Pat Bertram's Blog, page 59

The Sounds of Unsilence

I’ve never understood windchimes. As mobile art, they are rather intriguing, but when you add in the wind part, they are aggravating as all heck. But that must just be me. Obviously, other people find them pleasing otherwise there wouldn’t be so ubiquitous.

Still, there aren’t many people whose sound of choice is silence. There are a lot of noises I can’t tolerate, such as outdoor machinery, but at least there seem to be a purpose to those noises, and once the job is done, the noises cease. (And now that I have the semblance of a yard, I too am making noise with a yard machine.) With windchimes, though, the noise is arbitrary, based on whatever the wind is doing, and in a windy climate? Ouch. Those things are almost constant.

Luckily, the windchime currently aggravating me doesn’t disturb my sleep. In other places I’ve lived, the windchimes were so constant, they invaded my dreams, so I could never get away from them until I finally was able to move. Even more luckily,, come summer, the air conditioner will be on at least part of the time. The air conditioner has always been a rather hard choice for me to make — silence and sweat, or noise and coolness — but this year, having it on will help drown out the windchimes.

I wish it was just a matter of getting used to the chimes, but it’s not a so much that I prefer silence, but that windchimes, even the so-called tuned ones, grate on my nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. (Do young people today even know what that sound is, or have whiteboards replaced the old-fashioned blackboards?)

From what I remember of last summer, the early morning hours are fairly still, with the winds picking up later in the afternoon. Or perhaps I’m remembering the desert where I was living before I moved here. In that area, I know, the winds picked up as the day went on. Either way, I’ll find quiet times to go outside and sit. Or not. It could be that I’ll just go out to do whatever work I need to do, then come and hide inside where it is relatively quiet.

The windchime problem has given me an idea for a book, though. The poor protagonist is at wits end because of the noise, and she talks of shooting them. People misunderstand and think she’s talking of shooting her neighbors, and then they end up dead. But I wouldn’t want to harm my neighbors even in literary fun because that would seem to bring bad Karma, especially since we’re all planning on hanging around here until the end, whatever that end might be.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Thought-Provoking

This is a hurry-up-and-write-something-post-so-I-can-say-I-wrote-something post. I don’t normally have a busy day, but this is one of those rare occasions. I had to water my garden, go check on a friend’s house and water her houseplants, check with my car mechanic about the brake part he ordered, and stop at the store to pick up a few groceries. As if that isn’t enough, I have to go to work early today. Which means there’s no time to write a thought-provoking post, or rather try to think of something thought-provoking to post (though I often fail in the thought-provoking part, I do try).

Hence, this bit of silliness.

I did get a chance to check out a neighbor’s roses as he suggested. He’s rightly proud of them, and I’m glad I got a chance to see them at their peak

And, since I was wandering around with my phone in hand, I stopped to take a photo of my larkspur. (Which, incidentally, originally came from the rose neighbor’s yard.)

Now that I think about it, I’d take flowers over a thought-provoking post any day.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Wild Raft Ride of Thoughts

In the book I am currently reading, a couple was chosen by the birth mother to adopt her soon-to-be born baby. All goes well until the child is nine-months old. Then the birth father decides he wants the baby he has never even seen.

This scenario has me whitewater rafting on a wild stream of thoughts, starting with the oft-quoted presumption that a woman’s body is her right. She gets to choose to have an abortion or bring the baby to term. But when does her right end? When the baby is born? If so, why would that be? The child is still part of her, and if you doubt that, ask any bereaved woman who has lost her child — at whatever age — how she feels, and she will tell you she feels as if part of her has died too, as if a limb has been amputated, as if her heart has been scooped out of her body and stomped on.

In other words, whether inside or outside a mother’s body, the baby is still a part of her. So what about father’s rights? In this scenario, it seems as if the only rights he has are those the mother confers on him. Why else would he have any rights? Adding to the whole weird situation, if a woman had a child by another man, then that man’s DNA can migrate to her body from the fetus, so any subsequent baby could have the first man’s DNA, too.

