Have you ever had the feeling that something you were experiencing was surreal. Two months ago I had that feeling again as I sat at the pasta bar at Carabbas. I was by myself so the noisy pasta bar was a quicker option than the short wait for a table. Plus, the evening before it was me scurrying around in a kitchen, attempting to stay 1 step ahead of servers and other kitchen help. See, we had our first (of many, hopefully) Widow’s Banquet. For some reason someone thought I would be a good candidate to head up the food. What was up with that??  Anyway, food went well, except for the Salisbury Steak (aka Poor Man’s Steak) wasn’t quite cooked and so we had to scramble to get that taken care of. So, if you make SS for a big crowd and bake it in an electric roaster, make sure that the meat is fully cooked/baked before you smother it in gravy for baking. That is your free tip of the day. We used a recipe that calls for cream of mushroom soup and cheddar cheese soup instead of just CoMS. It’s much better. That’s your second free tip of the day.

So anyway, there I was sitting at the pasta bar at Carrabbas and it was oddly relaxing to watch them busy clanging pots and pans and slamming oven doors and hearing an occasional song belted out by the person who was manning the grill. Pun intended.

Later that evening I was at JoAnn’s Fabrics, having taken my good old time picking out sale items to be purchased with my additional 20% coupon. As I was standing in line, waiting to have my fabric cut, I was intrigued to watch 2 young mothers, who I guessed to be in their early 20s and army wives, each getting a small stack of printed fabric cut. They had 3 well-behaved toddlers with them. The ladies were happily chatting about the little dresses they were going to make for their daughters. And one of them was getting terrycloth to make washable wipes.

As we stood there, another interesting character came by to have fabric cut. This young lady had the most unique assemblage of clothes. She had a plain black t-shirt on. Now there’s nothing unusual about that. But her skirt was one of those that were sold maybe 20 or more years ago. Remember the ones that had 1″ pleats the whole way around the waist, were polyester with a polka dot pattern? She had cut it off a little above the knees and it wasn’t hemmed. To top her outfit off (pun alert), she had a red stocking cap on, the kind like we were 20 or more years ago, not the trendy knit caps currently available. Like the kind I wore when I was 6 or 8 years old and it always smelled kinda musty. We lived on a farm and they probably didn’t get washed very often.

And then, I was the last person to get my fabric cut for the evening and it was literally closing time but the lady was in no hurry. As she was casually snipping away, she was talking about her husband, soon to be ex, she hoped, who was waiting out in a car for her. She had finally made a break from him and the long stemmed flower he had brought in for her didn’t impress her any. Having no personal marriage advice to give her, I gave her a listening ear instead. There is so much sadness in this world and the breaking up of a marriage is one of them.

The other day I was in the Verizon store 4 hours with my boss and co-worker, waiting as the salesman set up a new account for us and then set up 5 new phones for us. And to think we thought it would take about an hour. Eventually the conversation went something like this:

Me: I’m so glad that others [from church] have learned to use the hotline. I think people were getting tired of hearing my voice.
Co-worker: I’m tired of hearing your voice.
Me: And that is supposed to mean what to me?
Boss (offering an additional comeback): And I care because …..?

Gotta love sarcastic bantering!

Today in the office, boss, co-worker (same one), plumber and I were talking about people winning the lottery. We had a lively discussion with 2 of us declaring how that much money ruins lives and the other 2 arguing the other side. I said, “You couldn’t pay me to win the lottery! You would never again know who your true friends are [vs. those out for your money].” Said plumber, “Yeah, but then you could just buy new ones.” Cracked me up!!!

I had to spend about 2 hours on the road today to deliver some paperwork. I got to listen to the Braves opening game! I finally figured out why I enjoy listening to them. It’s certainly not because I’m a sports fan. Their announcers have the sort of humor that I enjoy. See, it’s kind of like my critiquing of fiction books. If the style of writing is bad enough, the moral of the story can’t redeem it. Anyway, here is 1 little tidbit (not verbatim) of today [21-year-old Jason Heyward, had just hit a home-run at his first at-bat, an exact duplicate of last year’s opening game except for the number of pitches]:

Announcer #1: He is really showing his age. This year he hit a home run on the second pitch.
Announcer #2: Yeah, by the time he’s been in the major leagues for 10 years, he won’t be hitting a home run until the second day of the season.

