Perfect Sunday Afternoon

October is the one month you can really relish a perfect afternoon. Today, the air is cool, the sun is bright, the sky is blue. As the sun sets the hillside glows like it only can in October.

Today as I sit on the deck I feel good about the completion of a job--the yard is freshly mowed. I wear my Ronde Barber football jersey. It is just the right weight and coverage for the temperature. In Florida it was too hot to wear it.

I sit and read a book in the late afternoon sun with an amply fortified screwdriver (that's beverage, not tool).

There is only one problem that crosses my mind.

When I moved here my goal was to read the unread books on my shelves and remove them one by one. The goal was to have only a few boxes of books to take with me the next time me moved. But the local used book store, Barnes and Noble, and my book club are conspiring to introduce me to enough really good books that I want to keep them.

Today I am reading one of them. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society has me laughing out loud, loving the characters, and marveling at what people go through in times of war.

I live in a place where the proximity of war is unknown. I am grateful.

My shelves will have one more book to protect.

And I have one more perfect Sunday afternoon to remember.

Impressions of Warren

3 year old boys are a hoot. It was such fun watching this one. I always see such growth when I visit my grandsons. I try to see them twice a year.
Vocabulary words Warren has educated me on this year: Combine, Payloader, Road Grader, bulldozer, cart, wagon, tractor, Quad Track, Castle--a grain elevator! :), planter--He may be working on his colors and numbers, but he can ID any piece of farm equipment.
Here are a few "Warrenism's".
Looking for a lost toy (his red man), he takes a flashlight down the hall calling "HellOOOO?"
Mowing the grass with his toy mower he mime's putting in ear plugs, shakes his head, lipping "I can't hear you".
Lines up his blocks across the room, building 'hoses'--imitating the farmers laying 'tile', a black hose that is buried in the ground to help drain off the water.
Runs in the room, grabs his handy-man light, hammer or wrench, "I have to fix something" and disappears again.
Calling for his dad: "Hey, Mike!"
Gets his bike out: "I have to go to work now. Don't take my picture, Granberry." ( a sign of an over photographed subject ;} )
And my favorite:
A gentle hug and a soft "I like you, Granberry."

Computers....can't live with OR without them

I had hopes for today. I got up and did my workout. I took care of the light chores. I had lunch. Then I looked at the rest of my To-Do list. Vacuum, clean up the loft, walk, read, Call HP. I REALLY didn't want to call HP. But I knew I had to.
Last week I had an issue with a wireless printer we own. I called HP and played Spider Solitaire on the desktop computer while HP used my laptop remotely to find out what the problem was. The techs are very cordial, and pleasant. They say my name with a funny accent and occasionally the connection on the speaker phone seems to screech, but I don't mind. They can navigate the morass that makes up a computer hard drive with an ease that eludes me. I watch my arrow seemingly move with a life of its own until, voila, my printer begins to work! Yea!! I think.
The next day I open Internet Explorer. A dialogue box pops up telling me my security program has been disabled. Hmmm. I play around and have no clue. I try to turn it back on, but nothing happens. I restart my computer. No luck.
I'm busy. I don't have time for this. So I ignore it until I do.
Today I can't ignore it anymore. It is time to face the phone...HP tells me the problem is in my computer, not my printer. DUH...'no, they can't fix it'. Toshiba tells me the problem is in Windows. Call Microsoft. Microsoft tells me it will be faster if I go online. I spend hours online clicking here and there and literally going in circles. Each click eventually takes me back to the beginning, with no PERSON in sight! Finally, I go back to the phone with the information MS wants just to tell me how much it will cost for me to talk to a person.
Bottom line? Another pleasant tech takes control of my computer, does her guru thing, makes SURE MY PRINTER STILL WORKS, and leaves me grateful and annoyed.

Computer and printer: $800.00
Tech support to make it all work: $60.00
Assuaging my frustration .....  Priceless????    Not Exactly. Maybe I shoulda' bought an Apple.

Night Lights

During my visit to Jan's I gave you lots of impressions of Iowa. The flat, gravel roads. The sounds. The fields. It is so different from Pittsburgh that I always enjoy going there as much for the view as for the family. I'm going to share one more view that really fascinated me the first time I noticed it. It is the lights at night.

When Jan met Mike she took him to see the ocean. He said he had never seen water for as far as the eye could see, but he had seen corn for as far as the eye could see. In daytime in Iowa, it doesn't seem as if there is much else. It is corn and soybean fields, distant horizons, occassional outcroppings of trees, a house and barn every mile or so.

But walk outside at night and look around. There are lights everywhere. Stand in the road and do a 360 degree turn. The lights don't seem to be in a row, but they are all around you. Where do they come from? None of them look close, like the ones in your neighborhood. But they don't look far away either. They are 'across the field'. Some are red blinking ones. You can assume they are attached to a tower somewhere. But where?

