Tuesday Tails: Wolfie still itchy. Personal RANT on healthcare.

I put his Yellow T shirt back on him.  I must sew him some more, and soon.  He's not quite so itchy now.  Oddly, I certainly am!

Begin Rant:

I didn't get a stress test today;  I got shunted off to another doctor in the system, since the one I wanted, I.E. the one who did the angiogram, and cared for me then as well (as on the last little emergency trip) is on another "spoke of the same wheel".  I SO love bureaucratic red tape and turf wars!

I'm royally PO'd.  This means that I'll see this new Doctor twice, which is very expensive, indeed.  PLUS, I need to do well on a stress test so that I can get my life back which was what kept me going for all these days!

 I don't like being on an invalid list, and yes, you can read that word two ways.  For instance, an invalid driver's license can also get you "arrested", so to speak, which can also be read two ways for "detained pending further investigations" or as in "cardiac arrest".  Words!  Don't you just love them?

So, I guess it's "Let Go and Let God", or maybe even "Go with the Flow".  I'm still pretty po'd.  I almost lost my temper with the scheduling nurse, but I thought, "This isn't her fault."  I just swallowed all that bile and trudged onward.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

I did something much more fun.  The tiny "water baby" African Violet (from a leaf) got a new home.  The nifty fork tool I learned to make from my mom.
 

You can make this collage bigger.

This picture is a collage because Diana makes them on her blog, and they look absolutely stunning!  Mine's less ambitious but it certainly saves space!  Thank you to Diana at Elephant's Eye Blog for the idea, and I'm totally stealing it!

"Little Fish turned Land Animal" is still going well.  I love the way African Violets make babies.  In fact, I envy them.  A baby, in water, but outside the body and from a piece of the original is lots easier!  Doesn't that make a lot more sense?

Secondly, I think I'll go fondle my fingerless mitt project.  or all the UFOs.  All of them I think.  It brings down the blood pressure.

And, finally, I'll  put another smile on the Jamaica colors sock monkey.  It had this sad little smile, and needed a better one.  I only wish I could put dimples on it to match the ones on the little girl receiving it.

Adventures in Housekeeping:

Having just finished wrestling a shower-curtain-gone-bad to the shower floor, tossing it in the trash, and taking it back out again to re-cycle, I then put an older "reserve" curtain back up and "rebuilt" several stainless steel clips with my bare hands.  I'm going to brag now.  My arms are so darn strong lately that it isn't to be believed.  Score A+ for fitness training!   The old, OLD shower curtain will now be reduced to a painter's drop cloth or worse, a garden weed killer. I needed to punish something, and it started the fight!

All the last ranting aside, may you walk with beauty all around you!  I'm going to go outside and stare at the sky...

Protea in UCSC Aboratum

Music Monday, The Great Ginger Baker's Solo: "Toad" in Albert Hall.

Gott Im Himmel, I love this guy!  The Key?:  Just close your eyes and go with him where ever he goes.




Alzzzzzo.....

I was looking for the origin of this African "proverb":

"True Happiness is Loving Life"

I found THIS site, Sandra Guzman's blog and read a bit.  It's truly a lovely blog so I'm sharing it and putting it in favorites.  I think it's wonderful.

Wolfie is in my lap to keep him from scratching himself incessantly.   We have to figure out what is going on with him.  Until then we will just hold him as soon as he starts scratching himself and give him belly rubs.  It seems to keep him focused on the good things in life, and it helps us to do the same!


Tomorrow a stress test.  I'll let you know how it goes.  Maybe I really DO need to find time to knit more? 

Sunday School and Sunday Matinee

Sunday Matinee this week is the documentary called "Happy".  It chronicles a 30 +  year study of "happiness";  It is about why people are happy instead of depressed even when, by all measures, they shouldn't be happy.

The findings are very informative, especially since Americans are generally an unhappy people, according to most measures of true happiness.  I think it's VERY worth watching. 

 The Linkie  to "Happy".  Watching it made me, well, Happier!

 Sunday School:

On the other side of the coin, we have money grubbing.

Herein lies a little lesson in why we can't make it unless everyone pays their fair share?

LINKIE to Nation of Change article on just how much money the super rich have avoided paying, and why it makes a big freaking difference.

This might be to radical for a some of you but maybe this is right?

Oh, and the Global Banking System just keeps raking it in, too.  We are about to enter a very shady Brave New World.  We can beat them at this game, but it will take local trading of goods.  A village, you know?

Now, to fight back!  We have heated water with solar since 1984, but there is lots more to do.

I grabbed a badge from 350BrighterPlanet.com  after having seen it at Elephant's Eye Blog, which is a fabulous place!  Mosey on over and have a gander at the flowers and stuff of South Africa.