Tonight the very green outdoors is nearly surreal. Because only 2 months ago the trees were bare and the grass was brown. We’ve had a warm February and March and now rain off and on for the past 5 days so things are nearly bursting with green. And to think that some of you up north are experiencing snow. Can’t hardly believe it.

And some friends from N.D. are experiencing something surreal as they wait in the hospital with their 6-year-old son who has been having seizures. [Actually got an update as I write this and it believed to be epileptic seizures.] Please keep them in your prayers as this cannot be an easy thing to face. And to many others who are facing difficult situations, I’m sure they know that feeling as well.

Have a great evening y’all. I’m wishing that cleaning the house tonight wasn’t so real.

Congratulations to Miriam!!!!

You are the winner of a print! Send me a message with the your choice from the images and your address so I can get it ordered!

To everyone else who participated, thanks for taking time to stop by and leave a comment! It was fun to see what your favorite flowers are.

Marylou

 I’d say it’s about time for another giveaway. Spring has been here for several weeks, although it did dip down to nearly freezing last night and we had a light frost. I wonder if my okra seedlings will make it. If not, I’ll plant some more. Okra is in the cotton family and likes warm weather. And the ants are loving the little plants for some reason.  They are not touching the kohlrabi, lettuce, broccoli or onions. Our asparagus has been pushing up new shoots at an alarming rate and this will be our first year harvesting them. Yum!

The weather has been gorgeous!! We’ve had a few rains and the grass is greening up very nicely. It is time to bring out the lawn mower.

But anyway, in January everything was brown and drab and so when The Pioneer Woman had her flower assignment, it inspired me to go get some flowers and shoot. So, I got some tulips from Walmart (half price) and some football mums and Gerberas from a florist.

The giveaway is this: 1 print chosen from the photos posted below to the randomly drawn winner. If you choose one that is square, it will be a 12×12 print. If you choose #7, it will be an 11×14. Adding or deleting a saying or verse will be an option as well.

To enter: Leave a comment here or on facebook and tell me what your favorite flower is. (Mine happens to be a pale pink peony but I am ever so sorrowful that we cannot grow peonies here. Just too far south. I’ve had several plants and they come up each spring but stop at a certain point and refuse to grow anymore or flower.) If you want to tell me which is your favorite from below, that’s fine. Otherwise, I will contact the winner for their choice. If you leave a comment here as anonymous, please leave your name and check back after the contest to see if you’ve won! If the winner doesn’t respond within 10 days another winner will be chosen. 

Oh, and a couple of weeks ago I updated my front page at my website Impressions by ML so drop in to read if you dare. It probably is way more than you wanted to know!

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EDITED TO ADD:

Ah yes! I knew I was forgetting something. A deadline for entries. Which will be midnight Tuesday night, March 15, Twenty-Eleven.

 

So all the time I was putting off posting the NE journal because of busyness, I was taking a few pictures along the way. Since I had them all edited and ready to go, I though I’d go ahead and post them anyway. So sorry the are stale. Guess you can quit looking if you want.

Within 2 weeks of returning from our trip, there were 4 weekends in a row where I was gone. The first being our church campout. We had a very lovely time again and the weather was gorgeous!! Some years we have had pretty chilly nights, and the “rustic” cabins were barely tolerable. This year was still sleeping bag weather but it was surprising how quickly it warmed up in the mornings when the sun came up. The state park we use has group camp area. It is nice because there’s plenty of room for the kids to ride their bikes. The sleeping facilities are rustic, at best. The bathhouses need some serious work but we’ve been told the state has no extra $ to spend these days. I have a gazillion pics but I’m not going to post them this time.

The following weekend we went to VA for the ordination of my brother. We had a lovely, laid-back weekend with his family, plus seeing extended family as well! This time I don’t think I even took pics, except at the ordination with my SIL’s camera.

The following Wednesday I was delighted to have a friend of mine from S. Ont. come visit me. We met in NW Ont. at  a mission where we both worked. She is now married and has 2 kids and this is the first time since she’s married that she has been to GA. We went to a local swamp park where her son was delighted to see all the “crackodiles”.

