Another peaceful weekend

in Northern Arizona. 2dogs enjoyed the cooler weather. I planted two more trees in the back yard, a flowering plum and another sycamore. The grasshoppers had made twigs out of a few plants, so I used a repellent and by Monday morning they were almost gone. Hopefully I can salvage what they ate.

Until I blog again, always wear protective clothing when trying to kill grasshoppers with chemicals. I must now sign off to scratch.

Scrabble and procrastination

Last night I was up north and my friends stayed the night, on their way to California on vacation. My friend is from the Czech Republic and is very emotional, to put it mildly. It all started with a simple game of Scrabble. Because I haven’t played in years and his girlfriend was very experienced, she and I decided we would just start playing and I would refresh myself on the rules as we went along, and we would teach him as we went. Boy, was that the wrong decision.

The lack of a dictionary was another major impediment. The first word he tried to spell was "eco.” We both said that was a prefix and he couldn’t use it. He argued quite loudly that it was most certainly not a prefix, after asking, “What is a prefix?” The second round went no smoother, and he took his tiles and dumped them, and quit. We made fun of him, and continued to play while teasing him.

While she and I played on, he continued to watch and read the rules and correct us loudly at about every other move. She beat me soundly, by twice as many points. I am a type A and if I can make a two-letter word and move the game forward, that is my strategy, which, of course, is a strategy only for a sound arse-kicking.

We bedded out finally about midnight and went to sleep, their two German shepherds asleep with them in the great room, mine locked in my bedroom with me, since Oz was being a bit snotty to their male, Bernarde. "This is my house and my toys and Romy is my pack member and you are an uninvited guest," he seemed to say as he guarded his bones and balls.

This morning the dogs barked when they got up. I think Romy forgot we had overnight guests. They went for a walk and I slept in. When I finally got up a few hours later, they were at the kitchen table playing, you guessed it, Scrabble! There was less argument because she was allowing him to do some phonetic spelling: “genre” was spelled “janre.” Really, that’s how it is pronounced!

As we ate oatmeal with brown sugar (his with three egg whites and one cooked yolk on top), I helped him lose his first game. As they were getting ready to leave, he noticed a wall plate I have, where the entire world, instead of continents, is renamed things like “the Ocean of Love,” “Sea of Deceit,” “River of Revenge,” and “Peninsula of Procrastination.”

“That is where I live,” he said, pointing to Procrastination.

“I would, but I never get around to it,” I responded. We all laughed.

They packed up the car and the dogs and drove off to California, first routing their trip for me on their atlas. A few minutes later, my phone rang.

“We left the peaches,” he said. “They don’t look good, but they are delicious.”

“I’ll eat them,” I told him. And I repeated two more things I had told them as they left.

“Be careful,” and “I love you,” because I never want to let friends leave anymore without that reminder. The world is an unpredictable place, and I want them to know how I feel, just in case. In that matter, I no longer procrastinate.

Vacation time!

I just took a week off work and spent the time in Northern Arizona at my house. I had such a nice time. I had all sorts of things planned that I wanted to do--drive to Lake Powell, or maybe Colorado. I ended up doing almost nothing except yard work and napping, and that was fine with me.

The weather was pretty good, little rain, so most of the days I spent moving the hose around watering trees I've recently planted and trying to protect them from the hungry elk that love to eat aspens. "Aspens are like elk ice cream," one of my coworkers said. My friends, who come up almost every Sunday to nap on my porch, call me by my new Indian name: "Moves the Waters" because I'm constantly getting up to move the hose from one tree or plant to another.

I put up several hummingbird feeders and each day more hummingbirds seem to discover it. This weekend I lost count of how many were fighting over the feeders, but at least three dozen, I'd estimate. I finally broke down yesterday and hung up a third one. Each day as I napped I could hear, as I dozed off, the sound of hummingbirds chirping, wings flapping, and the wind chimes that don't even phase the birds. Here is an awesome sight for many wonderful hummingbird pics.

Each afternoon I napped, so I guess I needed the sleep. I went to a meeting almost every day and wandered around town hitting the thrift stores and chatting with people. It was a great vacation.

One day last week, a woman stopped by my house to introduce herself. She had moved in to the empty house near me. She looked like one hundred miles of bad road. Her car was a rolling wreck, windows knocked out, no door interiors, wires sticking out, threatening my curious dogs' eyeballs. In the first four minutes of conversation, I learned she had just gotten out of a Kansas jail for failure to pay child support, and had just had her license suspended for driving under the influence of marijuana and methamphetamines. I excused myself for a minute and went and got her an NA meeting list. "You don't have to live like this," was about all I said.

Sunday I noticed her walking down the road and offered her a ride. She was going to the local cafe for breakfast. Last night I took her to her first meeting and, with tears in her eyes, she got her newcomer chip. It was pretty neat. She also peeled off the bucks for a Basic Text, so who knows? It's always an uphill battle for the newcomer, but if she's as sick and tired as she looks, maybe she is ready. One of my friends in the Fellowship tells me he's just the postman--he delivers the message. Whether the other person receives it or not is up to him or her. And God, I usually add. Isn't it true that it's merely God's grace that we get the program or we never arrive? Who can explain why I get it and my wonderful relative struggling for years with his alcoholism does not?

So until I blog again, dear readers, put out a hummingbird feeder. The small investment will pay back untold dividends.