2012 Project 365 – Week Thirty-seven

We’re both feeling much better now, and ready for this next week to be a little less crazy.  

Saturday, September 8^th

I love seeing chickadees at our feeders.

The cypress vine is still attracting hummingbirds – although it won’t be long before they head south.

Another vine that grows along the fence – so fluffy and pretty!

Sunday, September 9^th

This was the day I felt the most miserable – ugh! Fortunately Dr. M was on the case taking pictures of birds. LOVE the blue sky behind the dove!

Juvenile goldfinch gorging on thistle seed.

Monday, September 10^th   

This plant grows in the seam in our driveway. We periodically kill it back, but it’s pretty stubborn. For some reason I kind of like the pattern it makes on the concrete.

A few feet away, in the same seam, a geranium is growing! How hilarious…

Sunset in the Kroger parking lot.

Tuesday, September 11^th

Half mast flags at work in remembrance of the 9/11 attacks. A somber day all around.

Except that Dr. M found some beauty…

And a cow, to make me smile.

Wednesday, September 12^th   

An Ohio Obama barn.

This crow made me laugh out loud.

Squirrel antics.

The Tax Time Pig looking put upon by aliens.

Thursday, September 13^th        

Dr. M took some great pictures of a couple of red tailed hawks. Here are a few – see his blog for more.

Friday, September 7^th          

The State of the Bug – wearing a braid for the first time in my life. I’m thinking about getting a good bit of length cut off so I thought I’d try the braid. I’m not sure I was really missing anything – ha!

We had a contest at work for United Way. We had to use food contributions in a creative manner. Some people were VERY creative!

Pirate ship

Do you recognize the figurehead for the ship? Made me laugh out loud!

Etch-a-Sketch with the United Way logo

While I was running around taking pictures of food, Dr. M was taking pictures of beauty. I think it’s safe to say that fall has pretty much arrived in the Ohio heartland.

Go to Sara’s blog here to see the blogs of all the other Project 365 participants. Have a great week!

Most of our photos are taken with a 12 megapixel Nikon D5000 DSLR, using a 55-200mm zoom lens. This is the camera that Dr. M takes with him most days. The Bug uses our new Nikon Coolpix S6200 most of the time. If you’re interested in which camera was used for a particular shot, just ask! 

An Open Letter to My Muse

I blamed the heat.

And then the humidity.

I blamed hormones

and hateful rhetoric.

I even blamed my hair.

Today is cool and clear.

I am calm and collected.

I have not been

cold-cocked by cruelty.

My hair will do.

And yet I’m sure that

all this alliteration

will not tempt you

to return to me.

I sure hope you’re

having a good time

wherever you are.

Love, Wordless Bug

I'm sharing this for the one second that starts at :30 - but you go ahead & enjoy the whole thing. It makes me howl :)

Where I Was

This is a repost from last year...

On Monday September 10^th, 2001 I was knee deep in red tape. The real red tape that was wrapped around letters from Freedman’s Bureau agents in Kentucky to their superiors. I was helping Dr. M with his dissertation research in the National Archives in Washington, DC. Our strategy was to flag all of the interesting documents and then come back the next day to make copies. The stories I read made me want to weep – these agents used the word “outrages” to describe what was happening to former slaves in post Civil War Kentucky. These stories became the backbone of what I consider to be a pretty powerful work about the plight of freed people in Kentucky.

Tuesday morning, September 11th, as we prepared to leave our Maryland extended stay to spend the day making copies, we didn’t turn on the television. In the car on the way to the nearest Red Line metro station we listened to a music CD. And as we grew ever more frustrated with traffic and full metro parking lots, we just thought it was a part of the mania of Washington DC at rush hour. Finally, we gave up trying to get on the Red Line and decided just to drive down the Potomac and maybe stop at the Iwo Jima Memorial to take in the view. After that, we hoped to get parked at a Virginia metro station. We weren’t in a particular hurry, as the Archives stays open late on Tuesdays. However, I was feeling rather desperate to go, so we pulled off into a park where I could use the facilities.

