I just saw an ad for the new movie Peter Rabbit, opening in a couple of weeks. It looks really mean and violent. Beatrix Potter must be turning over in her grave.
What cinematic travesty has set your teeth on edge?
All posts by verily sherrilee
Stuck
My company closed early today so I got home about 2. I barreled up the snowy driveway to discover that YA wasn’t home. When I called her, she said she was at her boyfriend’s house. I told her she shouldn’t wait too long to come home as the roads were terrible. She said “his house is only 5 minutes from ours”. Well, there’s no arguing with THAT, is there?
Fast forward 2½ hours and the phone rings. It’s YA saying she’s stuck at the bottom of the driveway and asking what to do. I told her to get a shovel, clear out all around the tires and up the driveway a bit. Despite thinking it was her bed and she should lie in it, it didn’t take long before I coated up and went out to help. At about that time our neighbor came and helped as well. YA didn’t really know how to rock the car so I took over, but to no avail.
Neighbor and I decided I should back out onto the street, go around the block and approach the driveway from the north so I could get up some speed. Of course in the crush of traffic, this maneuver took almost 20 minutes, but it did the trick.
When we got back in the house I said “you know I will never be able to resist saying I told you so?” She kinda grinned and said “I know.”
Anybody gotten to say “I told you so” lately in your life?
The Melting Pot
My treasure has turned 23! I so clearly remember going to China to get her – how little she was – it seems just like yesterday sometimes.
We celebrate Family Day every July and for the past 10 years or so, we’ve splurged with a trip to The Melting Pot in downtown Minneapolis. (Yes, I completely get the irony that we’re celebrating the blending of two cultures/two races by eating at a place called The Melting Pot).
This year YA had a really hard summer with several summer school classes and a lot of work as well and we could never find a good time for The Melting Pot. With her birthday last week, we decided we should go now.
Usually we take the bus downtown because I really dislike driving downtown, but with the sloshy weather and how long it takes, we decided to drive. Instead of splitting a salad, we each had our own. YA remembered that last time we were there we tried their blackberry lemonade and didn’t care for it, so we just had water. Even though these parts of the tradition were different, we went with the only fondue that will do – the alpine with gruyere and emmentaler. They make the fondue right at the table so you get to see the wine, the garlic, the fresh ground pepper and even fresh ground nutmeg go in before your eyes.
And even after scrapping every bit of cheese out of the pot, we always finish up with chocolate. This year we did the milk chocolate with peanut butter. Little bites of pound cakes, brownie, strawberries, banana and pineapple – YUM-O! A wonderful end to our wonderful little tradition.
What is your favorite fondue dipper?
Double Dog Dare
I was amazed to read today that teenagers across the country have started taking part in an online challenge to eat laundry pods. I didn’t want to encourage anyone by clicking on any of the videos out there, but news reports say they are filled with teens foaming at the mouth, vomiting and some even passing out.
The last online challenge I remember was the ice bucket although I never understood it. I had thought it started as a “if you don’t donate money then you have to dump this bucket of ice water on yourself” and ended up as a “I’m donating money and for some reason dumping a bucket of ice water on myself”.
Both of these remind me of Flick in Christmas Story who caves to the “triple dog dare you” on the playground and ends up having the fire department detach him from a frozen flag pole. Or Marty McFly in Back to the Future who responds with fury to “you chicken?” I’ve never understood the “double dog dare”; it doesn’t make sense that you should do something you wouldn’t ordinarily do just because someone dares you. And it makes even less sense to do something that is clearly not just unpleasant but potentially very dangerous to your health.
Have you ever done anything on a dare?
Reading Gems
Every now and then when I’m at the library, I find bookmarks made by kids. In addition to the fact that I always needs a bookmark, these creations are delightful. Markers, stickers, ribbons, misspelled words – I love them and usually take one home with me.
