Scout Moves

We attended Eustacia's college orientation this weekend, so there is clearly no point in pretending she will not be moving out of the house in August. Here I was going day by day in complete oblivion, making meals and doing laundry and having daily conversations with the girl as if she had not grown up and were not about to leave the nest I spent years making for her. And now I have been yanked back into reality. To make matters worse, yesterday afternoon we pushed a cart around Target and filled it with things like blankets and sheets, a lamp, some towels, and a pillow. This week, we may investigate buying a bike for riding around campus and the surrounding town. The campus is of such a manageable size, though, with no more than a ten-minute walk from point to point, Eustacia may decide a bike will be more trouble than it's worth. She has chosen Baldwin-Wallace College in northern Ohio. It's a small liberal arts college in a suburb of Cleveland with small houses scattered ...

I had a hankering to create another needle punch piece, but I didn't know what to make. Just off the top of her head, my daughter suggested a lion, so I sketched out a lion in foliage, slightly abstract so that his mane looks like the sun. And then I transfered it to the cotton and went to work. The finished piece is about 3 x 5 inches. I'm not sure what to do with it now. It can be framed or stitched into a decorative pillow. For now, it just sits in a pile of stuff. I would like to keep making stuff in this craft form, but I don't want to collect 3 x 5 images that I'll never do anything with. The next step is to find a design style that matches my house and make something suitable. Hmmm.

I did it. I actually went out to a store and bought my very own camera. I'm not sure I have ever personally owned a camera before. We've had lots of family cameras, but these days, everyone else in the house has one they call their own. "Where's my camera," Eustacia will ask, and we all know just which one she's looking for. It isn't husband's big-ass camera with the monster lens, or Kwanita's little camera that is usually tucked away in a black case, and it certainly isn't the old one with a malfunctioning zoom feature. No, that's mine. She wouldn't think about asking for that one. No one would. That's why it was shoved in the back of a cabinet collecting dust when I found it. So, now I have a modest digital camera with a movie feature and a zoom feature and a rotating image display and an image stabilizing feature. That was the thing that drew me to this camera to begin with because I am not known for my abilities to take steady s...

My daughter Eustacia is pretty handy with a camera and takes pictures of things at angles I wouldn't think of. I have been using the oldest camera in the house, the one no one else wants, and I have been thinking about getting a new one just for me—nothing too fancy or too big—just a nice, digital camera with a functioning zoom option. Until then, here is a closeup of one of my daughter's photos. Have any idea what it is cropped from? Click on the photo for the full shot.

I canceled my horn lesson for today because, to be frank, I have a bladder infection. The other day, I mentioned to a friend that I would never talk about the nature of my ailment with my horn teacher, but I don't mind telling all of you. Last Monday, I braved it and went to this lesson which is almost an hour away from home. My plan was to use the potty as soon as I arrived at the art building, but my teacher was waiting for me at the main door. The college is closed this time of year, so he has to personally let his students in the locked doors. I could have excused myself before the lesson started, but being shy about that sort of thing, I decided to suck it up and go ahead with the lesson first thing. "Suck it up" is probably not the appropriate phrase in this situation. "Hold it in" is better, so I held it in and marched straight for the tiny lesson room, one with very little air circulation and walls that close in on you after ten minutes. My horn lessons ...

to me! Update: Since you have asked, I only got one actual packaged gift, a beautiful hand-made bracelet from a friend, but both girls were home for the weekend, and we had dinner at the lake and a relaxing weekend. Thanks to all of you for your lovely wishes!

So, this is what I've been spending a good portion of this week doing, painting a flamingo on a lime-green Adirondack chair, and it was extremely fun. The chair and ottoman belong to my friend Joan who is going through a flamingo phase. She bought a whimsical lawn ornament flamingo with flapping wings and bright pink pin lights outlining its body, so this chair was designed to compliment the electric bird. After Joan coats this thing with a good lacquer finish, her deck will be ready for a party, I'd say. Something with cosmopolitans, perhaps. Or mai tais. Here I added just a hint of surprise for the person sitting in the chair, little flowers and dots. They go with my personal polka dot phase.