I've learned that light travels great distances. I knew that from my science classes, and from looking at the stars. In Iowa it becomes more evident. Those red blinking lights are on windmills 30 miles away. They sit just above the horizon and look as if they could be on the main road. The white lights are the dusk to dawn lights on farms I can't even see during the day. I don't see big lights, small lights, near lights, far lights, (excuse me Dr. Seuss). I see LIGHTS!

It is an amazing sight to me. Just another intriguing aspect of a part of the country very different from Pittsburgh.

Welcome, Fall

September flew by helped along by the birth of Samantha. I am home again, and slowly regaining the rhythm of the day. I have to admit that one advantage of family and job is that it always made it easier for me to get back into a routine. Since the demands on my days are few, it always takes me about 3-4 days to regroup and develop a daily pattern.

It didn't help that I was welcomed back home by 4 days of rain and cold weather. I was only able to get out and walk one day. Today is wonderful. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and I'm finally able to really see the beginnings of the fall colors around me.

Fall is truly my favorite season. The changing leaves and the crisp air are hard to beat. As much as I enjoy summer with it's warm days and trees covered in green, a beautiful fall day cannot be matched. I love the golds, russets, reds; fields of goldenrod, and bloom of mums. Unfortunately, sometimes I have a difficult time embracing it. I also see it as a signal that winter is on the way and it will be many months before I can enjoy those warm days again. But last year, I discovered one of the hidden blessings of fall.

There is a natural progression to fall. It begins with just a hint. The days become 'slightly' cooler, and just a bit shorter. As it moves on the world around me becomes breathtaking. I fall in love with cool nights for sleeping, windows open during the day, air that is crisp and clear. Eventually all great things must come to an end. The colors fade to brown. The days become cold and chilly. But just then Christmas lights appear everywhere--in stores, in nursery's, on city streets. By Thanksgiving, fall maybe almost past and winter may be almost here, but the holiday season is in full swing. And that brings it's own special joy.

Fall provides a beautiful backdrop as it transitions us from summer to winter. And the Holiday season provides a beatiful backdrop as winter arrives. One of the side effects of spending so many years in Florida is that I found winter harder this time than when I lived here as a child. But there are gorgeous winter days as well.  So as Fall descends I will embrace it in all it's stages. I will be like Frederick in Leo Lionni's children's book. I will absorb all the colors of summer and fall so that when winter comes I can remember that deep blue sky, green leaves, daisies, rosebushes, warm sun, and babbling brooks. And on a gray, rainy or snowy day, I'll pull out those memories and warm myself with them as I sit by the fire.

Sounds of Iowa

One of the things I enjoy about walking is listening to the sounds. At home I hear the sound of cars on the highway, the hawk circling above with it's high-pitched cry, the crows cawing as they fly through the trees.
In Iowa the sounds are different.
Some days all I hear as I walk is the wind. It blows across the fields, whipping into my ears. It blocks the sound of oncoming vehicles so that I have to turn around frequently and look for the tell-tale cloud of dust letting me know something is coming. It silences the birds, and keeps the insects down in the grass.
If it is not blowing too hard, but in the right direction, it carries the train whistle across the fields to the house. Warren will try to look out the window to see it. He can see it after harvest, but the corn blocks the view now.
The traffic sounds are of pickups, vans, the schoolbus in the morning, the mailman. I haven't heard a siren yet. And now, as harvest begins, I hear the rumble of tractors, combines, carts, on their way to the fields and the semi's filled with grain on their way to the grain elevators.
But the sound I love the best is on a quiet evening as the sun is setting. There is no wind. The traffic is sparse. As I walk I hear the crunch of my feet on the gravel. An occasional cricket in the grass. The owl in the wood by the south lot. He hoots as I pass, and then is silent, until I return to pass by again. An occasional flutter of a bird in the cornfield trying to hide from me, or settle in for the night. The drumming of wings as a pheasant heads for a more secluded spot. On a quiet night even the corn doesn't rustle.

On a quiet evening, I stop to watch the sun set over the fields. It slowly disappears, leaving behind a horizon layered in orange, tangerine, gold, pale blue. It is so still I can hear myself breathe.
And then I continue home to the crunch of gravel under my feet, and the song of a cricket to keep me company.

Muffin Man

Last night Warren and I made banana muffins. He has had some baking experience. He makes pancakes with Daddy on Sunday mornings.

Warren was an excellent sous-chef and we had such fun.

First he mashed the bananas while I whipped the sugar and butter.

Then he helped me measure the salt and baking soda into the flour.

I added the eggs into the sugar/butter mixture and slid the bowl in front of him. He stirred as I added the flour mixture and the perfectly mashed bananas.

I was so impressed at how well he stirred. All the batter stayed in the bowl.

And here is the result! Yum!!