Wellington win

On this day in 1815, Napoleon met his Waterloo.







Of course, at the time that idiom didn't exist. It is courtesy of Great Britain and their allies that we can now allude to any great failure as a Waterloo. I wonder how Waterloo, Belgium, feels about being synonymous with defeat.

So. Father's Day.

I consider Father's Day to be completely about the father of my child. To me yesterday was all about LSH. In little ways. And he would probably disagree since he did do a couple loads of laundry, but (and this is important) of his own volition. I did not even gently suggest it.
It's difficult for me to think of the day in terms of my own father because he has been gone for so long. This year marked 34 years since his sudden death. I have been more changed as a person by his absence than by his presence. But I don't mean that in a bad way.
His death, when I was still a child, changed the person I became. And because I like the person I am, I have accepted the twists and turns in my life that led me here.
The only time I get a bit melancholy is when I think about how much he would have loved being a grandpa to Punkinhead. 

Friday Book (not really) Blogging

I read part of a book this week. I like it so far. I'll tell you about it next week (even if I read something better in between).
But really, what I'd like to post now is how much I love my tiny creaky bed with the old mattress and mis-matched sheets.

Heading home

Tomorrow I return to my world!

Let's go to the zoo

I'm in Decatur, Illinois, and the laptop's not working. Posting this week will be spotty at best.

I would offer my apologies in advance, but that spottiness problem has already begun. Is there anything interesting happening? I'm literally surrounded by cornfields and fine dining here is the local Olive Garden.
I did visit the zoo on Sunday. I'm a little crazy at the zoo. I LOVE zoos. LOVE THEM! My family (especially Punkinhead) makes fun of me for it. I talk to the animals. I run from exhibit to exhibit. I laugh at silly things they do. I've been known to skip....
The Scovill Zoo has a little zoo train that loops a in a semicircle around the perimeter of the zoo. I rode it. I also rode the Endangered Animals carousel (very cool!) on the capybara.

And I went to the little petting farm and fed the goats. It was a little unusual to do by myself, but I'm sure all the stares from strangers were just because I was having so much fun. Right?

Friday Book Blogging

I read a book. I liked it. I'll share it with you.
As you might have guessed, I've been having a hard time keeping my shoulder to the grindstone. All of my posts this week have felt decidedly lackluster. (Can something lackluster ever be decidedly so?) This malaise has even permeated my reading: a below-average three books read.
This week I'm giving the nod to Tasha Alexander and her A Crimson Warning.Her creation of Lady Emily Hargreaves heroine and amateur sleuth led to Alexander being tipped before.

Trivia buff

My friend and fellow-blogger (who is one of the most supportive people I've ever met) is offering tickets to the upcoming movie "Copperhead" on her blog. I'm sure she wouldn't mind if you tossed your name into the hat, if you're interested. But that's not why I'm posting.
She has inadvertently tapped into one of my guilty pleasures: history trivia. I'm not a huge Civil War fanatic in that I don't visit battlefields (except Gettysburg on the 8th grade trip to Washington D.C.) or attend re-creations. I don't collect memorabilia or discuss it hours on end.
But I have read Shelby Foote's entire Civil War history. Twice. And watched the Ken Burns documentary at least three times. I've read other books on the war, but Foote's is amazingly well-written and thorough.
There are other periods of history, I find fascinating. And I read a lot of historical fiction, but for the sheer impact alone, the American Civil War holds a favored position with me. That said, I'm not sure I want to see the movie. And I'm really disappointed that the trivia quiz is the same 8 questions each time. It was hardly a challenge!

When your back hurts

...it's hard to write a blog post every day.

Wages of sin

Like it isn't already difficult enough to get a guy to spend a little tongue-time south of our navels, now Michael Douglas is telling everyone it causes cancer. 
I hope my Long-Suffering Husband doesn't read this.

Also, on a related note: can we come up with a better term than cunnilingus? Really?

Erect inflourescence

This weekend in the garden was taming the already prolific growth on the yew, the red-twig dogwood, boxwood, and Japanese knotweed.

Of the aforementioned, only the Japanese knotweed is an interloper. It is also the inspiration for the title of the post. (Gutter minds.)

Friday Book Blogging

I didn't Book Blog last Friday due to a lamentable lack of literature.
You see, I spent almost every spare minute doing work in the garden and/or yard. In fact that trend continued this week, so I have only three books to choose from.
The best of the lot was Chris Ewan's Safe House. I've tipped this author before as part of his "good thief" series. This book departs from the jaunty feel of that series, but keeps the intrigue and "Die Hard"-style action. (How many times can you be beaten and left for dead before you finally stop getting up?)
This is distracting to say the least, but the plot itself carries enough weight that the book still gets top spot. Keep in mind, however, it beat out only two others and one of those was a trash novel.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity

I am sitting in my 84°F house wearing only slightly more than modesty necessitates and perspiring. Which leads me to wonder if discomfort in warm (hot!) weather is somehow genetic. Do my Nordic ancestors doom me to uncomfortably sweaty summers? When the vikings landed on ice-covered Greenland and named it that, were they cannily keeping tourists out of their frigid playground?

