My exercise class goes out to breakfast once a month to celebrate all the birthdays that have taken place during the month. Normally we go on a Wednesday, but for some reason, the January birthdays thought they would be a little different, and they decided that we would go out on Monday.
So, tomorrow, I plan to drive across town to pick up the lady who normally stands next to me in class, and drive her to class and the brunch. It will be nice to have the chance to catch up with her. She’s been dealing with an eye problem related to diabetes, and hasn’t been able to drive since Christmas.
I need to pick up groceries in the afternoon, and spend a little time in the kitchen.
Tuesday, I’ll grocery shop for Elegante Mother, and spend several hours visiting with her and her caregiver. It’s also time to pay her bills.
Hmmmmm…EIther I wrote this to a friend, or I must have posted this all ready. I’m just babbling on, forgive me.
I hope you all have a great week. Spring is just six weeks away, right??? *G*

I was astonished this year to see a BLACK heron, or possibly egret. It has a favorite hunting perch on the bank of a retention pond near our home. It’s about the size of the smaller white egrets that come up to us from the Gulf Coast.
I went on-line to see what I could find about them, and discovered that they are an AFRICAN species. How the heck did he get here? I wonder if he was blown off course and into hurricane winds that brought him across the Atlantic, and can’t make the trip back against the prevailing winds?
It seems as though I’ve seen more variations in our feathered friends this year. Not only do we have small and large white egrets, but we have the great blue herons with a lot of variation in their markings. It’s been a pleasure to watch the birds in the early morning as I drive through a major refuge on my way to exercise, and I love to see them in flight.
And, this year I have set up a quilt studio, with my sewing machine at an east-facing window. I had the blinds pulled open during the afternoon, and Ed, the cat was sitting on the edge of the table, watching for chipmunks. We were both surprised when a tiny hummingbird flew up and hovered just outside the window from Ed. Usually they don’t stay long enough for us to get a good look. It’s astonishing just how petite they are, and how fast their wings are beating.
I love all the birds that come to visit, but the herons and hummingbirds have been a real pleasure this year.

Recently, in a large French city, a poster featuring a young, thin and tanned woman appeared in the window of a gym.
It said: “THIS SUMMER DO YOU WANT TO BE A MERMAID OR A WHALE?”
A middle aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.
To Whom It May Concern:
Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans). They have an active sex life, they get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins, stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Barren Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia . Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.
Mermaids don’t exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human? They don’t have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them not to mention how could they have sex? Therefore they don’t have kids either. Not to mention who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store?
The choice is perfectly clear to me; I want to be a whale.
P.S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver and a coffee with my friends. With time we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room it distributes out to the rest of our bodies. So we aren’t heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy. Beginning today, when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, “Good gosh, look how smart I am!”
Thank you to the author of this piece. If you care to come forward, I’d be happy to give you credit for a witty comment on the issue of what women should weigh.

I’m going to share something with you that I found in my e-mail today. I don’t know who David McClure is, but this is his senior moment:
“David McClure of McKinney: A senior moment … at 48?
David McClure teaches science and coaches at Faubion Middle School in McKinney. He is also a Teacher Voices volunteer columnist.
$5.37. That’s what the kid behind the counter at Taco Bueno said to me. I dug into my pocket and pulled out some lint and two dimes and something that used to be a Jolly Rancher. Having already handed the kid a five-spot, I started to head back out to the truck to grab some change when the kid with the Emo hairdo said the harshest thing anyone has ever said to me. He said, “It’s OK. I’ll just give you the senior citizen discount.”
I turned to see who he was talking to and then heard the sound of change hitting the counter in front of me. “Only $4.68” he said cheerfully. I stood there stupefied. I am 48, not even 50 yet a mere child! Senior citizen?
I took my burrito and walked out to the truck wondering what was wrong with Emo. Was he blind? As I sat in the truck, my blood began to boil. Old? Me?
I’ll show him, I thought. I opened the door and headed back inside. I strode to the counter, and there he was waiting with a smile.
Before I could say a word, he held up something and jingled it in front of me, like I could be that easily distracted! What am I now? A toddler?
“Dude! Can’t get too far without your car keys, eh?” I stared with utter disdain at the keys. I began to rationalize in my mind. “Leaving keys behind hardly makes a man elderly! It could happen to anyone!”
I turned and headed back to the truck. I slipped the key into the ignition, but it wouldn’t turn. What now? I checked my keys and tried another. Still nothing. That’s when I noticed the purple beads hanging from my rearview mirror. I had no purple beads hanging from my rearview mirror.
Then, a few other objects came into focus. The car seat in the back seat. Happy Meal toys spread all over the floorboard. A partially eaten doughnut on the dashboard.
Faster than you can say ginkgo biloba, I flew out of the alien vehicle. Moments later I was speeding out of the parking lot, relieved to finally be leaving this nightmarish stop in my life. That is when I felt it, deep in the bowels of my stomach: hunger! My stomach growled and churned, and I reached to grab my burrito, only it was nowhere to be found.
I swung the truck around, gathered my courage, and strode back into the restaurant one final time. There Emo stood, draped in youth and black nail polish. All I could think was, “What is the world coming to?” All I could say was, “Did I leave my food and drink in here?” At this point I was ready to ask a Boy Scout to help me back to my vehicle, and then go straight home and apply for Social Security benefits.
Emo had no clue. I walked back out to the truck, and suddenly a young lad came up and tugged on my jeans to get my attention. He was holding up a drink and a bag. His mother explained, “I think you left this in my truck by mistake.” I took the food and drink from the little boy and sheepishly apologized.
She offered these kind words: “It’s OK. My grandfather does stuff like this all the time.”
All of this is to explain how I got a ticket doing 85 in a 40. Yes, I was racing some punk kid in a Toyota Prius. And no, I told the officer, I’m not too old to be driving this fast.
As I walked in the front door, my wife met me halfway down the hall. I handed her a bag of cold food and a $300 speeding ticket. I promptly sat in my rocking chair and covered up my legs with a blanky.
The good news was I had successfully found my way home.”
I’d say I have a LOT of company on this issue! lol