Even if the baby only had the father’s DNA, being a sperm donor or a DNA imparter doesn’t really change anything because our DNA doesn’t necessarily belong to us. It belongs to whoever mines it from our bodies.

That sounds dramatic I know, but the truth is, every time you have blood drawn or any other invasive test, the doctors are mining your body for information. They send it to various labs to be processed. And that part of your body no longer belongs to you. There have been scenarios where a person’s blood was so valuable that the lab company laid claim to it legally. And if the person ever finds out how valuable their blood is (for example, if the person’s blood produces antibodies against The Bob that would protect people forever and against all variants) the person can’t sell it to the highest bidder or even give it away because someone else owns their blood.

In addition, it seems as if aborted babies belong to the abortionist or whoever the person works for because so much medical research, including stem cell research, is done with fetal cells, and where else would the researches get all those fetal cells, unless they are growing them in incubators, which adds a whole other level of insanity to the equation.

Then who does the baby belong to? The midwife or doctor who delivers it? Of course not. It’s the mother’s. She “baked” it. It came from her body. In that case, how could anyone but the mother have any rights? (Though it was not my intention, this would seem to negate the whole child-support question.)

And if we do have rights to our bodies, how can any government mandate any sort of medical procedure, even those they consider as innocuous as inoculations?

I told you this was a wild raft ride of thoughts. As with any wild ride, I’m not sure where I’m going with all these hypothetical questions (meaning I’m not sure what I think and I’m not looking for answers). Mostly I’m taking certain political and scientific presumptions to a logical conclusion, or what seems logical to me. It for sure has nothing to do with my thoughts on abortion, which basically are nonexistent since the issue has nothing to do with me. I have no right to decide what anyone does with any part of their body, though I do give serious thought before I let anything be taken out of — or put into — my body.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

And the Creek Don’t Rise

There’s a flood warning today for the area, though despite the title of this piece, it’s not a creek that’s rising but a river. Since there’s been no rain, the higher level of water must be runoff from the distant mountains. Odd to think that although we can’t even see them from here, the mountains can still affect us. The flood watch notwithstanding, I’d be surprised if there were any flooding in the area, but who knows. This has been a time of surprises — good surprises.

Yesterday I got a call from one of my erstwhile dance classmates. I haven’t talked with her since I moved here, so it was a wonderful surprise to be able to talk with her and to catch up on all our news. She’s been reading my blog, and because she wants to get out of the state (geographical not emotional) she’s in, she thought this place might be a good fit for her. It would be, too, except for one thing — doctors. Anyone with any issues has to take a two-hour drive to get to specialists. Oh, there is a part-time doctor here, and there is a hospital in the next town over, but I’m not sure how good that hospital is or what sort of services they provide because almost everyone I know who has ended up there has been transferred to a bigger hospital in a bigger city.

It’s too bad her brief thought of moving here won’t come to fruition — it would have been nice to have someone to practice our dances with. Assuming, that is, my knees ever get healed enough to do the gyrations necessary for both belly dance and Hawaiian dancing. (Except for that, my knees are doing well; the exercises I’ve found seem to be helping.) But oh, I do miss dancing!

Another surprise came today. I went out my front door, planning to go to the library, and I saw a neighbor cutting the weeds in the right-of-way between my sidewalk and the street. (Around here, they call that area a “parkway,” but to me, a parkway is wide strip of park-like greenery dividing a street.)

I am so delighted! I do have a string weed trimmer, but that thing and I don’t get along very well. Besides, it would have taken several reels of string to do a halfway decent job and taken me a whole heck of a lot longer than it took him with his industrial weed cutter.

And as a final surprise, the forecast was right, and the winds have died down. Ah, the lovely stillness.

So see, although it would be a surprise if the “creek” rose, it wouldn’t fit with these other surprises. With my luck (all good at the moment), I don’t expect there to be any problem.

