Morning Glory, Memorial

The first morningglory this year:



Yesterday we were in Alamogordo for the memorial service for Keith's mom.

Big-Name Lilies on a Friday

I bought one pot of lilies last Saturday, and was so happy with it as the week went by that Holly and I went back today and bought two more. It has the coolest name ever: Peter Pan Lilies of the Nile. The first one I brought back sitting in the floor of the front seat of the car.
When Holly and I went back to get some more, one of the plants was too big to fit in the car without breaking the already-bloomingness of it, but luckily we were just a couple of blocks from the house, so I walked them home in the cart. Keith will take the cart back when he takes the dog for a walk tonight. Keith dug two beautiful big holes in the back, much better than the one I did by myself while he was gone last weekend. [There used to be a slideshow or widget here that doesn't work anymore; sorry.]

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1. It's cold and lonely in the deep dark night... and it's cold and wet 18" below the surface of our yard; Keith just dug two deep holes for our new flowers (see above!).

2. On my deck are hanging tomatoes.

3. My favorite health and beauty product is SLEEP! (This question has come around before... I did just recently buy some Skin-So-Soft to keep mosquitos off Holly, and it smells like the tub baths of my childhood, which is a nice thing.).

4. I no longer enjoy a nice long ride. I'm increasingly afraid of car rides.

5. Well, first of all ... First of all, now can there be a "first of all" without a second of all?.

6. My deceased mother and Holly; those were the cast of characters in a recent dream and it was irritating. (My mom irritated me, not Holly.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to ice cream, tomorrow my plans include a funeral (memorial service, rather) for Keith's mom, in Alamogordo and Sunday, I want to water my wonderful yard and meet Nuee, a cat who's going to come and live with us because her owner is moving to Hawaii.!

Death and Life

Keith's mom died yesterday morning early. I waited for him and Marty to get back from their long camping weekend to let him know. He and Holly visited her a couple of weeks ago; we knew it wouldn't be long. She had inoperable cancer in several places. Saturday we'll go to Alamogordo to a memorial service.

There's another YouTube video of me up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvyGgmin0t8



I'm stuck wondering which philosophy teacher said that thing. I remember it in a male voice, but I remember being outside with her. Maybe it was a guest speaker in her class. Probably someday I'll find it in a notebook. I still have my college notebooks. The world inside my house is growing too, because I'm a packrat.

Holly on YouTube, by Lee Stranahan

There's a little article/intro here:
Huffington Post: Who needs School?

Me on other blogs

20 Unschooling Questions: Sandra Dodd from NM, USA
I actually only answered eighteen, but I'd already covered the other topics in what I'd written.

Tidbit from a list
Ren Allen wrote about her concern that some people who come to unschooling are wanting to join a group more than learn how unschooling works. Then she quotes something I wrote recently.

TODAY: Homeschooling: Freedom and Fun For Your Family


Not so recent, but I discovered it recently:
101 Ways to Increase Your Longevity and Quality of Life
My video games page is linked as their #89.

Humor, Literature and Real Life

I didn't write or make this. It's gone around. I got it from CrookedBrains which cited another site that's not there now.



It reminds me of Holly, who is going to Iowa for over a week, and then to Austin, and then after she goes to a conference with the family in September, is planning to move to Oregon. Can she *DO* that!? I mean seriously. She's not an orphan. Why would she want an adventure?

I got up to get food, and was joking with Holly. She didn't know I had been writing about her move. She asked me," What are your thoughts about me moving to Oregon, because I feel like I'm getting mixed signals from you."

I said "You're getting a clear signal! I have mixed thoughts."

The trip to Iowa has mostly to do with learning more about photography and photoshop. She will be with Chris/Zamozo's family, and then go to Austin to see Kirby for a few days. The Oregon plan is less certain, but it's somewhere between possible and likely that she'll go to live with Diana/hahamommy for a while. "A while" might be a polite mother-soothing euphemism.

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Holly got lipstick that matches my glasses:

Karaoke and the song I didn't sing

Last night as my mother's day "doing," I went to karaoke with Holly, Marty and Brett. Holly goes every week. Brett goes sometimes. Here's a video of Marty. Holly had gone off to take a phone call from her boss at the flower shop. The first table of people are Cindy, Antoine, Nick, Ian and Josh, and then at my table Ashlee and Brett.

I had planned to sing Circle Game and Queen of the Silver Dollar. They didn't have either one. Holly and I did "Color My World," by Petula Clark. I was doing verses and harmony. Holly did the chorus. We also did "I Won't Say I'm In Love," from Hercules. I did "the chorus" and Holly did Megara. Holly also did LDN by Lily Allen, and I don't know what else. After the official end of the karaoke time when there was hardly anyone there anymore, the guy put on "Jizz in My Pants" and "I'm on a Boat." Holly was on the stage with Josh and Nick for the first one, and Marty was big into the second one.

I had been thinking of doing "Circle Game" because Marty's twenty years old, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it might not be so appropriate. Joni Mitchell was writing from not having raised her daughter, and thinking fairly negatively and theoretically about having a twenty year old. I have a really happy twenty year old. So I was thinking about the lyrics:

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a butterfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on a carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round in the circle game.

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like "When you're older" must appease him
And promises of "someday" make his dreams...

Sixteen Springs and sixteen Summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
And they tell him "Take your time, it won't be long now
'Til you drag your feet to slow the circles down."

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through.

I've liked that song since the summer of 1971, after my first year of college, when I listened to Joni Mitchell every day, at my mom's house on McCurdy Road in Española. I was melancholy and young and angsty and it was a great soundtrack for that. (I wouldn't recommend it to a lonely 17 year old angry with her parents nowadays, at all.)

So thinking of Marty, and looking at the song, the only thing that's like Marty about it is "the boy is twenty." That and that he can ice skate, but we're in Albuquerque, not Sasketoon or Toronto, so skating is inside a skating rink. Marty wasn't sad or afraid as a child, we didn't say "when you grow up" to him, we didn't try to hold him back and he didn't create grand dreams to look forward to. So it's okay that I didn't sing it.

(To be fair to New Mexico, there are outdoor skating rinks in a canyon in Los Alamos, and in Kit Carson Park in Taos. I skated with my dad at the Los Alamos rink later that same Joni Mitchell year.)