My blog is written at a high school level. I'm not sure if that's a compliment or something to be ashamed of. Given that most newspapers and magazines are written at that level or lower, I suppose I'm on target. I had always heard American newspapers were written at a 6th-grade reading level, and the other day I even read they had been lowered to 3rd grade in order to boost circulation, but according to a study done using an established formula, they are actually written between 9th and 12th grade. The LA Times and the Boston Globe are at the top of the chart, and the Washington Post and USA Today hover around the 10th grade. There are various formulas for determining reading level, all involving an equation related to number of sentences, number of words, and number of syllables. None of these can judge how complicated the concept being written about might be, but they can at least gauge the general reading level. It seems that too many syllables can cause the untrained br...

I'm a little late in joining in with the meme, but I'm lucky to have finished it at all. Technology Q: What is your wallpaper on your computer? Right now, it's a green screen with this photo in the center. Q: How many televisions do you have in your house? Ah, well...let me explain. We have three to four people living here, everyone with different interests, so we've got five TVs. BIOLOGY Q: Are you right handed or left handed? Right Q:Have you ever had anything removed from your body? One cyst, two babies, four wisdom teeth, and a few splinters. Q: What is the last heavy item you lifted? Heavy is relative. Sometimes the vacuum seems heavy, so carrying it up and down the stairs is a chore. Q: Have you ever been knocked out? I have passed out twice but never been knocked out by outside sources. Bullshitology Q: If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die? I don't think I'd want to know. I just watched The Bucket List, and when they k...

At 7:30 this morning, a neighbor was mowing his lawn. 7:30 in the morning. It's a lovely sunny day with a breeze blowing through all the trees and birds singing, a kind of scene you'd like to preserve for a while before bombarding the corporate peace with your big-ass riding lawnmower with a double-wide blade. I would like to preserve it for a while anyway. When I was in high school, all of my sisters had moved away, and I was the last one standing so to speak. During the summer, my parents would leave for work and give me a chore or two for the day. Sometimes I would have to pull weeds or clean my room or vacuum. Sometimes I would have to clean the gutters, which is startling now when I think about making a 15-year-old climb a ladder to clean slop out of the gutters with no adult supervision. Fortunately, we lived in a one-story house, so if I had fallen, my injuries would have been relatively minor. Sometimes my assignment would be to cut the grass. I was a master of that law...

The Good Word for today is "etiolate," pronounced ee-tee-ê-layt. I know this because I have discovered The Alpha Dictionary , the most creative and interesting dictionary every created. Every day, there is a new Good Word with pronunciation, definition, usage, and history, and it's all presented with flair. For example, etiolate means (1) to bleach or make pale, especially by depriving of light, or (2) to make feeble or sickly. And here is how they show the word being used: "Years researching her novels in musty libraries had etiolated Rhoda Book to the point it was difficult to look at her in a bright light. Rhoda's sister, Rita, was physically etiolated by lying to much abed with good literature." Not only can you find definitions and clever usage tips for thousands of words, but you can also spend hours on end playing with words and finding answers to pressing questions, questions like what does "kumbaya" mean in that irritating campfire song. H...

I decided to give the needle punching thing another try, but I didn't have time to drive all the way out to the store that sells the stuff for another pattern. So, I came up with my own. This: I traced it on a piece of plain cotton, bought some floss in various shades of green and earthy tones and went to work. I don't think I quite have the hang of this yet, so the loops aren't uniform, but I kind of like the variation in texture. Maybe that's just an excuse to be sloppy with the whole thing and not actually master the technique. We'll see. Here is the finished product.

This past weekend, the Red Cross and the school music department held a duck race at a park in Small Town. At this fund raising event, there is a clown making balloon animals, games for little kids, a dunking tank, a tent with hot dogs and their usual trimmings, and mini-concerts by the high school jazz band and steel drum band—my daughter's very last performance with these groups, by the way. The end. Later in the afternoon, more than 1500 ducks raced down the creek, and prizes were awarded for the winners. If you've never been to a duck race, it may seem odd. I find it oddly fascinating. People buy ducks and are given numbered tickets. Hundreds of little plastic ducks, each with corresponding numbers, are dumped into the creek, and a guy in waders herds them down to the finish line. They funnel through one at a time, and the winners are collected. I didn't stay for the actual race because it was such a hot day, and I didn't want to stand there idly waiting so I could ...

