Math and wrath: Auntie Kay on warpath

Okay, before I forget, yesterday's walk was 2062 steps...and today's was 2132, which is nine tenths of a mile,  and that included a stop for manual labor.

I am on the warpath, and it's unlikely the perpetrator will be reading this, but I must get it off my chest, just as I tried to get it off the sidewalk.
Broken glass, I don't know how many small shards of it, on the sidewalk by the swimming pool, where children walk...some, perhaps, barefoot because they've just been swimming.
I didn't have a container with me, but I did have a facial tissue, because one never knows, but the nose knows...
So there I was, an old lady with a walker, not to mention a bad back, stooping down to pick up as many shards of glass as one tissue could hold, then carefully carrying the whole thing to one of the dumpsters beside the ice rink, with disposal in mind.
I am a childless aunt/great-aunt/step-grandma, and I take those roles very, very seriously. My instinct, as my eldest niece and my youngest brother can tell you, is save-the-child.
But wait, there's more...yes, more broken glass, on the ground all around the dumpsters.
Saving the town's children from broken glass suddenly looms as an impossible task. The best Auntie/Grandma/Nana Kay can do now is write a letter to the editor of the local rag.
Sigh.

But it was a good walk otherwise, although I started too late, so the shadowy places were smaller and farther between. There was a nice breeze, though, and the walk would have been quite enjoyable except for being on the warpath.
For instance, these photos were fun to take,
because I wanted to compare the leaves and fruit of a neighbour's tree with the leaves and fruit of our own ornamental crabapple tree.
As you can see below, allowing for the difference in seasons, the leaves of our ornamental crabapple are distinctly green, with nary a bronze leaf in sight, but the fruit of each is definitely similar.

Stay tuned while I solve this mystery. I'll be right back, probably tomorrow.

Cruising with my walker on a somewhat cloudy day, the one I love gives me a shove...

Okay that doesn't have quite the right ring to it, somehow but that's what I'm doing, but not with the one I love, or even the dog.
And going for a walk is new news because I have been fighting my overwhelming team of caregivers for many months now, especially the one who wants me to use a walker so that I get more exercise.
Sigh.
Okay, I need a walker, but it has to be a walker that will hold two small suitcases. Then, when I travel by rail, I can use it as a luggage cart if necessary. Not in huge airports, of course. There I agree to take the assistance available to unfitties in large airports.



So...I bought one. I didn't use it, but I bought a walker.
Then, last week, I saw the same doctor, who asked me, "Where is your walker?" and also said, "You aren't even using a cane."
"I left them both in the car," said I.
True fact, that's what I did. Walker in trunk where I wouldn't be reminded of it, and cane in the front seat where I could use it if accosted by...um, any dangerous persons lurking in the hospital parking lot.

So...the plan is, I am going for a walk this morning. With my walker.
I'll be back afterward to tell you all about it. It isn't likely to be exciting, but it will be progress, something this stubborn female hasn't made much of lately, walking-wise.

Forward one half-hour.
"Honey, I'm ho-ome!" No response. He is more stubborn about his hearing aids than I am about the walker, and has been for quite some time, but I digress.

I swear it took longer to put the folded walker back into the trunk of my car than it did to walk three long blocks and back (for a total of six blocks, don't forget) until my feet hurt.
The doctor who prescribed the walker intended me to walk as far as I comfortably could, then to lock the wheels of the walker and sit down in the seat thereof until my diabetic nerve-damaged feet stopped hurting.
I didn't stop to rest. Not even in the dense shade of the ice rink. Sure, I walked down the avenue to the far end of the ice rink, but still...
Okay, my bad.
Decided yes, mornings are the best time for me to go walking. There is shade on the east side of every long block in town, and not too much sunshine on the cross-streets.
Howsomever, I didn't take my cell phone along for the ride, which means I also didn't take my pedometer, so I plan to take the same route tomorrow, to check out my mileage (using the term 'mileage' loosely because 'footage' would mean film, which this isn't).
I shall return anon (which means sometime in the near future) with new news about Project Fitness. In the meantime, this unfittie is losing weight. Yes, I am, and my blood sugar is bloody marvellous. After a nurse checked it for me, I had to tell everyone within telling distance, and then to tell my husband by phone.