One that I picked up last week has a quote on it. “No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure.” L. Frank Baum
I started to think that there are quite a few quotes that would be good for bookmarks. Here are a couple more that I like:
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”―Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” ― C.S. Lewis
Do you have a favorite quote about reading?
The Hat
Today’s post comes to us from Ben.
I received this hat as a Christmas present a few years ago. I thought it was the dumbest hat ever. The earflaps? Man, what a dork. I put those down and immediately make the “L” on my forehead.
And the lights on the bill? What’s up with that. And camo?? I don’t do camo. I don’t own anything camo.
But ya know…. It’s come in handy. Cold as it’s been, those ear flaps are invaluable.
And the lights, well, that saves me from holding the flashlight in my mouth. Because sometimes I drop it in the chicken pen and then I do actually hesitate for a couple seconds before I put It back in my mouth figuring a little dirt never hurt anyone. But that hat. I groan everytime I put it on and I’m thankful that it keeps my ears warm.
In his book, “Semi True”, Russ Ringsak says, “I couldn’t blame nature for trying to murder me but I wished she wasn’t in such a hurry.” Yeah, really. Does it have to be this cold?
You know it’s cold when I get this many water bucket stumps piled up.
I’ve got a small outside water tank with a tank heater in it. I put the frozen water buckets in there while I put out corn (which is supposed to be for the chickens and ducks, but seems in the winter, only the turkeys and deer find it.) After doing the corn, I can just dump out the ice from the buckets, refill, and take back to the chickens. They don’t actually drink much. The 50 chickens drink maybe a gallon per day.
Meanwhile, my ducks that won’t come eat this corn, some of them, the ‘wild’ ones, are down in the pond.
I know it’s cold when the pond gets ice on the edges. The water comes from springs, through the pipe, under the ice at the top of the picture.
Although since the hawk got a duck in the pond last week, I don’t put corn out there anymore. And the ducks aren’t that interested in going over there anyway.
This is Humphrey being curious about the hawk. Humphrey is very curious about everything.
Ever gotten a gift you don’t like yet still find valuable?
Today’s post comes to us from Occasional Caroline.
I don’t really have a bucket list, but for quite a while I’ve thought it would be delightful to see the cherry blossoms in Washington DC. It’s tough to predict when to be there, but last year I thought I had it nailed. I found a website ( https://cherryblossomwatch.com/peak-bloom-forecast/ ) that predicts and tracks the probable peak bloom days for the annual display. Without knowledge of this website, you probably do not know that there is an “indicator tree” that helps the National Park Service fine tune the prediction of Peak Bloom. For reasons too complicated for me to comprehend, one particular tree hits stage one of the 6 stages of blossom development nearly 2 weeks before the all the rest; the others usually follow on a predictable timetable. Usually, but not in 2017. 2017 was not a typical year in DC, on many levels.
http://www.cherryblossomwatch.com
The latest information and forecasts on when Washington DC’s cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin will reach peak bloom in Spring 2018.
But I digress. In late February, due to a very mild winter in the nation’s capital, the indicator tree indicated that the 2017 bloom would possibly be the earliest in history and particularly spectacular. The original prediction was March 10-13. The earliest ever recorded was March 15, the latest, April 18, and average somewhere around the last week of March to the first week in April. The whole show lasts 1-2 weeks, from buds to petals on the ground and green leaves on the trees; and peak lasts 2-3 days. That time frame was particularly convenient for us to take a trip last spring, so the planning began. We decided to leave on March 11, the day after our granddaughter’s 7th birthday party. We hit the road (yes, we drive on vacations) early Saturday morning, heading east. The plan was to be in DC from the 13-15 and then spend a week in the Williamsburg area. Day one was going well until we started hearing reports of the cold snap hitting the East coast. The NPS started pushing back the prediction for peak cherry blossom bloom. Suddenly the buds were encased in ice and it might possibly be the first no-bloom year in history. Peak, if there was to be one, would be at least a week later than previously predicted.
