Sundays In My City

This is my first time to participate in Unknown Mami's Sundays In My City.

This veterans memorial is a small park in the middle of our town. I am showing some of it here in these pictures. I will be practicing with my camera and finding interesting photo opportunities in our little hippie town.

Poo Prints

Something is being done about the irresponsible dog owners in some areas. For example, New Hampshire. This post in CNN caught my eye.

Some apartments are implementing PooPrints, a program that matches dog waste to DNA collected through pets' mandatory mouth swabs.

"The tests bought through PooPrints, a subsidiary of BioPet Vet Lab in Knoxville, Tennessee, match the DNA already captured to a sample of each pet's waste. Poop that isn't scooped can then be analyzed."

I wonder who gets the outdoor in the fresh air job of doing the scooping. I wonder if that is a full time job or just part time. Sounds like something we senior citizens could do part time. I wonder if they pay under the table. I'll have to get the scoop on that. This could be another way to help the economy with more new jobs.

Stay tuned for updates on the DNA tests that provide the poop on bad dog owners.

God, This Is TechnoBabe Again

God, what is the lesson I am to learn?
Do you send the spiders to me
Or do they enjoy a freedom I don't?
When do I get to be in charge?

I admit that during my young years
spiders were my friends, my play mates
They moved and were alive and playful
We were a family of poverty and dysfunction

What happened to change my view of spiders
And when it happened is a mystery to me
At least I am consciously unaware
of slipping into the state of dread

God, for many years I held out hope
Hope that you are truth, Father, Allah
Even if faith is the glue to belief
Blind acceptance is not in my nature

You gave me a brain, a mind to use
to study and interpret and decide for myself
What am I to learn from the spiders
who want to be close to me, on me, with me

I sit down and a spider walks across my chest
I walk through a room, a spider scurries in my path
I feel something tickling my neck and brush it off
A spider is flung across the room, disappearing

This morning another spider was on my foot
The shock and dislike make me react swiftly
Another spider bites the dust because of me
Why wasn't it in the garden doing its job

Spider Medicine teaches that spider connects
knowledge of past with possibilities in future
The web center is small, which is me
Expanding web denotes life's possibilities

There is a life lesson relating to the spiders
It is time for me to bring all spider knowledge
to the conscious level, expanding my mind
So that my spirit can be at peace.

Ninety Years On This Earth

July 10th is my mother's 90th birthday. This is the girl who was ill with childhood diabetes but in a family of eleven children in the midwest, doctor visits were non-existent.

My brother and I were farmed out to families many times while our mother underwent surgeries for various problems. Back then children were not told facts so I only remember being an intruder with older couples with no children who insisted I sit still and eat whatever horrible thing was in front of me, or getting lost among the many children in a household and expected to be another hand with the early morning chores.

After the age of twelve I didn't live with my mother any longer but we were occasionally in touch by phone. She let me know when she was in the hospital with the first mastectomy and seven years later the other mastectomy. Then surgery for ovarian cancer. Then gall bladder surgery. The cataract surgeries were a couple years ago. She had a fairly major stroke about twenty years ago and mini strokes since then. And all the while she is an insulin dependent diabetic.

She started telling me when she was in her sixties that she would not live a long life. She was just too ill. In my mind ninety is a lot of years. So she has lived a long life, contrary to her predictions.

Hubby and I made a CD for her with us singing some songs she likes, and hubby playing guitar. She will get a kick out of it. One song will make her cry: You'll Never Walk Alone. It was the song I sang when I auditioned for the San Francisco Light Opera. That was during the three months I lived with her after living in foster homes several years. She has mentioned that song to me many times and told me how much it meant to her to go with me to that audition.

Of course the CD we made is just for fun. Just to make her happy. Other than hubby's singing and guitar playing there is nothing professional about it. But we had so much fun working on it together. Within an hour of finishing the CD we watched an episode of Frost on Netflix with a band and male singer doing a fun rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone. In all the years of watching shows I have never seen that song being performed. Twilight Zone moment.