Sharing this, somewhat belatedly, with Lady Fi's
Our World Tuesday

A most amazing friend

 That's me on the left, a few years ago, enjoying a visit with my high school friend Carola, who is one of the people I know well and admire most.

She probably doesn't want these things published, because she is a humble person, not given to tooting her own horn. So I'm going to toot it for her.



Carola has always loved reading books, learning new things, sewing her own clothes, photography, and quilting. Maybe I should have put quilting first, because it is her creative voice. Quilting is what she loves.

The quilt above my bathroom mirror was one she'd made for her husband's office. When he retired, she gave it to me. I don't know if she intended it for my bathroom, but that's where it is, so I see it every day.

A few years ago, Carola lost the sight in one eye. Doctors and optometrists and ophthalmologists consulted to find the reason for this sudden loss. While they dithered, Rome burned. Well, while they dithered, she lost most of the sight in her other eye. She was left with a tiny bit of sight in the bottom of one eye.

Undeterred, she didn't sit around and weep. She still manages to travel, to read e-mail and visit on Skype with the little bit of eyesight she had left.

Then she decided to return to quilting, and the first quilt she made was for our darlin' dog, Lindy. I am forever grateful to have Carola for a friend.



I'm sharing this post with Our World Tuesday

Can this be the same dog?

Yes, of course it can...those of you who know our Golden Retriever, Lindy, will know she has become a Grande Dame, but one who is not averse to lying on the floor in front of the refrigerator, just in case someone thinks of food.





Even the size of the photos, when enlarged, show how much girth our girl has grown since she came to live with us...but we love her, large or small, white hair or golden...she's wonderful.

Sharing with Our World Tuesday

A long uninformed dissertation on child labor

(Note to my fellow Canadians, make that "labour.")

My husband (you know, my personal photographer, that husband) and I watched, recently, a TV program about child labour, specifically in India.
Although I knew intellectually, I can now clearly see that it is still a horror in the 21st century, as the feature program showed us the people who are now dedicating their work to try to end child labour there in the land of Mother Teresa.

Although she was undoubtedly the world's most popular and successful nun, conflicting online sites have Mother Teresa born in Skopje, Macedonia, and also in Gotarrendura, Spain. Delving further into Wikipedia's varying opinions on her birth, I find she was most likely to have been born in Skopje, and unlikely to have been born in Spain. Some years later, as a young woman, she received her education in Rathfarnham, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland.

There is no uncertainty, however, about Mother Teresa's dedication as a Roman Catholic nun to the people of India, where she tried to relieve the grim poverty and abhorrent death rate. She was, as a result, among some of the first women to have argued against child labour.

She did much, probably more than any one other individual, and although she won a Nobel Prize for her exemplary efforts, and was beatified a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, even Mother Teresa couldn't eliminate horrors such as child labour.

Nor could rabblerousers, missionaries, and lawmakers who followed—but not for lack of trying.

Most of us in this 21st century abhor the thought of child labour, and can often be heard opining "something should be done about that" but, here in North America, we are pretty much helpless to do so. Child labour (we hope) is no longer listed among the many deficiencies of our society, but is an ever-present fact in countries as diverse as India and China. Therefore, we wring our hands but can do little or nothing.

However, believe it or not, I digress. All of the above came to me as a result of that TV show, and of revisiting one of my all-time favourite poems: The Ballad of East and West, by Rudyard Kipling, and, indeed, the part of that poem I have always loved best. No, not the refrain, which has been quoted for various conflicting reasons, probably ever since it was first published in 1889, and has caused many a difference of opinion in the meantime.

No, this essay of mine is, would you believe, about child labour, and how I came to think of it...via that TV show, and because I had just been reading that poem. Sending offspring into servitude has long been a necessity, but none so seemingly glorious as Kipling has it here, when Kamal, the border thief, reaches a truce with the Colonel's son:

"...if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack,
Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back."
Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet.
"No talk shall be of dogs," said he, "when wolf and grey wolf meet.
May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath;
What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?"
Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "I hold by the blood of my clan,
Take up the mare for my father's gift—by God, she has carried a man."
The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled against his breast;
"We be two strong men," said Kamal then, but she loveth the younger best:
So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise-studded rein,
My 'broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain."
The colonel's son a pistol drew, and held it muzzle-end,
"Ye have taken the one from a foe," said he. "Will ye take the mate from a friend?"
"A gift for a gift," said Kamal straight, "a limb for the risk of a limb,
Thy father hath sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!"
With that, he whistled his only son, that dropped from a mountain crest:
He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in rest
"Now this is thy master," Kamal said, "that leads a troop of the guides,
And ye must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides.
Til death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed,
Thy life is his—thy fate it is, to guard him with thy head.
So, thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes are thine,
And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the border-line.
And thou must make a trooper tough, and hack thy way to power,
Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in Peshawur."

