I was closing my computer to go walking with John when I looked outside and was struck by a rainbow. Obviously, it didn’t hit me, but it did get my complete attention. We watched for a while as the sun shone on the mountain. At dawn there were heavy gray clouds moving steadily, brighter clouds above, and blue sky peeking through. We walked up the street, turning every few seconds to see what was happening. The rainbow was thicker and more intense than any I’d ever seen before. The little toy camera did its best to capture the scene. It recorded the rainbow, as well as our tan house. After ten more steps, we turned to find the rainbow had disappeared. What a beautiful start to the day!
Are you home if you can’t get in it? We had driven 2,116 miles and returned five and a half days after we started. John opened the garage door with the clicker. We each took an armload of things, but we didn’t get very far. The door between the garage and house was locked. Our son was here while we were gone, and we had asked him to lock the house when he left. He did exactly what we wanted. The only problem was, we assumed all car keys had a house key with them. We failed to add them to the Honda sets when we bought the car a few months ago.
We checked with the neighbors to see if they had a key. We had talked about it, but we never followed through. An emergency call went out to John $, and luckily he was in Asheville, not at his place an hour away. He agreed to come rescue us. Waiting wasn’t bad. We were close enough to the house that our phones and computer could access the internet I sat in the sun on the front porch and read today’s newspaper, while John listened to one of his favorite streaming radio stations. Soon $ was here. We scurried in and turned up the heat. $ helped replace a smoke detector battery that would have driven us nuts if we hadn’t. That incessant chirping, which started after he left yesterday, was unbearable. It was good to be home and inside it.
Getting home was a bit of a gamble. We knew we were taking a chance going through the gorge. $ warned us to check before we came home that way, because many wildfires have made the Smoky Mountains more smoky than ever. We could see the thick haze from Tennessee. If the road had been threatened by fire, it would have been closed. As it was, we saw signs that the tunnels were closed. We could get through, but we had to go single file. It turned out that the tunnels were wide open, but we were following a huge wind turbine blade on a truck. It was a beautiful thing, sculpted in graceful curves. Ahead of the blade was half a house. Neither of those things could have gotten around the tunnel detours. Neighbor Shawn said she saw two blades on I-40, so she must have seen one that went through before or after ours.
Now that we are home, I’ll be putting out fires of a different sort. The computer has been unable to upgrade its operating system, and the phone declares it has no SIM card. If both refuse to operate at the same time, I may just crawl in bed and catch up on sleep. That would be a good idea, don’t you think?
There were no planned activities until the wedding at 4 pm on a Sunday. Seven of us squeezed in our vehicle and went to a Lutheran church. We met nephew Anders, Caroline, and baby Rowan there. In talking to the pastor after the service, they discovered they knew people in common. Among others, they knew the founder of the high school John attended.
We had lunch together at a Philly Steak place In one photo, I had everyone except Chris.
Caroline, Steve, Anders in the mirror, Lars, John, Rowan, Barbara, Thom
The wedding was lovely. After the vows were made, the ushers moved a table to the center with an empty container and three glasses of sand. The pastor had white sand, representing God. Bride and groom had colored sand. White sand was poured first, the foundation of their marriage. The three of them took turns pouring.
The result was lovely.
People are the most important thing at weddings. We have photos of the grandparents and parents of the groom and one of the couple at the reception.
Emma PollockChris and Steve LamosChris and Chrissie PollockCJ and Lauren Pollock
They were not messy with the cutting of the cake, maybe because it was cheesecake instead of a buttercream concoction.
Cheesecake and pumpkin pie. Note lighted stands for cakes
I haven’t been to a wedding recently and had no idea what people did when the bride and groom left the church. We used to use confetti, but that was replaced with bird seed. What did we have for this wedding? Sparklers!!! It was beautiful. The young couple will be flying to Utah in a few days, back to their jobs and their new life together.
I was concentrating on the people at the wedding shower and didn’t think much about the surroundings. I knew how people on the groom’s side were related, but I needed a family tree for the bride’s family. We were in farm country, so things were a bit different. The hostess leaned out of the front door and invited us to enter through the garage. My eyes opened wide when the first thing we saw was a large farm tractor. Skirting it, we heard the reason. It’s a farm, so no one walks in without removing his shoes. You never know what you might have stepped in. I was glad I didn’t have holes in my socks.
Indoors was elegance you most certainly would not associate with a farmhouse. There were cabinets of fine china, huge works of art on the walls, and the most up-to-date kitchen you could dream of.
