Okay, it's time to stop protesting, to put all sad things behind.
It's time for the pre-Saturday sappiness.
So let's not solicit a second more of your time.
Let's get on with it!
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The little girl who lives across the street is always in motion. She bursts out the door and jumps on her tiny bicycle or a scooter and races around the driveway and sometimes even into the street. We live on a rather remote street so that doesn't consist of too much danger. Just enough.
Her energy is enviable. But she is only seven or eight years old so that is easy to understand.
I'm guessing that she must have recently gone to a yard sale with someone. She must have decided that was a great way to make some money.
This afternoon she started hauling items out into the front yard of her home. Many articles colored pink. Her mother helped her bring larger items out of a very crowded garage.
The little girl carried item after item out. She arranged them and re-arranged them repeatedly. Then she sat down in a tiny chair and waited for the customers to flock in.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Then she walked out and looked up and down the street. When a car was heard approaching, she would look down the street and start waving her arms in a beckoning motion as the car whizzed past.
This went on for about an hour and a half. No one stopped. She disappeared into the house.
Now, as the sun is setting, the garage door is back up and the items are slowly being returned inside.
- - - by Judith Taylor
Now don't tell me about the first day of May being celebrated as a Workers' Day, or a really big deal for international Communists.
And don't start with it being the first day of Asian Pacific American Heritage month or that it's celebrated as Lei Day in Hawaii.
Or that it's National Learn to Ride a Bike Day or World Carnivorous Plant Day.
I might lean a bit in the direction of National Chocolate Parfait Day.
When I was a tot, the first of May was celebrated by hanging May Baskets on people's doorknobs and running away.
The lucky recipient would open the door to find no one there but a basket containing these types of candies.
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I've outgrown those.
No I go back, way back, to the ancient pagans who knew how to mark this period between Spring and Summer.
They danced around a May-Pole.
Modern Day Pagans paint themselves green and indulge in drinking and dining and perhaps some other whims of mind.
However and whatever you celebrate, Happy May Day!
Those of you who have had to put up with me bitching about commenting on our cool weather this Spring can now say it: nah-nah-nah-NAH-nah-nah.
For on this April 30th here in lovely Arizona, the mercury has climbed to near 80 degrees in mid-afternoon.
That's almost 27 degrees Celsius in Canada and Europe and Australia and, well, most of the rest of the enlightened world.
Now I'm not complainin'.
In fact I fired up the oven in the Taylor Family Kitchen this morning to replenish Judy's supply of English Muffin Bread.
Sorry about the roof-tops but I wanted to get as much of the clouds as I could.
It probably would have been a better picture if I'd have noticed it earlier.
So it goes.
My extremely talented wife, Judith (Judy) Taylor aka She Who Must Be Obeyed, is a good teller of tales.
Now by that I do NOT mean to imply that she's a liar.
She's just a good writer.
But she's modest to a fault.
She was a bit gobsmacked by all the kind comments on her story yesterday about putting her mother in a retirement center.
I kept praising her as comment after comment came in and she scoffed, "They're just trying to kiss up to you."
I reminded her that she's the only one of us who has written a novel.
It's unpublished but still!
Then she got a telephone call from a very dear friend in Seattle, who told her how much she appreciated her essay.
They talked about my blog and how about every three weeks I say, "I don't know, I think I'll end it, I don't have anything more to say."
Our friend said, "No, no, just tell him how much I enjoy reading it."
Judy said that she had told me I should stop blogging about food so much.
Our friend responded that anyone who cooks the kind of food we do should be proud of it and keep blogging about it.
So . . . . the other day SWMBO tried a recipe she found in a drawer for Banana Pecan Muffins.
The only problem was it made way more batter than the dozen muffins the recipe called for.
And we didn't have another muffin tin.
So she put the extra batter in a pie plate and baked it that way.
Some cream cheese frosting topped it off and here it is.
Once again today, I turn the blog over to my wife, Judy for her tale of A Suitable Dungeon.
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Many years ago I found myself in the terrible position of deciding my mother's future. She had had a couple of "minor" strokes and my father had recently passed away.
It wasn't safe any longer for her to live alone in their retirement house in Florida. She left stove burners on and forgot them. She stumbled frequently and almost fell.
I was summoned from across the country to "come and help me deal with Mother". My sister had moved near our parents when they retired to Florida. But she was still working and "the mother situation" had become critical. It was obvious that we had to deal with the problem quickly and I was required to be there.
We started looking at potential "retirement centers" . . really, nursing homes. Upon returning to her house the first day we found Mother sitting on the edge of her bed. She looked up and gave us an evil look and said, "Well, did you find a suitable dungeon for me today?"
We were spent from the mental and physical effort of the day. Both of us plopped on the bed beside our mother and one of us said, "No, not today, Mother," and we laughed rather hysterically. Mother looked at both of us and couldn't see the humor in the situation.
The next day we heard of a brand new retirement center that was opening in three weeks. We took the tour and instantly decided it was perfect.
Mother had been a gardener and bird watcher all her life. We told her of the beautiful gardens all around the place. She inquired as to whether she could take her bird bath with her and put it in one of the gardens. We said we would see if that could happen.
We scheduled a visit for the three of us to do a walk-through of a possible apartment for Mother. It was on the third floor. She liked the sparkling newness of it all and that she could take her own furniture and personal things. We walked out on her private balcony and looked around. One of us mentioned that the bird bath would like nice down below in the garden.
Mother looked around for a minute and said, "That bird bath would be so far away I wouldn't know if they were drinking or shitting! Then she stomped away. My sister and I looked at each other and knew we had work to do.
Over the next few days we lobbied for the place by pointing out the amenities. "You can have your own little refrigerator and microwave and coffee maker. You won't have to cook major meals. They will be served to you in the dining room."
"I won't know any of those people," she snarled.
"But you can get to know them."
"Why should I? None of my friends will know where I have gone. Nobody will ever visit me."
She had really been a loner, almost anti-social and suddenly she worried that the few friends she had would never visit her. She worried that no one would speak to her at the dinner table. It was rather ridiculous that one of the best-read, most informed persons in the area was worried that there would be nothing in common with these people.
But slowly she started to look semi-kindly on the new place. It was very different from anything she'd ever known. The move proceeded.
There was a terrible wrangle over her learning to use an electric coffee maker rather than perking her coffee on the stove. "I know good coffee and I know bad coffee and this stuff is bad," she growled.
One morning before the move, as we sipped our "bad coffee" in the living room of the home she had known, a movement outside the picture window attracted my attention. A giant Blue Heron was leaning down to drink from the bird bath in the front yard. He was so casual about it. My heart was pounding as I whispered to my mother, "Look, oh look at that!"
She said, "Oh yes, he stops by a few morning a week for a drink."
A short time later the move took place. Mother adjusted quickly and was quite satisfied with her new home for the rest of her time.
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My daughter and I have lunch together often on Fridays. A while back she handed me a brochure for a new retirement center in town that was holding an open house for the public in a week or two. She asked if I'd be interested in going and looking it over. I said I'd like that.
When I came home and handed the brochure to my husband, he asked, "Has she found a suitable dungeon for us?"
----- by Judith Taylor