Life

Months ago, I took a trip to Australia.  In that time, before, during, or afterward, I received in the mail a slim postcard that exclaimed that my Kansas driver's license was due to expire soon.  I am not sure I ever saw the postcard, pre-Australia.

I took my Aussie trip, returned home, and lived a normal life until weeks later when I prepared to go to Hilton Head Island, our family's annual Springtime haunt.

My flight reservation was made solely on the thought of when my Dad would be taking his tennis lesson, after which he could drive to Savannah, GA to pick me up.  So great in theory...

I glanced at my itinerary on Sunday night.  It said I would leave Kansas City at 8:00 am.

Huh.

That meant I would have to leave the Flint Hills of Kansas at 4:30 am in order to make it through security on time.  I opted to leave the afternoon before, and spend the night in Kansas City.  This was not a big durn deal; I love spending time in KC.

Ok, ok, Go back to Sunday night, the night BEFORE I was going to KC to spend the night before my Tuesday flight to Savannah, to be picked up by my Dad after his tennis lesson on Hilton Head Island.  I was going through mail and bills and recycling so that everything would be "Ducksinarow" for my absence.

Whoa, there!

My driver's license!  EXPIRED!! NOooooooo!  How could this be?!!!

It was thus, because that thin little yellow postcard settled in quite nicely in-between my recycling of newspapers.  When I returned from Australia, I had a stack of newspapers, the innards of which I LOVE to read (Wall Street Journal).  And so I gleaned my papers and there was my Department of Motor Vehicles note.  Bah!!!

I showed that Spouse o' Mine the card. I said that I would renew it first thing the next morning, before I headed to Kansas City.  The next morning I drove the rural Kansas miles into town to run errands - one of which should have been the DMV.  Sheesh!  I forgot both the thin little yellow postcard AND some proof that I lived where I do.  I drove  the rural Kansas miles back home, mid-afternoon, about two hours before my planned drive the opposite direction, to Kansas City.  This day was already feeling old.

When I neared our home, I observed lots of big machines, Kansas Department of Transportation (K-DOT), very nearly blocking my drive.  Something about re-sealing the road?  I screamed shrilly at one husky driver on one husky machine, "Will I be able to drive back out in twenty minutes??"  And he smiled and smiled and smiled.  Too loud, too much hearing loss from riding loud machines, too much tar-inhaling, whatever.  I ran inside, had a drink (of water, people), took my documents and went out the door.  I had to drive across our front lawn and make a 4-mile detour because the big machines were indeed blocking the drive by then.  I drove back into town, to the DMV parking lot, and that's when I read the sign:

Open T_W_TH.

Huh.  Not Monday afternoon.  After driving 45 miles to be lawful in my driving pursuits...

So you know what I did?  I went on down south to Hilton Head and Savannah and drove all the way back to Oklahoma with my Mom and Dad.  So there.

Well, it just gets worse.  A day after I returned home to rural Kansas, I gathered all things needed to acquire a renewed driver's license.  I even made myself presentable, with manageable hair, and lipstick, even.  I was going to come out on top of this photo opp, because I knew it was going to be with me for six  more years.  Off I went, humming a lilty Cell Block Tango, to the DMV.

I walked into the place, and was dumbfounded.  There were three people working a giant 20-yard desk, and me.  That's all, just me.  No waiting.  Just me and the three of them.  So I walked up to the first guy, and LO AND BEHOLD, it's my son's Scoutmaster from years ago.  He used to be a police officer in the higher levels of the force way back when, and I assume he has retired and is now taking a second job.  I smiled and started to say hello when he barked, YES!! He BARKED at me, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, go back, step back and look at that wall.

What wall?  What the heck?!  I looked at the wall and there was some STUPID screen there asking me what I wanted to do.

I wanted to talk to the man sitting at the desk in front of me.  So I looked at him (again), and he said, "Pick which option you want to do."  I looked from him to the screen and back at him.  I didn't even bother rereading it because I was beginning to think I was on Reno 911. He asked, "What option do you want?"

And I smashed some button and walked right over to him.

"Hi!  I am Trish Armstrong.  Graham's mother.  How are YOU?!!!"

I may have been scowling.

Right after that, the lady (far end of the 20-yard desk, "called my number".  "Number 16."

Seriously?  I am the only one in the office.  Seriously?!

OK, so this is where I lost a little bit of control and did not utter, but DID say really loudly, rather scathingly, that "It would be really GREAT if we could just communicate like humans."


I was really angry. 

Well, BOOM!!!  That former Scoutmaster former cop practically loped the 20 yards down the desk to where I stood fuming.

He smiled and began asking all sorts of "get me up to date on your son, and your family" questions, and then the bombshell of "Do you have any grandkids?" Oh, seriously, this was just getting worse and worse.  I wanted to say "Not that I know of." but I smiled benignly and said, "No."

