Subject: September Banner From: Joy Beeson Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2006 23:52:53 -0400 To: Alice Lecklitner , Mary Love , hoosiers31@hotmail.com, The Rundell's , David Lecklitner , Don Lecklitner , Musser1@chartermi.net, alanlove3@hotmail.com, sara leck , ChrisVBrown@Charter.net, busymomsewing@chartermi.net, armusser@charter.net, andyleck@hotmail.com, debeeson@comcast.net, joybeeson@comcast.net CC: joebeeson@earthlink.net, Timlindafrancis@wmconnect.com, smbeeson@earthlink.net, Jean Beeson , kathygales@mac.com, Sherry X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000 Message-ID: <45208D15.80307@comcast.net> User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (Windows/20060909) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 1 September 2006 Yesterday, while walking down the street that had been torn up all summer one year, we tried to remember how long it had been -- it had been somewhat, ah, exciting while they were digging, but they did such a good job that the pavement still looks brand new. This morning, "Road Construction Ahead" signs went up in the middle of the new stretch. Nobody has a clue as to what is going on. Further toward the entrance, Dave says, there are "shoulder work" signs -- streets don't *have* shoulders! They have gutters. (And very nice gutters which work very well.) ----------------- Dave finished _Lucy Ellen's Heyday_ tonight. He complained that the story just stopped instead of ending. 5 September 2006 A fairly exciting afternoon. I had an appointment to get the results of my enteroscopies at 2:45, and thought I would go to the library afterward, eat downtown, and go directly to the Sewing Circle, so I made a tossed salad to leave in the fridge and chopped up the remaining pork loin to make pork salad -- and forgot to lay some bread out to thaw. While I was crossing Center on Harrison, one of the clips holding my wire pannier jumped off -- there were no bumps or anything; it must have come unbolted long ago, and popped almost off during some previous jolt. This allowed the pannier to rotate into my back wheel and bring me to a sudden stop. I think the driver of the car right behind me had seen the pannier coming loose and knew what it meant, because he or she stopped in time and only embarrassment resulted. So I carried the bike out of the intersection, rearranged things so there was no strain on the unbolted clip, and continued to the appointment. The consultation didn't tell me anything I didn't know before -- there are some small erosions in my stomach, for which I've been taking Nexium, but everything frightening has been ruled out. While putting my bag back on my bike, I suddenly changed my mind about going downtown -- in a flash, you might say. Or a flash rumble-rumble-rumble. (Actually, it was drops of rain that first got my attention.) So I dropped off my mystery magazines at the emergency room and hurried home. As I was cruising down Harrison Street, the bulb popped out of my headlight. I caught it and pushed it back into the black rubber without stopping, and worried about bumps thereafter. Got home before the rain started in earnest, and found a wrench in the bike cupboard that fit the bolts on my light -- since I haven't used it in five or six years, I'm not sure the battery will still hold a charge, and I don't trust it not to pop out again, I'd decided to take it off instead of trying to repair it. Just as I was putting it into the bottom shelf of the bike closet, there came such a loud crack that I thought I'd somehow done something wrong with the light and made it explode. A follow-up rumble-rumble- rumble explained what it had been, and I came into Dave's office to say "That scared my fur off!" He said "It hit our tree; there is wood all over the lawn." Then I went back into the garage for some reason, and there was another crack. I came back to find a bunch of green stuff on the lawn and a spectacular split in the tree. So we thought it had been hit a second time, but Barbara was on her porch when the limb came down and it had fallen by itself. She also saw that the second strike was to the west of her house, which is west of ours. I suppose the falling limb tore off the missing bark, or had concealed it up until then. We are pretty sure the whole thing has to come down; there are flakes of outer bark blown off all over the main trunk. When I was just starting to write this, Dave brought in a leafy twig off the tree to see whether I could identify it. We repaired to the living room, where he took _Trees and Shrubs_ off the shelf, which destabilized the row of books, they knocked over a tall wooden statuette, and that knocked a candlestick and an oil lamp off the shelf. I saw it coming, but couldn't move in time. The candlestick bounced, breaking only the candle, and the lamp -- a cheap reproduction, not one of the two antiques -- landed chimney down in a basket of nuts, breaking only the chimney, which was a frosted chimney I'm glad of an excuse to replace. There was lamp oil all over the chimney, but none appears to have gotten elsewhere. (You should have seen the two of us suspiciously sniffing the basket of nuts!) I still haven't found the piece that broke out of the chimney. The tree, by the way, is a blue, white, or black ash. We ruled out green. 