My mother and I have gone through stages of getting to know each other over the sixty five years I have been here, to come to a place of contentment and acceptance. Ninety is a big number. Big enough to hold up the weight of mistakes and regrets.

Happy ninetieth birthday to my mother. From my heart. We may be making a 100th birthday CD in ten years.

Do Do Do Looking Out Our Front Door

I mentioned in a previous post that it is not unusual to see tractors around town on the city streets. I need to remind you that the town we live in has less than 1100 residents. Hubby took a short clip of some tractors going down our street and we laughed so hard putting this together I hope you hear it loud an clear. Enjoy.

Fourth Of July Parade

The high school marching band is playing
The clowns toss wrapped candy to the kids
Families and their pets walk along the side
Downtown has decorated its digs

Flags are flying and spirits are high
All ages celebrate together this way
In remembrance of a freedom won
Back on the first Independence Day.

Guest Post: Five Miles And A Miracle

(Hubby wrote this, and asked to post it here, so here goes... TB)

I want to wander into the emotional and metaphysical forest here, so bear with me.

Five, Miles, and Miracle are words.

Words are a code. This code lets you know many things, depending on the placement of words in another code called a sentence.

So far, so good?

Five is a number, another code which defines everything, as math (quantum physics) is the basis for the universe.

Mile is a unit of length, and here's where we start our path into the woods.

Yesterday I increased my daily riding length to five miles, thanks to an incredible find by TechnoBabe: a nature trail built around the high school's track. I say "the" high school because we only have one here, you know.

I'd been riding a little over four miles by going around the outer streets of town and adding a spectacular one-mile stretch northeast of town. It's a straight, flat (wait, that's redundant, it's all flat here) ride through farm country.

With the new route I can do three laps to the mile on a concrete path through a beautifully serene woodland, and I can ride flat out; no people, no traffic, no intersections, just me and the bike and nature. So I am doing six laps and then riding a half mile to the "long road," as I call it. Five miles.

So, you can understand my code (sentences) because I am using smaller codes (words) in a way that creates a common understanding between us.

Miracle.

Now we're really into it. This word is LOADED with meaning. Five and Miles not so much. Miracle is defined as:

• A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.

• a highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences.

• an amazing product or achievement, or an outstanding example of something.

I will use all of these definitions going forward. Here is how the miracles happened to us.

When I met TechnoBabe for our marathon first meal and chat, she told me many mind-blowing things which happened to her, and as the afternoon wore on I could not believe she wasn't a raving crack addict serial killer. I was amazed at how she handled these catastrophic events and went on to raise a family essentially on her own. I could see an awesome human being hiding back there in the foliage putting out crumbs for me to follow into her soul. She did not know this. Her inner self knew who I was, and had decided to reveal herself.

Now I can see that her ability to transcend this horrible damage was a miracle, not explicable by natural or scientific laws, and thereby caused by a higher power's interaction with her soul.

After six months of dating, we moved in together.

Then the real work began. And I encountered her Protector. This was a psychic response to a dangerously abusive situation. She created this entity before she had words to describe what was happening to her, and it became fully developed after she had to fend for herself after her mother refused to stop her abuse. She learned to dissociate. Then she was sexually assaulted and almost murdered when she was twelve.

Hence, a highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences. This extraordinary skill borne of horror allowed her to deal with the pressures of married life with increasingly dysfunctional men, and the raising of three children. As time went by, her Protector kept her from harm by dropping the gauze of slippery personality change over her, but eventually the consequences became unwelcome.

Her Protector took over whenever the slightest threat was perceived. This part of her did NOT trust me, and became increasingly agitated when I did not abandon her or cheat on her.

After a while I realized I wasn't living with a single personality, but I was too busy falling into my own damage to make sense of it. All I knew was that from time to time, she would fall into a scripted, repetitive response to disagreement which sounded like someone I did not know, complete with warped facial features and violent responses.