Just then the lady who called "Number 16" looked at my old license and remarked, "Patricia, I see here that your height is 5'2".  Is that still correct?"

I looked at her dumbly.  I thought to myself fleetingly, "Does she seriously think I would have grown any in the past six years?"

And then, I got it.  Sadly, I got it.  I am 55.  Even though I got up that morning and "spruced" and even put on perfume, I was still 55, and this lady thought I might be shrinking like a pathetic violet.  Then she motioned me over to the square on which I was to stand for my new photo.  She told me to lower my head and look into the camera.  Lower my head.  Lower it more.  A little more...  I didn't want to lower my head because then I have a double chin, lady. 

There was nothing, nothing atall pleasant about ANY of this Department of Motor Vehicles chapter in my life.

When I received my new license in the mail this afternoon, of course I eagerly looked at my photo.  I am frowning.  My eyebrows are greatly raised.  I look like a cross between the SNL Church Lady and my Great Aunt Alpha, who could express her opinion with a glance.

I'll take it.
       

Field Trip!

A week ago our rancher neighbor Joe took that Spouse o' Mine and me out for a Sunday drive around part of his ranch property.  This is a big ranch.  Thousands of hilly, flinty, Flint Hills acres.  And we drove over hill and dale of rocks and rills until I was very nearly sick to my stomach, weebling around in the back seat of this giant pickup, across land that had no discernible roads, only slight pathways through the tallgrass which defines the Tallgrass Prairie.

We always enjoy outings with our ranching and farming neighbors.  I learn a lot, having spent most of my life in city and townie-living.  That Spouse o' Mine grew up on farming, ranching lifestyles, both in the US and in Australia.  His work now is indeed in horticulture and agriculture, but his job title is Scientist, and he works in a lab.  These field trips out into the real deal of farming and ranching pull us into what is involved in the day-to-day work of the land.

And from our Sunday field trip last week, I have a photo to show and tell.  I had spotted an animal skull which looked to be impaled on a locust tree, exactly at my eyes' height.  (I spotted it because I nearly ran into the skull!!)  Locust trees have TREMENDOUS thorns.  How did this happen???

OK.  I think that Spouse o' Mine has come up with the correct conjecture:  An animal died.  The locust tree grew, and continued its growth through the eyes of this skull.  In later years, the locust limb got to be as high as my eyes' height, and therein lies the skull.  The skull, by the way, is unidentified.  It's larger than a skunk or badger.  It has molars.

And that's the end of this tale.   

Easter

Today is Easter.  Such a happy day that ranks up there with Christmas and Valentines Day in my Happy Holidays book.  After forty dreary days of Lent, Easter is all about good and happy, with flower blossoms, fresh air, a good church service, and Hallelujahs! in the air. 

This morning we went to early service, after which we scurried back out to our car and grabbed our backpacks.  They were full with hiking gear.  We returned to the church and changed out of our Easter finery and into our fleeces and hiking boots, and headed out to the woods for an Easter hike and picnic.

This was really nice.  I think everyone else must have waited to go to their respective late services, because it appeared that we two were the only hikers in this state park.  That Spouse o' Mine and I began a conversation about bees.  What colors do bees see?  I said something about ROYGBIV and he replied back, "Richard of York Gained Battles In Vain."  Where WAS he educated?!  We bantered back an forth about this.  How could anyone know what a bee sees, anyway?!  Is someone out there talking to the bees? Somehow this subject evolved into campfire songs and then into the question of how did musicians centuries ago tune to a pitch?  (I was explaining that when I was a kid visiting my grandparents, we would attend their church which did not believe in pianos or organs in a church service, lest they drown out the voices raised up in praise to God.  I described that singing as interesting even to a little kid, in that there was a song leader who had to be pretty true to pitch and not start a song really high or really low, or midway through there would be big problems.)

When we got home from church and hike, I hadn't gotten the "hike" out of my system, and I called out to our dog, "Pasture!" (NO: Her name is not Pasture, but "pasture" is one of very few words that she reacts to in a favorable way.  She connects Pasture! with Adventure! and she comes running.  Biserka is such a neurotic/borderline psychotic dog that most movements and noises unhinge her.  But Pasture! is one of her few "happy" words.  I named her Biserka because she is.  She rarely comes when called.  She WILL come if I call out MacArthur! which is our cat's name.)

Biserka and I crossed through our pasture, down a steep trail, and into our creekbed.  The creekbed is dry, yet muddy, and the sides of the creek are straight-up steep, in many areas higher that a 2-story building.  It's like exploring a mini-Grand Canyon, with wild animal paw prints and hoof prints, and curiosities which change from season to season, and flood to flood.  There used to be a Model A car in a wall of the creekbed.  And a red boat once appeared during a flood.

