Saturdays

"I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel."
Audrey Hepburn

"I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks."
Barack Obama

"Later, in the early teens, I used to ride my bike every Saturday morning to the nearest airport, ten miles away, push airplanes in and out of the hangars, and clean up the hangars."
Alan Shepard

"On Saturday, I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known. On Monday, I was world renowned."
Christiaan Barnard

"Saturday night is your big night. Everybody used to fry up fish and have one hell of a time. Find me playing till sunrise for 50 cents and a sandwich. And be glad of it. And they really liked the low-down blues."
Muddy Waters

Saturday nights! My Saturday nights are akin to a box of assorted chocolates: each one is great, each one is different from the last, and each one is temporarily satisfying.

This evening? I have lamb curry (Gulai Kambling) on the stove, for the 2nd night in a row; Grad Student Gillian came home for Fall Break, and thought it sounded GREAT! - Which, last night, it was, and so we will have an encore dinner tonight! Who doesn't love curry? And so I am concocting a 2nd serving of the good food.

Saturday for us usually include the morning cycling Pancake Ride. But this morning was windy and blah-de-blah-de-blah, and so that Spouse o' Mine and I opted out.

I spent my morning on the internet (because I was still hopped up on two - READ: TWO Benadryl tablets from the night before - one at dinnertime, and one at midnight...) and wasn't too clear about what I should be doing on this glorious autumn Saturday morning. Honestly, every year at this time I think, Gracious me, what is happening to my body?!!! The allergies I experience this month are, to me, horrendous. I want to take a bottle-brush and move it through from ear to ear, the allergy itching is so bad. And I am, this weekend, in horrendous mode. If I am taking TWO Benadryls in an evening, then I know my system is in disorder.

And here we are Saturday evening, Gulai Kambling, green beans, basmati rice, served. Football: on.
Me: in another room.

Hello?

I have a dandy phone message on my cell phone: "Hello! Please be so kind as to leave your name and number after the tone and I will get back to you as soon as possible."

Well.

Three kids (and some nieces and friends and neighbors, too) complain that there is a split-second, too-long-of-a-pause between Hello! and Please. They claim that they can't tell if it's the recording or the real me when I answer.

I think there is a big difference in my intonation: Hello?, as opposed to the recording: Hello! But the kids disagree, and have been at me for some time to change my voicemail recording. I still haven't gotten around to it. Today, College Grad Claire called, and I answered, "Hello?" There was a long pause. I repeated myself, "Hello?"

"Mom. If you're not going to change the recording, then at least answer your phone differently. Answer, 'Yo!'"

Later in the afternoon, the phone rang and I saw that it was Claire again. I answered, "Yo!" Silence. I repeated, "Yo!" Claire said, "Mom, don't just say 'Yo!', you have to say something more or someone will think you're a recording! Say, 'Yo! Wat up?' "

So I practiced it a few times. "Yo! Wat up?" "Yo! Wa' up?" "Yo! What's up?"

I am ready.
Give me a call.

Flora and Fauna

These are poinsettias from last Christmas.

They looked really dismal when I planted them outside in May. They have taken on a new lease on life now. When visiting my inlaws in Australia, I would see huge, roof-high poinsettias, all pretty and red. This morning I was trying to remember at what point the poinsettias in Australia would be red. I think in the spring and summer, in that we usually visited them in our fall. In any event, mine are thriving, but green, and so I may haul them in and have pretty green poinsettias in December.

On another subject, this praying mantis has been hanging out at one of our hummingbird feeders. He has been there over 4 weeks now. I have watched him eat butterflies and ants. He knows a good thing when he sees it: the hummingbird feeder attracts whatever it is he likes to eat. I see him sometimes in the morning, and most always every evening.

The Prairie: Butterfly Hunt

This morning I read Grad Student Gillian's blog, and my interest was immediately piqued at the prospect of seeing a butterfly migration. "Off to the Konza!" I announced to that Spouse o' Mine early this morning. It's difficult to describe his expression when I announce things like this. Anyway, as he left for his day, I was I soon out the door for my butterfly hunt.

There are several choices of trails at the Konza Prairie,
and this morning I opted for the ~ 4.5 mile route:

One of these pretty plants is the Virginia Creeper, and one is not.
Do you know the difference?

No wonder I am always sneezing:

Oh - as for the butterfly migration? Out on the prairie part of my hike, there were nothing but kabillions of grasshoppers, and that was most unpleasant. But as soon as I got into the woods and meadow areas - it's true! Swallowtails and Monarchs and ones I couldn't identify! And: here was a plus: lots of wildflowers which were nowhere to be seen all summer in the heat and drought. They're out in fine form, now!

Years ago when I first started hiking out on the Konza Prairie, I would pass a magnificent oak tree. It was huge, and beautiful. Many times I told myself to make a point of coming out and photographing it in every season: summer, fall, winter spring. It was beautiful in every season!

But it's too late.
The big oak tree died this summer.

There's a moral to this story.
I'll let you figure it out on your own.

Something New

One day last week I mulled and thought and planned and finally pulled out my all-purpose backpack and started packing: towel, check! swimsuit, check! all things needed to transition from swimming pool to Lunch with the Ladies, check! And I got into my car and drove down the road, headed for the university natatorium. (And here I have to mention that my spell check is telling me: sanatorium, but I am quite healthy and I MEANT natatorium. I don't know why K-State just doesn't call it a swimming pool.) I was going to go swim some laps. I haven't gone to lap swim for a long, long time. So long in fact that I wasn't too comfortable with the aspect of getting into a swimsuit and sliding into the cold water amongst the REAL athletes who do this everyday on their lunch hour. But I felt like mixing it up a bit - a change in my day.

Halfway down the road, I noticed my Rec Pass wasn't attached to my key ring. Odd. I turned around and drove back home and searched the house. Nothing. Well, I thought, if it's gone, it's gone, and I'll need to drive over to the main Rec Center on campus, pay my $5 for a new one, and rush over to the natatorium before all the lap lanes get full. (I thought if I got there right at 11:25, I could beat the Olympians.) Sadly, a comedy of errors commenced (find a park at the Rec, find enough (any!) change for the meter (or receive a $60 parking ticket - wow, that would be an expensive swimming expedition), get my new Rec Pass, find a park at the natatorium, fail, drive around the block twice, fail twice more, and decision time: No time to swim. However, I did have a luncheon date, and I had not bothered cleaning up before my planned swim. So, back to the Rec to have a shower at that place, before lunch. Find a park, dig around for 20 minutes' worth of change...

So the whole idea behind my lap swim plan was to do something out of my ordinary day. A few days later I read something that made me think, and gave me an idea...a plan...

Last year about this time, I spent the 12 weeks before Christmas accomplishing one major task each week. That was a very good exercise for me. As I mentioned in a blog a couple of days ago, the premise is that if you do something regularly for three weeks, it becomes habit. Accomplishing a major task once a week didn't make me want to reroof the house and dig a new well or anything like that, but it did make me see bigger and smaller pictures of things I could get done on a weekly basis.

With that in mind, I think these next twelve weeks will involve my trying something new each week. I haven't plotted the whats or hows, but I know it will involve learning new things and I know that it won't involve skydiving or bronc busting.

Oh, and about that non-swim day? Part of the impetus for my Twelve Weeks of New is just how far out of my comfort zone I was with the idea of going to swim laps in a pool full of total strangers. I should push myself to do new things more often.

Care to join me in these twelve weeks?