40 Years Revisited

I've had fun reminiscing over the last 40 years. Some of it boggles my mind like:

10 Houses, 3 States, 7 Communities.

I'd like to just say here, I hate to move! I would have made a terrible military wife. Even though we have lived in 10 houses, once we settled in a community we usually lived in one place for 8 years, and we even lived in our last house for 16 years!

I've worked as an Avon Lady, a pre-school teacher, but mostly as a Children's librarian in both the public library and the public school media center.
Larry has been a Prison Guard, a Cop, but mostly a great Sporting Goods Salesman.

We've always had a dog, but at one point we had 2 dogs, 2 cats, and 2 large tropical aquariums!
Then came kids. We had 2 of those as well!

When we married we had an oven that could be programmed to come on and go off at a certain time so my meatloaf and baked potatoes were ready when I got home from work. Our TV had 3 channels plus PBS and we had 2 phones in the house. Land lines of course.

Now we have a microwave, Flat screen TV with 400+channels and a DVR (I hope to never have to give that up!). Cell phones have replaced a need for land lines and we have 2 computers to keep us connected to the world.

Our favorite toys were the bass boat, swimming pool, and finally a corvette--when the girls were off our auto insurance!

Just a few of our Favorite Memories
Camping on our honeymoon
Water Skiing on the Alafia, Fishing every body of water in Florida,
Learning to live with Alligators, snakes, but never spiders!
Those annual 3 day drives to the Connecticut cabins and the blueberry farm, with picnics at Mt. Tom or Kent Falls
Watching the Space Shuttle every chance we had
Swimming with the manatees; a once-in-a-lifetime experience!
A Hot Air balloon ride
The Christmas Larry and I gave each other bath towels with similar, but different mallard duck patterns on them
And of course, family dinners ending with the chocolate giggles

So many trips: (How lucky we have been!)
My first view of the Colorado Rockies
Jamaica
Alaska
Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein
Seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time
A House Boat trip on the St. Johns with 2 daughters and 2 friends
Larry's Wilderness Fishing Trip down the Rogue River
The Redwood Forest
My Trip to N.Y. with Jen after 9/11
My Trip to Canada with Jan for Canadian Thanksgiving

(I wonder what the kids will add to this list?)

Is it possible to wrap up the memories of 40 years in a blog?
No. That would be called a memoir and would be at least 200 pages!

All I can say here is that in 40 years we've had some good times and a few, but only a few, heartbreaks. There were ALE HOUSE nights on Thursday's when the week was long and the day had been longer and we were enticed by the $5.00 bucket of beer that awaited us. But more often were the nights we all sat down together for dinner, even if it meant waiting for daddy to come home, and then going to bed as soon as dinner was done.

In 40 years we have had dinners end in uncontrollable giggles only for someone to say "OMG, it's the chocolate!"

In 40 years we have kept in touch over the phone when one parent or another was traveling and:  a child stayed out too late, a horse had to be put down, through broken legs (plural-we have 2 kids), or a computer crashed and "my whole report was on that disk!"

On Sunday we exchanged Anniversary cards. As we read them we realized that although the design of the card was different we had selected cards where the message was identical, word-for-word! It reminded us of the "Duck Towel Christmas" 22 years ago.

Yes, In 40 years we have grown, changed, but managed somehow to stay in tune with each other.
It's been a good 40 years.

40 Years Ago Today

40 years ago today, I married the love of my life. Although back then you couldn't have convinced me I would ever feel differently, today I am 40 years wiser. I know how easily and often things change between couples. So today I feel especially honored to say that I am still married to the love of my life.

I really wanted to find a way to celebrate this event so recently we decided to treat ourselves to a one of a kind trip next spring, either on a cruise ship or on a cross country train excursion. Last night, however, we marked the day in a traditional way with a dinner out at a wonderful restaurant called Shakespeare near Ellwood City. The building looks like a castle and is on a golf course. The food was not traditional Elizabethan fare, but good old seafood for us "Floridians".

As we ate we reminisced on favorite foods we've experienced. It was a pretty cool way to look back over the years! The best calamari was in Anchorage. It was mouth wateringly unbelievable! One spring break we stayed at a little place on the St. Johns River in Florida. I've never really cared for fried clams, but we tried them at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant near there and ended up going back every night for more. The best clam chowder ever was at Selena's, a little restaurant in Tampa. And we've even been blessed to have melt-in-your-mouth veal in a little village in Switzerland. Yep! It's been a good ride so far!

