Summer Napping

It has truly been warm here...or should I say a bit sweltering..but I AM NOT complaining..I was so cold last summer so I am enjoying every drop of sweat that falls from my forehead into my eye! When it's summer it needs to be hot but my poor friends in the Backyard Bed and Bistro are having a wilting time of it. However, last Friday was a most delightful day....we all took naps together...I love my furry friends! They gathered around me and saw that I was napping so they perched themselves on cool rocks, leafy branches and moist cool earth and slept with barely an eye open. First I read to them from a book I was reading and then when they saw me lay my head down, napping we went!

Anything Goes

I frequently read a blog called Daisy Cottage. Kim of that blog is such a genuine and sweet person and her blog today was on being free to decorate the way you want to..and I say Hear,Hear!
WE love our decorating shows but sometimes they make us feel that we are not decorating properly...have too much color or what we are all probably guilty of...too much stuff. We love our color and stuff and should be surrounded by all that we love...it makes us feel safe...and if we habitually watch the news...we are made to feel unsafe...so Color up those abodes and pile in that stuff! Your house is your world and you can make it a billowy nest that two kitties would love to sink into!

Wild Party Saturday Night

And that it was!
As the sun set every one who was any one and their closest relatives were there. Excessive amounts of food was consumed in a frenzy with bits and crumbs dropped where ever they partied. Drinking...oh ho ho yes, there was drinking...and jumping into the pond in their birthday suits. There was dancing on the bar and chasing the new girl in town whose attitude would have turned off any sober potential suitor. But not these boys..these guys strutted their stuff till they passed out on the tables and ground. Rude cat calls and resultant hisses at the most bold was the haughty attitude that girl displayed that night.
At one point in the long night there were 2 gals chasin' one guy..screaming and running..then..soft cooing was heard after the pursuit and a look of guilt on the faces of the participants as they crawled from behind the fence. tsh tsh. Nearby resident parents tucking their inquisitive young into bed, had to cover the little ones eyes and ears!
Late into the wee hours of the morning a lone singer continued...excited by the gaiety of party lights and unwilling to give up that last robust note... Finally, enough was enough...the big switch had to be pulled to grow the darkness that announces Closing Time!
Next day the Wild Life Bed and Bistro was unusually still...all for a couple who wandered in and out trying to pick up the pieces of their dignity...but it was a wobbly entrance and exit.

The Peculiarities of My Mind

Some peculiarities about me I haven't shared with too many people~~

I see numbers as family relationships...for example: #5 is the Mother and #10 is the Father of 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9. #9 is the big teen brother, #6 is the little teen brother and #7 always watches out for #6. #7 hangs around alot with #8 because she is the biggest teen sister and #9 kinda watches out for all of them. #1 is a little brother and #2 is a little sister who she thinks she is pretty mature. #4 is a regular normal little adolescent brother.) This did NOT help me with Math in school however!

I see dates in a time line like they taught us in school. I stand on the time line where we are now and look backwards at all the years in decades. That's why dates of history are easy for me to remember.

When I hear people speak I see the words spelled out as if they are being typed onto a page. This DID help me with spelling and grammar.

I visualize letters as individual colors. They have family relationships, too, but not as strong in my mind as numbers. So when you tell me your name I see it as a color or a string of colors for each individual letter. This necklace looks like my Mother's name Charlotte. The way the beads are placed on the string is how I see the colors of her name, like Indian corn. My father's name is golden brass and black~Ernest. The letter A is always red in my mind's eye. My children's names are Regan~bright golden with a red A and bronze R and Derek~ blue for the D and golden yellow for the E and white for the K.

I don't know why my mind works in this way...it wasn't taught to me. Don't know why I'm writing a post about it either. Guess I thought you just might want to know how maybe UNPECULIAR "you" are....I must have had a lot of time on my hands when I was a kid! Silly, Silly Girl!

Literary Divers

We love books so much that when our friend emptied his family home that was full of many, many books all the way back to the late 1800s, we climbed into the dumpster and gathered all the books that he and his siblings had thrown out. They were understandably overwhelmed with the 65 years of accumulation,~ they were too exhausted to even think about keeping one more book. So many pieces of literature...signed first editions...wonderful literary books from their parents college years in Minnesota, went from their family home to ours... Oh, we acquired a lovely collection since his parents were journalists and very learned. Going through the books I found his mother's diary from the late 1930's~the time just before her marriage to his father. I loved reading it and after I did I gave it to him as a gift. He was so delighted he had no idea it had been tossed..so for a gift to me he gave me a gorgeous ring that he had bought his mother when he was in Israel which she wore on all special occasions. He said he knew it would fit me perfectly. I have a bond with his mother...I never knew her.