I sprinted off & did my thing. Walking back to the car I saw a curious sight. Dr. M was sitting in one of our folding chairs watching one of the park rangers go through our car trunk. Let me just be a little politically incorrect here: as a college educated white couple with ordinary hair, no visible tattoos or strange piercings and respectable (if off the rack) clothing, we were not generally a target for random searches. This was a thorough search.

I asked Dr. M what was going on & he just shrugged. I asked the park ranger & he said that he couldn’t really tell me but that I should listen to the radio. “Listen to the radio!!” So after he finished with the trunk, and while Dr. M had his turn with the facilities, I got in the car and turned on the radio. And listened.

We didn’t go back to the National Archives that day. We checked out of our hotel and headed home. Not home to Ohio, but home to North Carolina to be with our families. I think we may have been in shock, a bit, but we were aware enough to notice the eerie silent skies above us.

In the last ten years I’ve run the gamut of emotions: patriotic fervor, worry & dread, horror at how innocent people were treated. I applauded war and abhorred war. I wanted retribution and I cringed from the actions of retribution. Deep down at my core I just want everyone to get along. Can’t we all just get along? Sigh. I guess not, and that makes me sad. I know, it’s not that simple, but that doesn’t keep me from wishing it was.

So in the end I’m left with feeling sad as I hold my little flag and listen to God Bless America during one more 7^th inning stretch. How about, God bless us, every one? No?

If you'd like to read the Christmas poem that Dr. M wrote that year, click here.

Thoughts on having a cold…

With apologies to my Facebook friends who've seen this already...

That feeling of sneezing so hard that your ears stop up…

Sneezing so…er…spectacularly that you really need a paper towel instead of a Kleenex…

Noticing that the ends of your hair are damp & realizing that you sneezed INTO YOUR HAIR. A world of eww…

Eating Ben & Jerry’s Red Velvet Cake ice cream because you have the Best Husband in the World…

Vowing to be a better nurse the next time he gets sick…

2012 Project 365 – Week Thirty-six

Hello from the infirmary! Dr. M is slowly recovering the cold he developed this week, but he thought that he should share with me. I’m not on any drugs, but it doesn’t really take much to upset my brain’s thought processes, so I would take what you read here with a grain of salt (and why would you do that? What does that even mean? These are the kinds of questions that plague me…).

Dr. M posted a lot of pictures from this week on his blog. Go here to check them out – including pictures of a hummingbird & a goldfinch which I didn’t use.

Also, I heavily edited some of the pictures using PicMonkey. It’s just so much fun to play around with it. Can you guys guess which ones?

Saturday, September 1^st

Pinky the geranium is showing signs of slowing down.

One of our tomatoes was staring at us :)

Sunday, September 2^nd  

We went to the Fair at New Boston with Dr. M’s history club. Dr. M was dressed as a back country farmer. He posted a lot more fair pictures on his blog here.

He was playing Sweet Hour of Prayer on the water glasses...

Monday, September 3^rd   

The weekly squirrel.

Tuesday, September 4^h

I saw this on my way home from work. It was so cool to clearly see where the rain was & wasn’t.

Our dinner – Dr. M made baked spaghetti out of leftovers. Yum!

Wednesday, September 5^th   

I saw this on a van on the way home from work – LOL. Now this would be an interesting family to meet!

Toad.

We had a potluck & our first choir practice of the season at our Rector’s house.

I was so glad that Joanne could come! She's the friend I eat with each week.

The State of the Bug - mmm food & music...

Our feisty organist - she's a hoot!

Thursday, September 6^th        

Fall is a’comin!

Went to dinner with friends & saw this on the wall.

Friday, September 7^th          

This was growing between the sidewalk & the street in front of our house. Dr. M moved it back to the garden – we’ll see if we get anything. Whatever it is!