I was just doing the same everyday things, but it seemed this weekend that things went very smoothly. I accomplished more, and with each little thing crossed off that mental list, I felt a growing sense of satisfaction. I still have have tons of things that need to be finished, but I got some of them out of the way, and that’s a start.
I have an ironing basket that I’ve been ignoring. Bandannas, white antique pillowcases with embroidery or tatting or crocheted edgings, colorful everyday cotton dinner napkins, and white formal dinner napkins, a red tablecloth, the dress for a pillowcase doll that had been washed……things that have accumulated through the spring and early summer. I got about half of that done.
I have three more seams to do, and I will have finished a double bed sized scrap quilt. I pulled out three other quilts that are ready to be quilted to get their sizes and make sure I have the backing and battings for them. I have a project to finish for my sister, and one for my youngest granddaughter. I have a set of six place mats and a table runner to complete. I’m getting closer to getting things finished, now that I have enough space. The bookshelves I ordered should arrive this week!
I went out early this morning to prune in the herb garden. The scent was heavenly. Everything I brushed or clipped gave off it’s special perfume. I used the string trimmer to edge around the yard and the herb garden, and even tried to hack back some of the weeds in the west yard. It was good timing, because a storm came through this afternoon. I could hear the plants saying, “Ahhhh!”
I spent a large part of the day working in the office. I decided to get my filing done. Lack of order has a negative impact on my work habits, so it was time to do something about the disorder in the office. I filed for the company, I filed for Elegante Mother, and I filed our personal papers! Then, I balanced the company checkbook, typed two proposals, and entered accounts payable. I was flying! I was able to leave things for Dear Husband to look over and sign, and I walked out of the office with a sense of accomplishment.
Don’t you love those days when things have gone smoothly? I treated us to roasted garlic, baked feta, and browned baguettes of French bread, and we noshed before we worked on dinner. I hope this week will continue to go as well as the weekend has.

I had one of those senior moments yesterday. I was on my way to run errands. I had to stop at my local kitchen equipment store to pick up a special order before they put it out for sale to others. I had to make a deposit for Elegante Mother, and several for our company. I needed to visit the Post Office to get a letter off to a friend in Scotland, I had to pick up toner and copy paper for the company, and then stop to do some grocery shopping.
I was on the overpass heading east when I something caught my attention and I thought, “I need to blog about that!” I could hear the opening lines, and it was something that was worthy of my soapbox. I didn’t write it down. I can’t remember what the heck it was. I DO remember thinking that Roberta would have made a fine entry on it, and you all would have had an opinion.
It’s really too bad that I simply can’t remember just what it was that caught my attention. I hope that’s my only senior moment for this weekend.

FRESH peaches and strawberries. I am so ready for summer produce! Our grocery chain had peaches for sale, and as I walked by their scent wafted up at me. I couldn’t resist touching them, and discovered that they weren’t rock hard! I bought three or four, and then bought more the next time I was in the store. I’ve been eating peaches and strawberries at breakfast and dinner. I shared them with my sister, Frankie, of Just My Opinion, while she was visiting this week. YUM!!
When I was in my twenties, I lived in the far northwest suburbs of Chicago. The week after I was married, my parents and youngest sister moved to Table Rock Lake in Missouri. My father would make occasional trips up this way for business, and I asked him to bring me a bushel of peaches from one of the orchards in his area.
He made the trip, and had to wait a day until I could drive down to Joliet to meet him. I was rather surprised to find that half the bushel of peaches was gone! They were so ripe when he started out that they began to bruise before he got into Illinois, and waste no-want not kind of guy that he was, he pared away the bruised spots with his pocket knife and ate the rest. I found peaches on every surface toward the end of the room near the air conditioner. He’d really tried to get them to last for me, but FRESH peaches are fragile. I hope to make a simplified peach “pie” that was featured on the cover of Midwest Living last summer. I saved the color picture because it was so enticing.
I visit the L.A.Times Crossword Corner blog almost every day. We were talking about zucchini for some reason. It’s likely it was puzzle-related to start, but you never know what prompts some of the discussion. At any rate, I thanked the posters for reminding me that I needed to go out and harvest my zucchini, that there was a baseball bat sized one waiting for me. That prompted a flood of recipes to use up zucchini. I think almost everyone has a zucchini bread recipe in their files. Someone posted a link to Simply Recipes to the chocolate zucchini cake. I’ll be making that cake tomorrow! I wasn’t kidding about the big zucchini. It’s got to be about a foot long and my hand won’t close around the width. I may make some zucchini bread while I’m at it. I’ll be caring for Elegante Mother this weekend, so I’ll take some of both to her.
It’s that time of year. I suspect that I’ll have a lot to say about fresh produce in the coming months. Why would anyone eat a frozen dinner when they could have tuna salad with fresh dill on a tomato warm from your garden?