There's more, and if you are Kipling fan, you'll know, but my point is "I'll send my son to him...now this is thy master...ye must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides..."
While this is hardly child labour, it shows how readily people in the 19th century bartered their offspring. "I'll send my son to him"...sons were items of trade, or were rewards, as in this case. No thought was ever given to the feelings of the mothers and sisters of the young man. He was sent from one life into another as a gift. The word "dower" was even used.
But when I first heard of him, that nameless son of a border thief, at a young and impressionable age, I fell in love..."he trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in rest." Sigh. There's something to be said for the 19th century after all.

My personal photographer's photos

    That's right, I have a personal photographer. I can no longer walk the red crushed-rock paths around the coulee nearby, nor can our wonderful dog Lindy, but my husband goes out every afternoon or evening. I love it when he does evenings, because sometimes his photos are extraordinary. (see previous post)

    However, in a previous post I said I would have more about coulees. These photos were taken some years ago, at a particularly rocky part of our coulee, and of course the first and last ones feature our dog Lindy when she was younger. She didn't climb around on the rocks, but she loved walking the paths with her daddy. (I know, I know, sappy old lady talking about her dog.)

Photos by Richard Schear     

Doggerel and our dog-girl

Today I coughed up something green
with something of a puce-ish sheen
the meanest green I've ever seen
I thought that I had burst my spleen!

I took me to the doctor quick
"look" I said and he said "ick!"
then mentioned to my husband Dick
"I think your wife is very sick."

"Oh no!" said Dick, "oh, woe" said he
"Now who will cook and clean for me?
and wash my socks and underwear?
What will I do with no wife there?
this all is more than I can bear!
Mother didn't teach me how to cook
she only taught me how to look
for someone who would do for me
the things which had been done by she."

Apologies are due to my husband, Richard Schear, who has been cooking and cleaning (and taking fabulous photos) for the last few years while I walked around in ever-diminishing circles half the time, and slept the other half. 

Fortunately, I am coming out of that fog and heading toward returning to the me I know I should be.

The blog posts of my friend Yamini are very helpful in that regard, as are those of many others—you know who you are.

So, after the doggerel we have, as promised, the dog...
Lindy, when she first came home with us, and who didn't waste any time at all deciding who she loves best...here she is, looking out the window to see her daddy come home.

 Ditto below, waiting at the door

for him to come in from the car.

It didn't take any time at all before she decided she'd take the best place to sit, although she did more sleeping than sitting.

Down in the valley so low

Richard Schear photos

At the risk of being unoriginal, a picture speaks a thousand words, and I want to thank my husband, Richard Schear, for these photos taken with his phone while he was on his regular walk around the nearby coulee last night.

If you don't know what a coulee is, I looked it up. You'll get only a vague idea from the definition offered by Merriam Webster:
a usually small or shallow ravine; gully. Really, it says "a usually small" and even without the grammatical error, that definition scarcely does it justice.
Dictionary.com's second try was a little better:
1800-10 Americanism; Canadian French: a flowing;  feminine of coulé, past participle of couler: to flow.
But my favourite was Dictionary.com's example of historical usage:
He rode through the coulee without seeing a single cow, and an exploration lasting over an hour resulted no better.
Watch now, it gets better: the above example is attributed to Hopalong Cassidy by Clarence E. Mulford. Anyone old enough to remember Hopalong Cassidy must be nearly as old as I am, perhaps my brother Clint's age, or a little bit younger.
Anyone who knows anything about Clarence E. Mulford, however, must be even older than I am. Please let me know who you are.
So...the gully that is our coulee is barely visible to the left of the red rock path in the first photo above, and completely invisible in the second photo.
The photos below could almost be called historical, like ol' Hopalong, taken as they were by the abovementioned husband some years ago, but they should give you a good idea of our coulees, and they have already given me a good idea for another coulee-photo blog-post.
Now, Tuesday has come and is almost gone, and I forgot to link this post to

