Jonah = Fun @ Grammies!

"Papa's Drum!" We got him to wear the head phones. Good boy.

"CHEEEEEESE"

"Rea...den?"

We read it 10 times, each time making up a different story.

The flowers liked the gin, too!

When I was sick a few weeks ago, Jake brought me roses from the market. Not expensive ones,$6.99 a bunch.

Cornell did a study on using alcohol to keep cut flowers fresh and upright, so I put in a cap full of gin.

Three days later 2 of the roses began that awful droop. so I cut the stems and added another capful of gin and the next morning they had really perked right up.

Thinking more is better I put another capful for good measure and voila! I had gorgeous blooming roses for three weeks!

The leaves don't hold up so well, but who cares about rose leaves.

Aren't the colors wonderful?

Snow Shoot

Snow on Cedars

Hydrangea

Pine Snow

Snow Butterfly Bush

Surprise Snow

I got up today after the alarm went off three times. I looked out the front window. There was snow out there..pretty ordinary and then I remembered it had all but melted over the weekend..WTF?

I already had 2 inches. I went back to tell Jake in bed.

"Babe, it snowed last night".

"Oh, yeah? what did we get? A dusting?"

"Well, no. I'm going to go check the cancellations".

If school are cancelled in our district, we have 2 hours to decide if we can get in and then if we can't, we can take the day. We have to take a personal or vacation day but it's a legitimate reason.

My district was closed. Jake, not, but we can't drive our roads when it's like this. I also had MG class and it was an important one. Presentation preparation.

I made phone calls and we decided to cancel.

I had a great time ringing the students and saying,"No class today!

They were all delighted.

Jake and I called in and then had breakfast.

Surprise snow- almost 5 inches and right now the squalls---are making hard to see across the road..

Four minutes later, now the sun is out..make streaks through the flakes..shadows on the snow.

David has been here all day laughing at me as I make rice pudding , looking for crayons and making snow globes in the yard, like kids. I don't mind because he plays my guitar all the time that he's here, live music.

Jake got my snowshoes from the crawlspace and they are pretty shot..dried gut,broken laces and wood. Bummer. I had some adventures on those shoes.

What an unusual day. We are going to cook steaks outside on the grill (brrr) and put the taters in the wood stove and maybe have more rice pudding.

Nap time right now but the light is really cool I may have to go out and take some shots...

Have a warm eve.

Pete's Banjo

This is Pete's banjo and he finally got around to changing the banjo head after thirty years of hard strumming.
It says on the head,
" This machine surrounds Hate and forces it to surrender".
I have heard all sorts of wonderful tunes on this instrument. I have carried it from sloop to dock and slept next to it below decks.

It's a good ole banjo. When he got it changed the person doing it asked him what he wanted to do with it. Pete said, 'Let's see if someone wants it and we can raise some money with it"

So they put it on ebay and auction proceeds will go to 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, whose tree-planting work in western Kenya reforested clear-cut mountains.

He hopes Maathai will teach the women of Haiti her methods of land restoration. “I read her book, ‘Unbowed,' about her experiences in Kenya. It's a glorious story. If you fly over Haiti, as I have, you can see a straight line between the forested Dominican Republic and Haiti, which is almost bereft of trees.”

Though the small Caribbean nation is in the throes of earthquake recovery, Pete said he wanted his proceeds to benefit the Haitian environment.“The good and bad are all tangled up in this world, but some awful things are followed by good results”.

Isn't he amazing? Pete, still carrying it on.

Look for it on ebay. They made a youtube video, too. Google it

Meeting Jake

I met Jake in 2001 on the Internet. Gasp! I was using my web cam and my daughter was on hers. We were on a web cam site that I can't ever remember the name of , but it was public. I was saying goodnight to my grand kids as I usually did a couple night a week.

Jake saw my cam and tried to chat with me. I blew him off. I didn't have a steady boy friend ( at 50 what do you call them? IDK), anyway, I wasn't looking at all. Seems he was.

A few days later he tried again and I said,

"Okay let me see you first".

Hey, he looked pretty good. His screen name was, Longhaired Hippy Dude

We chatted and pretty soon I was liking him and this conversation.
So against all my good notions and something I had strictly admonished my kids against , I gave him my phone number.

Dun dun dunn!

We talked all night, having to go back to the computer screen to look at each other every hour or so.

Pretty soon the we both heard the birds...it was morning.

Turned out he wasn't an axe murderer or a serial killer and we have been together almost eight years.

Sometimes the Internet is a wonderful thing.

We had these pictures on the top of our wedding cake instead of figurines.

AHHHH CHOOOOO

I still hab a code