In August of 2008, some of you know that I had a manic episode caused by thyroid dysfunction. TechnoBabe moved out. When I left the hospital ten days later, we began to pick up the pieces and she eventually moved back in. The miracle here was that she met and learned to trust a therapist who realized and reinforced the same thing I did: she dissociated into another personality. The therapist said she'd never seen anyone flip so fast and so seamlessly. Tell me about it.

Her Protector was rude, dismissive, taunting, mocking, verbally assaultive, and totally blamed me for her feelings and behavior. We learned a Kabuki theatre of arguing, going from a sweet loving couple to horribly damaging spats that seemed to have no beginning, and no end.

Even through all of this, she respected my commitment to my music and in early 2010 played a monumental support role in the creation of Bipolar Shaman, my first CD.

Then the last, or most recent, miracle happened.

Her primary personality took over. She realized that the Protector was keeping her from taking responsibility for her behavior, and that it was killing us. I could fight the Protector to a draw, but as time went by I realized that my part had to change as well. So TechnoBabe became her true self, and I became a new part of our new life.

The Miracle part has been ongoing since December, and it's consistent. If you think about it, two people with catastrophically damaged lives working through the worst shit you could imagine and coming out the other side nearly whole and loving each other more all the time...

We are an amazing product or achievement, or an outstanding example of something.


Something called Love.


(Note: She read this prior to me posting it and didn't blink. This is another miracle of her growth, believe me.)

Babies, Babies Everywhere

This has been a month of babies. These two little bunnies are enjoying the next door neighbor's yard. I walked out our front door and tried to zoom in to get a closer picture. I didn't want to get too close to them and scare them away. One day we were in the back yard and hubby looked down and asked what that was at my feet. It was a very young rabbit. We backed up slowly and left him alone. The baby bunnies and several adult bunnies live in a few habitats in our back area. Two habitats we made for them. One was here when we moved here.

Then one day while hubby was mowing, he looked down and saw that he had mowed across a nest of some kind. Upon closer inspection we saw brand new ground squirrels, all nestled in their mama's fur. There were four of them about the size of hubby's thumb. They were wiggling around. We found leaves and cut grass to cover the nest and would check on them occasionally. We watched them change colors and then the stripes were on their backs. They are Thirteen Stripe Ground Squirrels. We have seen a couple adults running around the back yard, checking out the food we leave on the ground for the tree squirrels and birds. They look like they are smiling, joyful little creatures. Have you ever seen a Thirteen Stripe squirrel?

The tree squirrels had babies as well. The baby tree squirrels couldn't get on the table at first and they looked like they had oversize feet. Like clown feet. The table is just outside our living room window. If the window and screen were not there we could reach out and touch all the critters. We sometimes have the window open and they are getting used to us talking and to hubby's music. The finches sing with his music and sometimes squirrels and birds are on the table at the same time.

There are plenty of baby birds too. Baby Grackles; baby Cardinals (the male Cardinal takes care of the babies most of the time); baby Robins; baby Mourning Doves; baby Blue Jays (who look exactly like the parents, just very small); baby Red Finches; baby Ring Neck Doves; baby red headed woodpeckers; baby lark sparrows.

With so many babies it gets noisy sometimes. It is an unbelievable privilege to be in the position of observing the birds growing, how they push their parents to the point of exhaustion sometimes, and especially how all the different bird groups get along in our yard. Calm and easygoing around each other.



Some day we will get better at photography so we can take clear pictures through the window and screen. The video was taken with the digital camera leaning on the inside window so the view is looking down on a table outside with bird seed and sunflower seeds on it. Unfortunately, the electric colors on the Blue Jay are dim and the powerful red,black,and white color design on the Red Headed Woodpecker don't show through the window and screen. But one day we will get better pictures that will knock your socks off!

Lets Go For A Walk

This story is so heartwarming that I copy/pasted the whole story here. No other words necessary. Found this at All Creatures Great and Small blog.

"A dog who had all four of his paws amputated when he was just a puppy is going walkies once again, thanks to a brand new set of bionic legs.

Naki’o, a Red Heeler cattle dog, was abandoned in a frozen puddle and suffered such severe frostbite that he was left with just stumps to move about on.

