The Delightful Child

Lemon's Mill is not a road like many of you have driven with much regularity, but its character is central to this story. It is about a lane and a half wide and has some wicked curves. The curve and hill we remember most is the one where TGP has a wreck in his Omni (TGP was never really very good at picking cars). It really was a bad Sunday afternoon for USAA, because Muv ran headfirst into a station wagon driven by a pregnant lady on the way home from church. As we were waiting for police, etc., one of the bystanders was warning approaching traffic a little ways back from the first accident. TGP came along, saw the man waving his arms and decided it was better to run the Omni up the embankment rather than over the man directing traffic. It went up and then flipped over on its roof. Muv was close enough to see his flipped car and burst out in tears, thinking Pha was hurt. Instead, inside the upside down Omni, Pha was simply gathering his pocket contents off of the roof of the car before unbuckling, dropping, then crawling out. Anyway, Lemons Mill was how we always got from Georgetown to Sleepy Hollow.

I met Kimberly at swim practice, which was at the tiny indoor pool at Georgetown College. He had just moved from Olympia, Washington and we hit it off immediately.

His first visit to Sleepy Hollow, of course, took him out Lemons Mill Rd and he loves to tell the story of that trip. Not surprisingly, my brother Dunn was doing something challenging in the middle of the back seat as we were heading home. Muv was, as usual, going 70 down Lemons Mill. Dunn's action required some response from Muv, so she took off her shoe (at least in the story, it is pointy toed and high heeled) and beat him where he sat, without turning around or slowing down. Kim took great note and decided that Muv was someone to be respected.

Life went on and unlike the picture above, Kim became much bigger than me. Perhaps to avoid the "Boy named Sue" syndrome, he became affectionately known as Red; we became BFFs. Fast forward to my junior year in high school, and one of many random gatherings around the creek. Kim, me, Soph, Karen S. and probably several others of us were at the dock. Muv's rule was that no one could swim in the creek unless she was there. An interesting rule given that she couldn't swim a stroke. On the creek, the lure of the green water was too much for almost all of us and we used the tire swing to jump in. Kim, however, resisted the temptation and sat on the dock. As usually happens when kids are doing what they shouldn't, Muv came home as we were swimming. There is no way, especially without towels, to appear dry right after being in the Elkhorn. Muv surveyed us all in our wetness and contrasted it to Red's superbly dry self. She fussed at us all pretty strongly, but declared him a "delightful child".
Some thirty years later, he still is.

The drought in Georgia

We had the big pine tree in the front of the house die fairly suddenly a few weeks ago. Apparently, that's what happens after extreme drought. Even with slightly better rain this year, the dry times in the past were too much for that big old tree.

It took about 3 1/2 hours for the crew to take care of it, but I've condensed it into about a minute. Note the use of the "zip line". Because there are Crepe Myrtles right underneath the tree, they let the high cut branches slide down a rope into the yard instead of falling straight down.

Enjoy the video.

Sparky's ears are up

Doesn't he look great?

Scottish Terrier Ears

As our Sunday School teacher today said, you have to look for moments to celebrate "In the Meantime". She meant that real life frequently happens on the side while whatever else you are doing that you think is important is happening. Many of our moments lately have been puppy inspired. It's great to watch Sparky's ears evolve on their own from floppy and almost labrador-like to the standard firm up-pointing Scotty ears.

Remember Sparky at 8 weeks. Note the floppy ears:



By his second weekend here, he was more adventurous, but the ears haven't done too much:



Now at 10 weeks, Sparky's left ear is up. The right one is at three quarters. It's a very good look on him:

I'll post again when the ears are all the way up.

Just for fun, we have below Sparky's first hole, Scout and the soccer ball and both pups relaxing.




And finally, because Steve asked, here's 10 seconds of Scout playing soccer in the back yard:

Water balloons at UK

My hard-earned tuition dollars at work

Video

Oh, yes, Caroline was there. Bill was too.

Bow and Arrow

First, let me introduce Tom Grunwald, fourth form head and most interesting member of the Sayre School faculty, hereafter affectionately referred to as Gruner. I have also referred to TGP in an earlier post, and will frequently in the future. TGP is "The Great Pha". Pha is Father and the somewhat self-chosen moniker came about somewhere late in high school, during the trip he chaperoned to Williamsburg.

Anyway, on with the story. As part of American History in ninth grade, Gruner wanted us to understand what it took to create a bow and arrow. Actually, he was willing to provide the arrow; we just had to create the bow.