6 September 2006 Dave cleaned up the road yesterday, and this morning he and I picked up the splinters on the lawn. It was such a spectacular mess that I didn't want to do it, but we couldn't leave splinters on Brent's lawn. It took very little time, and made a surprisingly small pile, but we left the big pieces for Clay to take care of tomorrow. Those all fell close to the base of the tree. 7 September 2006 It's raining ash. We never did determine which ash, and I didn't think to ask Clay. Naptime: After working all morning, they have gotten all the small limbs off. Clay & company are certainly earning their $1400. 9 September 2006 I marveled at the spiral split in the tree, and wondered whether that was the way the grain in ash trees runs. Later on, Clay remarked that he'd never seen a split twist like that. But all the evidence is now firewood. The "road construction" signs turned out to be the Greenway, which I thought we'd be spared until next summer. I got my first look at it today, and learned that when it's finished, it's going to be harder to get to Southtown than before they started. Where the beaten path wandered back and forth to stay on top of the ridge, the road is driving straight through, which creates a series of short, sharp hills. Climbing just one left me out of breath. I suspect that giving all one's attention to climbing will be rather dangerous when there is two-way traffic. Why on why couldn't they have spent all that lovely money on another boardwalk? While I'm griping, our grapes aren't ripe yet, but something has eaten most of them. When we got back from the golden wedding party, our tomato had a blossom on it, and now it's covered. It's going have to work fast if we get any tomatoes before frost. I got two at the farmer's market today, and a half dozen ears of corn. Also stopped at the health-food store for dried fruit and nuts, and I bought four nuts and bolts at Ace hardware. I suspect I got the wrong size; being helped inhibits my dither. Pretty close to two weeks since I had to empty my innards, and they are still too pooped to poop. Starving didn't bother me much, and there wasn't any discomfort from the purgatives -- save for having to stay home -- and the worst part of the procedure itself was getting there on time. But if I'd known how long I would be passing deer pellets, I might not have done it. 16 September 2006 Another trip out the bike trail. They've got it torn up and muddy from Roy Road to Boy's City Drive, and have the new path cleared of trees more than halfway to the road along the creek. Eric said that he's seeing to it that none of the mulch and firewood is going to be wasted. He was working hard at getting vines out of the grove beside the old boy's-camp entrance; it's going to look really nice when he's finished. He's obliged, unfortunately, to destroy a bittersweet vine that is endangering the electric wires. I rode out to Roy Street, then, unwilling to face the mud and the steep hills again, came back by Packerton and Pierceton, then checked out this end of the trail. Saw a young deer twice -- or, more likely, two young deer. If the town and DNR had any sense, they would close down the whole bike trails for hunting season, mark off areas that are too close to houses, and tell the hunters to take as many as they can eat. Indeed, DNR should pass a general rule that deer taken inside city limits don't count against your bag limit. I read the rest of Lucy Ellen's Heyday just before naptime. It does end -- but hasn't much structure. I got tomatoes, peppers, peaches, and corn at the farmer's market this morning, and ran into Lois. 21 September 2006 You can't see Union street from the new roadway, but you can see one of the orange stakes on the new roadway from Union Street. That streak of woods looks as though it has been a road before. 24 September 2006 I drove through the Farmer's Market Saturday morning, but I was late for my gig at the log house and couldn't shop. And we've eaten nearly all the black walnuts, too. I don't want to do schoolteacher again; I'm not at all good at it. Sitting there answering questions, and talking about the old books on my desk, and that sort of thing was fun, though. Didn't get my "bedgown" finished until Friday night. Doesn't look all that bad, somewhat to my surprise. I'm starting to think naughty thoughts about making linen petticoats and the like. Maybe even buying a book and finding out what I'm doing! 