Jim, from Parkway Rest Stop….here’s a bit of trivia for you: Antonomasia is the practice of using a trademark as a generic term.
I’d never given any thought to the fact that someone would have named that misuse of words. Probably some lawyer said, “We can’t have people using “Kleenex” to describe just any tissue. We’ll have to create a name for this syndrome so that we can take the issue of tissue to court!”
Or, maybe it was the Xerox Corporation who coined the term. There are loads of other products in this same boat.
Jim….did YOU coin that phrase??

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Some crazy person always says “Summer colds are the worst!”
Bah humbug! ANY cold is the worst! It doesn’t matter when it comes, a cold is a rotten thing to have to deal with. At least in the summer you could go out and bake in the sun.
Mother came down with a cold about ten days ago. I’ve been babying her, trying to get her to eat and to get up and move around. She missed her hair appointment last week, but she’s well enough to go to her appointment on Thursday. I can tell that she’s not quite over it, but she’s getting better.
Unfortunately, now I have her her cold.
Bah humbug!
I’m going to wrap myself up in my most comfortable clothes….and carry throat lozenges in my pocket, and have an endless cup of hot tea. And let myself be just a little bit grumpy. It’s about all I can afford to do. Life goes on, and there’s too much to do to take to my bed.

This week, while I’ve been away from my blog, Mother Nature has been doing her best to paint our landscape. We’ve had sunny weather well into the 80s with unusually warm nights for April. This morning, as I was having toast, I looked out into the grove, and realized that the shrubs and trees were beginning to blur the outline of the the houses to our west.
During the winter, when the trees are bare, we are very aware of our neighbors. There are six houses along our lot line. From where I’m sitting, I’d guess the houses are about the distance of a football field, or one hundred yards. Our grove is old, and a great deal of it has fallen over the years. We’ve purposely left it wild as cover for wildlife.
I welcome the leaves in the Spring. They give us a sense of privacy you don’t normally have living within the boundaries of a town. The noise is muted and the trees give us a little relief from the afternoon sun.
Despite what Robert Frost had to say in “Mending Wall,” I rather like the barrier my grove gives. Perhaps I’m like the neighbor who is buried in the past, but there are times when privacy is to be cherished.

since I last posted? I frequently ponder the passage of time. It seems to me that a good description of time would be a steam roller perched on the edge of a hill. Envision it, as it starts to give in to gravity….moving slowly at first, picking up speed until nothing could stop it on it’s downhill flight. Eventually, it hits the flats and slows, until all the energy of that glorious escape has dissipated.
I wonder if that simile holds true for our lives? As a child, I thought time would never pass. Now, I’m in the downhill stage, with each day flying by, crammed with activity. Will there come a time when I hit the flats and time will once again move more slowly?
I’ve talked with my 88 year old mother about this. She feels that there is never enough time in a day to accomplish everything on her list. The key to the passage of time has to be what we hope to accomplish. Time moved slowly for me as a child because I had not yet discovered the ability to keep myself busy. Now, there’s a never ending list of things to do.
I hope I never return to that stage where I have time on my hands.

Today we saw a Rufous Sided Towhee for the first time this Spring. Its one of a group of birds which visit us on their way to their summer homes. We have a thrush, and soon one yellow bellied sapsucker will be hunting through the mulch for bugs.
We have a pair of mallard ducks, and we hope to see indigo buntings. Our bird book is at the ready while we watch for new visitors.