Blame it on the Moon

Well, I tried to take a picture of the moon last night for my friend, Chase, who was having a tough day yesterday and wanted to blame it on a full moon.

The moon last night was a banana shaped sliver with a bright planet (I'm assuming Mars or Venus) just above and to the left.

I was driving home and kept seeing it and decided to dig my camera out of my purse and take a picture for Chase.

My camera has an option for "Scene", so I put it on that and slowed WAY down and took a shot. No good. It hesitates a LONG time to actually take the shot, then it processes it. The picture came out like you see here. I drove along a little further and came to a place where I could see it well, slowed WAY down and tried again.

Well, crap. Here I am on a dark road in the middle of nowhere Hinds County and am trying to make a dang picture of the freakin moon for someone I've only met once. But, doggonnit, he's special to me and I REALLY wanted to do this.

So, I kept rolling along, looking for an opportunity with no one on the road and a good view of the moon and finally came to a complete stop, rolled my window down and took a shot. The camera hesitated, finally clicked, then processed and I got this:

It was at this point I realized that, obviously, I cannot hold the camera still enough during the long hesitation and processing time with low light conditions. But what a cool shot! It's like some kind of giant ethereal birds or something.

Even though I was not successful in taking the picture that I had in mind, I still managed to get a shot I wanted to share.

So, Chase, little bro, this is for you. I wanted you to know you were on my mind last night, just as so many of my other MRBA friends were.

I love you all.

Harmony at Home

Well, I guess Tank is REALLY going to sign me up for eharmony when she sees this, but that's okay.

I get picked on a LOT about being the cat lady since I seem to be constantly taking pictures of my kittiekids and posting them on my blog...but that's okay too. I love my kitties and am proud to show them off.

Now, for the story here...It is HIGHLY unusual for Gracie to get in my lap. I can pick Ringo up and throw him over my shoulder, put him in my lap, hug him, whatever... Gracie, on the other hand, is NOT a lap kittie. She's usually in her basket or outside. She's her own cat. If you have cats, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't have cats, well, you are missing something. I'm just sayin...

Anyway, Gracie decided this morning to get in my lap. Since it is such a rare thing, I sure wasn't going to get up and disturb her. Well, what do you know, Scooter (my adopted deaf baby) decided to join us. I was SURE Gracie would bolt. She tolerates Scooter, but normally doesn't really allow her to be in her "space", although she has gotten a lot more friendly than she used to be. I managed to reach over and grab my camera out of my purse and began to take pictures.

Scooter was working HARD on bathing Gracie's ears and the top of her head, and her face, well, you get the picture...

They then fell asleep together, in my lap, for the first time.

Ok. So I know I take a lot of pictures of my kittiekids, and I know my life seems to revolve around them, but they give me great pleasure. I had a sense of joy this morning when my two little girls were lying there together as they never had before.

Sometimes in life you just have to learn to appreciate the little things that bring you pleasure. In my case, it happens to be my kittiekids. And having harmony in my home.

Contrails of Life

As I was driving in to work this morning, I noticed the sky was filled with contrails. There were no real clouds, just contrails. That's the trails of condensation left by passing aircraft.

I don't think that there are that many planes actually leaving from or coming to Jackson, but clearly, there is a lot of traffic OVER Jackson.

I'm sure it's like this all the time, but when the air is as clear as it is, temps on the ground are somewhat warm, and the air in the sky is much cooler, you get to really see them. It's like an entire highway in the sky.

They start out as thin streams behind the aircraft, then they gradually disperse into wider and wider lines until they begin to look like big long clouds. Actually, I guess they are really big long clouds, just man-made.

They criss-cross and form unintentional patterns all over the blue sky, until they all blend together into whiteness.

Seems to me like a lot of people are pushing along thru life, sometimes crossing the paths of others, sometimes causing an effect, sometimes not. When it comes down to it, though, it's all blended together in the end.

Mother, Mother, Pine Tree

I had a wonderful experience yesterday with my Dad. He drove me all over his property on the back of his 4 wheeler. He was showing me how his pine trees are growing and all of the places that the deer are crossing. He showed me his "blinds" where he goes to sit and watch for deer and told me of the experiences he's had sitting there watching.


No, he hasn't killed a deer in years, but just being out there means something to him. And it meant something to me experiencing it with him.


This huge pine tree is on one part of his property and I'm sorry I didn't get a better picture of the pine forest she has created for him. But, suffice it to say that she has been prolific. Once an area that we used to go and fish in a little pond filled with catfish, is now a magnificent pine forest, all because of this mother pine. She has done well for him.


