Thunderheads displace
spring’s playful rain-and-shade clouds
cruel winds of summer
Lizl Bennefeld, Copyright © 2016-06-30. All rights reserved.
Daily Post Prompt: Clouds.
RonovanWrites: RonovanWrites Weekly Haiku Poetry Prompt Challenge #103 – Summer & Fun
The Scampers are at the veterinary clinic, recuperating from their micro-chipping and neutering. We dropped them off at 7:30 this morning. After a brief stop at the grocery, We came home to eat melon slices in the calm quiet and then took very long naps. Such sweet solitude! Missing the puppies now, however. In another hour we can pick them up, again.
We never did get them to the groomers, and now we will have to wait another two weeks. Assuming that we can get an appointment, which we couldn’t when we’d have liked to, which would have been before their surgeries.
I tried calling the folks’ place, last night, but there was no answer. I’ve decided that the telephone is not a good medium for them at this point. Tomorrow I will try to write a letter to mail to them. I suspect that my mother figures that nobody calls that she wants to talk to, and so she just ignores the telephone…if she hears it at all.
Actually, I feel that way a lot, myself. My phone number used to be that of a business, and so I get odd spam calls from people wanting to loan my “business” obscene amounts of money. Usually while I’m taking a nap. Or have not yet awakened.
I am having a delightful time reading and chasing down old favorites, so that I can reread them. Latest few: Shade and Shadow by Francine G. Woodbury, Lightwing by Tara K. Harper, and Star Driver by Lee Correy. I look forward to our appointment with the optometrist at the end of July and the possibility of new glasses.
I figure I have about five weeks in which to clean my guns before I go to the marksmanship center able to see the targets, again, at fifty feet. I also must find my hand weights and begin doing wrist exercises. I’m up to more than three miles a day on the exercise bike; in the not too distant past (in terms of years, not longer months), I was putting in twenty-five miles a day. I shall not regret, however. I have a need to find another book of general exercises that will help with general strengthening.
The piano playing project is coming along nicely. The Scampers still howl occasionally, but I’m still getting to the piano at least every other day. I love the warm-up exercises, but I’ve also returned to some favorite preludes, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and other favorites from my J. S. Bach piano book. My back’s still giving me trouble when I sit for too long, but there is general improvement.
I may have to grab a sheet of staff paper and write out what the notes off the staff are. I’ve forgotten over these past years. I was right to put out the brass instruments for people to pick up from the curb, this spring. But I’m also glad that in addition to the piano, I’ve hung onto my harmonicas and the soprano recorder.
Some melodies running through my head, also, but I don’t think I’m up to doing anything with those. Perhaps never, again, except in my mind.
I made a nice jug of Toddy coffee concentrate over the weekend, and I’m now looking forward to a nice cup of iced coffee-and-milk before we head out to bring the Scampers home again.
Hope you’re all enjoying a lovely day, wherever you are!
Lizl
If we were having coffee, today, it would have to be a short visit. My husband came home early from the ARRL Field Day activities that began Saturday at noon; he and his friends usually get out to the camping ground a day early. The wind gusts, last time I checked, were 44 miles per hour, and the fellows had a long drive to get back to town.
The puppies missed him, and they kept me busy in his absence. We took morning and afternoon naps both Friday and Saturday, which gave me time to recuperate.
If we were having coffee together, I would lament the fact that neighbors on two sides (although one was a couple of houses down from us) had huge fires in their back yards. The new neighbors to our south have put in a permanent fire pit with surrounding patio in their back yard. I am allergic to smoke (and chemical fumes, fragrances, petroleum distillates, &c.) and feared I would need another ER trip, but did get inside quickly enough.
Usually I enjoy spending the evening in the back yard with the puppies. Yesterday we took another nap, and today we got out extra early, so they could play while I took photographs, drank Toddy coffee and put in 2.5 miles on the exercise bike before eight o’clock. While Al was gone, I missed playing the piano, but I find that I crave exercise more.
If we were visiting together this weekend, I would be able to offer you sushi and crab salad on millet toast. Also various green salads and fresh fruit. When Al goes away for a long weekend, we go together to the grocery to buy favorite treats. He brought home hot dogs, and I’m giving him the other (store-bought) seafood chef’s salad for his supper. I cooked up a pound and a half of beef liver with a yellow onion and four thick-cut slices of bacon, which I enjoyed at supper, last night, and also for this morning’s breakfast. I did not share them with the puppies, although they did get some slices from the bananas.
My weekend has been a technical disaster with the touch screen no longer working on my laptop and my stick computer not working at all since the last time I unplugged it in advance of thunderstorms. I cannot tell if the stick computer is getting electricity, and my only alternative for testing it is on one of Al’s monitors (HDMI). I did find the missing power cord for my HP laptop, though, so I’m up a computer, again.
I have not visited with other family members in weeks, and I am feeling uneasy about that. I am confident that my father is doing well, but I worry about my mother, who does not always recognize my voice when I have called, and hangs up the telephone. Both are hard of hearing. They both have trouble with their hearing.
To find the Weekend Coffee Share link-up and read Diane’s blog, please visit: Part Time Monster.
Thank you for stopping by.
Best wishes for your week!
Lizl
Al’s doing some ARRL Field Day stuff, this weekend, and so the puppies and I enjoyed an unstructured afternoon. I’m glad that I didn’t go along; he called to tell me the site had not been mowed. The grass is above his knees, and wood ticks are plentiful. The puppies are wondering where he is, right now. Too bad that they can’t understand what I mean, if I try to tell them.