Thursday, I was driving down to see Elegante Mother. I’d been to exercise, stopped at home long enough to water plants, and was on my way. I was about a third of the way there when I realized I was having trouble staying awake. That alone should have scared me into waking up, but I really needed to close my eyes.
I was passing the parking lot of a very large park district sports field. It was almost empty, so I thought I would pull in and take a quick nap. I’ve never done this before, but it seemed to be the best of the choices open to me.
I left the car running so that it would stay cool. I was parked so that I was facing away from the sun. I tilted my head back and was gone in a flash. About ten minutes later there was a loud knocking at my passenger window. A young woman was there, asking if I was all right. I’d fallen asleep with my mouth open, and she must have assumed that I had had a heart attack.
I was mightily embarrassed to have been caught like that, but comforted that a stranger would stop to check up on me. I reassured her that I was fine, and both of us left the parking lot. It seems that just ten minutes made all the difference. I made it to my destination without any problems.
I used to be the original sleep anywhere kid, but as I’ve gotten older my sleep patterns have changed a bit, and not for the best. I have a bad knee that makes it difficult to find a comfortable position in which to sleep, and it wakes me several times during the night. It addition to that, despite the fact that I want to be up at 5:00 in the morning, I still don’t have the smarts to be in bed at 9:00 at night. I really need to work on that. Short changing myself of sleep when I’m already deprived is just stupid! (Don’t tell my step-daughter I used that word. I’m supposed to be erasing it from my vocabulary for the sake of our granddaughters!)
At any rate, all’s well that ends well.

It’s spring, it’s spring! (doing the happy dance) It’s SPRING!!
I have crocus in bloom, and the daffodils have pushed up through the mulch. I moved two pots of tulips (I waited too long to get them into the ground last fall) out to the sidewalk. I discovered that the rhubarb is coming up, too. I waited too long to plant that, too, and had to pot it up. I hope to find the perfect spot for it this spring and create a spot where it will be happy for many years to come.
I’ve seen iris and day lilies and tulips sending up new leaves, the chives are greening up, and the magnolia outside my office window has flower buds that are swelling, a sure sign that warmer weather is coming.
Just as the trees turning color in the fall makes me want to ready my nest for winter, seeing the first of the leaves pushing their way out of the ground makes me want to rejuvenate my surroundings. Spring cleaning can’t be far off, and repairs that have been waiting are getting closer to getting done.
YEA, SPRING!!!

I am so sick. I think that I’m getting better, but it just can’t happen fast enough.
Dear Husband and I managed to scrape together ten days when we could get away to Florida. He goes each year to golf in his oldest son’s memorial golf tournament. I went with him last year, and knew I was coming down with something on the way to the airport. I was sick the entire time, and he made me march up and down these gorgeous beaches on the Gulf coast. I really wanted to just sit, but I humored him, because he’s sure that you burn off the “cold” faster if you’re using more calories.
This year, we planned to spend the first four days with family. My step-daughter and her family had arranged to go to Disneyworld, and we agreed to go with to help wrangle the kids. Our youngest granddaughter had this terrible upper respiratory “thing,” but she was willing to play and smile, and gave minimal resistance to our wiping her eyes and nose. Two days later, her mother came down with the same thing. Two days later Dear Husband came down with it, too.
We were driving south to the Keys and he was sick. He hadn’t started the awful coughing yet, but he was achy and generally felt bad. We spent most of the afternoons last week, in beautiful, sunny, WARM, Florida, because we felt under the weather. I managed to stave it off until Thursday, the day before we were supposed to fly home, and the aches and sinus drainage and coughing started up.
I think maybe I should cross Florida off my list of places to visit in the future. (sigh)
We returned home about 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning on Saturday. I have been sick ever since, with terrible coughing. I’ve slept almost upright in my chair for the past three nights. Luckily, the doc gave me a prescription to help my ears, and Robitussin with codeine so I could get a little rest. I am SO ready for this to end, and people are telling me horror stories about it lasting a month.
I hope it clears up soon, so I can visit with my mother. It’s been more than two weeks since I saw her last, but I don’t want to risk giving her whatever this is.