Actually, the Creek really won’t rise. Supposedly the saying, “God willing and the Creek don’t rise,” originated during the Creek Wars of the early nineteenth century. The Muscogee Nation, descended from the historic Creek Confederacy, is nowhere near here, so the chances of an uprising in this area (or any area?) are surprisingly slim. My luck really is holding!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Seasons Out of Season

It’s been very windy the past few weeks, as well as rainy, but starting around seven this evening, the wind is supposed to die down. The rains are also supposed to be leaving us for a while.

What this has to do with anything in my life, I’m not really sure, except that I get to experience the flow of the seasons. Or more accurately, the flow of seasons when they’re out of season. Except for the relatively cool temperatures, it has seemed more like July monsoon season around here. Many recent days were pleasant in the morning, with the winds bringing rain (and more wind) in the afternoon and evening.

But then, the seasons have always been out of whack in Colorado. I remember Christmases when I was young that were so warm, we played outside in the sun without coats. I remember Easters that were so wintery, our Easter finery was buried beneath snowsuits or heavy coats and leggings. (Leggings today are merely footless tights. Leggings in my youth were heavy wool pants worn beneath skirts for the trek to school or church to keep our legs from freezing.)

I’m looking forward to the quiet (and the lack of headaches) that comes from still air. No creaking branches on neighborhood trees that sound as if they will be breaking any minute. No roaring gusts of wind. No windchimes. Just . . . quiet.

Even so, except for perhaps a few hours in the early morning or an occasional overheated day when one desperately hopes for a breeze, it’s never really still out here on the plains. There are no mountains to act as windbreaks, no hills or forests, though luckily, the winds aren’t as fierce in town. Also luckily, my circadian rhythm now tends to favor the dawn. (That’s not my preference. I prefer to sleep in, but my body senses the rising sun, and that’s the end of any possibility of shut-eye.) It’s probably smart, anyway, to do my outside summer chores in those cooler hours. I certainly don’t need to be pulling weeds when the temperatures climb into the nineties and hundreds

But that’s not something I need to think about now. Today, I just need to hold on for another few hours. Then the dangerous winds will die down, and I will have a semblance of peace . . . for a while, anyway.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Showing My Life

People often express concern about my posting photos of my house and my yard. They think I am setting myself up for theft or home invasion or some such, and perhaps that’s true. However, most people who read this blog don’t know exactly where I live — in fact, most live in distant parts of the United States or in other countries — and those who do know where I live, know because they have actually been to the house. Despite that, I realize anyone can find anyone nowadays, probably with just a few keystrokes, so it behooves all of us to be careful.

In a way, posting photos works in my favor because although my rooms look inviting, it’s quite obvious there’s nothing of value in the house. The furniture is old, handed down from relatives; the kitchenware was inexpensive when I bought it decades ago; and whatever tools I have are both handed down and inexpensive. Still, when it comes to a more expensive tool (expensive compared to old rakes and shovels, but still relatively cheap), such as the lawn mower I use, I make sure not to post any photos, though truly, that’s not the sort of thing that goes missing around here. The tools people like to steal are the sort they can pocket and perhaps pawn — or maybe even pawn off on an unsuspecting buyer.

I am careful, though, at least as careful as I know how to be. If I were to go on a trip, I wouldn’t talk about it until I returned home again. It really is nuts the way people post their vacation photos while they are away, as if to tell the world, “No one’s home. Feel free to break into my house.”

I did post photos when I took my cross-country trip, but even then, I waited until I’d moved to my next stop before I posted the previous stop’s photos on the off chance (the off, off, off chance) that someone would be stalking me. At the time, I had no home, so it didn’t matter if people knew I was away, but I had enough people telling me how dangerous it was for a woman to travel alone that I took a few precautions. I’m glad nothing dire happened, and even more than that, I’m glad I took the trip. Although I thought that trip would be the first of many, it turned out to be the first of merely a few. I tend to think my traveling days are now over, especially since I spent my travel money on a garage. But truly, if I do ever take off, I won’t be announcing to the world that my house is empty.