His future was looking grim until veterinary surgeon Christie Tomlinson, who was looking for a playmate for her golden retriever, saw him at a Colorado rescue centre.

At first Naki’o was small and light enough to hold himself up on his stumps without too much difficulty.

But as he grew and gained weight it became painful for him to walk, especially on hard surfaces. ‘I felt so bad for him as his condition worsened,’ said Christie.

‘He is such a hyper and happy dog, but I was having to take him for walks in a stroller and carry him around.

‘He couldn’t be a normal dog, he couldn’t lead the life he wanted.’

Eventually Naki’o had to crawl along on his tummy at home and at the clinic’s daycare centre.Then Christie heard about a company called Orthopets in Denver, Colorado.

Founded by husband and wife team Martin and Amy Kaufmann, Orthopets began when Martin saw that his experience in creating human orthotic devices could be adapted for animals.

‘I felt it was barbaric that in the 20th century we were still amputating dogs’ legs,’ said Martin, who carried out the operation free of charge.

‘I thought we should be using the technology used for humans on our pets.

‘An animal is a much better patient than a human. They have drive, determination and they just won’t quit.
‘They don’t feel sorry for themselves.’
Since undergoing the pioneering surgery Naki’o can leap and bound with the best of them.Christie is amazed at her pet’s motivation and joy for life.

‘He was always a happy dog, but now he’s much more confident,’ she said.

‘It’s great to see him interact with other dogs at the park and play without a care.

‘Naki’o can now not only chase after a ball with other dogs, but he can beat them to the catch!’

Orthopets is working to open clinics worldwide. As well as dogs, they have fitted cats, horses, llamas and a stork with state of the art prosthetics."

Do you agree that this is a great story?

The Eyes To See You Better, My Dear

Squinting and tired eyes have become normal lately. It had been four years since an eye exam, so I made an appointment for an eye exam.

The good news is my distance vision has improved.

The bad news is I have cataracts.

I ordered new glasses with progressive lenses.

The interesting thing about progressive lenses is they are customized to the measurements of my eyes. There are two circular areas on the bottom of the lenses for reading. My brain is training my eyes to look through those sections to read. Above the reading circles is a section for computer work. There is a specific area for this; again, my brain trains my eyes to use this section. If I look to the side it is blurry. The top is for distance.

I am simplifying it, and some people have trouble adjusting to looking in very specific areas for specific needs.

The glasses are such a help right now. For one thing, I only have one pair of glasses and they are usually on my face. Before getting these glasses I had a pair of reading glassed at the kitchen table, another at my computer, another with the current book and a distance pair somewhere around the place to watch movies and drive the car. All those glasses are gone now. I am seeing better than I have in years and it is a small adjustment for me personally to get used to the progressive lenses.

The usual procedure is for a person to use the progressive lenses while the cataract condition worsens. I am choosing not to wait for that. I have ordered eye drops that some people have benefited from and I am believing I will be one in that group. The eye drops have slowed the cataract process and even reversed it in many people. The latter group I plan on joining.

According to the eye doctor, it could be two months or as long as two years before cataract surgery would be required for me to see. She is telling me that my eyesight will gradually decline until I won't be able to see much at all.

We shall see. Now it has become a challenge to disprove that prediction.

Joanna Is At It Again

You all know Joanna over at The Fifty Factor. You know when she sponsors a giveaway it is a GIVEAWAY. Nothing scrawny about her generosity.

Do the two people in the picture look familiar? They should. It is Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks.

That is all I am going to tell you. Go to Joanna's blog and get in on the GIVEAWAY.

You only have until midnight on June 27 to enter.

See you at the movies.

Going Through Changes

Someone had been parked for two years on the domain name I owned for five years. We failed to renew the name on June 15, so there is a new owner of the domain name "the technobabe.com". The new owner is a corporation with a porn blog.

It is possible I will be changing the name of my blog. Not anytime soon though. My first reaction to the domain name directing people to the porn site was to get the heck out of TechnoBabeville. That still may happen but for now I will plod along and make some adjustments to my blog.

