Meteorological spring

As mentioned by every blogger north of the Mason Dixon line, and many south of that marker, it continues to snow on us.  All over us.  Except last weekend, February 24^th, when I took the girls to the park for a winter snow festival.

Our local meteorologist said, in his teaser at the beginning of the six o’clock news one night last week, it is meteorological spring and he would explain it to us in his weather segment. And, he did.

Meteorologists prefer clean divisions; for them the seasons commence March 1^st, June 1^st , September 1^st, December 1^st.  For crying out loud.  This is as unrealistic as a teenager in love.

Accountants like clean quarters, too, but ours really work.  They are recognized in the real world.  Businesses report their quarterly returns, the stock market responds, 401K’s go up or down.  Our quarters are the real deal.

I believe meteorologists are deceiving themselves. The seasons change with the equinoxes, and those are three quarters of the way into their respective months.  Daylight and dark does not balance itself on June 1^st, to accommodate meteorologists. 

March 3, 2013, 10 am, NE Ohio.  The white specks are falling snow.

Does this look like spring?  My hopes are on March 20^th.

Ten years

My friend Linda and I had lunch last week or the week before.  We went to Doug’s Dinner Bucket, up the street.  It’s where Carol and I go for breakfast.  We sit in the booth for two hours, catching up.  Pam, the owner, doesn’t care.    All the breakfast traffic is gone by eight in the morning.  Much of the lunch business is take out.  The phone just keeps ringing while Carol and I sit in our far corner.  It’s that kind of a diner, open from six in the morning until two in the afternoon.

Linda picked me up for lunch and we hung out in the studio for a bit before we went to Doug’s. Jan was working away on a custom quilt that was taking all week. As our lunch date was a Wednesday, there was a lot of quilting done and plenty of admiring to do before we left.

At lunch Linda told me about the shows she would do this year, and who would help her.  Her schedule is scaled way down; the first show is Broad Ripple in Indianapolis in May.  I helped her there last year and had fun selling rugs and feeding the ducks at the motel.  Her cousin will help set up and tear down.  I’m thinking of getting on the bus, but haven’t told her yet.  It’s fun, but it’s a hard four days for two old ladies.

Suddenly Linda said “It’s the ten years!  Ten years between Janice and us and there she is putting in another concentrated quilting day.”  Linda was absolutely right.  Ten years ago we were sixty.  Still on the road alone, although it was my last year.  We could handle our gear, build and stock our displays, sell with a smile for the two or three days of the show, tear down, pack up, stow it away and drive home.

Linda is still out there, but only selecting shows where she can find the muscle power to unload her van, set up her display; come back in two days and do it in reverse.  She’s out of stamina and I’m out of that and balance.  My cane and I simply stand back while the heavy lifting is occurring.

It’s all about something to do.  Work.  I’m going to talk to Linda about doing more with the internet and her magnificent customer base.  Change is not one of her favorite occurrences, but I’m going to present her with some internet ideas I’ve researched starting with a new, selling friendly web site.  My favorite so far is a platform/template called Shopify.  If any of you know of or use internet selling venues, feel free to hop in.  I would especially like to hear any opinion on Etsy vs. a dedicated internet shop.

Could be the plan for the next ten years.

Trinket board with Ojo de Dios

Once I used the little bulletin board for posting important notes.  Now I have a wall sized bulletin board on another wall, and important things on the little one.

Starting at twelve o'clock, a tiny gold lapel pin that says Attitude. They were part of the dress code of a company my daughter worked for.  She gave me one.

One of Beth's first business cards.

A fabric bookmark found by my friend Carol at an antique show.  Probably a give away for a company named Bo-Peep, trademark warranted.

On burlap, something my granddaughter Bekka made in first or second grade.  That is her hand in foil in the middle.  Bekka will be 21 this year.  A friendship bracelet Laura made is hanging on it too, but may be too small to make out.

Next the owl macrame.  Beth made that in a grade school art class.

Larry's whistle.  Larry hired me as the controller of a small company that was swallowed years later by a larger company and when an even larger company swallowed that company the little company was spit out and left to die.  I left before it was spit out.  Larry was not part of the original sale.  He was leaving for health reasons.  He used the whistle at company picnics, and when he left he gave it to me, to be in charge.  He died before he was fifty.  A good man.

Blue mardi gras fish beads.  Someone handed them to me at a show, for good luck.

God's eye.  Ojo de Dios. Wikipedia gives a long account of the Indian spiritual connection of this little object.  It also is a simple  yarn weaving, easy construction for children to understand and do.  Francis made this one; he may have been about five years old.

Santa Claus pencil.  I found the pencil in my Christmas stocking the last year mom was alive.  Jan says it wasn't from her, so I figure it was from mom.

A cartoon Jan once cut out for me.  Two suits with brief cases are passing the door that says Account ant. An ant is working at the desk.  One suit says to another "All this time I thought it was a misprint."  I'm an accountant.  Get it?

That's the story of my God's eye.

How cold was it yesterday?

Beth noted a park event for yesterday in her Cleveland paper: Drop by with your family for fun in the snow! Test your skills at winter challenges such as snowball making and throwing, fort building, sled pulling, and more. Challenge others and yourself in snowshoe games. Dress for the weather. Enjoy hot chocolate by a roaring fire within Ledges Shelter. No snow? No problem! If the weather does not cooperate, we'll have other outdoor games to play. Ledges Shelter, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. 

