Drafts Lost and Found

(I found some drafts on my dashboard and decided to post them.  Wonder if I'm missing the reasons they were stuck in drafts.) 

My blog will no longer allow me to type a post, only a title. That makes no sense. The keyboard comes up but no cursor. Ever. No matter how long I wait.  So I am now typing a note and will email it to my blog where it will go into drafts for publishing later. Why bother, you ask. Because I am sitting in my tube on the banks of the river and know that I can enjoy nature and tech worlds simultaneously if I can just work past the garbage. At least signing in is simpler here than on FB because my iPhone remembers better, and my FB password is so long since the hacker that I can't remember it without my Rolodex.

Here come late tubers, young couple, oops take that back, young man and cougar, each with a dog, standard and mini, her pale gray roots showing where the red ends. Upstream my nephew's son lifts and places rocks to improve a channel for multiplying rapids. This activity substitutes for the weightroom he misses at home as part of his prep for football season. The next school year is right around the corner even though the calendar says June. His grandfather calls to him from the porch, but the physical activity and girls in bikinis distract him. I suspect when the teen appetite kicks in he will have only his hunger for his focus. The next tube has a friend of mine so we chat hello. The girls are with her and describe my family guy as they float nearer. A mom comes next and asks me how old he is. When I tell her his age she says perfect because the girls are a year younger. Little threat, I read between the lines, but downriver they go, never to meet on dry land.

I stopped to email this note to myself for insurance, no point to risk an accidental delete or plunge into the water.  I may be live blogging but must qualify this as delayed live blogging since I send it to drafts on my dashboard. 

If anyone wants an instant update, nephew's son went up to dinner prepared by his grandpa, no floaters in sight this late June evening, summer tanager singing his heart out, new family throwing rocks, sun behind trees, young dad and his daughter crossing to fish, and me sweating/glowing, evening breeze beginning to slide up the river.

Country Peacock

This guy watched me drive by on my way to painting class and then posed for my camera after I backed up on the country road. He was a fun surprise on a drizzly morning. I wonder how he would look in a landscape with bluebonnets. That's a composition I've never seen in a painting. And probably never will. At least not in one of mine. 

(I'm disappointed to have a red "X" instead of the picture, but I will edit later.  I'm determined to find out why the photo doesn't show.)

(Okay, I edited to add the photo, but I'm not happy to have the extra step when I want to do all at the same time on my iPhone.)

Fajita Feast

One of the river businesses hosted a welcoming open house for the Chamber of Commerce and friends. Food feature was a fajita dinner and dessert bar. Their new venue will be the scene of many parties and happy celebrations. I wish I had taken photos of the pool area, but I'm sure I'll go again.

I'm trying the email feature to send photos and drafts directly to my blog.  If you're seeing a picture with this post, then whatever I did worked. 

Sent from my iPhone

Busy Hands

Almost a month since I've blogged, and I have exactly three minutes until I am supposed to walk across the road to leave for an open house. Because I'm using my thumbs to enter text, I can't lift my wine glass to sip. Problem to solve!

A Thursday

(I intended to post this from my iPhone last Thursday but didn't.)

Some blogs I read have entries almost every day. Mine doesn't. Some bloggers have more than one blog. I don't. Thinking. So if anyone wants to read a blog for right this minute, please know that I am sitting on my porch finishing a glass of red wine first begun when our friends were here to share a bottle of rioja. Actually, my glass contains some of the second bottle, a trendy blend. Sigother waits for me to join him for watching Survivor on DVR, but how can I leave the best part of the day.

Down at the river to my left a summer tanager calls, and to my right a canyon wren. Knowing the birds by sound comes in handy when I can't see them, and my hearing improves exponentially as my sight declines. The lushness of spring succeeds in obscuring many of our songbirds but their voices reveal them.

Lavendar skies.

Aunt Ida's Flip-flops

Last week I shopped for shoes in Kerrville and thoroughly enjoyed choosing the skimpiest flip-flops in the store. I couldn't help but think of how much my Aunt Ida would have enjoyed the summer styles I take for granted. In her later years, she was cursed with bad feet misshapen from years of ill-fitting hand-me-down footwear and hard ranch life. Her current shoes were worn enough to have holes of varying shapes and sizes here and there, and the soles were wearing thin.

Aunt Ida was actually my great aunt, sister to my mother’s mother, but she often stepped in as grandmother since she had no children of her own and my actual grandmother died when my mother was only fifteen. One of my childhood summers, I was spending a few days with her and lucky enough to witness the opening of a huge box from Sears, her favorite shopping place (thanks to catalogs) challenged only by Monkey Ward. Included was a pair of sensible black shoes, sturdy cotton hose, a jacket, and some items for Uncle Carl.

Aunt Ida was most interested in the new shoes and quickly tried them on to check the fit. Yep, they would do, and certainly looked better than the ones I had seen her wear all week. After she removed the new pair of shoes, she pulled a knife from her apron pocket and stabbed it into the toe of one of the shoes, sliced off a ribbon of leather, poked another hole on the outside edge, carved out a couple more, and continued in this way with the other shoe. The final result was a strange looking pair suggesting unique sandals but looking vaguely familiar. I glanced over at the old shoes and almost immediately noticed the similarities –- the holes were in the same places for the left shoes and for the right shoes. Of course. Ingenious. Each hole in the new shoes had a purpose: to relieve a sensitive spot on her aging feet.

