Pictures don't do it justice...

Early morning on the lake at the park. I was too afraid to take my "big" camera out in the kayak, and the battery was dead in the "little" one. So these were taken from the safety of shore. This one is my favorite from today, just because of the colors and the near-perfection of the reflection. I know it's just a bridge....... I hope to snag a picture of a beautiful blue heron that I startled out of her nest down in a secluded cove of the lake.

Then I spent way too much time this afternoon trying to get a good picture of a hummingbird at one of our two feeders. After a while it wasn't about getting a cool picture of a hummingbird....it was about WINNING! (I didn't.)

My Father's Obituary

I was looking through an ancient Office Depot catalog today, trying to decide how to spend my "Sonny Money." I didn't realize how long that catalog had been on the shelf......it had "advance" calendars all the way up to 2003. Ha! Needless to say, I was not looking in it for prices, just ideas.

In the catalog I found my father's obituary, laminated as a courtesy by our local newspaper. I have no idea why it was in there.......it's not like you use a bookmark to keep the place where you left off reading in a catalog. Reading that obituary was the only way I knew when he died. I can remember the license plate numbers of people I went to high school with thirty years ago, birthdays of people I neither like nor associate with any longer, and my credit card numbers complete with the security code on the back, but I had no idea of the date my father died (it was October 21, 2002). I also had no idea how old he was, but I could have figured that out if I had remembered the year he died (he was 77).

I'm sure that if you asked him, he would say it wasn't the drinking that killed him; it was the sudden stopping. He had called me at school on a Saturday (working on the yearbook) and said he needed somebody to take him to the hospital.

"Why, what's wrong?"

"I'm drunk."

"Daddy, they don't put people in the hospital for being drunk."

I didn't go.

He went to the hospital on a Wednesday (I think) with what must have approached alcohol poisoning. He had a heart attack that Saturday and went into a coma, punctuated by frequent tremors and seizures, and we made the decision to remove him from life support the following Monday morning. My daughter, my sister, and I stood by his bed, along with a step-mother I didn't like (they had only been married a couple of years......Daddy was her fifth husband, I think) and a step-sister I didn't know, and waited. The hospital chaplain had either done that job a lot, or cheated and kept his (her? I can't remember) eyes open during the prayer. Because with the word "Amen," the line went flat.

Grammar Snobbery

I'm such a grammar snob....... I went to a particular cycling association's website, really just looking for a map, not to join their group or anything. But their website and all associated postings were so fraught with spelling errors that I clicked out. Even the map has terrible misspellings on it. Says a certain rule will be "strickley enforced." Don't they get the red squiggly lines like I do? I could attribute this snobbery to the fact that I'm an English teacher..........

.....but I have to admit that I was this way long before I started that career. In fact, (God forgive me), when I was a teenager and my mother and I were in church together, whenever the pastor made a grammatical error (and he made tons of them), Mom and I made eye contact with each other all the way across the sanctuary. No wonder I've been told I'm on the express train to hell.

I asked the woman at the Publix bakery to fix the writing on my sister's birthday cake. The cake was intended for three family members, so I asked that it say "Happy Birthday, Y'all." They had spelled it "ya'll." The lady looked at me like I was crazy when I asked her to move the apostrophe. So I told her MY SISTER was the grammar snob!!!!!!!!

I'm not this judgmental about most things, just spelling and grammar. Sigh. But I don't correct my husband, so maybe that can earn me some points back.

Two weeks left...

Feeling that panic of only having two weeks left before I return to school. Things I still need to do (partial list only):

• Gather clothing and other items for good will
• Ditch dissertation materials
• Clean blinds and windows (yuck)
• Watch entire Sex and the City series
• Plan for yard sale to benefit our school

I did get motivated enough this morning to go walk in the park for an hour. I love going early in the morning.......except for tearing down last night's spider webs with my sweaty face. Gus is pretty tuckered out from our morning jaunt. Too bad.....he's due for a bath.