The morning is cool, the wind is moderating and the flowers in the garden are blooming. The poor honeybee is still trying to land on the wild flax flowers, which stems and petals will not support its weight.
The neighbors across the back fence, whose son has been teasing our dogs, are loading furniture into the U-Haul rental truck. That should mean that their new-to-them house with built-in dog run is ready to receive them. I am certain that all will benefit from the larger space and freedom of their own property. The parents have been quite congenial, and their boxer pup is sweet and tries so hard to be a “good” dog.
I stayed up, last night, to put in my miles (2.5) on the exercise bike in the gazebo, and then again until four o’clock or so, reading. Scion of Cyador by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., and A Sea Change by Lynda Ward. I previously finished Dead End Street (Museum Mystery Series) by Sheila Connolly.
The puppies are inside the house, tormenting Al, and so I had better end this post and go in to make coffee and think about lunch. Best wishes for your day!
I spent most of the day with the puppies, going back to the beginning to enforce proper indoor behavior. They’re spending lots of time in their kennels, with me taking them out frequently for outside and water. When they’re loose, they’re confined to the room that I’m in. I think this is working.
I did manage to get in 2.5 miles on the exercise bike. I think I missed a couple days in the midst of everything.
My next chore is to get some more boxes sorted and paper put through the shredder for next week’s garbage pickup.
The photo taking, first thing in the morning, is really great. As is the exercise bike after the sun’s gone down, out in the gazebo. I must find some exercises for the rest of me, now that my blood oxygen level is approximately where it is supposed to be.
Our day was quite busy. Al spent it pulling/spraying weeds around the house and in the back yard. Right down to the bare dirt, since no grass came up where we had put down seed on the dirt hauled in last summer to build up the yard around the house. The air was dry and breezy, and the sky was without clouds, and so the blue wild flax lost their petals before Noon.
As last, I got caught up, again, on the dish-washing. Digging around in the refrigerator, I discovered another seven jars of yogurt (homemade). Still quite good/fresh. I must have made another batch, forgetting I’d made the first the day before.
I fell asleep in my chair, last night, and awoke at a quarter of six, this morning, to find all the lights still on in the kitchen and living room. I’d heard Al’s TV still on in the other room just before I fell asleep, but evidently he didn’t get up, again, either. How strange!
I got out late, this morning. The air is dry, today, and there is a strong breeze. Promise of a nice day, if not abundant flowers.
If we were having coffee together, today, I would suggest iced coffee. The Heat Index is 90°F (32°C), and the humidity is higher than is comfortable. I look forward to tonight, for which the forecast low is 58°F. Yesterday morning we had a thunderstorm and pounding rain.
The living room and kitchen are still a mess. I have two more bookshelves to empty before we can remove the last of the carpeting. The puppies have decided that they can climb and eat everything, so books are going into the basement, where I gave away enough books that shelf space is now available. The puppies are now wrestling on the love seat.
If we had gotten together yesterday, you would have found them devising new methods of pushing back the kitchen chairs so they could climb onto the table to get onto the counters. (They’re now banned from the kitchen as well as the basement, bathroom and the sleeping areas.)
If we were having coffee together, I would share my frustration at having to spend the majority of my waking moments during the past two weeks either napping or dog sitting. My husband has activities to attend to; yesterday he worked a paid four-hour shift at the marksmanship center. Volunteers are sparse during the summer months. Last night, we put the puppies to bed in their kennels before midnight, and I stayed up writing, reading and planning out various activities until after seven o’clock this morning. I put on the coffee to brew when I woke up shortly before ten o’clock. I’ve been trying to find time to write a #weekendcoffeeshare post since Friday. By the time I sat down, my head was empty of all ideas.
The puppies (who are getting restless) will soon be begging my attention for another trip out outdoors. Thank you for spending time here visiting with me. Before you go, I have a few photographs from yesterday morning before the rain to share that I worked on during the night. Please visit Diane’s Weekend Coffee Share post, where you will find her post and also the InLinkz button where others are sharing their own links.
In the process of going through our possessions, giving some away and tossing others, I have enjoyed revisiting items of significance. My husband’s family on his mother’s side has produced a variety of artists: painters, musicians, writers, crafters and such. The saw blade was painted by Al’s mother. She painted a fair number of them as I understand it. We have more conventional paintings by her and one of her brothers hung throughout the house. His mother also was a quilter. Several of Al’s aunts wrote columns for town, county and/or area newspapers. Several of Al’s first cousins were accomplished singers.
Life has been too hectic. I couldn’t stand not writing for another day, and so I have kept awake through the night, while the puppies are sleeping. I can put in miles on the exercise bike and 15 to 30 minutes practicing piano and doing the finger exercises, but being hyper alert whenever the puppies are not asleep in their kennels is more than I can handle while trying to write. Dogs, computers and stove-top cooking are a particularly bad combination. And Thaddeus has figured out how to push out the kitchen chairs, climb onto the table and from there, reach the kitchen counter at the other side. I do not know where I am going to put the art that sits on the shelves instead of being hung on the walls. I’m almost through gathering the rest of the books that are not locked in a closed cabinet into boxes to take to the basement. We discarded enough books that we never would read again to open enough shelf space to house the refugees from the upstairs. Until the puppies outgrow their need to chew all cloth and paper products within their reach. Naps! Love ’em! Need ’em!
Going to try for a couple hours of sleep, now.
The Moments Between 