Last winter we purchased a great picture of us. Our church was having a directory made and each family got one free portrait. We went to the sitting with full intentions to NOT purchase the "Package". After the sitting the salesperson went through each pose, one by one. Dutifully we selected our favorite poses of each other. She put all 3 shots in a frame which looked lovely, but we weren't wavering. I really loved Larry's picture. He really liked mine. But we didn't waver!

"When were you married?" she asked. Jokingly we admitted that we'd almost made it 40 years. Voila! 3 pictures of us captioned "Celebrating 40 Years Together-2011". We looked at each other. We were beaten by a good sales person! The portrait looks great in our entry hall.

The years have been good, and we've been lucky. No set back was too severe to handle, and the adventures were fun. Best of all we raised two phenomenal daughters who married two really cool guys and they all gave us 3 fantastic grandkids. OK, I know I'm bragging here, but hey, it's my blog! And it's been 40 years in the making.

More Bird Tales

After taking such a hiatus from blogging I find there are a lot of stories that have been fermenting in my head and are ready to come out. Today I'm going to share the woes and successes of our robins.

When we first moved into this house we had a few odd or upsetting experiences with the robins in the area. At first we were delighted when they started building their nests under the eaves of our deck. Momma would fly away every time I walked out the back door, but she would come back soon enough and roost on the eggs. Then we noticed some very strange behavior from another robin. At first I thought it was Momma, but I realized later it had to have been a different one. This robin would fly at the window in the back door repeatedly. I watched and realized the same bird was doing the same thing to a neighbor's window. A friend suggested maybe he was flying at his reflectiong, but the window was under the deck roof and he would come at it from a side angle, so I'm not sure that was the answer. The end result was dirt/mud dabbed all over the door. Another end result was that we found the bird dead under the window a few weeks later. We dubbed him the Kamikaze Robin.

The good news was that the robin in the nest hatched 3 little ones and we watched as they grew. Just as we were preparing to leave for a trip one weekend I heard a thump and found a dead bird on the portico over the front door. There is a very large window there (see yesterday's post). I didn't want a dead bird lying on the roof so we got out the ladder. I climbed up and retrieved the bird and carried it gently to the edge of our yard and pitched it into the ravine. It was after we got back that we found the other dead robin and assumed it had finally knocked itself out on the back door window. I pitched that one into the ravine as well. 2 days later Larry called me frantically. All of the baby birds had tried to fly and one had gotten his leg tangled in some grass or twine in the nest. It was dangling helplessly as all the other birds were squawking away. I grabbed a towel and stepladder and climbed up. Placing the towel over the baby bird I was able to hold him while I extricated his leg. I didn't want to just put him out in the wide open grass especially since we have hawks around here, so I carried him gently to the ravine and placed him in taller grass. This may not have been the best move as the mother spent most of the rest of the day hopping around the yard squawking and calling. I didn't know how to tell her he was fine and only a few feet away! Larry was an immense consolation as I fretted about the mother.

"She's already seen you throw 2 other birds over the edge. She probably thinks that's what you did to her baby!"

Ahh, the sweet condolences of a sympathetic husband. I've only been able to assume that Mother Nature took over and the mother and her family were all united.

Meanwhile we have another family in the back under the deck. If you look closely you can see 3 babies. It seems late in the season for hatchings but maybe it's because we had such a late spring.



Mom is that you?





Baby robins are surprisingly quiet. They don't chirp much, but when they hear me, they tuck down in. Meanwhile, Mom waits patiently in the grass for me to go away so she can feed them. 



2 beaks and one head=3 babies



I don't know about you, but the birds in these pictures don't look very old to me, and yet 2 days after I took the pics I went out for a morning walk. I was struck by how frantic and noisy all the birds were. Several Robins swooped at each other, squawking away. Sparrows frantically cheeped in the strident call they make when they are trying to distract you. Only the goldfinches seemed oblivious. I went to check the nest and much to my surprise it was empty. The babies had flown and the parents were in high protective mode. Momma Robin hovered near the hostas in the front of the house, so I'm guessing the 3 little ones were hiding there until they could get the nerve to actually fly away.

I love watching the birds... as long as they leave my windows alone!