Our exit was equally different. When it was time to go, I was sorry I was wearing sneakers and couldn’t just slip my feet in and walk away like the others. The owner pulled an office chair over for me to sit in and stood there holding it so it wouldn’t tip over. He was on his way to the furnace and asked niece Caroline to guard the chair. Boy! Did that make me feel old!
He proudly showed us the furnace as we walked around the tractor. We peeked in to see half a tree merrily burning, heating the thousands of gallons of water that flowed through the house, the barn, and outbuildings. He explained that he couldn’t see the sense of walking out in the snow and ice, and that’s why he built it inside the garage. The light bulb went on in my head. In North Carolina people have outdoor wood furnaces that work exactly the same way, only we can see them from the road. Stoking in bare feet would not be an option. The man said he feeds the fire twice a day in the winter and once a week in the summer. You could see Yankee ingenuity at work on that farm.
Warning: This post features our family and may not be interesting to a general audience.
The son of our niece was getting married, and people converged on a small town in New York for the event. There was an historical connection for us. We spent the last night of our honeymoon in a nearby town. John drove us through that town, and we found the old motel building was still there 53 years later. We also found the ice cream parlor that we had enjoyed. It is now an unappetizing real estate office.
It would be fun to get a map and draw lines showing where people came from to attend this wedding. Niece Chrissie’s relatives drove in from downstate New York, Maryland, Massachusetts and both Carolinas. Her husband Chris’ folks came from New York and Connecticut. I chatted with a cousin and thought he sounded like home. He mentioned that he came from Brooklyn. Yep, a good, solid New York accent made me feel right at home, since I lived on Long Island for 50 years.
There was a quick shower for the bride the afternoon before the wedding. I took a photo of two of my nieces and two sisters-in-law. They were the only ones I knew before the party started.
Of course you’d like to see the bride, and here she is opening a gift.
The older generations on the groom’s side partied in our motel. It was wonderful to see Chris’ relatives, some of whom we met when he married Chrissie 25 years ago.
There was an impromptu book signing at the far end of the room. A relative bought Lars’ latest book and had him sign it. (The Sea Wolves by Lars Brownworth about the Vikings)
We met a great niece for the first time as her dad, Anders, showed her off. After the party, we went to their motel room to visit a bit more. There were seven of us in the room with the baby, and we spoke in whispers. It is hard to snicker and snort silently! We didn’t wake her, though.
We saw Manhattan coming and going. Driving from Pennsylvania, we saw the west side from New Jersey.
We had lunch out with daughter Kate and Michael, celebrating her Veteran’s Day birthday. Michael made a cake himself and put it together with real whipped cream and strawberries. Impressive! It was a most enjoyable visit.
Michael mentioned his handyman hair cutting tool and had Kate model it. She holds it as he cuts her hair evenly. In her other hand are the beaters Michael used to whip the cream.
From New Jersey, we went across the Tappan Zee bridge to cross the Hudson River and down to Westchester County to pick up grandson David. He was waiting for us in front of his dorm. I tried a photo of the east side of Manhattan from the car as we streaked out to Long Island to see grandson Nathaniel.
We had pizza from our favorite place that was close to our old home. Wanting to visit without interruption, we ate in the car at the harbor where I used to walk every morning.
David and Nate before eating pizza in the car
David and I chatted all the way to and from Long Island, so it was Nathaniel’s time to talk. We loved hearing about the things he has done in cooking class and admired his cake. He did what you see except for the flowers that his teacher made.
After two hours with Nathaniel, we took him home and headed back to the college. I wanted to know what David was doing in his accounting course. He said I wouldn’t want to know, but of course, I did. They are setting up books using 13-column sheets. Real sheets of paper? Yes. I said in the accounting office where I worked, they got rid of them years ago, switching to computer spreadsheets. They don’t have computers in that class. One thing is for sure, he will really appreciate getting back to computer work after that.
There was a new low in our motel – do-it-yourself toilet paper. John saw a plastic thing in the sink and didn’t immediately recognize it as the TP holder. Thank heavens we found a new roll in the bathroom and put the two together.
What a fabulous thing it was to spend a couple of hours with one of my writing idols! I don’t remember how I found her blog, but I followed her soon after I began blogging. We were similar in a number of ways. Our differences intrigued me. I found Dor to be a gifted writer with a sense of humor, and you can’t beat that in my book. Each time we passed her town on our way to New York, I wondered what it would be like to meet her in person. I had a hunch our husbands would get along. Bill grew up in the Bronx, and John was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, and went to high school in the Bronx. They would talk the same language, wouldn’t they? My hunch turned into lunch.
