Same-Old Me

Well, I must be back to normal. I've spent a couple of hours this morning hunting for Halloween stuff, with very little luck. I guess I'll be forced to go to the basement.

 Valentine is looking pretty spiffy in his costume. So's Jerry.

 

***

 I didn't find what I was looking for. But guess how many corkscrews and nail clippers I did find.

 

 

Pep Rally

Tomorrow's the day we host the Birmingham Arts Journal. I've been sitting here trying not to think of all the stuff I've got to do, till all of a sudden I think I can cope. I can put a lot of it off until the last minute, meanwhile doing all the little stuff that I can do at home.

My favorite season of the year, and I haven't been out of the house since Saturday. I hope my car will start. "I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope."

Sometimes I Walk Backwards

It saves a lot of twisting and turning.

 

I reckon (Heaven help me!) I'm going to have to get a cat. I keep dreaming about stumbling over a cat in the kitchen: a black cat, a tabby cat, a poor little mangey white kitten.

I reckon (Heaven help me!) I'm going to have to get a cat. And a litter box, and a collar, and a veterinarian.

Progress

Jennifer cleaned up the house yesterday, and I got Dave to fix a couple of things that I'm too "feeble" to handle. I gave him a handful of quarters and sent him to the laundromat with my velvet bedspread, dry weight nine pounds avoirdupois. He also repositioned my shower rod and hung my new shower curtain.

 

Tuesday

I dreamed Mama was sitting on the sofa, thumbing through my HGTV Magazine. She looked young but mighty skinny.

Also had a sort of nightmare--a college math exam where I aced all but the last two of ten problems. They were identical, and involved square roots of letters. When the exam was over, I asked the instructor to show me how to solve those two, and she couldn't.

***

Once a year, our "Open Circle" Leeds poetry group hosts the Birmingham Arts Journal group. I was thinking it was to be this Thursday, October 22, but it's not until the Thursday of next week. I've volunteered to furnish chips, dip, and soft drinks. The Saturday after that meeting, the Alabama State Poetry Society meets in Calera, Alabama, and Jed and I plan to go to the awards luncheon.

Muddling Through

Sometimes, when you've got something tiresome or difficult to do, you tell yourself, "I've dealt with worse than this before." Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

***

It was the car's battery again. It wouldn't start, although Murray's had put in a new battery back in the summer. One of their guys came over and started it, and said there's a short somewhere that's draining the battery if it sits a day or two without running. They were closing the shop this afternoon, so I said I would bring it in one day next week and let them look for the problem.

I did go by the grocery and stocked up on tomatoes and cucumbers.

More Rocks

We couldn't get on the bridge. And one thing our cameras didn't really show off: As well as "undergrowth," there were big trees growing on the bridge, and a couple had fallen off the edge and hung by their roots upside down. This one shows a smaller tree hanging down.

This is a gigantic formation--about 180 degrees of rock over your head, under your feet, almost all around you. The whole mountain seems to be one big rock, with broken or eroded pieces of it lying around. Here's a view of the Indian profile:

 

and I don't know why it won't sit upright.



Some of the big rocks, including parts of the cliff face, were full of thousands of little holes, which probably account for breakage and erosion over time.

Natural Bridge Photos 10-13-2015

 

 

The Natural Bridge(s)

 

Me and the Indian Rock

We walked and climbed, and finally decided to save the Bankhead National Forest for another time.

My Kind of Weather

This morning was sunny with temp. in the high 60's. With the heat/AC turned off, the house was as cool as outside. On mornings like this, instead of taking a shower, I like to fill the bathtub with very warm water and soak until the water starts cooling. That's what I did this morning. Of course, I couldn't wash my hair in the tub, but I expect it'll still be dirty next time I get in the shower.

Jed plans to come over tomorrow, and on Tuesday we'll explore the Bankhead national forest up in (I believe) Winston County. This is where our great-great grandmother Mullins, or maybe Gaddy, owned beaucoup acres and sold them for 50 cents per. Alabama's natural stone bridge is located somewhere up there, and maybe we can see it, too.

The media doesn't report much about it, and most of the reports are slanted against Israel. But the situation over there gets worse every day. I don't like to brag about praying, but I do pray for the people and the state of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

With a little help from my Sis.

Yesterday I was having a bout of the old Father Williams--not knowing which way was up. That is, needing to hold onto the walls and furniture to walk around. So on her daily trip to Walmart, my beautiful sister Ramey picked up my prescriptions and brought them to me.

I'm feeling important today, because I wrote a couple of pages this morning.

***

An email from NaNoWriMo made me start thinking about accepting that challenge in November 2015. I could either try to finish the novel I've got half-started, or a new idea: See how many ghost stories I could write in a month. The second option sounds like more fun. Either way, I intend to turn out some kind of effort.

Monday kind of chores

I've done several of them today: laundry, grocery shopping, calling in Rx refill requests, paying a few stray bills before the new ones start coming in.

That's all, folks!