Picture Perfect -- One

I have ONE niece, and she is ONE year old.

 

DSL is back on ... Now I have firewall & virus protection "issues"

 

Have to play computer geek tonight.  Hopefully I can get back to the fun stuff tomorrow.

OK - So I HAVE fallen off the edge of the world!

Still no internet, guys!  AT&T lost my order.  Now they say I can't have my DSL back until November 26th, "because of the holiday."  (Another 50 minutes on the phone with them, yesterday, BTW.)  A manager/DSL consultant was supposed to call me back yesterday.  No call.  Tempted to go with another carrier -- but then I'd suffer more than they would cuz I'd lose my email address.  So I wait. 

Writer's Block Challenge #24 -- Ghetto Edgers

Steve and Ardene have a place at the lake, but they live 'round the corner from us, on the edge of the ghetto.  Mike and I were walkin' the dog one Saturday.  We walk towards the east ... two blocks east and you're among manicured lawns and golden retreavers.  Back in the 'hood, and one block west of our place, Steve was on the sidewalk near his house, poking a rake handle at some shoes draped over the telephone wires.  "Shoes hangin' over the lines like that means a drug dealer lives here," said Steve; and I had no idea how he would know that, or if it's even true.  Steve and Ardene were missionaries to Africa most of their lives; and then when they retired they moved back to a neighborhood no longer predominantly Dutch.

Ardene was my middle son's teacher in first grade, and Steve was my husband's best man at our wedding.  We chatted with Steve while he tried to snag the shoes down off the line.  Then we headed home with our dog.  I suppose he eventually got the shoes down.

They had us up to their cottage at the Big Lake once.  We walked the beach, and then went indoors and played dominoes.  Steve and Ardene are older than Mike and me, 'though not by a lot.  Their kids are our age, I guess ... but my own folks were roughly 20 when I was born, and 20 years age difference isn't so much when you're in your late 40s.  So Steve and Ardene were 60-something.  Big deal.

But Steve up and died one day, while we were eating dinner.  We heard the ambulance come 'round the corner.  Wondered about it.  That's all.

Next morning, Steve's daughter knocked at the back door.  Wanted to tell us herself.  He died on his birthday.  Gettin' ready to take Ardene to dinner, where they'd meet all their kids, to celebrate Dad's birthday.

It snowed the day of Steve's funeral.  Hadn't snowed that winter till that day.  Their church was like a gymnasium.  Not very Dutch, even though it was CRC.  We all sat on folding chairs.  The place was packed, though.  Had a nice luncheon, after, I suppose.  Steve's funeral luncheon kinda melds in together with other funeral luncheons I've attended through the years.  Cake and coffee and white paper over long tables with people scattered here and there.  Probably some ham on buns, potato chips, potato salad, large assortment of jello salads made by ladies from the church.

"I want you to know, I will be okay," Ardene told us next time we saw her.  "I don't want you to worry -- Steve left me okay off.  I don't plan to move.  I plan to stay."  Those of us who still take care of our house and lawn, this close to the ghetto, sometimes reassure each other that we're stayin'.  It's not the color of our skin that matters -- any neighbors who take care of their place and don't let their kids run wild are excellent neighbors far as we're concerned.

Sometimes when I drive through town on my way to work, I see shoes draped over the telephone lines, and I wonder whether Steve was right -- that they mean something, I mean.

So shoes that dangle, as those in this photo do, even though they're at the beach, make me think about Steve, and encroachment by drug dealers, and once-lovely neighborhoods with absentee landlords, and ghetto-edgers like us, who think if you plant enough flowers everybody will remember that Time Began in a Garden.

I've got a jar of dirt -- Johnny Depp remix I snagged

Snagged this from someone in my multiply network. Hilarious!

Quote for the day

"So humanity goes on, bundling up anew the things it has found precious." -- Christopher Morley

Stuff to do while I don't have internet

Oooo!  Look what my husband got me for my birthday !!!!!!

DVD:    "Northern Exposure -- The Complete Sixth Season"

Book:  The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers, by Lilian Jackson Braun

Lucious! 

Blogging when I could be mopping kitchen floor - grin

Today's "To Do" list is almost done!  Had some before-winter preventive maintenance done on the car, did the laundry, dusted the furniture, (raked leaves yesterday), swept the kitchen, balanced checkbook, notified everybody that my internet will be down next week.  All that's left to do is mop the kitchen floor, vacuum, and wash my hair.  That'll do it!

We get an EXTRA hour tonight!  (Daylight Savings Time ends.)

10 PM and all is well ... this time tomorrow it will be only 9 PM.  I love it!  Have a restful night, everyone!

Cold Turkey !!!

We're going to be making some changes in our internet service, and beginning Monday, November 5th, until Tuesday, November 13th, we will be WITHOUT an internet connection at our home!  (This is a household of 3 people & 3 computers, mind you.)

MAYBE I'll get a chance to flitter about online at the office, before & after work ... depends what else will be going on from day to day.

But IF you don't hear from me for a week, I HAVE NOT fallen off the face of the earth.

I have fallen off the edge of the world
I have landed in another time
I carry the memories of a former life
Uncharted waters: There be dragons here!

-- Poem by Rani Kaye, all rights reserved

Foto Friday -- Fall

 

Today is Friday, and here's my "Foto Friday -- Fall" submission.  First you rake 'em, then you "fall" in 'em, then you pose for a photo in 'em.  After that you get to come inside and have hot chocolate and pumpkin bread.  They'll pose for me because they "fall" for my ploy -- pretty face for the camera and you get to have something sweet.

Here's the followup photo (which is NOT my Foto Friday photo ... simply an addendum to my blog).