The best time to see gators is in the winter on a warm, sunny day. They come out to soak up the warmth. On this day they were all over the place. And no, you should not put your child on their backs to take pictures. According to the one ranger, they’ve had people ask if they can do that.

There’s a little reptile show where you can hold a baby gator, and hold snakes, the non-poisonous ones. har har

FYI: an adult gator bites with over 2,000 lbs of force, the equivalent of having a small sedan fall on you. However, their muscles to open their mouth have only a fraction of that strength.

Sometimes they open their mouth for dental work, and to show you just how afraid of them to be.

Seriously, that mouth is loaded with salmonella. It’s what helps digest their food.

Most of the time they look more like this:

They do have a bit of a smirk, don’t they? I will say this, they are all bite and no very little brain.

Here’s another FYI: An female alligator lays eggs and the temperature of the eggs in the nest determines the gender of the baby alligators. 86* and up, they are male. Below 86* and they are female. Amazing, eh?

Here’s Evan pondering the size of Oscar’s bite. Oscar was a docile gator who lived to be around 100 years old. Most gators don’t live past about 70. They have all 14 (?) feet of his skeleton on display.

We headed down the islands for a few hours and enjoyed a picnic and a walk on the beach. This was the first time their munchkins had seen the ocean.

I left early Friday morning for Ohio. I was so thankful that God had worked out the details so I didn’t have to drive up alone. There were others headed up for the same wedding as me, but their travel plans didn’t exactly correlate with mine. So I rode up with 1 party and back with another.

I was the photographer for Walter and Dorothy and since they didn’t want a lot of pictures, I shot it alone. They had a beautiful sunshiney day that started out chilly but ended quite warm.

 

The following weekend I flew with Christy to Montana, where someone picked us up for another 3-hour drive to Alberta. Twice Christy has a been my second shooter so this time I was tickled to go along to help her. We had fun navigating snowy roads around Lethbridge.

 I even got to introduce her to poutine. Shooting in a very cold climate was a different experience, as the other 2 we shot together, we were able to do all formals outside. This time most formals were shot in a motel courtyard. The bridal party very bravely went outside for some.

By midnight we were reduced to giggles. Not that anything went wrong or was funny about anything of the wedding. Just relief-that-it’s-over and then little things from the day hitting our funny bones at just the wrong angle. Christy, I’ve been wanting to go Italy. Do you know of anyone who needs wedding photos done there? I’d love to shoot for you again!

We got a few winks of sleep before we got up to go back down to MT to fly out. It was cold all weekend (mostly around 0 or a few degrees colder) and just before we boarded the plane they warned us to use the “facilities” at the airport since the ones on the plane were frozen up.

This time I remembered my little P&S camera that was in my purse. Does that look cold or is it just me?

Yup. That looks cold. Real cold.

Then suddenly it was Thanksgiving and my family all came here for that.

We had a grilled meat smorgasbord, with a number of sides. We ate at the lake and it was quite warm.

 

My, my! What a sky! Can you see the frisbee fly?

Move over, Dr. Suess.

We had a meal cooked over the fire one other evening as my brother Phil wanted to try some dutch oven recipes. We had a delicious stew and cornbread. Dessert was blackberry cobbler, also baked in a cast-iron pot. I was so glad it was chilly, and that my niece ended up wearing my coat, because! She found my set of spare keys for my car. I had been putting off getting another one made because it’s the kind that has a chip and cost $70+ to replace it. I knew I had misplaced it around Christmas the previous year. Check your coat pockets, people! You never know what you’ll find. It might even be a $20 bill like I found another year. No, check your OWN pockets. Mine are off limits.  

Oh and the end of November, guess what we did?

 

 

Nope.

 

 

Nope again.

 

 

Still wrong.

 

 

We picked our lemons. All four of them. And they were beautiful!

Maybe next year we’ll get 8. And maybe we’ll get none. Our poor tree looks rather bedraggled from the many cold nights we’ve had this winter.

One Saturday evening in December my sister and I catered a company Christmas supper. Here is Charity’s home that looks like it comes out of Southern Living.

I took silicone muffin cups and coated them with white and semi-sweet chocolate. After they had chilled, I peeled the flexible silicone cups away. And we filled them with fruit.