Saturday Komeekz

Good old Wiley....

I found this cartoon among several others in, of all things, a knitted toy book on my shelf.  Right now, I feel like the guy under the palm tree.  hehehe

Maybe I'll knit a Zebra out of the book.  It's very cute.

I want to knit a penguin, too.

Speaking of which, this little fellow made us all very sad the day we went to the Aquarium.  He just stood at the big windows that over look the ocean, looking out.  We think he was there for at least 40 minutes.  I just feel very bad for captives, but especially when they show signs of longing, loss or depression like this little bird does.  I hope someone figures out how to help him.

Friday Fill ins, and a Hunky guy with a sword.

1. Sunshine is burning a hole in my knitting.
2. "We should tell them how we feel about her not showing up!" is the last thing I overheard someone say.
3. I found a recipe for quinoa and brown rice, which we had for dinner tonight in a commercial blend, and it really tasted good!
4. I'm looking forward to Fall and Winter.
5. Right now it's too hot for me and making me sick, and I want to move North for good.
6. Crafting Toys makes me smile!
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to reading the last dozen pages of my book, tomorrow my plans include housekeeping and making jewelry and Sunday, I want to eat fish and chips!



Now, I give you the Hunk with a sword, as promised!  Isn't he yummy?

As found in Wall Photos at FB

Want more, EX-FB?  Go to HUMOR TRAIN  and have a look around.  Warning:  some may well be Xrated. 

Beauty the Bald Eagle's Story...

There is a new Bird Blog on Some of My Favorite Blogs blog.  This is one of the stories from it:

Linkie to Beautie's Story

If you really love birds, you will love this blog, and the story about Beauty.

Another New Bird Blog on that list, Bird Naturalist's Blog

Knitting and Grey's Anatomy Report:  Meredith is knitting a sweater.  Izzie is helping.  You can really tell who is and isn't a knitter.  Go Izzie!  My knitting?  It's still in the scupper.  What can I say.  I know that I should be doing something about this but it's still too hot.  My question is: since climate change is too damn real for me, why isn't it TDR for those nay saying knot heads in DC?

The Weather Report:
It's beginning to cool down, and the humidity is in decline even though it was 90ºF today it feels cooler than the 78 over night degrees.  Come on November!

Monday, at 2 AM, I had another ride in the little square truck. Next Tuesday I get a stress test, I think.  I'm supposed to have one anyway.  I'm so glad that I've gone to fitness all these months.  At least I have a better chance of survival in a stress test, yeah?  Do you get to have your hand on the "Throttle" in a stress test, or does the "attending Physician"?

We have tomatoes!  There were five little plants that sprung right up among the baby Lamb's Quarter.  I'm jazzed.  I have NO idea how well they will do without the days of summer but it sure the heck is hot enough for them to set flowers!

♥ Later Gaters.♥ Have fun and here are some very beautiful little travelers who journey with us:

Beautiful Sargasso Sea Horse

Dancing Jelly

Aren't they beautiful little creatures?  Aren't you glad we have all these fellow earthlings along for the ride through the Universe on Planet Earth?  Me, too. 

Want to Join a Boycott of Companies Fighting Prop 37, the one about making manufactuerer's tell the truth?

Let's make them tell the truth about what is in our foods.

The list is long, and chances are that there are things on it that you eat and love.  But the reason they need to get the heat turned up on them is because they are trying to defeat Prop 37 that will tell you, in California at least, what is in your food -from additives to GMO crops.  If you know, you might keep eating  those foods anyway, but at least it will be a CONSCIOUS  CHOICE , your right as an American, and something that the manufacturers on this list do not want you to be able to make.

Boycott Companies Fighting Prop 37! | The Alliance for Natural Health USA

Seriously, we do have a right to know what we are eating and feeding the kids, and just what's in it besides the pretty strawberries, honey and the delicious looking Oats waving in the field.  You know, all that stuff in the pictures on the front of the cereal boxes!  That's what we need to know.  That amounts to the Whole Truth, in other words.

Music Monday - Stand By Me, from Playing For Change

Ben E. King's song.

"Stand By Me"  This will bring a smile to your face.  Sing along, dance a little.....snap the fingers...

It flows through you, doesn't it?  Makes you feel good all over....  Me, too.........

Sunday Matinee, and a Sky Watcher Post

Two days ago, driving home, we saw this Thunderhead.  It was Huge.  All we got out of the thing was a lot of humidity, but what the heck.  We can't have everything from a cloud until sometime in late September if we're lucky here.  If this had stuck around and rained out on us, it would have been a gully washer.