There is this thing horn players do after having played for awhile and needing to loosen their chops. I have only heard the older ones do it, ones like me who are slowly losing elasticity in their skin. You let your lips go slack, clinch your teeth, and breath out so your face flaps. It sounds like a child playing with Matchbox cars, and it looks like this: If we knew what it looks like, we'd probably never do it in public. Now that I know, I'll have to excuse myself from the band room the next time I need to air out my embouchure. People will think I need to use the restroom more often than the average band member, but I'd rather that than to have them see me looking like an upside down fist face and to think I'm pretending to race a miniature red tractor against a black mustang with tiny doors that open and close. This must be one of the things that happens with age, this need to loosen up frozen parts. It's not unlike needing to shake some feeling down to my left...

The other day, Small Town's paper gave us the usual comment in its 30 Seconds column, with somebody complaining about moving here and being shocked by the local gossip chain and how pervasive it is. People who want to reply to the comment on line are instructed to stay on topic so the forum doesn't end up in some kind of irrational rant, but no amount of site monitoring has ever seemed to prevent that. Here is the first reply from a guy named Joe: "About the comment on moving to tuscarawas county, Who cares about the gossip! We need to start worrying about these illegal mexicans and guatomolins invadeing our county. These illegals are taking our jobs, ruining our towns (15-20 people living in one home) and the money they make they spend very little here. They send it back to there country to help relatives over here. Something has to be done! Dover is sarting to look like Tiawana! We can't afford to let these illegals take over our towns." You just know this guy c...

Last week a black man won...no, earned the nomination for the democratic ticket. A black man in America. And coming in at a very close second was a woman. Can you believe it? I hardly can. Given our history and the occasional moron who still utters racial slurs and threats and even follows through with a lynching now and then, the results of this primary season are miraculous. Over the weekend, Hillary Clinton delivered a masterful concession speech, although it wasn't called that for several technical reasons, and in it she said this: "You can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the President of the United States. And that is truly remarkable...Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is shini...

Last week's party was a success. I think what made it a success was Eustacia's happiness level, and she was pleased. Not all of her friends could make it, and those who did could only stay for a few minutes because they had a steel band concert to perform, but she was still a happy graduate. When you invite practically everyone you know and don't require an RSVP, you can only guess how many people will show up, and you can only guess how much they will eat, so I tend to over plan. I over planned on the food and the punch and plates and forks and napkins. I over planned so much I could have given another party the next day with all the leftovers. I didn't, of course, because no one was left to invite, but were I to suddenly meet 50 to 75 strangers, I could have fed them all and offered them a glass of punch. First, the cake. I ordered it from a local baker who works out of her kitchen. She's a sweetheart, and she produced a lovely treat. Second, the flowers. My siste...

It's art if I say it's art. Earlier this week, I took my mother and sister to Berlin, pronounced with the emphasis on the "Ber." It's a little town west of here smack in the middle of Amish land. The road to get there has extra wide shoulders to accommodate horse-pulled buggies, and there are hitching posts in the McDonald's parking lot. Berlin's main street is lined with gift shops and craft stores, and there are a couple of small cafes where the locals eat. After having lunch and pie at one those places, we went to a craft store next door. I was expecting yarn and doll parts and the usual stuff, but we were accosted by something new to us. It's called needle punching, and the sample sucked us in, as did the woman at the counter who demonstrated how it all works. We decided this thing had potential to make artistic things—by that I mean things that don't look like tea cozies and things that wouldn't look fine next to a crocheted octopus at the...

I'm pooped. The party was a success, and now I'm left with a bit of clean up. But we're pacing ourselves and will recuperate at the lake. I'll have pictures later, but for now, I prefer to put my feet up and nibble on leftover goat cheese and cucumber sandwiches...and lime curd tarts...and cake.