Still, whether I heed people’s warnings or continue showing my life, I do appreciate the concern. It’s nice to know people care.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

If At First You Don’t Succeed

My brother left a lawnmower here the last time he visited, almost two years ago. I’m sure he planned to come back and help with the yard whenever he traveled this way, but then The Bob intervened, and he hasn’t been back.

Last year, it was so dry, I didn’t have to worry about a lawn. To be honest, I have no lawn to worry about even now, but last year I didn’t even have any weeds in the yard, so the lawnmower just sat immobile.

Well, this year, with all the rain, the weeds are growing rampant. Even a bit of grass is growing. And it all needed to be cut back. For some reason, I felt nervous about using the machine since I’d never used it and didn’t remember how. Still, I dragged out the lawnmower, found the manual my brother left with me, and proceeded to read the instructions. The machine had been put into storage mode, meaning it was locked and folded and set in an upright position to get it out of the way. It took me a while to find all the right parts, first in the manual and then on the machine, and get it back to working condition.

I thought I’d read the instructions properly, but when I tried mowing, the blades never engaged. I called my brother to see if he could figure out what I was doing wrong, but he didn’t have the time right then. So I went back and read the instructions again.

And then it clicked. Literally. I had to push this button, pull that lever, and like magic, the thing turned on and I managed to get my weeds aka “my lawn” mowed.

No wonder the thought of mowing the lawn made me nervous. I’m out of the practice of concentrating, and it takes concentration to read instruction manuals and try to decipher the graphics.

It just goes to show, if at first you don’t succeed, read the instructions, and if you still don’t succeed, read them again.

My next venture will be to see if I can figure out the string trimmer. The right-of-way between the sidewalk and the street is overgrown with woody weeds and tall tree sprouts growing out of the roots of a tree that had been chopped down, and it all needs to be cut back, but that’s a project for another day.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Garden Surprises

I was cleaning away weeds this morning when I discovered a patch of mushrooms. It’s always a treat — and a surprise — to find any sort of mushroom or toadstool in Colorado due to the generally dry climate. But so far, this spring has been anything but dry.

Although most of my wild roses are gone for the year, I did find a couple of yellow roses still clinging to their branches — another lovely surprise!

Then there is the candy bouquet flowers that I planted in a hanging pot. I doubt it’s the best place for the plant when it comes to enough sun or shade, but so far, it seems to be doing well.

And the final surprise is the new growth on the green-gage plum tree. The tree was a six foot tree, but except for a small sprout near the graft, the tree died.

I don’t really want to get another six-footer to plant in its place because this one seems to be doing well, but then, if I’d wanted a six-inch tree, I could have paid a whole lot less for the tree. For now, I’m just waiting to see what happens. I wonder if I could root the twig when it gets older so I can have my six-inch tree as well as a replacement 6-foot tree? I’m not sure why the tree needed to be grafted in the first place. Maybe because it’s really a bush? There’s so much to learn!

Luckily, I have the time to figure it all out.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Rainy Days and Cloudy Skies

Rainy days and Mondays . . .

And Tuesdays. And Wednesdays. And probably Thursdays and Fridays, too.

Unlike what the song intimates, all those things don’t get me down, but recently, the days been cloudy enough that if I had a tendency to get depressed from cloudy days and rain, this certainly would have been the time. Luckily, I don’t have that problem, though I do have another problem, sort of an odd one. Many plants either need full sun or some shade, and when there’s no sunshine, it’s hard to know where the plants should go.

You’d think after two years and two months living here in this house, I’d know where the sunny and shady spots in the yard are, but those spots move. What’s shady in the winter is full sun in the summer. And vice versa.

I’d planned a container garden to go in a triangular area between my house and the back ramp. I couldn’t put it there because the workers hadn’t yet finished graveling that area, which turned out to be a good thing. It’s almost always in the shade (at least from what I remember back when we had sunny days), and the plants I bought need full sun. So I put the containers on either side of my garage door, thinking they will get sun in the afternoon. The trouble is, since it’s cloudy every afternoon, I can’t tell how much sun the plants would get. I do know that area is shaded by the garage in the morning; I figure that in itself should tell me the plants won’t get full sun, so today I moved the containers to what I hope is a sunny location.