Living in the country, you would think that it wouldn't be too hard to find a suitable piece of pliable wood. Wikipedia says: "Find a piece of dry, dead but not gray and cracking hardwood--oak, hickory, yew, black locust, or teak" Honestly, I don't even remember the search across our acreage for the bow wood. We had birch and a few other types of trees, but Uncle Hall mowed just often enough that there wasn't a lot of dead wood anywhere on the property. I eventually found some piece of wood that I thought would be suitable and brought it home. I worked and worked at bending that wood so I could string the bow. It didn't bend much.

I do clearly remember that after my stringing effort failed, TGP came to the rescue. He promptly pulled and pulled and finally broke the bow that I had found. It was late and it was dark, so we shifted to the next obvious choice, a broom handle. Recall the Wiki article and the fact that there was no mention of broom handles. Think logically about what you want a broom to do (not bend) and contemplate what comes next. TGP said "Oh, it will be fine" with enough authority to inspire whittling. Amazingly enough, whittling was followed by an exceptionally long time in the bathroom with the shower on hot for steam. A 40 gallon hot water heater will only produce steam for so long (check with 19 y.o. Caroline for exactly how long), but that process was repeated for multiple cycles. Thankfully the Tankless Water Heater had not yet been invented. I'm surprised that my bathroom wallpaper even survived the night.

Very late that night I had, essentially, a tapered broomstick with a bow string that literally touched the bow for the length of it. Not any bend at all.

Now, being a straight A student, I was nervous going into class with my sorry bow. Gruner took one look at the contrivance and said, "Oh, it will be fine". Perhaps an interesting trait of Kentucky men, or just an interesting coincidence between Pha and my history teacher. We went from Old Sayre to the parking lot behind the gym. Several bows were demonstrated with real arrows and pullable strings. Gruner took what I brought from home and worked at stringing it. He just wanted to force a little bend in it.

Of course, Gruner broke the broom handle bow trying to string it there in the parking lot. I don't know what grade I got on that project, but it was not a high point of my academic career. It's not clear what we learned about native Americans, except that I bet they were better at making a bow than this ninth grader at Sayre. But I do laugh when I remember the story. And I love having grown up trying to make things out of orange juice cans and bailing wire.

Modern Communications

Well, response to the blog has been somewhat mixed. Most of my friends and family apparently don't do blogs on a regular basis. Someone guided me to Facebook instead, to see her profile, but I don't do social networks much. I am now on Facebook, with two friend invitations out. I've seen at least a few people that I have lost touch with that I will work towards reconnecting with via Facebook, which makes that effort worthwhile.

Anyway, even in the empty nest, with supper to make, puppies to walk and just a little relaxation time, it's hard to imagine how folks spend too much time on social networks or blogging.

That said, email has been a great boon to communication. I email my father-in-law almost every day and we both are better for that correspondence. And, to continue my edits on this post, I had to bring a laptop up to the bedroom, so electronics are good for something.

I talk with herself a lot about maintaining contact with people. It takes time and effort, and perhaps these mechanisms can be a way to leverage some of that time. College friendships seem easier by comparison because you're in close proximity with the people you want to see. Many of our friends and most of our family are tens of minutes if not hours away.

Herself wrote some hand written notes this evening. Now there's a communication method that we reserve only for expressions of gratitude.

Even after stewing for several days, this post is rambling. Then again, that may be what blogs look like.

Sparky Video

At least some of you have asked, so here is some video of Sparky:

A new addition

This is my first blog post. I still have some qualms about the public nature of blogging, but she who will be obeyed is rightly pressuring me to write some.

The Blog title, "What A Bunch" is what TGP said every night as we scattered to go to bed. I hope for these musings to be mostly about family, so the title seems appropriate.

This post should be about the new addition to our family. Reds fans from the 70s will remember Captain Hook, who pulled pitchers early in the game before that was cool. The Big Red Machine was always more about the bats than the arms. We have been a dog family since shortly after our move to a house with a real back yard in 1997. Teddy Shipou (whose story will certainly be in a later post) was a great dog, but he died rather suddenly earlier this summer. Both girls were home, which was a blessing. We mourned, but were ready to go back to being a two dog family again fairly soon. The girls insisted that we not get another Scottie that looked just like Teddy, therefore the more obscure white-haired variety became our focus.

Meet our version of Sparky Anderson:





Some challenges remain with formatting.


We'll see how this evolves. I anticipate musings on topics of interest, which will include family stories, grammar, software development, child rearing, my faith and who knows what else.

Stay tuned.