DJ Names

Some kids have nick names.  Mine have DJ names!

DJ Bow Tie

DJ 'Stache (as in mustache)

DJ Scooby Snax

DJ Ewok

DJ Dark Eyes

Life's pretty good

I finished my great novel.  I'm very happy with myself.  I've had three family members read it.  They are a great audience.  They have been helping me find mistakes, typos and generally making the story better.  It's been fun and now I'm working on the sequel.  Well, I have an idea for a sequel, but I haven't started working on it yet. 

Working at the parks is going well.  My job changed this month.  They call it a promotion.  Perhaps it is.  All I know is I'm still enjoying my job, working at the parks, driving county trucks around and looking all official. 

Kids are good.  We keep busy.  We get to celebrate two birthdays in one week in November!  Halloween with the gang was fun and we are all looking forward to Thanksgiving.  My oldest son is in a play at the high school.  Tomorrow is opening night.  I'm excited to go.  He is playing ten different characters.  It will be interesting to see how it works.

I started listening to Christmas music today.  I know it's awful early, but I just love it.

My mother, father, sister, youngest niece and mother-in-law all came for a visit this past weekend.  It was a full house, but so much fun.  I miss the rest of the family that couldn't be there, but my house was bursting as it was.  I never laugh harder than I do when my sister is around.  She is patient while I talk about my crazy ideas and latest interests.  We have a great time together.  I wish the visit could have lasted longer.

The chickens are good.  We've sold a number of our roosters, but it seems we still have more.  I wouldn't mind them, they are very entertaining, but they are so noisy.  The last thing I want to hear at three thirty or four in the morning are those dumb roosters crowing.  I sing to them most everyday when I go out to feed them.  "I've got to crow!  I'm just the cleverest fellow 'twas ever my fortune to know."  They aren't good about singing along, though.  We get 6-8 eggs a day from our lovely girls.  I take them treats (a slice of bread) every time I go out to see them.  It makes them happy.  Happy chickens are good!

Life is pretty good.  That's all there is too it.

The Bruise

My left thigh has been covered in bruises for months now and I just could not figure out how I was getting them.  I'm not exactly the picture of grace, so I assumed I was running into stuff and not really paying attention to hurting myself.

Then, last week while I was working at one of the parks, and doing my park duties, I realized exactly how I was getting all those bruises:  it's the way I dump the trash cans!

When I dump the trash from a barrel into a bag, I hold the bag with my left hand around the mouth of the barrel.  With my right hand I lift the barrel, but the barrel is too big for me to just lift with the only the strength of my own right arm.  So, I counter the barrel's height and weight by using my left thigh as leverage.

No wonder the bruises are only on my left side.  I'm going to have to start wearing football padding on my legs when I dump trashes from now on.  Either that or get my right arm muscles big and strong so I can just lift the barrel without using the aid of my leg.  Or maybe I'll just put up with the bruises.  Summer's over.  Shorts and bathing suit season is over.  No one's going to see the purple spots.

The Great Novel

I have been working on my great novel lately.

That sounds so impressive, doesn't it?  Truth is, I've been writing on a particular story as much as time and kids have allowed lately.  Years ago, I came up with a great idea for a book.  The problem was, I came up with a great idea for the middle of the book, without a good beginning or end.

I wrote down that idea and was very pleased with it, but put it aside for a long time because I was unsure of how to start or finish the story.  Since I began this story, I have written so many other things: several books, several plays, a few years of the blog, many essays and multiple "short" stories.  However, my mind was never too far away from this particular story.  Finally, I developed its beginning and I was very pleased with it.  I wrote the beginning of the story and was able to incorporate the middle that I had already written.  Then I got stuck in the middle and had no idea where to take the story.

For a long time, I thought and thought and thought and then one day - poof - an idea came to me and I was able to come up with the base idea that would finish the story.  With that base in mind, I have been writing.  In the past month alone, I've added over 16,500 words.  I'm not done and I'm missing several small sections that bridge various parts of the story together.

It has been exciting to write and I have to say that I am enjoying my story.  I think it's pretty darn good.  I'm reaching the end of the story and that is exciting.

When I am done, I will have the exceptionally fun task of re-reading it and look for major spelling and grammar mistakes along with any glaring plot holes.