Time to rethink. Go to Williamsburg first, spend the week there and go to DC on the way home. Good plan. No problem changing reservations, peak Williamsburg season and peak cherry blossom season do not correspond. Remember the cold snap hitting the East coast. Yep, that includes Virginia. We weren’t looking for Florida weather, but 20s? Blustery, frigid winds? For days? We made the best of it, we went to the attractions that were open; most opened April 1. We were there March 13-20. We had a good time in Virginia and there was going to be at least a 50% of normal blossom “peak” on March 25, it was now March 20 and time to leave Williamsburg. Husband had been fighting off some insidious eastern US disease for a day or so, but seemed to be winning. It wasn’t peak yet, but this might be the closest we’d ever get, so we scheduled a Cherry Blossom bus tour of DC for the next day, that would require getting up pretty early, but we could handle that. Right? Nope. The illness won during the night and a feverish, achy, mess of a man was not going to make it from Williamsburg to DC and enjoy a bus tour that day. Well medicated and much later than our original plan, we headed west without ever seeing a single cherry blossom.
I have a new cherry blossom plan in mind now. My chiropractor tells me that his uncle lived in Traverse City MI, which is known (at least in Michigan) as the cherry capital of the US. If they have cherries, they must have cherry blossoms, right? While checking it all out, I discovered that a shortcut to Traverse City is to go to Door County WI and take a ferry to Traverse City, thereby going across Lake Michigan instead of around it, and with a boat ride to boot. I’ll just look at pretty pictures of the DC peak, and head for Wisconsin next time I have a yen to see cherry blossoms.
Have you ever fought with Mother Nature?
Jurassic Coincidence
Last summer I read a string of books that I didn’t enjoy – all from my self-imposed “lists”. I beat myself up for a bit and then went to the library website and typed in “dragon”. All kinds of books came up, from all the Ann McCaffrey books to The Black Dragon River (a book on a journey down the Amur River) and then Dragon’s Teeth by Michael Crichton. I’d never read anything by Crichton (not sure how I managed that) so I put it on my waitlist. This was the book that his wife found among his papers and published posthumously.
I just finished it and really enjoyed it. The postscript shed light on which characters were fictional and which were historic. Charles Marsh and Edward Cope were real people – famous in paleontology for their 19th century rivalry.
Fast forward 24 hours. I just started A Brief History of Almost Everything by Bill Bryson (about the only Bryson I haven’t read yet – but that’s another blog). As I got to Chapter Three, suddenly he is talking about Marsh and Cope and their rivalry.
I understand in my head that coincidence is just coincidence, but sometimes in my heart I wonder how I can go six decades and never discover something, then within a day or so, run across it again. And we’ve talked about it here before – including pointing out that it is common enough that there is a phrase for this – Baader Meinhof. We’ve even put this phrase in our Baboon Glossary.
But it still amazes me when it happens.
Any coincidences in your life lately?
Grocery Fiasco
Life Rule #62. Never grocery shop when you are hungry. I suppose for my purposes we should add “or before breakfast”. I stopped for ONE thing. ONE!
What life rule do you have trouble with?
Poetic Lament
There are many sad things going on these days. Unfortunately as icons fall, some of their good works fall with them. I have read Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac on a daily basis for years. Almost all of the poetry I read is inspired by the Almanac – either more poems by the featured poet or work of others mentioned in the “on this day” section.
When I heard the news about Garrison in November, the first thing I did was to search online to see if the archives were still around, hoping the APM (American Public Media) would publish them on their own. I’ve checked every week since then. Nothing. I even talked to Dale to see if he knew whether Garrison was going to continue on another platform. Probably not.
So now I’m officially in mourning. I love poetry and I’m struggling to figure out where to get my poetry fix these days. I’m know there’s lots of poetry out there but the Almanac was such a perfect setting for me that I’m thinking that my world from here on in will just be a little sadder for the loss of it.
Two questions today:
Is there a product you’ve had to learn to live without?
Where do you recommend I go for my poetry fix?”
Trail Baboon 