There are many Technobabes online, each with our own unique personalities and tastes. I will be thinking long and hard about keeping or letting go of my online TechnoBabe personna. I have grown comfy with it. I want to remain anonymous and if I change names it would probably have initials CW in the blog title so I would be known as CW. Maybe something like CW's Adventures.

Something I am in the process of doing is going to each blog that I current am a follower. I am checking to see which link I used when I became a follower. If it was the domain name at the time, I unfollow and then become a new follower.

One new thing is that I have added an email address to my profile:
technobabesadventures at gmail dot com.

The only link to this blog now is http://thetechnobabe.blogspot.com/

Just make sure my link has the blogspot.com part in it; do not use the old domain name.

If you copy and paste blogs into your Reader, the Reader code is http://thetechnobabe.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Some readers will probably get lost along the way but I hope to connect up with everyone eventually.

One blessing to come out of this chaos is that hubby realized that his domain name annual payment was due two days after mine was. Which was in the nick of time to update the automatic pay info so he wouldn't lose his domain name too. He had changed his email address and we had changed banks, and forgot all about the annual payments for the domain names.

I told you we are old! I would not want to lose the domain name to his blog about his music. I am with him one thousand percent regarding his composing his music. I never tire of hearing the work he does with his music. He calls it "our" music because I am an intricate part of it. This thrills me and blesses me and fills a place in my being just waiting for a way to share in music to this extent.

By the way, did you see the little ol' hippie lady in the reflection on the front door on the post on doors? Ha.

See the dancing girl in my sidebar? Click on the music bar to hear one of hubby's songs that keep me dancing. He is looking for feedback for the next group of songs he has started. The only feedback he gets is from me. I will be changing the songs periodically so you can hear different styles. One of them is my favorite. I will let you know when that one is on my sidebar.

Have a spectacular week everyone.

Summertime Fun

Daddy's little girl
And Daddy's best friend.


Happy Fathers Day to all the dads from my hubby and me. Being a dad is a full time forever job. We hope you enjoy your special day.

Doors

I have a thing for doors. Most women I know have a thing for shoes but mine is for doors. For most of my life I noticed doors and would save pictures of them from magazines when I was very young. Barely old enough to handle scissors. Today I have a file for door pictures on my computer.

There are screen doors, wood doors, metal doors, double doors, and so much more. Choices. So many shapes too. Standard shape, arch top, windows, bars. OMG the amazing textures.

Some doors have screen doors protecting them. Oh, I know they are put there to let some fresh air into the home, but in my thinking the screen doors also protect the regal front door. The front door is the sentry always on duty with the various locks and chains.

And don't get me started on the hardware on doors. I can spend days in a hardware store looking and drooling over hinges and handles for doors.

Moving so many times in my life has provided opportunities to handle hundreds of door handles in my time. Left my mark like a dog marks his spot on a tree.

Oh, oh, the colors of some front doors! Be still my heart.

I am sure I will be writing more about doors because this is a subject that has much meaning for me.

Getting Around In This Little Town

Some housing areas are neighborhoods surrounding golf courses. One time I was interested in purchasing a house that was about three blocks from a golf course. I didn't play golf then and I don't now, but the house was perfect for me to own and rent to a roommate. The interesting thing about that neighborhood was that it was zoned for golf carts. It was not unusual to see people in their golf carts on the public streets running their errands.

Here in this little town there are a few golf carts, but there are more riding lawnmowers and tractors on the streets than cars. The older guys ride their mowers down to the Corner Cafe early in the morning to drink coffee and visit with their men friends. Then they drive back home after an hour or so. When they leave this town to travel to the next town that is much larger, most of the residents drive their SUVs or super size pickups. I think we have the smallest car in town.

Photo found on Google. Main St in our little town looks similar.

Sabroso Lentil Tacos

The recipe for Lentil Tacos caught my eye on Eat At Home blog. Print out your own copy of the recipe here.