I think this donkey just might be preggers. At least I hope so because otherwise maybe she should lay off the grass for a while! (I seriously want to make some snarky comment about Democrats here, but since I am a Democrat that seems self-defeating. But the Republicans among you can just have at it if you want to!)

I went to church this evening to set up the altar for Sunday. Here’s my Facebook status: I'm on Altar Guild duty this week AND I'm the Lector on Sunday. So today I was setting up the altar & putting the hymn numbers on the board and marking the scripture passages to be read & decided to go ahead & practice reading them since I was there. I almost cried when I read the New Testament lesson (from James 2). It's at the heart of most of my political decisions. Here's an excerpt: ...If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?

Go to Sara’s blog here to see the blogs of all the other Project 365 participants. Have a great week!

Most of our photos are taken with a 12 megapixel Nikon D5000 DSLR, using a 55-200mm zoom lens. This is the camera that Dr. M takes with him most days. The Bug uses our new Nikon Coolpix S6200 most of the time. If you’re interested in which camera was used for a particular shot, just ask! 

Nothing to Say



From Ellie at Meditation Matters and Jan at Yearning for God

 [Note: This isn't strictly true, but I just haven't had a chance to write a real post this week.]

Now About What Was I Being Paranoid Again?

Cousin Itt or The Bug?

I'm just too busy doing Very Important Things to write a real blog post. Like, tonight the choir had a pot luck & our first practice of the year. And I've been actually WORKING at work. And Dr. M has been sick, so I'm cutting down on my own productivity in sympathy.

So ANYWAY, I thought I'd just share a picture of the front of my head. I thought it would be funny to brush my hair forward like that. What it was, was claustrophobic. Man I have a lot of hair! Wasn't it just yesterday that I worried that I was losing my hair?

P.S. Check out Dr. M's post from this evening - you can see some of what we've been up to.

The Random Must Flow

Recent chat at work:

2012 Project 365 – Week Thirty-five

As you might expect, Dr. M took a lot of pictures leading up to the blue moon. Sadly, we had too much cloud cover last night to get a great picture (we wouldn’t care if the clouds had brought rain, but we’ve had nothing from Isaac so far). I’m including some moon pictures here, but go to Dr. M’s blog to see the rest. Oh, and I took exactly TWO pictures this week – thank goodness for Dr. M!

Saturday, August 25^th

Dr. M took a picture of our very very sad back yard.

Butterfly.

The first moon pic of the week.

Sunday, August 26^th  

Hummingbird!

Monday, August 27^th   

Dr. M saw a couple of fawns on campus.

A little silhouette of a bird…

The weekly squirrel (yes, I’m grinning while looking at the picture).

Tuesday, August 28^th

Sheep!!!

Cows. Please note the extra special marking on the second cow – sweet!

Wednesday, August 29^th   

My first dental appointment in about 18 months. I don’t usually wait that long, but I didn’t want to go right after my surgery & then I forgot & then when I called I had to wait about 4 months for the appointment. Did you know that if you go every six months like you’re supposed to the scraping & holding your mouth open & lecturing is cut in about half? Sigh. But no cavities!

Dr. M took pics of the flowers in our yard. They are bright spots in a dreary land these days. (I mean the dreary brown grass – not any emotional dreariness – although there is some of that since it was hot & humid again this week).

Thursday, August 30^th        

Almost full!

Friday, August 31^st          

The cement pond has been out of control!

The State of the Bug. Feeling tender vittles after reading this post (I just reread it & teared up again).

A cloud-impaired blue moon. To see another picture from a friend of ours, go here.

Go to Sara’s blog here to see the blogs of all the other Project 365 participants. Have a great week!

Most of our photos are taken with a 12 megapixel Nikon D5000 DSLR, using a 55-200mm zoom lens. This is the camera that Dr. M takes with him most days. The Bug uses our new Nikon Coolpix S6200 most of the time. If you’re interested in which camera was used for a particular shot, just ask!