So, dear Aunt Ida, I bought another pair of flip-flops to honor your memory, and I wish I could give them to you and see the pleased expression on your face. But to get that post between your toes you might have to give up those thick cotton stockings.

Goats Redux

Two weeks have passed, and yesterday I returned to the goat ranch for painting class. The yard gate had a new latch hook. My teacher said that after her son installed it, the young nanny moved to the front yard gate and figured out how to open that one. The son put a different style of latch there and solved the problem. No more goats in the yard.

After class I loaded my paint box and palette into the back of my car and went to get my paint boxes. At my car again, I was surprised (but not really) to see that young brown female trying to climb in while other members of the herd stood around and watched. I'm sure she would have eaten my wet canvases if I had loaded them first. The evidence of sky blue paint would have been all over her quivering hairy lips. Cabrito, anyone?

Driving home I wondered about the kind of nanny she will be someday. What will she do with the kids while on such escapades? Will she be too independent to get involved with any of the males? Will she run around bothering those goats who have chosen normal goat life, even leading some of them astray to her own beat of the drum? Will her penchant for opening gates and going where boundaries say she’s not supposed to be put her in a predicament she can’t resolve successfully? Perhaps always a kid.

Back to School

Today the granddaughters return to school, and I hope their teachers are ready. N is so excited that her assignment will be to write about what she did during spring break. Only in first grade, she has no idea how many times she will confront similar topics in future academia. Her main concern is not having enough time to write when she wants to include everything from the rope swing to the Crystal Cave hike. We lost count of the number of times she exclaimed “This is the life!” during her week in Texas.

K will be ready to celebrate the lifting of any glass, whether juice or milk or water, at her school with the toast she created: “Cheers to our lives!” Then she will want to “clink” the glass of every classmate the same way she does with us and our wine glasses and drink cans. She has been enjoying this routine with us (and sharing it at school) for a couple of years, but I’m not sure if her teachers find it as endearing as we do.

Life around our house is mighty quiet now that they are home again, but June is coming soon.

Gingerless

Someone gave me some crystallized ginger. It tasted like soap fragrance. Not like soap, but just the fragrance of soaps. The outside sugary coating didn’t last long enough to disguise the flavor. Hello, trash can.

I put a couple of cubes in my cup of hot tea, having heard ginger tea described as delightful, and they lay inertly at the bottom of the cup. At least that’s what I thought until I got to the last few sips. Then I found out what they had been doing there -- disgustingly tainting my lovely cup of tea with old soap. Hello, garbage disposal.

After some Googling, I learned that Alton Brown touts a recipe for candied ginger and syrup. His readers are nuts for all things sweet ginger: ice cream, scones, homemade ginger ale, turkey brine, rum cocktails, snacks to nibble, even a sauce for lobster. Fine for them, but my recipes shall remain crystallized gingerless.

Goats Longer

One day a week I drive to a painting class on a goat ranch between Kerrville and Fredericksburg. My teacher lives there in a house containing her gallery and studio. She turns 89 this week, and she and her sons continue to raise a herd of goats, partly for nostalgia, but also for cash. Recently a young female has been appearing at the door of the studio calling and stomping until someone opens the automated gate where the driveway enters the backyard. Then she turns and ambles down the drive and exits the yard. How she gets inside the fenced yard is a mystery. No one has ever seen her enter; she just materializes without notice, often nibbling in the cat food dishes. Sometimes we see her circling the yard, but we never see how she gets there. Various theories have emerged, from jumping over the fence to squeezing under, but we can’t catch her in the act. Just like a kid.

Last week after class I took my canvases and materials to my car parked outside the fence. With Miss Goat’s usual curiosity, she came over to nose around and to check out what I was putting in the car. Since goats have a reputation for eating almost anything, I quickly closed the back end of the car and started back to the house for goodbyes. She beat me to the side gate, nuzzled the latch until it popped up, and used her nose to open the gate for both of us. Mystery solved! When I opened the door to the studio, her rush to enter first was thwarted by my teacher’s quick hand on the remote control. The sound of the driveway gate slowly creaking open caused Miss Goat to switch direction, see the clear escape route, exit the yard, and pause to start the whole pattern over again. Such a kid!

I have never thought too highly of goats, rarely thought of goats at all, but always enjoyed seeing the newborns during the spring season. This unusually talented goat has yet to become involved with a male, knows nothing of young babies tugging at her undersides and following her every move, has a burro for a bodyguard, remains ignorant of dangers lurking, moves nimbly wearing a sleek and shiny coat, and will never leave the ranch for any good reason. Kid.

In a few days I’ll return to the goat ranch art studio, and I’m already looking forward to seeing how much the little ones have grown. The nannies will echo their babies’ calls when I scatter them by driving up the ranch road. I will creep along and roll down the windows to inspect what spring vegetation attracts them. My teacher will call some of them by name but declare that she no longer feels attachments to them. We’re kids, too.