Then I thought of India.
I've never been to India, but I imagine it is warm there. At 8:00 am today, it was already 86°F. The humidity was hovering near 70%. Gandhi, in real life and in the movie, never got frostbite wandering the dirt roads in little more than a pillowcase.
Throughout most of the 1800s and nearly half of the 1900s India belonged to the British. Queen Victoria was also crowned Empress of India. As such, quite a few Brits colonized the place (or as they would say, "colonised"). Wearing clothes like this:

How is it that millions of them didn't turn into puddles on the promenade. Perhaps they surrendered India to independence because they just couldn't stand the heat.
But really, all this proves is, 1.) I'm very lucky to not live in an era when hosiery and corsets were obligatory, and 2.) I'm a wimp.

Possible?

The most frequently overdue books at the library are the "how to organize your life" books. 

Break in

We have a rickety gate in the picket fence surrounding our mini-orchard that quite literally was ripped from its hinges this weekend. The assumption was that neighborhood kids had accidentally pulled on it too hard and dislodged the screws in the top hinge. I repaired it Sunday.
On Monday we discovered it hanging only by it guy-wire, all six screws still in the hinges, but the holes stripped. As we railed against the delinquent teenagers, we noted that there was no crushed vegetation at the far end of the orchard and that someone had been nibbling at the pear leaves.
It turns out our delinquent teens are of the four-legged variety.

Honoring the warrior

I'm uncomfortable posting about Memorial Day because I am not properly grateful for the sacrifice that we are supposed to be honoring on this day. Perhaps this would be different if (god forbid) I actually had known someone who died while serving in the military. I don't know.
I fully acknowledge that I ought to feel more reverence than I do. My Long-Suffering Husband does. Most everyone I know seems to. Even when I sit quietly and force myself to reflect on it, what I mostly feel is an overwhelming sense of loss. Not in an awe-inspiring gratitude way, but in a pitiful what a waste way.
And those who died while serving our nation deserved more than my pity. So while hundreds of thousands of veterans remember comrades and think, "There but for the grace of God... ." and thousands of war widows (and widowers) and their children and parents suffer without their loved ones, Let us consider all the wars that were fought to shape this nation.
Because as surely as we honor the newly-dead and recently bereaved, we should strive to remember all the soldiers who gave their lives on battlefields from Fredericksburg to Gallipoli, from the beaches of Normandy to the 38th parallel. 
War has shaped us. By remembering the cost, we can possibly prevent it from defining us.

I now pronounce you ex-wife

On this day in history possibly the most famous divorce ever was finalized when Archbishop Thomas Cranmer officially annulled King Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
The intended result of this was a subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, who was pregnant with arguably England's greatest queen. 
The unintended consequence of the split being the birth of the Anglican Church and the English Reformation.
How many religious movements can trace their origins to a monarch's ass-chasing?

Putting your lack of faith out there

I don't really like how apologetic she is, like it's her fault that Wolf Blitzer asked a stupid question, but still, an average person who is willing to say on national television (granted, it's only CNN) that she doesn't believe in God: brave.

There are a lot of very vocal, very unChristian-like Christians who are howling at that right now.

The cat came back

What are my obligations to a cat all of us disliked who busted out last night and is wandering the neighborhood? What are my obligations to the neighborhood? He's fixed so he won't be making any kitties. Is that it? Can I wash my hands of him?

Please say yes!

Recap

LSH and I worked all day long on Saturday. In fact, we put in a solid 12 hours, although 2 of those hours were spent purchasing annuals to plant. The Punkinhouse back yard is beautifully decorated and planted and clean and open for summer. (Please do not notice the peeling paint on the clapboards, that will be taken care of soon. --I hope!) Unfortunately, we are still not finished. In fact we have likely two more 12-hour days to go before we reach the "eff it; good enough" stage of the yard.

But all that work on Saturday was followed on Sunday by a complete day of leisure (for me). We went on the Ohio City Home Tour. (Why is it so fun to peek into other people's homes?) We ate at a trendy little restaurant in the area. We got back home with plenty of afternoon left for reading with a tall iced coffee under the umbrella on the back deck. We got to visit with a good friend and neighbor. And I'm only a tiny bit sunburned.
Sundays are almost perfect. Their only downfall is that they are followed by Mondays.

Friday Book Blogging

I just realized I never posted this on Friday~ (This is proof of how easy it is to "save" and not "publish.") So for the (very) few of you who look for it, here is a belated (and ultimately not worth the wait) Friday Book Blog:

This week was crazy-busy, so I only have two books to choose from. I'm selecting the virtually fattening Clare Cosi mystery Holiday Buzz by Cleo Coyle. Yes, it takes place at Christmas. And yes, it's an arch-typical mystery featuring an amateur detective (in this case she runs a coffee shop but she's dating a cop). There are odd, quirky characters, red herrings, and a satisfying solution. But best of all, there are a bunch of delicious-sounding desserts AND the recipes to go with them. Yum!