Make it really BIG!

We are turning into New Mexico; I think. Enjoy your Sunday.  Just don't listen to the tweekers of news  in your town who fiddle with truth and like to make trouble.  They are in it for the money.  Just enjoy what you can of whatever local rag you must deal with.  They can't get over it.  They are very unscrupulous.




Have some fun.  Find this two part series on the web, or anywhere, and watch them.  They are a scream. They're some Very British poke-in-the-eye type films that are utterly charming.  No fooling.  If you like British Humor, and Doc Martin, you'll love these.

Saturday Komeekz and Generic Blah Blah

Good old ( well, maybe not exactly old) Lalo!  Huzzah!

Yes, just when will women, who make up 50.85% of the U.S. population finally get "personhood"?

The way back machine. Elle "reading" to Bee. 

Elle could read very young but not quite this young.  After getting the idea that those sounds and symbols are what makes the story, I don't think she's ever stopped reading again!

 Elle had an eye operation before she was 18 months, and after that there was no keeping a book out of her hands.  She also taught her little sister to read!  The girls are a little over 1 and 2 here.  Does anyone else remember TV with an antenna on the roof,  and those awful plastic drapes when we were just starting out housekeeping, and they were lots cheaper than cloth?  The line snaking out the window was for our FM radio or maybe the TV.  Our TV was a black and white monster we had for years and years until someone gave us a color TV.  Anyway, we can't remember which it was as this little house had a tile roof so not so easy to put out an antenna.  Years later, The house burnt down in a big wildfire.  We hadn't lived there for a long time but I remember our wonderful neighbors, and the "hood", and felt very sorry indeed.

As an aside, none of us own a Kindle or any other device for reading books.  We just seem to like books best. No offense to those who love their Kindles and Nooks.


 I turned on the earring "machine" in the middle of the week, and have made these for a sweet, comical friend who came to meet us, with her very humorous sister, in Santa Cruz.   We go back a long ways, J and I.  She's so very dear to my heart.  We stayed in her field one year for a week.  I made some tasty little sweet buns in the tiny oven of the RV - succeeding in not burning them all - and we had a chin wag and Low Tea at the dinette one mid-morning.

She took us on a tour of wine country and we got a LOT of tasting in that day!  Wheeeee!  Also, we went to see the ancestral Native American village, re-created by California Parks and Recreation.  We need to keep those people in mind while we gaze into the distance over the tops of the Giant Redwoods at the Zip lines.  California is the home of their ancestors.

These are J's favorite colors

 Today I'll make more earrings but these will be from some re-cycled bracelets  that the DDs found at the Flea Market.  They asked me to make them some earrings.  And dear S,  yours are on the assembly line.  I found some marvelous leafy things in the bead stash.  

I mentioned the pretty flowers on something that is called bind weed in Santa Cruz.  It grows here,too, but I never knew it was a pest.  Such a pretty little flower.

Now for something else beautiful

Elle made one of these for each of us. 

My new bracelet, very hard to photograph unless it's on a light table, a technique I haven't quite mastered.

I hope your weekend is going along happily, and that there aren't too many pictures in this post to make it unwieldy!   There's a trip to the Monterey Aquarium coming up and it's loads of pictures.  I'll make a flicker album or something.  Not sure.  (How is all this for "chain of thought" blah blah?  I'm in good company with some pop pulp fiction authors, right?) 

Friday Fill-ins Heavenly Abodes and a wiff of knitting

 I'm not going to my sister's on Fridays so this day just got a lot easier for her, DH and for me!  We spent the afternoon on Wednesday reminiscing about cooking, she told me about Michelle Obama's speech - which I had missed - and stuff.   We looked through her stash of old Victoriana Magazines.

Some of it was really old and ugly farm junk but some was rather pretty.  We both like Victorian things but I like Craftsman style houses the very best.  Santa Cruz has some absolutely beautiful old Craftsman houses, the most noteworthy to me is the one by the harbor on the street that runs down to Aldo's Cafe.  It is Gorgeous! It's slightly more impressive - location and grounds - than my favorite that is on Rosecrans street in San Diego.  I lust after both, and if there is housing in Heaven (which I truly doubt), the one in Santa Cruz is the one for me. 

Here's the Friday fill-in:

1. I am so far behind doing what I need to do that has scared me.
2. It seems like the week starts on Sunday and suddenly it's Friday!
3.Watching seasons of "Grey's Anatomy" on Netflix makes me laugh.
4. Did you know that you can make your own rice milk?
5. I looked more closely and I saw that there are a lot of interesting things left to do in cooking.
6. I'm so glad that I live in a house with a blender.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to watering my potted plants and watching the last two episodes of "Life", tomorrow my plans include making more earrings and Sunday, I want to start up the knitting!