I have to laugh at how I almost outsmarted myself. I put gravel at the bottom of the containers to help with drainage and to make the pots heavy enough not to get blown over in the high winds we often get, and they were almost too heavy for me to move. If they’d been any heavier, I’d have had to ask for help. (It’s not that I have a problem asking for help, but I do have a problem with waiting around for help to arrive when I am focused on getting something done, so it’s generally easier to do things myself.)

Apparently, without knowing what I was doing, I got the dahlia in the right place because it is doing well. Such a cheery color! Next time I’m by the hardware store I’ll check to see if they have any more. I do enjoy seeing spots of color in my yard.

[image error]

We’re supposed to have a few rain-free days, which will be nice. The drainage in this town is terrible — I had to walk several extra blocks out of my way yesterday to be able to go the two blocks from where I live to where I work because so many of the streets, gutters, and sidewalks were awash with rainwater. Hip boots would have helped, for sure!

It’s funny that new people who come to town always try to get things changed, such as painting murals or setting out trash containers or opening even more pot shops than are already here, but no one addresses the drainage issue. I tried. I even went to some town council meetings when the new mayor was setting out his objectives. The matter was actually brought up by other people so I didn’t have to be one of those people who move to town and immediately try to change things. Although everyone at the meeting agreed there is a problem and that the standing water exacerbates the mosquito problem, nothing is being done. I suppose it’s too expensive — it would be something the town would have to pay for, while those who paint murals do it on their own dime.

But I’m getting off track here. The point is . . . hmm. I’m not sure. Rainy days and cloudy skies and lack of sunshine and gardening, I suppose.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Watching Things Grow

The problem with a wet spring is that the weeds are everywhere, and they grow like . . . well, like weeds. If it would dry out enough, I could mow the weeds in the yard to give me a semblance of a lawn, but in some areas of my property, I have to dig them up by hand. The biggest culprit is the end of the driveway. The driveway slants down to a gravel bed, which is nice, but at the end of the gravel is a depression where water and weeds gather. You’d think this was a swampy part of the state the way the things are proliferating, but unfortunately, when the dry heat of summer hits, it won’t make much difference. It will slow the growth somewhat, but these are all-purpose weeds. They will grow no matter what.

Even though the depression on the edge of the driveway is outside my property line according to the surveyor, the building inspector and code enforcer go by a different measure — the utility poles — so it should be possible to extend the driveway out a bit more to meet the graveled alley. I can take care of the weeds now, but as I get older, I sure as heck am not going to want to be pulling up weeds for hours on end. I suppose I could poison them, but I really don’t want to resort to such drastic measures, so I’m hoping that graveling them over will solve that particular problem.

On a more positive note, the constantly wet soil is giving the old seeds I planted a chance to germinate. The radishes are coming up in clumps, so it won’t be long before I have to thin them. Even more than having to get rid of weeds, I dislike having to pull up perfectly good seedlings. Maybe, if they aren’t too close, I can try to transplant some of them. Or leave them be. The radishes probably wouldn’t grow big enough to eat, but the green swath sure would be pretty.

Surprisingly, the Pee Gee hydrangea bushes the Arbor Day Foundation sent me in thanks for a small donation are all doing well.

[image error]

They are tiny and perhaps fragile, but they did survive the winter, so that’s especially good. It’s amazing to me that any gift from them is growing because the bare root trees they send with a membership are notorious for not doing well. Mine all died, as did three of the five lilacs I got at another time. (I thought all were dead, so I planted other lilac sprigs in the same area, and two of the lilacs decided to come back to life.)

When the bushes grow up — the lilacs and the hydrangeas — it will help with some of the weed growth because the bushes take up a lot of room.

Meantime, I enjoy watching anything grow, even weeds, as long as they don’t encroach too much on areas where they could be damaging.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.