Catastrophe A Jupille

We serendipitously acquired a few years ago a very unusual hand carved cabinet. KennyRogersLookalike found it leaning up against a dumpster where we have a storage unit. It has a fantastic albeit tragic history and it was locked. It is extremely elaborate and the carving on the front is an exact replica of the picture on Le Patriote magazine from 1961. In February, 1961 a horrible catastrophe happened in Jupille, Belgium. It was a fly ash flow mine disaster that killed 11 people, 4 women and 7 children. The cabinet has script carved on the bottom Le Roi and Le Reine visitent the catastophe de Jupille...this is all written in french. At the top are the words L'Union fait la force. It was a stroke of luck that we found the illustration of the carving on the 1961 magazine being offered on ebay at the very time we found the cabinet. The likeness is incredible as you can see. I wonder so often why this magnificent piece was so painstakingly carved with a hinged door and lock. What was kept inside and why would someone create it? Did it hang on a wall in a church for offerings? Was is created to be given to Queen Fabiola and King Baudoin? I have emailed History Detectives but they never got back with me. Does anyone have a clue about it? We have tried every skeleton key we have and have pulled and pulled trying to open the beautiful cupboard. Miraculously, my daughter's Dutch husband was looking at it the other morning and suddenly it opened for him..was it because he is Dutch and it took Dutch hands to break the spell? Was it waiting for someone that is from it's neighboring country to release it's interior? The interior is beautiful and highly polished and smooth. It has 2 shelves and in the bottom a hidden compartment...all we found were 4 little round paper punch circles. But that's alright...it is a fantastic remembrance of unfortunate ones who perished in this catastrophe and I think of them every day...they are not forgotten. If any one knows anything about this or can help me get in touch with someone who does know, please let me know. We are chosen to be the keeper of this object and we will keep it safe. One of my favorite blogs Ted and Bunny said the cabinet found us as much as we found it...I believe that! I am compelled to unlock its secret.

SOME HISTORY: One night, early February 1961, the King and Queen were woken up by a phone ringing. Six houses in Jupille, a coal-mining town near Liège, had been buried by a collapsing slag heap. In those houses, four women and seven children were stuck and rescue teams were working nonstop to try and get them out alive. The royal couple didn’t hesitate for one moment but left the palace immediately to inspect the damage and help the people. Upon arrival, the Queen immediately presented herself at the First Aid post and offered her help as a nurse to the doctors, who were baffled by her behaviour. When the slag heap destabilized even further, the security officers tried to get their monarchs out of danger, but the Queen refused to leave: “The King and I will only leave when the danger is gone.”

Family Intro

Well, the big party I was telling you about has happened for my daughter Regan and her Dutch Boy! The introduction to the Family... with the big family party which was the best party we have all had together since my parents have passed. We had really warm weather, unusually warm weather till the day of the party! Of Course! Then a cold front came in with a huge blow of a Zephyr. And this zephyr was not gentle, however, it was calm by the time the party got started and even though it was chilly we all sat around the fire pit and criticized each other's Lebanese cooking! No one cooks as well as our grandma but everyone tries. It just can't be done! But that is our dynamic. My sister brought me a homemade~ from~ scratch Lemon Meringue pie for my birthday... of which I got a sliver and she got none...every bite of food was gone in no time. (note to self~make three dishes of each recipe) The guys did shots of Chivas Regal..some loving it...some not so much. Took lots of pictures~ much too much according to some family members..but I noticed they were sure to smile while they were complaining.
It was a whirlwind visit with the guests of honor arriving at midnight on Friday night, family party late afternoon till the wee hours of the morn and whisked off for the other side of the family's dinner on Sunday a good two hours of driving time away. We did have one day together on Monday and we chose to see the canals and aqueducts in downtown Indianapolis. We also visited the famous Monument Circle that boasts a very emotional obelisk full of sculptures of the various wars that Indiana has been represented in...statues emoting parents pleading the young son to not go to war and cannons with gunned down soldiers careening and hanging off the upper ledges so lifelike you might think it had just happened and they will fall straight into the fountains. There are 32 flights of stairs to climb to the very top to Miss Liberty if you can bear it and a Civil War museum in the belly of the monument. We didn't choose to climb the 32 flights but we did buy some french pastries and sat along the ledges and studied the workmanship of this magnificent landmark.
Tuesday morning was the sad morning...the guests of honor had to catch a plane and KennyRogerslookalike and I had to bolt off to work...but we will all be together again in July for their wedding...I hope her Dutch boy survived the meeting of the family!