25 September 2006 According to a recent thread on 18th-Century Woman, the book I want to buy is "Whatever Shall I Wear". Buying a book won't go over big with Dave. We have a knee-deep pile of books in the parlor to be gotten rid of. I need to get boxes and sort them into attic, shelves, Goodwill, and other. Of course, to put books on shelves I need to dispose of books already on shelves, which are pretty much where we jammed things when we unpacked. But Dave recently cleaned out the bookshelves in his room -- which is where the knee-deep pile in the parlor came from. Books in my room are pretty much sorted: the Burroughs collection on two shelves, my needlework books -- separated by category and alphabetical by author -- on two shelves. And two shelves and a pile of "gotta put it someplace". Plus shoals of sewing supplies. I'm sure I'd find a *lot* more room on those shelves if I took everything off and put it back again. Particularly if I sorted out the stuff I'm never, ever gonna use and gave it to Goodwill. I did unload a box of cotton prints on one of the quilters teaching patchwork across the room from my schoolmarm gig. When the Gentle Guests aren't very thick, it's much more pleasant to have history and patchwork and sewing and schoolteaching all in one room than it would have been if we each had our own shelter. They are hoping someday to have a one-room schoolhouse in Redbush village. The Greenway now connects to the dirt end of North Union Drive, but the pattern of mud-churning (and three trees with orange ribbons) suggest that they mean to make a right-angle turn there in order to keep plowing into virgin territory. I hope I've misread the signs -- but there are tracks of heavy machinery on a driveway off Boys City that points toward the mudchurn. I didn't get anything done today except a little laundry. Back to the Days must have taken more out of me than I thought. Didn't help that I missed my nap yesterday. Cain't think what I did to make my back sore; nothing I did was physically demanding, nor did I ever sit or stand longer than was comfortable. Our microwave died in the middle of preparing supper Friday, forcing me to stir-fry my stir-fry vegetables. On Saturday, Dave ran out and bought a new one. The screen on the window is painted white instead of black, which makes me think something is wrong whenever I catch sight of it. I haven't yet zapped anything I want to peer at, so I don't know whether it's hard to see through. 26 September 2006 We heard crashing and banging this morning, and went out to see what they were up to on the Greenway. Noise came from the intersection of the trail along the creek and a new road driven through to Boys City Drive -- the right-angle turn I'd been fretting about. This is such an obviously-insane place to put the Greenway that Dave is convinced that they are merely using an old right-of-way to avoid dragging heavy machinery through the whole length of the mud road. I sure hope he's right. On the way to Sewing Circle tonight -- nobody showed, but I finished darning my bike socks -- we went through the park and found that some more sea wall had been demolished. Not a lot of sea wall; it seems to be a tough job despite the miserable condition of the sea wall. The good news: the font that vanished during my "upgrade" is on the old computer, which is running Windows again. The bad news: Z-tree isn't on it, and Explorer doesn't do file copying. It did offer to copy the entire directory; perhaps I should have let it, to see whether it would get to the file I wanted before the floppy ran out of space. 30 September 2006 A strange nightmare woke me this morning. I was seen running away from the scene of a crime wearing my older, worn-out, Villa-Olive T-shirt. In the dream I reflected that it wouldn't do me any good to dispose of both shirts because people would wonder why I'd suddenly stopped wearing them. Waking, I realize that getting rid of every scrap of villa-olive fabric in the house would be quite impossible. But in the dream, I was living in an apartment -- appeared to be part of a nursing home when I made it to the outer door (but not quite to where I could change shirts). I think it odd that -- except for the occasional dream in which I dream that I'm waking up -- I never dream that my home is any place that I've ever been before, waking or dreaming. The chase went on too long to remember the crime, except that it involved stealing a complicated-to-detach part of a machine which, now that I'm awake, wasn't all that much like a motorcycle. Whether I wanted the seat I was trying to detach or the rest of it is among the things I've forgotten. 1 October 2006 I tried to wear my newer "Villa Olive" T-shirt yesterday -- I'd forgotten about the dream by then -- but couldn't find my red raw-silk shirt to put on over it when it got cool, so I switched to my red turtleneck and blue vest. When I undressed that night, I found that I'd put the vest on inside out. Found the raw-silk shirt hanging on a coat rack at the church today. I was wearing my long-sleeved Villa Olive dress at the time. (I bought a *lot* of Villa-Olive jersey!) September had a happy ending: a weenie roast at Alice's house. -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather) west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.