All I know is that it meant a lot for me, a woman approaching her half-century mark, riding on the back of a 4-wheeler with her Dad, who was proudly pointing out the places that the deer are crossing, and the pines are growing.

It was a great day.

Facination

Do you ever click on my pics to see them full size? This is my deaf baby, Scooter, TOTALLY facinated by me crocheting. PLEASE click on it so you can see how pretty she is.

She actually had her head turned COMPLETELY upside down, but it's hard to take a pic while crocheting, so I missed the totally head upside down shot.


I'm still blown away by the fact that she is completely deaf, but she's a part of my life now, and watching her watch life is facinating.

Oh, and it's also hard as heck to crochet with a cat in your lap that can't hear you say NO!

Why me, Lord?

Ever feel like that? Why me, Lord? Hell, I do all the time. A lot of good it does me. By the way, the pic is of Jessie. Jessie James as friend in CS calls him. He loves his Aunt D (that's me).



I've just spent hours trying to get a fender and steering column for son of friend in CS on ebay. I managed to get the fender, but not the steering column and I feel awful about it. WHY??? Am I making money from this? NO. Do I have a vested interest in this?? NO. But I did try. I really did.

What it boils down to is WHY DO I DO THIS?? I don't know.

Little Pine Peters

It's that time of year. Pine trees everywhere are covered with the little purple peters that will bless us with yellow cars in a mere few weeks (although as cold as it is at this moment, it's hard to think of that now).

Last year, a co-worker and I were walking from our other office across the road and she walked into a pine branch and got conked on the

head. That made us stop and laugh and see what it was that she had run into. We realized the pine tree we had just walked under was completely COVERED with clusters of beautiful purple pods. I automatically assumed that they were little baby pine cones. That's what they looked like.

I ended up picking a couple (yeah, I know) and taking them back to the office with us. I happen to work with some guys who know a little bit about trees and I showed my little purple prize to my boss. He then explained to me that, no, that was not a baby pine cone. That little purple thing was going to be what would provide the pollen that would be turning all the cars in the parking lot yellow soon. He instructed me to look again at the branches and he said I'd see little tiny pine cones up further on the branch. Well...

I'll be darn. There it is. A little tiny pine cone.

So, anyway, in case you ever wondered what it was that caused the incredible amount of yellowness that we experience in the spring, blame it on the little purple peters.

Facinating Fungii

When I was leaving the lakehouse Sunday morning I saw something beside the driveway that made me stop the car and reach into my purse for my camera. This is when I realized that I had left my camera in the house because I had taken it out to take pictures of Ghost the night before.

I backed up and went back inside to retrieve the camera and told T & J that I had just seen something very cool beside the drive and realized I had left my camera. They laughed and said they knew what I was talking about. T called it a toadstool.

Well, this is no toadstool, but it's definitely a fungus of some type. I went to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungii to see what I could find and might as well have been reading a foreign language. Fungii are complex little buggers.

What I found facinating about this thing was that it was HARD. I mean like a rock. But, it was able to grow up around resurrection fern, leaves and twigs like they weren't there.

OK, I know I'm strange, but I find things like this totally facinating.

Encroachment?

Yep. I grabbed the camera as soon as I realized my deaf baby Scooter was scoping out Gracie's basket.

Fortunately, Gracie was out for her early morning constitution and didn't witness this.

I'm afraid she wouldn't have been real happy if she had jumped up to her perch and found Scooter lounging in her spot.

In order to keep peace in the house, right after making these pics, I enticed little Scooter to join me on the couch just in case Gracie made an appearance.

Because THIS is what this basket is supposed to look like:

And when we are all in our respective places, it looks like this:

Note that Ringo has no problem with Scooter "encroaching" on him. In fact she seems to completely disregard the fact that she is actually laying on him. Sometimes he protests, but she usually wins and they end up lounging together in a big bundle.

Most of the time I try to express some thought or meaning in my blog posts. This is very simply an indulgence in my kittiekids behavior and sharing how beautiful they are.

Although, now that I think about it, there is somewhat of a lesson here. Some personalities allow encroachment on their territory easier than others. Food for thought...

The Most Beautiful Boy in the Whole Wide World...

is my Ringo.

It's funny, though. He adopted me in November of 2001 and has been with me ever since and I had no IDEA his tongue was this long.

I swear, I never saw this happen. I was FINALLY going to get a picture of my main squeeze AWAKE, looking straight at me, since 99% of the time he looks like the pic above, but NO, it wasn't meant to be. He somehow managed to lick the TOP of his nose right in the midst of me taking his picture.

But he's still the most beautiful boy in the whole wide world!