I have this wild idea that someday my book will be published, become a best seller and Hollywood will be interested in turning my book into a movie.  I even know which actor I want in the main adult roll.  But, while I have fantasies, I am not delusional.  I know that this book will probably never be published and never be read and it kind of hurts my heart to know that.  Still, it doesn't stop me from writing.

I already have my idea for my next novel.....

Differences in the mind

When I look at the world, I see the colors and hear the music of nature.
When my 9 year old daughter looks at the world, she sees the math and logic in nature.

She asks very difficult questions.  She wants to know how the human brain works.  She calculates the numbers she sees in the everyday world.  She has an interest in biology.  Today she and I talked about arteries and veins.  When she cut her foot and it started to bleed, we wondered if the blood came from a vein or an artery.  Then we cleaned up her foot and she got a Band-Aid.

She wants to be a Kindergarten teacher.  I keep telling her that she needs to become a professor at a university.

The funny thing is, she says she dislikes math and claims that she is not good at it.  It is so not true!  She is very good at math.  The problem with learning math, is that it is hard to see how the information you learn could be practical.  I told her that I hated learning fractions.  I saw no point in learning how to add and subtract fractions.  Little did I know, I would use it everyday in the kitchen when cooking food for my family.  I've told her to give math a chance.  Someday, when she is ready to become a great scientist, or a Kindergarten teacher, she will understand why it was so important for her to learn equations.

Until then, I hope she never looses her interest in the world.  I hope she keeps asking hard questions.

Busy summer

Life has been busy this summer.
We've done:

Parkour day camp
Boy Scout camp
Youth Conference
Summer school
Goofing off
A visit to the frozen yogurt place - YUM
Hikes in the local national forest
Tons of laundry
Monkee Marathon
Visits to many local playgrounds
Improv classes and a performance
Computer game playing
Writing (me) lots and lots of writing
Reading
Working at the parks
A birthday party
Caught a cough
Two 1000 piece puzzles
A trip to the pool
Sewed a purse
Kindergarten registration
Shopping at new malls
School supply shopping (cries)
4th of July BBQ
Went to see fireworks
Watched movies
Jumped on the trampoline
Canned salsa, tomato sauce and ketchup
Grew tomatoes, cucumbers, cherry peppers, 1 squash, 5 kinds of mint, and a few strawberries
Built a small chicken coop
Started collecting eggs from our chickens (hooray!)
Baked cookies, cupcakes and brownies

It's been a very busy summer and lots of fun!  School starts in 3 weeks and we all have mixed emotions.  Some of us are very excited and some of us not so much.  The Kindergartener is crazy excited!

Wonder what else we'll squeeze in these last few weeks.

The confused tree

We have a tree in our yard.  I don't know what kind it is, but it is season confused.

It's leaves have started to turn red and are falling to the ground.  It did this last July.  It was completely bare by September.

It's like how the stores get rid of pool toys and start putting out school supplies on July 5th. I just want to shout, "No, no stores!  It's only the middle of summer.  Put those school supplies away for another four weeks!"  I want to yell at the tree, "No, no tree!  It's only mid-July, keep your green leaves for another two months."

As much as I love fall, I'm not ready for it yet.

The cake contest

Mullet cakes, squished cakes, burning cakes.  This is the annual 4th of July cake contest!

Welcome, welcome to the annual Family 4th of July cake contest.  For the last number of years, Molly, her mom and her siblings (and their spouses) have taken part in this tradition.  This year was an especially good year.  The best so far.

First we have the " 'Merica Mullet" cake.  Liberty in the front, Freedom in the back!  Yeah, baby!

Next we have Big Tex.  For 60 years, Big Tex stood in the heart of Dallas Fair Park, welcoming all who entered the huge state fair.  Sadly, last year, his 60th birthday, he burned to the ground.  Here is a cake honoring the great Big Tex.

"Houston, we have a problem."  No, it wasn't Neil Armstrong who said that, but you know he wanted to when he saw Darth Vader pop out from behind his space craft.  "Houston, we've got an alien with a mask and a red pointy light standing next to the rover!" 

Next we have a homage to a great American tradition - hot dog eating contest.  Looks like he had a few too many.