Yes, knitting is rearing it's ugly head  coming back into favor....just.  The weather is cooling off here.  Not quite cool enough for some dam fool with "red flannel fever" to start using his smelly fireplace while the rest of us are using fans at night, but just enough to bring sweater wrangling back into favor.

Sadly, Fitness is causing me some problems with my hands - the machines and weights that I love for upper body strength building - are making my fingers have grinchy little pains.  Well, they'll just have to buck up!  I'm not going backwards, not politically or healthwise.


We watched Elizabeth Warren's speech two days ago, having sadly missed Michelle Obama ( whose speech I will now watch on the web) and then  Bill Clinton.  HUT HUT! HIKE!!  Then last night Joe Bidan, and the POTUS on the podium.   KAPLA!!!


And now for lovers of the Wolfman

Wolfie and his Poppa reach an understanding about that T shirt and the torn out surgical stitch

 The real meaning of "small potatoes"

Volunteer plants in a pot of herbs grew these tiny gems.
They are the littlest ones I've ever seen.

 

Tuesday Tails....Pets in Life

We actually acquired a Peking Duck from a local lake because she had been dropped off there by some unknown person and was following various people around for days, as she was completely tame.  She was also just getting torn to shreds by the Mallard males.  You know, the "New woman in town"- way too much attention. 

We brought her home and had her for several years.  We named her Jemima, and she gave us eggs that were delicious!  It was a wonderful experience for our daughters, and for me!  She would swim around and around in fast, tight circles in a galvanized tub that we had that was so small we couldn't figure out how she did it.  She loved when we dug the garden, and she ran around gobbling up the big white grubs of apple beetles as special tasty treats.  Jemima was nominally a Project Wildlife rescue, and  she was in re-hab.  She lived in the ex-play house at night, with lots of straw bedding.  The neighbors were very kind, but then again, she wasn't a rooster.

Tibetan song song by Sherten, playing a traditional instrument.

Firstly, proof that music is good for your brain (but of course we knew that already).  Well, it mentions.. *mumble* "other things", too, but still, music is very good for your brain!

CNN Article about Music and Brain function

Hopefully, that will stay up on the web

Keeping with the Tibetan theme going on my blog, here are two musical offerings of traditional Tibetan songs:

It is very hard to find Tibetan music without Chinese subtitles or electronic instruments. 

I was trying to find a traditional song by someone else and found this little cutie....

Skywatcher Post: Glorious Sunrise early AM today. Nashville Warbler in Garden..

Sorry, two posts in a day BUT there was this wonderful sunrise this morning and we got Rain! 

Sky at 5:40 am

I woke very early to rain (sprinkles) and it smells so wonderful outside!  Later, the sun started to rise.

After the sun was truly above the horizon:

Sky at 6:40 am

When we get any amount of rain, here, in September it feels much more normal to me.  When I was a child we used to get rain just when we started back to school.  This was true until around the beginning of the 1960's.  I'm just thrilled with September rains.  Rain is very energizing!

The first sprinkles on the stones of the Tort's "lekking" ground

Yesterday evening, when I was preparing to water the potted plants I saw a Nashville Warbler flitting around the hanging pots at dusk. It is a beautiful little bird, and a frequent visitor to the garden, only not so much in recent years. I was very happy to see that the garden was attracting a solitary one again. There were never pairs, only a single one whenever a Nashville appeared.

Sunday Matinee

Slow Paced with beautiful music and spectacular views of the Dolpo region of Nepal.
  What can I say?  It's a work of Art.

Rotten Tomatoes gave it a good review.  I enjoyed reading the comments

There are only two professional actors in this, and the person who plays the Buddhist Monk (his role is of the Chief's younger son) is a real Buddhist monk who crossed the Himalayas to escape being killed.   Be sure to watch the extra feature that has to do with the making of the film.  It is truly fascinating but do NOT watch it first.  It's a spoiler of course.  I think Karma is rather "dishy", myself, to say nothing of Pema.
 
Read about the Dolpo-Pa HERE if you dare.  It's a doctoral Thesis by Gregory Edward Pierce, and has a lot of the special descriptive vocabulary dealing as it does with the structure of Cultural Anthropology, and other necessary jargon, but if you watch the movie the Thesis becomes clearer.

I'll put a Wiki in about the movie HERE , though it may displease some folks who prefer to read the review in French.  Or was that German?  The movie has subtitles but some English is spoken.  The director is Eric Valli, who really made this film come together, and he speaks three or four languages.  That's a very good brain, that one.