We arranged to meet for lunch in the historic town, which was easy to coordinate with texting. Recognition was a cinch, since we’d seen each other’s photos many times. It was delightful to relax and enjoy chatting in a quiet restaurant. If you have a chance, visit her blog here, and you’ll know why I enjoy her so much.
On the way out of town, we drove by VMI, Virginia Military Institute. That, too, I had noticed on highway signs and longed to see. I finally got there, Tom and John (alums)! It was most impressive, although my photo from the car doesn’t do the place justice. I loved seeing the handsome cadets filing out of a building as classes let out.
The weather was gorgeous. We were pleased to note that trees became more colorful the longer we drove. Our mountain trees are past prime, because of the warmth and drought. I finished writing in the car, under the light of an almost-full moon.
Some typos are too good to correct. The title should have been Miscalculation. The last sentence of the previous post included the equation for calculating the time of sunrise anywhere in the world. Of course, I didn’t use that. I looked at some weather app and set my alarm accordingly. I should have known something would go wrong. Up to waking point, this had been the easiest daylight savings time change of my life. I did not run around like a demented chicken (no offense, Faye) changing all the clocks I could find/remember on Saturday night. On Sunday morning I changed the grandfather’s clock (apostrophe appropriate, Ellie, because the clock that had belonged to my granddad hangs on a wall). On the way to church, we had our separate jobs. John drove, and I changed the clock in the car – equal division of labor. Sunday afternoon I reset the microwave and clock times. The rest could wait.
The alarm sounded on Monday morning. There was supposed to be a hint of light outside. It was black. I had gone to bed early enough to be rested by 6, and so I was. The morning didn’t match. There was not enough light to walk by until 6:45. I am now older and wiser by a small margin. I think the sunrise calculation on the app had not caught up to the time change until Monday morning.
Next spring I plan to ignore the time switch completely and let the world tell me I’m wrong. I hope all of you had a smooth transition.
The temperature was right at the freezing mark when I got up. About half an hour later there was enough light for me to see visible proof of frost on the railing. There was a slight crunch underfoot as I stepped onto the deck.
I’m not good at reading rabbits. Are you? I wonder if the one I saw on the road had been shot. There were red bits around it, but I think they were undigested berries rather than frozen drops of blood. I’ll bet son John $ and grandson Nathaniel are glad they aren’t here for me to ask if one would like to skin the animal and the other to prepare Hasenpfeffer.
When I climbed the steep hill on the way home, the sun was just about to peek above the mountain. Sunrise was officially at 7:58 according to computer weather, and it was probably an hour later than that. Have you ever wondered how sunrise is calculated? I looked it up and almost immediately flipped off the page before math hysteria could set in. If you’d like to see the equation, hold onto your chair and click here.
I noticed and wrote about four items on the daily walk, but I didn’t think solitary day two would be as good. That has happened before. As I mentioned in a reply, John and I talk the walk, chatting most of the time we are walking. When I talk or listen, it’s as if my eyes are blocked. John had a play date at the train club, so I was walking alone for several days. Sure enough, I did not notice much to write about on the second day.
Here are my observations:
I saw two honeysuckle blooms that will be frozen to death in 24 hours, and I spotted a dead blue glove on a driveway. The nearest mailbox to that driveway had a rubber band to hold the door shut, and the band has snapped.
That’s it. I had my hand ready to grab the little toy camera. There were any number of beautiful scenes, but each time I thought of taking a photo, I took off my brain filter. That filter sees the sun lighting up a mountain or notices a beautiful cloud formation while erasing poles, power lines, and unsightly debris. I know people Photo Shop those things out, but I’m not one of those.
Maybe because I had nothing interesting to write about, I found words coming out of my mouth that I never expected to hear. Neighbor Dawn stopped her car to speak to me as she drove to her volunteer job. She was urging me to get out and enjoy the outdoors, because colder temps are coming tonight. I grinned foolishly and said, “I am a writer.”
There! I said it! Always before, I danced around the subject by saying I like to write or I spend a lot of time writing. This time the bold statement hung in the air, unchallenged. I am not an author, one paid for written work, but I am a writer.
View from the deck, the scene I see while writing Shadow of the big oak covers the yard.Leaves of the old oak have settled on the ground
My name is Suki, my human is a writer, and this is about my world. The world according to Suki The Cat. My humans smell funny, look weird, and I can't understand a thing they say, but they feed me, so hey, what are you gonna do?
Mehrling Muse 