That’s as far as I got with food pics. They went through the courses so fast we barely got the food out to them in time.  

And here is their little man who loves the toasty fireplace.

Oh, and there was that one night that I was up for 2 hours since the lunar eclipse peaked at 2 AM and it was eclipsing very slowly. I got a bunch of church calendar printing done while I was up, which was a good thing.

 

Moon on the right, Orion’s belt on the left:

The next is a 12-minute exposure. I tried to do a longer one by my batteries went dead. Cold weather is a real energy killer. And I decided it was time to go back to bed.

Christmas was a quiet affair with only our parents and us 3 youngest siblings. Waffles prepared by my brother and sister as my parents and I lounged around, trying to shake off the flu that so greatly invaded this land.

Thankfully I felt better the next day because we headed out to spend 2 days with some friends at a cabin in NC. And from there we headed to Ohio to attend the wedding of a friend of ours on New Years Eve. I was hired to do the reception detail shots.

I had met Emma in NW Ont. and I was delighted to see some other former misison staff at her wedding! Some that hadn’t seen in quite some time! 

We also had lots of fun with our dear single lady friends in the area. New Year’s Eve party, breakfast at Velma’s, supper at Red Lobster.

And so ended 2010. Happy New Year!!!!

About 2 months late.

 

Yes, I know I promised Massachusetts would be next but I have so many pictures and it’s gonna take a while to type it up and other commitments come first right now. Whew!

That said, I have to show you my latest good deal. First of all, let me say that I buy disposable sunglasses. Well, not quite but I go thru them so fast due to 1. leaving them somewhere 2. sitting on them 3. leaving them somewhere. I have left some in Ghana, Switzerland and several other places. I set them down for some reason and then forget to pick them up. So I just buy the $5-$10 glasses so it’s not much of a loss. When I was in N.E. states I bought a pair there, left the same pair in a motel restroom in Boston and bought another pair and ended up bringing those home with me.

Lois thinks I should just buy an expensive pair so I would take better care of them but I’m afraid if I would lose them, then there goes all that money.

I was on Southern Savers, which is a wonderful place to find bargains, in grocery stores and pharmacies here in the south, as well as day to day bargains at many other places. A few weeks ago Jenny mentioned that Graveyard Mall had a special on women’s “branded” sunglasses. Nine pair for $10 and shipping is included. Well, feedback I saw said they were half decent so I ordered a set. How can you go wrong at $1 a piece? They ended being priced anywhere from $10 to $20.

And since the bright winter sun is upon us again, the glasses have arrived just in time. You wanna trade some snow for bright sunshine? Sure. We’d take some!

I was tickled to find that most of them are wearable for me. Keep in mind that I am not a fashion expert so if you think I look weird in them, keep your snickers to a mininum!

I know, you’re snickering already. It doesn’t take glasses…….

Anyway, here’s the first pair:

These first 2 look very near alike.

2nd pair:

That pair was Panama Jack brand.

3rd pair (because goofy lives at my house):

I’m not feeling it so much with these next ones. The lenses are about as big as my face.

4th pair:

But, they have a special feature the others don’t have!!!!

I call this next picture A Loose Missing Screw  

So that helps make that decision easy.

5th pair:

Those have really cheap looking bling on the temples. Free to a good home.

6th pair (because goofier lives at my house too):

Not really liking those either. Also free to a good home. Or my toy box.

7th pair:

Those are my favorite, even though I look very sober on this picture. Must be because I forgot to take the take off. See those little circles on the temple? There’s a hole there. Guess it’s to let my temples breathe. Or something.

8th pair:

Yes, I’m shocked that you’re still reading this!!!!

9th pair:

Those are a pair of Hannah Montana shades. In adult sizes?????? They have stars on them. Here’s what I think of them:

No, really they’re not that bad. This adult just doesn’t want to wear Hannah Montana glasses. Free to good home. Or my toybox.

And I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I’ve gotten a new pair of glasses due to issues with photography. Sometimes you need a little more than what contacts can do for you. The best part was that the $ Tree had the right prescription in stock for me.

So what do you think? Would these make you laugh if I wore them at your photoshoot?

Seriously, they give me the heebie jeebies looking at them. Looking through them is another story.

And I shall retreat to the back of the camera again. Where I prefer to be.