KamiKaze Robins

This past Saturday I decided the time had come to do a dirty job...clean my windows. Not all my windows. Just one in particular.

When you look at this picture you must wonder what kind of a housekeeper am I and how long did it take for this window to look this bad! In answer to the first question, I'm an average housekeeper. On any given day there is a fair amount of dust and Maggie's fur coat lying around, but on any other given day, it has been routinely cleaned up. I don't "DO" windows (as the expression goes) very often, but they do get done. In answer to the second question--How long did it take this window to look this bad?--about a week.

Somewhere around mid-May we noticed a robin perched on the railing outside the window. Every minute or so he would fly up at the window. I know some birds have a hard time understanding windows, but I would think after repeatedly flying at it the robin would have come to realize that there was an invisible wall there and he wasn't gonna get through it. He persisted flying at it until after several days he had managed to put mud on every single window pane. We tried leaving the hall light on so he would know it wasn't a tunnel to somewhere, but he just kept flying at that window.  He never hurt himself, mind you. He just kept working at whatever task he had set for himself.

Now that he has left it alone, I decided to take a chance and clean it.

In the end, I had to admit it was a good idea. The railing was beginning to turn green and the robin had left lovely white polka dots all along the black rubber mat on top of the portico. Actually the white polka dots have appeared everywhere from under the grill on the back patio (how???) to marking every step on the front walk. Our blacktop driveway looks like a runway for birds. And since I'm on the subject, can I just add here that robins leave much bigger polka dots than sparrows!

It's a good thing I like the birds. In fact, tune in tomorrow for some more bird brained tales from the nest.

When Did I Get So Busy????

I can't believe it has been over 3 weeks since I last posted an entry on here! Where did the time go?

It's June. Mother's Day is long past. Memorial Day was a week ago and today I finally got around to buying flowers to plant outside. How did it get so late?

Before I retired I was pretty busy. OK. To be honest, I was very busy! I didn't consider myself to be a workaholic, but then I don't think most workaholics recognize the trait in themselves. One of the things I loved about my job was the variety of tasks associated with it. One of my biggest flaws was an inability to focus on one area. Instead I became a Jack of All Trades, but Master of None. Outside of work I was also busy, mostly through church activities. Two trains of thought characterized how I chose things to get involved in. The first one was that if I read of an opportunity or a need for help, I would often think to myself "I could do that". The second step was to check my calendar. If that particular time block was free I would say "Sure! I can do that." It wasn't a very stringent selection process.

When we moved I was ready to completely revamp my way of thinking! I guarded my time fanatically. For a year I was involved only in our church choir and handbell choir. But our neighborhood is a friendly one and after a year two groups had formed; a book club and a Bunco group. I was in! Anything to do with a Ladies Night Out and a glass of wine seemed to be a good fit! Over the next few years I added 2 church groups; the Mission Committee and the Flea Market Committee. In both areas, my tasks are fairly limited and a requirement for me to commit to anything was that it had to be something I can do from almost anywhere I have access to a computer. The Flea Market committee is a short term task and I handle publicity (ads emailed to the newspaper) while the Missions Committee has honed our tasks to a few meetings through the year to tweak plans. I handle most of the web site information. I felt I was controlling things pretty well.

However, I guess if I'm being forth coming I have to add in here that through the missions committee I have begun helping at a food pantry one day a month and my husband got me involved in his corvette club..... as Secretary. Hmmm.... how did that one sneak in? Uh-oh, I do believe an old thought pattern resurfaced. I distinctly remember thinking when I was asked if I would do it, "I could do that, and the meetings are already on our schedule, so ok."

I guess that's how it happened. Suddenly I find myself with a house layered in dog hair (yes, she is STILL shedding!), no summer flowers planted, and no time to sit down to blog. I can (and will) rationalize that this past 6 weeks have been a perfect storm of activity. Sandwiched between 2 trips was the need to finalize the plans for the Flea Market, maintain my commitment to the corvette club and the food pantry, keep the yard mowed during a very active growing season, and maintain some sort of house cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping. Suddenly I knew what people meant when they said now that they are retired they don't have any time!

But it's all past! There will be a few summer trips which is the best part of life, but not so much activity. I think life is going to return to a more normal pace. You'll know for sure if you start seeing more views from this empty, but no longer quiet, nest!