We followed the creek's meander down for about half an hour, and then climbed a steep climb out into our meadow area.  I have always intended to put a picnic table down there.  Maybe this summer...

Easter was a nice day.  No big feast with family, no Easter Egg Hunts, just a nice church service and then the outdoors.  A nice day.

Sunday Evening

This evening while waiting for the bread to rise, and also the pasta dough to rest on its gluten laurels, I began playing chess, interspersed with reading a poem between games.

I like Billy Collins poetry.  Tonight's poetry choice was I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of "Three Blind Mice":

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife
or anyone else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.

Billy Collins

I read this to that Spouse o' Mine, and he did not "get" it.  So I re-read it to him.  Still, a sort of shrug.  Ha ha!  I loved it.  So much so, that I You-tubed to hear Art Blakey's version of Three Blind Mice:

Click here to listen

And so now I will return to the kitchen and see what's cookin'.  Or needs to be... 

   

The Week's End

This week was a very normal week.  I spent part of last month in Australia and I think it made me goofy in the "What Season is It?!" department.  That, plus it was warm in rural Kansas last week.  Cccold this week, though.  I have so many clothes strung out upstairs (closets) and downstairs (bedroom), because one day, I am in linen capris, and the next, I am in a cashmere sweater.

This week's beginning was as it should have been: acknowledge that the cherry season is beginning in California (and ending in the Southern Hemisphere), and that means my business ducks should be in a professional row from here until August (Canadian cherry season).  What this means for you consumers is...in a short time you will see beautiful red and Rainier sweet cherries in the produce department wherever you market.  Buy them.  It's the trickle-down effect: from the orchard grower to the orchard pickers to the orchard packers and the orchard truckers and the orchard storage and the orchard marketers, also to the orchard wholesalers and the hort. professors and hort. grad students, not to mention the hort undergrads, all doing research, and the cherry shippers (ships: really!), and even down to us: we who sell instruments to enable the growers, the pickers, the packers, the shippers and the researchers.  A lot of business goes into one of those fine, ripe cherries.  Buy them.

This week's end was busy with things other than cherry biz.  On Thursdays, our church serves a community dinner for people in the community who need a dinner.  Or, those who want a dinner. Some people arrive out of hunger, and some arrive out of loneliness.  We provide sustenance for both needs.  That Spouse o' Mine  and I had signed up for Hospitality this week (i.e., dining), and so we did. There were chess games going, some artwork, a few people were busy reading the day's newspapers, that Spouse o' Mine had brought in a photo which Daughter Gillian had sent from her historical museum: an old undefined piece of equipment, asking "What is this??"  That was fun to pass around the tables and discuss and interject what it might be...what clues we all could contribute.  (It turned to be a cork press.  {Thank you, Gillian.}  You can read about it here:  http://www.bottlebooks.com/appraisalstories/corks_and_the_cork_press.htm )

Last week a man in our church was killed in a farming accident.  He was popular and well-loved.  It is customary in our church to provide a funeral luncheon when the need is there.  Sometimes, the luncheon is small.  Sometimes it's only coffee, or perhaps a brunch.  This luncheon was expected to feed 200 mourners.  All I volunteered to do was to provide flowers for the luncheon.

It is fulfilling to live on this property and have the capacity to share something that is so enjoyable to that Spouse o' Mine and me: flowers and such.  Happily, this week's pre-spring nature show was all about trees in the pasture and creekbeds, just teasing out some blossoms hither and yon.  After the community supper Thursday night, that Spouse o' Mine and I headed out to the pasture and creek, dusk and nearly dark, and clipped branches of beautiful dogwood, pear, forsythia, and redbud blossoms.

So pretty.

This morning at church, as I was arranging lots of vases, another horticulturally-inclined acquaintance arrived with what must have been hundreds of daffodils from her yard.  Gorgeous.  And between the two of us, the mood in the fellowship hall was made one mite brighter than what mourners no doubt felt in the sanctuary this morning.

Well, leaping from meals to funeral flowers and then...

A marathon?

Yes!  A marathon.  That Spouse o' Mine and I are doing the Wicked Marathon tomorrow!

That is to say, we are "doing" the marathon as the bike leads for the front runner.  I told that Spouse o' Mine that this would be the only way I would ever experience a marathon.  Even better, being in FRONT of the front runner in a marathon!!  I am always last in everything.  How fun to see what the finish line looks like before a kabillion runner/cyclists/whatever go through.  So, we volunteered.  26+ miles of riding slower than 12 mph.  It might get a little boring.  And cold??? The forecasters lied.

And here is my End of the Week.  It has been fulfilling.  Enjoyable.  Happy.