We arranged to meet at noon, turn the cousins loose, sit by the roaring fire and drink hot chocolate.  Laura was ready to leave before I got out of bed.  I put her off until after breakfast; we arrived around eleven.  There was no snow.

There was a roaring fire in each end of the CCC lodge, built in the thirties.  Two rangers were happy to see us come in.  On inquiry I learned we were the first fun in the snow customers.

I asked if they drew the short straw, and the tall young ranger said actually, they had invented this straw, and they had a good backup plan, too.  A button toss game and making god’s eyes from a bucket of yarn. There was no snow

.

It was cold. It could have been worse.  The day’s high temperature was thirty at midnight, and went down all day. I had on my standard winter gear, starting with a long sleeved tee shirt that is merino wool sandwiched between knitted tee shirt cotton, a turtle neck, another shirt, my winter coat.  I was cold.  The girls were game to be the practice children for back-up activities.  No snow.

One ranger left his ranger hat on the table.  Much as I covet a ranger hat, I only took a picture.  I looked around later on and saw the hat was the focus of a game.  

A family with four young children came in and most children descended on the yarn box to make god’s eyes.  Eventually the ranger enticed them all out for kickball.

There were no chairs for sitting around a roaring fire in a damn cold lodge, so I wandered around and took pictures.  I’ve mentioned that I like how well the federal government has maintained all these buildings.  I posted a picture of the outside of this lodge on that starkly blue winter day a couple of weeks ago:

Two weeks ago

Roaring fires notwithstanding, the building is only a shelter.  The stones are impressive, but the corners let in the outdoors. It was cold.  

The two chinks of light between the stone and the wood are from outdoors

The window panes are original glass, single pane.  The hinges and fasteners are iron.  I don’t know if they were purchased or if the CCC employed blacksmiths, too.  I’d wager they did, as all the quarried rock in the walls came from Deep Lock Quarry nearby and was cut on site.  I like the age patina on everything.

I was not unhappy until my feet grew cold.  I don’t tolerate that nonsense.  A text to Beth showed her still at home, a not unexpected state of affairs.  We made a backup plan to meet at the house, and the girls and I took our leave about 12:30, with the young family eating their picnic lunch on a blanket in front of the fire, cups of hot chocolate all around.

Three cousins kibitzing the afternoon chess game of two more cousins.  Around a warm kitchen table.

Another Krueger, another bird

The Krueger who survived his encounter with the Bobwhite Quail in 1961 was a bold and enthusiastic young fellow with a culinary habit may have led to his demise a year or two later.  He loved Japanese beetles and patrolled the top of the grape arbor, feasting.  Dad found him under the grape arbor, beyond resuscitation by the vet, and blamed it on the damn beetles.  Who knows.

Fast forward to the summer of 1966.  Beth could walk, I was hugely pregnant with Shelly and my husband brought home a kitten.  Because pets were not allowed we drew all the apartment curtains and lived in semi darkness until we moved the week after Shelly was born.  Krueger was named in honor of the late Krueger, who was named for college friend.  I’ve named many cats after friends.

In spite of living in semi darkness the first five months, Krueger had a happy and expansive personality.  He and Beth were fast friends and playmates.  She drug him around; he invented the game of chase Beth and knock her down.  Round and round the short dividing wall between the kitchen and living room, then Krueger would double back and jump on her chest, knocking her down.  Laughter, squeals from two year old Beth and the game recommenced.

We moved from the apartment to a house to another house in Krueger’s long life, without ruffling a whisker, but most of his years were spent in our Mentor house.  Krueger started the cat trail that led from one corner of the back yard, diagonally to the elm tree then straight into the back garage door that led to the door into the house.  In twenty years there I watched that cat trail, used by all my felines, turn to hard pack with no grass and visible as a depression under the snow.

My neighbor across the street called me one evening to come get my cat’s litter out from under his porch.  “But my cat is a male.”  “Well, he’s the father!” “My cat is neutered.”  “Oh, please get these kittens!”  I don’t recall if I did.

I was gifted a canary once, in a Taj Mahal cage.  Harry Canary led to Carrie Nation, the finch, and her husband and babies, and a parakeet each for my daughters. There was a cat population to deal with too; Krueger, Phoebe Snow and BoomBoom.  The solution was to hang the cages by hooks in the ceiling.  This led to hard packed areas in the carpeting underneath; cats sitting patiently, waiting for a bird to fall.  It never happened.

Somewhere around the age of thirteen or fourteen, Krueger began to decline; his liver rapidly failing.  Dr. Kroh, our wonderful vet, took good care of all my animals.  He put Krueger’s throat back in his body after a failed encounter with a pair of Airedales.  He put a pin in BoomBooms front leg when the shattered bone couldn’t be rejoined.  The last time he saw Krueger Dr. Kroh said take him home, make him comfortable for a few days.

We put Krueger on a warm bed under the kitchen table, food and water under his nose.  We carried him out occasionally to relieve himself, and he watched the family activity from his spot.  At Saturday chore time Shelly spread papers on the table and took down her parakeet to clean his cage.  The first time ever the parakeet jumped straight out to have a look at the big world.  He escaped outstretched hands over and over.  He landed on the floor, strutted right past the helpless cat.  Krueger stretched his neck, went chomp and had his bird.

Krueger died the next day.  But think about it.  All his life waiting and then the bird walked straight into his mouth.

Krueger was borrowed from the internet