The same day I happened upon the recipe, we made them for our main meal of the day at noon.

Not only is it extremely easy (my kind of cooking), the lentil tacos are so good we will have them in place of hamburger tacos henceforth. Or at least often. And for lettuce wraps too. Superb!

Try making lentil tacos yourself, dudes and dudettes, and let me know if these are not awesome.

I don't take credit for inventing this recipe, I am but the messenger with the fine tuned taste buds.

You're welcome.

Flying Blood Suckers

Camping in a tent with my kids in many of the fifty states taught us how versatile we could be.

Sometime it was hot , sometimes it snowed, sometimes we hiked, or swam. But every place we found to camp had its own type of bugs. Some were just gnats and sometimes we were swatting flies the size of a small frog!

Many times we resorted to bug spray, especially if there were mosquitoes. What a nuisance.

My arms and legs today look like I was camping in a swamp. For a week. Without repellent. Nude.

I don't mind that a mosquito gets high on removing some of my blood. Heck, I have lots; they can have some since that is the natural way of life for them. But the little mothersuckers leave something to share with me. It hurts. It stings. It swells.

The last two days I donned long straight tight pants that cover socks, my long sleeve light weight hoodie with the hoodie up and string pulled tight so my forehead is covered. I spray my face with repellent. I wear safety glasses. And my gardening gloves. Get the picture? Pretty sexy, right? I am sure all the neighbors and people driving by appreciate the charming picture I present to them.

All this just so I can water the plants. We just planted baby trees: Weeping Willow, Japanese Red Maple, Redwood Dawn, two Crape Myrtle, Crabapple, and many shrubs and flowers.

The soil is a rich black earth here. Maybe it's mosquito droppings that makes it so fertile.

Rip Off Game Was Not Won By The Rippers

In January I enjoyed plowing through online companies selling various foods. I spent more time than usual in my search because it was a late birthday present for my son who lives in Hawaii. After a few hours I landed on an article at Hawaii Magazine about ordering Hawaiian food online. The magazine had a link to the company from hell: Hawaiian Food Online.

I place my order online. The next day FED EX emailed me that my order was canceled and I was to contact the company I placed the order with the previous day. The owner of the company assured me my money would be refunded.

I would caution everyone about buying anything from this company. After four months of leaving phone messages and sending emails, they finally responded to my hubby after he joined Facebook and left a negative comment on their Facebook wall. And then they acted like they had no idea I was having a problem with them. Whew.

I received a check in the mail from the company and it is in my bank.

Thank you for all the encouraging comments and for emailing the company referencing our order number. I appreciate your help.

From now on I will just order summer sausage from Hickory Farms!

Community

According to the last census numbers, the population in our little town is just under 1100.

I told you it is a little bitty teensy weensy town.

Several times a year there are community events. And since it is a small population, almost everybody here participates unless someone has to be away on business.

We are setting up tables in our front yard and piling on items to sell. Saturday is Community Yard Sale Day.

We might not make enough to get a steak dinner but we will meet our fellow towners.

The Mud Room

Joey asked me about our mud room I mentioned in this post.

Hubby and I started calling the little inside porch the "mud room" because that was what it was. Literally. The back yard was wet with little grass and lots of mud when we moved here. That didn't dampen our enthusiasm for moving here last October.

We now have a wooden walkway across the back of the house so we walk through the kitchen into the mud room, out the back door onto the wooden walkway all the way to the garage. Hubby is planting grass seed and some new grass is greeting us now.

Wikipedia explains "mud room" this way:

"Many suburban American houses have a mud room, a casual, generally secondary entryway intended as an area to remove and store footwear, outerwear, and wet clothing before entering the house proper. As well as providing storage space, a mud room serves to increase the cleanliness of a house proper. They can often double as laundry room."

Our mud room is a place for us to enter the little hippie cottage at the back of the house, plenty of rugs on the floor to wipe feet, four shelves to store lanterns and muddy shoes. This is the picture of our little mud room taken at seven in the evening with light in the mud room window.