when it comes to podiatric problems. Apparently.

I made the error of googling the condition, and now I am going to be watching my foot - like a hawk - for any signs that the second toe is migrating over the big toe. Pictures of the surgery to correct it when it gets really bad were pretty gross.

I also have thick calluses on the balls of both feet, and to get my shot of steroids in there he sort of punched the needle in there. Even with the area numbed up with cold spray it was a shock. Listen, I am physically not a brave person. What I am is a proud person. Even though there was a part of me that wanted to scream "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh," there is a much larger part of me that would rather eat dirt than cry in front of a doctor. I couldn't help a great big flinch, but I didn't even whimper. I did rather wish that there was someone around to say, "You are a very BRAVE girl," give me a sucker, and let me choose a toy from a treasure box, but the podiatrist is nothing like the pediatrician.

Some days, being an adult sucks!

Old jewelry, old feuds, old houses

I took some old gold and sterling silver into a local jeweler and sold it yesterday. Mostly it was my mom's unwanted/broken/single earrings, but there were a few larger things. In the end Mom had about $240 dollars worth of store credit. The next time she comes to visit we will go over there and arrange for her to have The Wrong Ring re-worked or re-set.

The Wrong Ring is one of my Grandmother's rings that was actually left to my aunt. A different one was left to my mother, but in the clusterfuck that was the aftermath of Grandma's death and sorting/dividing her things, my mother wound up giving her sister The Right Ring and taking This Other Ring. To me, the ring mom has is nice, but I think she sees it not as an actual piece of jewelry, but as a bitter reminder of a bad time and of the dissolution of her birth family. So, I said, why not have the Unsatisfactory Ring changed into a pretty pendant, or a different ring that won't make you feel bad. It will still be something from Grandma, but it will be different! I hope this works. Grandma has been gone for about 10 years...but the sadness and bitterness of the family break remain.

While I was there, I looked at a couple of amethyst rings set in white gold. They were so pretty.


This is not one of the rings, but it is similar to what I liked:






Each of the rings was around $500. I enjoyed trying them on and admiring them, but when you get right down to it, I am not at a place in my life where I feel I can spend that kind of money on something that is a want and not a need.

I also, while I was out and about, stopped in at Sherwin Williams and got paint chips. I may not be going to spend big bucks on jewelry, but I am going to spend cash having my house painted and fixed up. We have chosen paint colors and the work should start in late September. These are the names of most of the paints we'll be using. We are going a bit more saturated and traditional this time. These color chips I copies off the Sherwin Williams site don't really look like the colors on the paper chips I have, but at least you can see where we are going.

Sassy Green for our bedroom

Compatible Cream for kitchen, dining room above chair rail; great room

Quietude for Living Room.

Hardware. Under chair rail in dining room.

Flowerpot. For the Spare Room.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The music of the falling rain

I walked the dogs in the mist and the rain today. It has been very rainy lately. As I walked I thought about how some places have so much rain it's dangerous and others are desert dry and gasping for any rain at all.

It made me think of how when I was a little girl I always wished I could "send" rain to Texas. My Grandpappy and Uncle Mike farmed in the Texas panhandle...and the constant  refrain was how dry it was and how badly they needed rain. And in SC we had lots and lots of it. In my way of thinking, that wasn't fair - why did God give us all the rain we needed, but my Grandpappy was going to lose a crop if he didn't get some rain? Frankly, I don't know that I have moved on that much, it still doesn't seem fair to me.

I  weeded for a very short time this morning, and good grief, I have a bunch of dog stinkhorn fungus growing out of the mulch in the back. It is REVOLTING. Have you ever seen it? Here's a photo:

The brown stuff on the tip is sticky and slimy looking and according to the innernetz, it smells like rotting meat to the flies it attracts. Ugh and double ugh! With all the rain we have had lately, there are all sorts of fungi growing everywhere, and the grass is growing like crazy and the weeds are flourishing.

Orange isn't my favorite color, but you go with what works

Yesterday evening I went down to my friend Christine's house and spent the night. We rose at dark-thirty to walk her dogs and then head off to the Germantown flea market, held the first Saturday of every month. I contributed nothing to the sale this month other than a table for Christine to display her wares. She had a very good month. She covered her expenses, made a few dollars, and (this is the important part) got rid of a bunch of things she didn't want in her house anymore.

This afternoon I took care of my own dogs and then went in for a Very Special Pedicure. Had to have my toes painted with some orange polish, to celebrate the first Clemson game of the season. It's just this thing I do to celebrate my alma mater in a way that is personally meaningful to me. Clemson won, which didn't have anything to do with my toenails, but I am happy for the team and the fans. Go Tigers!

This game was held down in Atlanta, and my friend/college roommate Amanda F. was there. I am sure she and her family are all having a happy evening now that the close game came out well. All wins are good wins, and now, if I know them, they are looking forward to the first HOME game. If you haven't ever been to a Clemson game, you should go sometime, it's an experience. Picture about 80,000 rabid fans, wearing mostly orange, faces painted with Tiger Paws, ready for "the most exciting 25 seconds in college football," when the team runs into Death Valley. The stadium is nicknamed Death Valley...Southerners are NOTHING if they are not fond of exaggeration and hyperbole. It's in a valley, it's near a cemetery*, and back in the 1940s some coach told a sports writer that he had to take his team to Clemson to play in death valley...WELL, that's exactly the kind of thing to make a Southerner's toes curl in ecstacy. Frank Howard Field at Memorial Stadium is so commonly known as Death Valley that I am willing to bet that there are diehard Clemson fans who hardly know the stadium's real name. Frank Howard even got a rock from the actual Death Valley, which is right there at the top of the green grass in the end zone. It's called...Howard's Rock.

*Thanks to Clemson University, my parents are now the proud owners of a plot in the cemetery on the hill near the stadium. So one day, their earthly remains will rest peacefully near Death Valley...not a bad thing for a Clemson family...