And finally we have the beloved Texas road kill - an Armadillo.  No trip through Texas is complete without seeing one of these babies on the road.  No one in Texas has ever actually seen one of these things alive.

And that's it, folks.  Which cake will win?  Who do you vote for?

Let the canning begin!

I was very busy today.  I canned 2 jars of salsa from our homegrown tomatoes!  The funny thing is, I can't stand the touch or smell of any of the ingredients.  I don't like the texture of tomatoes and my eyes are still burning from the two onions I chopped, even though it has been more than 12 hours since I made the salsa.  However, I do like the smell of the cilantro I used.  The cilantro was grown in my herb garden.

I mentioned we had  two cucumber plants come up on their own this year.  They have produced at least 10 beautiful cucumbers and they aren't done.  This picture is from last week, when we first started harvesting from the garden.  There are also some pea pods.  Hubby cooked and ate those today.

We still have a ton of pickles that I made last year, but I didn't want this years cucumbers to go to waste, so I tried a new recipe tonight and made crispy refrigerator pickles.  They are cucumbers, garlic, dill, lemon juice and cold water.  We'll see how those turn out...

This is the jelly.  You can see the lovely colors.  The pink one is, of course, watermelon jelly.  The second is cover jelly and the third small jar is chamomile jelly.  Aren't they lovely?

Summer garden

We have a garden again this summer and it has been great.

I wrote back a bit about my herb garden and the things we have planted.  Here we are a month later and I thought I'd update.  But no pictures.  I've been rather lazy about the camera lately and my computer isn't reading my camera's card.

I've made three kinds of jelly this season:  watermelon jelly, clover jelly and chamomile jelly.  The clover was made from the billions of clover flowers growing right here in my own yard.  The chamomile was made from the chamomile flowers in my herb garden.  (I bought the watermelon)

The clover jelly is a light golden brown and was so delicious.
The chamomile jelly is almost clear, but with the lightest hint of golden color.  It's lovely, but I haven't tried any yet.
The watermelon jelly (more like a jam really, as it has some texture) is the loveliest pink.  It is tasty, but a little odd to taste watermelon in jelly form.

The funny thing is, I'm not a big jelly eater, but I love making the jelly.  Once we make it through this jar of watermelon, we'll open a chamomile next. 

Our garden has about 20 tomato plants.  Every plant has several tomatoes, and they are just now starting to turn red.  I picked four yesterday.  We didn't plant cucumbers, but we've had two volunteer plants come up and they are producing beautiful cucumbers.  I've picked four of those.  I'm not planning on picking this year.  We've still got about 80 quarts of pickles from last summer.

We have one strawberry plant that has produced 3 strawberries.  They are kind of little, sad, withered things, but I hear it takes a year and a half for them to really get established. 

So, this is our gardening/preservatives successes so far for the year.  I'm looking forward to more as the summer continues.  With the many tomatoes I hope we will get, I'll make the Hubby a lot of salsa and I will try my hand at tomato sauce for pasta.

The herb garden

The herb garden!
Did you know chives put out purple flowers?  Neither did I, but they do!

Chamomile Flowers:

Last year I had almost no chamomile flowers and my parsley was only about three inches high.  This year is very different.  That's Chamomile and parsley next to each other in the picture below.  Since taking this picture a two weeks ago, they have both doubled in height.

Mint!  I've got peppermint, spearmint and chocolate mint growing.  The smell is lovely.  Also in this picture is cinnamon basil and lemon thyme.  It's not a great picture, but as you can see, everything is doing wonderfully well this year.

Next post:  The Backyard Garden...

Here chickie, chickie, chickie

We've got more chickens!!

Last Thursday we got some new baby chicks.  These are Americanas. 

 

They are very different from out other chickens, which are red pullets.  They are cute and fluffy, but they are more skittish, faster and pretty good jumpers.  I can't tell who is who.  I haven't learned their names, but they include Blackie and Joey (the two black ones), Cinnamon, Papalapa Ding Dong, Kirk, Jean-Luc, and Cleopatra. They were a random pick after they hatched and we don't know which ones are males and which are females.  We'll find that out as they get older.  We only want hens, though.

