Texas Autumn

The seasons in Texas frustrate me as I am not much into HOT weather. Warm weather I do not mind so much. Generally speaking, there is really only one season here where I live...summer. There are three other short time periods (the other three seasons) that if you blink your eyes, you might miss them. Even in winter which only lasts about a month or 6 weeks, I rarely wear a winter coat. I mostly wear sweaters or long sleeves without jackets even as none are needed. I love autumn but it is probably the shortest season of them all. Just last week, we began to have foliage changing colors. Probably by next week, the wind will have blown the colored leaves from the trees so it seems as if autumn is just a short lived dream. See what I mean, frustrating for someone who loves color so much.

Thanksgiving

Did you have a good Thanksgiving? We had a nice one although subdued compared to years past since we were missing a loved one from our Thanksgiving table. But that does not prevent us from being thankful. As I grow older, I find thankfulness to come so easily. I am thankful for blue skies, warm sun, sweet kittens, easy laughter and so, so, so much more. I am thankful for every morning when I awake, am able to put my feet on the floor walk to the kitchen and enjoy a nice, steaming cup of coffee.

The Mystery Clown Man

I have known people in the past that were honestly frightened by clowns. It is a real fear for some. Some people are afraid of libraries. This too is a real fear. These people who fear libraries become all tight chested, heart pounding, palms sweating just upon entering a library. In a class I took on medical libraries, the vast majority of this class consisted not of librarians but of nurse practitioners learning to use a medical library. I was partnered with a person who was afraid of libraries. He was as terrified of libraries as I am of snakes. What frightens people may be difficult to understand but should always be tempered with understanding. If I was afraid of clowns, I might be afraid of this one below. On the other hand, he appears to be fairly harmless especially if he drew those cats, hearts and flowers.

Anne of Prince Edward Island

As a child, I loved the book Anne of Green Gables. I would pour over that book re-reading passages of it because I was so in love with the place she lived. She lived in a beautiful, seemingly fairyland yet it was a real place. The setting for the book was Prince Edward Island. I would pretend that I lived in the fairyland, Prince Edward Island. Fast forward many years later. I had a manager who really was from Prince Edward Island. He had left Canada to find fame and fortune. He had found neither when I knew him. He was very nice always taking us out to fun events like hockey games, baseball games, nature centers. His family owned a maple syrup farm back on PEI. I could not imagine that he left such a place. He told me all about the syrup farm. The place they made the syrup was called the sugar shack. He would bring the homemade maple syrup back to us after visiting. It was very tastey! This piece I made reminds me of PEI somehow. It seems to be Anne lying in a hammock on PEI. At least this is what I saw in my mind's eye all those years ago.

Ladies and Gentlemen...Introducing....Stella

This is Andrea with her new kitten, Stella. What can I say? It is in our genes. Stella is doing a little balancing act.

The Sugar Plum Fairy

My mother always said "When you have a cat, you cannot have anything else." That is silly...right? Wrong. I have decided that my mother is very smart. Sugar is smart too. Since it has gotten a little cooler, that boy has dug himself a little ditch to sleep in by the front porch. It is just deep enough that he fits in it like a cat inside a bowl. Usually, he uses it for sleeping but last night, I found he has another use for it. It is also a bath tub. I apologize for the quality of the photo but I am still using my phone for everything. Call me lazy. It is okay. I don't mind. Anyway, back to Shoog...he is lounging here in his wallowing hole and taking a little spit bath. That boy is cute, isn't he? Oh by the way, see that 'gold cat' in the picture. That is a family heirloom. That thing is at least 45 years old. My stepmother gave it to someone ages ago. She made it in a ceramic class. Somehow it ended up on my front porch. I think Shoog thinks it is one of his relatives but not his mother. That is me and he knows it.

Victorian Tea Time

Queen Victoria is the monarch and it is time for tea.

Feline Lineage

What did I ever do to end the day before I met Photoshop? I cannot remember. However, it seems I can recall some form of housework. Photoshop is way more fun. This lady below looks kind of like me in Asian attire. I remember once a few years back, someone I slightly knew stopped me to ask me if one of my parents was oriental. I said no and asked why. He said 'Your eyes are slanted like cat's eyes.' I asked him, "Then why didn't you ask me if one of my parents was a cat?" He was left a little bit speechless.

Saturday Night's Alright

I was too tired tonight to make a piece for blogging so I will just continue with more of the same from the previous post.

The Best Part of the Day

The Best Part of the Day is the name of a song. The best part of a day is when you go to an EJ concert and it is just beginning. The saddest part of that same day will be when he sings "Your Song" which signals the ending of the concert. EJ will always make sure you get your money's worth though. He will guarantee 3 hours worth of great music. Somehow I keep playing my lucky hand in order to score the good seats. Do you think EJ is looking straight at me in this pix below? I think he is. Even if he is not, I am going to pretend he is.

Illuminate Yourself

As I have said so many times, lots of my dreams are like epic movies. Last night was no exception. I had a dream that I was an old, wizened man looking similar to Mark Twain and was a college professor. I was some muckety-muck at a college that I think was somewhere like Savannah. I say this because there was a lot of old trees with hanging moss about the campus. I really think I was probably the dean of the college but I was filling in for a professor that I had fired because our academic standards were falling. I went into a large class and proceeded to kick bootie and take names as they say. I told the students I would expel them for cheating and expected a higher standard from them than they had been producing lately and for quite some time. I was as tough as nails. Odd dream you may say. Knowing myself, not really. I did not have to dig deeply to know the source of this dream. It stems from football. The coach of the professional team we watch about here was fired this week as I had been saying he needed to be fired for years. Any team that receives as many penalties as this team receives means one thing...poor discipline. That comes from the coach. This team has many problems but I am not delving that deeply into it here. In my dream, I took that scenario and put it into a world to which I could personally relate. Not sure where the southern charm of the dream came from though. That may require more analysis. We can learn so much from dreams. Dreams illuminate our inner selves just like this lady below is being illuminated by the lamp.

Check out the va-va-voom fairy!

Pondering the weather and trees

Is it cold where you live? It is not cold here where I live. The weather has been very odd this year. We have not had any autumn weather yet. Yes, it is cooler than it was in the summer which I guess is what autumn is here but all of the trees are still green and none are losing their leaves yet. The greatest part about that is that I have not had to use air conditioning or heater for over a month now. However, I understand things are about to change. Tomorrow, it is supposed to begin raining and the temperature is supposed to drop some. I am never big on using the heater though and honestly, I never have to that much. Generally, my house will stay around 60 degrees even in the coldest part of the winter. 60-65 degrees is the perfect temperature to me. Last winter when my electricity was off for 5 days, the temperature did drop in the house to around 50 and it was feeling pretty cold.

This piece I made has a sylvan look about it. I do love trees and the forest look. However, the trees in my yard cause me great expense and trouble. However, they do shade the house in the summer which I know makes a great difference on the electricity use. My neighbor has a bald cypress tree that is so tall that I worry about it falling.

No sylvan look here, just thinking about France. I am not sure what the moon and the piano keys have particularly to do with France. They just fit.