 

 

They like to sleep in their food and they jump on each other's heads.  I still just call them all nuggets.

 

Our other chickens are lovely red hens now.  They have not started laying eggs, yet.  Still waiting on them.  We've bought two grown chickens.  For a while they were both laying eggs, but now only one of them is.  The other one had a bit of excitement this week.  She got out of her pen and flew off over the fence.  We couldn't find her or catch her.  For two days we kept an eye out and set traps to get her back.  Finally our neighbor saw her.  It took three separate attempts with no less than five people each time, but our wayward chicken was finally recaptured and her wings promptly clipped. 

 

I go visit the chickens every day and usually take a treat for them.  They LOVE bread.  They also love macaroni and cheese and spaghetti noodles.  When I come up to the pen, they all run to the door and start hopping, excited for their treat.  I'm certainly enjoying our chickens.  I hope they all start laying eggs soon and I hope more of these baby chicks are hens rather than roosters.  We'll see.....

Cicadas

Cicadas!  Apparently, every 17 years, a species of cicadas comes out to eat, shed, grow, mate and die.  This is the 17 year.  These cicadas hatched back in 1996!  They are everywhere!  I grew up with cicadas.  They are part of the summer sights and sounds, but I've NEVER seen so many at once. 

Shells all over the ground in the front yard.

See the shells hanging all over the trees?

They are everywhere!!

I can not take credit for this photo:  http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/8787
Personally, I wouldn't want to get close enough to take this picture.

This is what they look like up close.  They are UGLY!  The cicadas I grew up with were green and white.  These are like Halloween nightmares - black and orange with red eyes.  Thankfully they are pretty stupid bugs (I guess that's what happens when you live underground for 17 years) and they don't bother me too much.  Cicadas are just a part of summer.

Also in bug land, I've started seeing lightning bugs in the fields in parts of the county as I drive from park to park.  Summer is just around the corner when the lightning bugs appear!

Ruby Cube is Back!

Ruby Cube's latest episode of "Projects in Your Pajamas" is available for your listening pleasure.

This week she is talking about lawn décor and what to do when your broken mailbox is beyond repair!

Enjoy y'all!

Writers Block

I've been having writers block for quite a while.  The stories I want to write aren't happening.  I sit down and can't come up with two lines that I like.  It's been like that here at the blog.  I want to write.  I pull up a blank page everyday, but nothing comes to me.  Nothing.  I don't know where my brain is these days, but it's not feeling very creative.

I find it very frustrating.  Usually, if I start to feel this way, I just move on to a different project.  Unfortunately for me, I've been feeling this way for such a very long time now and I move from project to project feeling the same way with each one.  Perhaps I should try something new, but I would really like to finish one thing before starting more.

I don't know what it will take.  The muse is gone.  Hopefully she will return.  Until then, I'm feeling so unlike myself.

When you just keep moving....

We've lived in so many homes over the years.  I can't find something in this house, even though we've lived here for about 15 months.  I can remember where it was in the house before this one and the one before that, but I can't find it here.

So frustrating.....

Ah well, I'll find it the next time we move.  (NOT anytime soon, thankfully, although I would like to find a few missing items - my bluebirds of happiness, a folder with some old play scripts I used when I did theater as a kid, a particular kitchen utensil.... you know, that stuff.)

Ruby Cube's newest episode

Hey ya'll, my comedy home improvement podcast has 5 episodes now.  This newest episode is all about projects for the outdoors. 

What do you do with the old jalopy in the yard?  Ruby's got the answer.


http://mollysrandomthoughts.podbean.com/2013/05/02/ruby-cube-ep-5-outdoors-pt-1/

List of questions

A list of interesting questions:

1. Describe your note-taking style and habits.
2. Do you believe that we are all here for a reason?  What might the reason be?
3. What comes to mind when someone uses the phrase prolonging the magic?
4. Have you ever done something just to feel the danger, or to feel alive?
5. What is your favorite cliché?
6. How do rainy days make you feel?
7. What is the most amount of money you have had at one time?
8. Write a celebrity crush list.

Definitely interesting questions.  Some inspire deep thought, some require very little, some are just feelings about something or an observation.  Just quickly to go through these eight questions:

#1 - Note taking.  When I was in elementary school, we had to learn how to take notes.  My teacher would write outlines on the board for us to copy.  I HATED it.  It was several years down the road when I realized how important knowing how to make an outline is.  Kids in schools don't learn this anymore.  It's too bad.  Important skill that is being lost.  One that can make report writing easier.

#2 - Of course we are here for a reason.  Why?  Too deep to go into.  There is also a very basic physical reason why we are here.  Don't understand?  Time to have a long talk with the parents.

#3 - "Prolonging the magic" - I guess is another way of saying anticipation.  Sometimes the anticipation of something is better than the actual thing.  It's like Christmas.  I love Christmas day, but the month long anticipation leading up to it is even better.  I guess in the phrase "prolonging the magic" is not quite the same.  It would be like waking up on Christmas morning and finding out you can't open presents or eat the turkey dinner until tomorrow, when Grandma is scheduled to arrive into town.

#4 - Have I ever done something just to feel the danger?  Not really.  Nothing dangerous anyway.  I guess I've done some things slightly on the rebellious side just to do it.  I suppose driving the golf-cart-like vehicle in the dark, at it's highest speed through the walking paths of the park I work at, just because I can, could be an example of this.  Not necessarily dangerous, though.

#5 - Favorite cliché?  "It never rains but it pours."

#6  - How do rainy days make me feel? I love rainy days.  They make me happy. They can fuel my sadness if I'm having a sad day.  They can make me feel nostalgic.  They make me think of magic, too.  Not magic tricks, but like magic in a wonderful fairy tale.  Hard to explain.....

#7 - The most amount of money I've ever had at one time?  I don't really know.  In my hands?  In my bank account?  Stashed away in a secret hiding place in my room?  Don't know.  Not telling.

#8 - Celebrity crush list?  Not putting that here.  I have one, don't get me wrong, but it will not be revealed here.  Sorry.

No reason for this post.  I was looking through a list of journal-prompts.  Some of them inspire deep thoughts.  Many I found among the list, I wouldn't want to answer, such as "If you could tell the world one thing, what would it be?"  First off, I don't really know.  Secondly, I know it could never happen, so why torture myself with the idea.  Thirdly, if I could, most of the world wouldn't care what it was I had to say.  Fourth, I don't think it is a question that should ever have an answer.  If we only have one thing in our lives to say, our minds aren't thinking creatively anymore and I couldn't bear that.

More Bluebirds of Happiness

Some more funny pictures I took of my Bluebirds of Happiness back in 2009 and 2010:

Very patriotic Bluebirds of Happiness!

Happy Thanksgiving!  Don't you love the big bluebird, who is about to eat a TUMS?

The Bluebirds of Happiness with a bar of soap that just makes you happy look at.  I don't know why I took their picture with a bar of soap.



 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!



Growing tomatoes with the Bluebirds of Happiness:

Preparing for a rainy day - The Bluebirds of Happiness and food storage

Nothing like sharing a fresh home baked cookie with the Bluebirds.

Getting ready for a new school year:

Visiting friends at the family castle:

Spring flowers make even the Bluebirds happy.

 

 

A Toally Useless Possession that makes me smile

I found the quirkiest writing prompt recently and I had to try it:

Name a totally useless possession and how you came to acquire it.

I have a Bluebird of Happiness.  By itself it is completely useless as it is a bit of blue glass in the shape of a bird.  Even more useless, but adding to the fun, is I have two of these blue glass birds - a normal size and a baby size.

I wish I could remember exactly how they came to be in my possession.  I only know that I got both of them from my mom.  I believe mom acquired them (or at least one of them) from a student when she taught school, many years ago. 

We laughed about these little Bluebird of Happiness knick-knacks.  It became something of a joke between us - the useless glass birds and the fact that we possessed two of them.  In all honesty, the Bluebirds of Happiness have brought my mom and I just that: happiness.  They make us laugh.  I smile every time I see them.  They make me think of mom.

These are my Bluebirds of Happiness.  They are playing in the pool on a hot summer day.  Can you see them?  They are rather camouflaged in the blue pool.

 

One day I might share the reason I took such funny, ridiculous pictures of my Bluebirds of Happiness. :)  Until then, I hope they have made you happy today.