Our World Tuesday

One can never have too many socks

Socks. I find myself buying them whenever I see them...well, almost. I have drawers and baskets and boxes full of socks, and I'm writing this blog post in order to remind myself not to buy any more. That doesn't, of course, apply to the ones that are waiting for me to pick them up at the Sears delivery location in town.
But I am not alone...just google "too many socks" and you'll be amazed. Photos and quotations abound, all about sock collectors like me.
Let's start with J.K. Rowling: “One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair.”
And from blacksocks.com

"One can never own too many socks. Or so the Germans believe. In Germany, women and men own 24 pairs each. Hence, they hold the European record."

European record, indeed. How about Canadian record? I have exceeded that German record, and records from many other countries, I'm sure.

Please note: The photos below are not mine, so I have attributed them to the sock-lovers who took them, to show just how far a sock obsession can go.

panoramio.com

blog.sfgate.com

bucketsandspadesblog.com

And now you know, as Dumbledore might have said: "One can never have too many photographs of too many socks."

Sigh.

And the reason for this particular post on this particular day? I have promised myself I will sort out the drawers, baskets, and boxes of socks in my bedroom, and am postponing that overwhelming chore by blogging instead.

Sigh again.

Linking this post with
Our World Tuesday

The world is too much with us, yet today

For my 2000th blog post, I have chosen the words of poet William Wordsworth instead of using my own, which are insufficient. His words might seem archaic to some, but the sentiment is as true today as it was in the 1800s when he wrote them..."getting and spending"...which of us cannot relate to that? "Little we see in nature..." we're too busy getting and spending to be able to see anything in nature. "For this, for everything, we are out of tune...It moves us not."

"It moves us not"! How many of us are sincerely moved by the atrocities in the world today? How many of us can see the beauty in nature? How many are "getting and spending" and therefore unable to see anything else?

William Wordsworth 1770-1850......... (poets.org)

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— 

Little we see in Nature that is ours; 

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 

The winds that will be howling at all hours, 

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; 

For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be 

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Words of wisdom we all need in trying times

Words fail me these days, so I am sharing this quotation from Martin Luther King Jr. to express how I feel about the world today.

Does your dog often get a perm?

Lindy does, every time she's out in the rain...

Photos by Richard Schear

When Lindy's daddy brushed her later, many of the curls

disappeared, but she still had her 'permanent' ones left.

Linking this post with Our World Tuesday

Sittin' in the sun, lookin' at my shadow

"Yep, sittin' right by my hole, lookin' at the shadow of my ears."

"Maybe I'll come out farther, maybe hide behind these weeds."

"Oops, maybe not. I think I'll just go back into my hole."

My husband Richard Schear took these photos of the comings and goings of a wild rabbit during his walk today, and brought them home for me to enjoy. Finally a picture of an animal other than our dog Lindy on my blog site!

Connecting with Camera Critters, 

and also with Our World Tuesday.

Just a little rubby of the tummy, please

Linking, somewhat belatedly, with Our World Tuesday because, these days, Lindy is pretty much our world. She's getting old and tired, but she still gets enthusiastic when asked if she wants to go for a walk. Unfortunately, she doesn't get very far, but is happy to lie down to get her tummy rubbed.

This time, after leaving the house, Lindy and her daddy didn't even get across the street. She decided to lie down on the walkway immediately after coming outside, and rolled over so her daddy could rub her tummy.
Her daddy loves Lindy as much as I do (and maybe even more than he loves me) so he was happy to oblige, right there, in front of God and mommy's camera.

 Kay Davies photos

A wild and crazy sky

And there was no rain. It wasn't a storm, but it sure looked impressive.

Kay Davies photos 2016

I love this photo

I've been wanting to post this picture for a while now. It isn't anything special, except to me and to Lindy's daddy. If you look v-e-r-y carefully, you can just see his elbow, as he works at his computer.
On the floor, however, is a wet dog. And not just any wet dog...it is, of course, our Lindy, who tries to get as close to my husband as she can, no matter where he is or how busy he is. (Lindy and I consider ourselves fortunate because her daddy still works, to keep us in dog food and other necessities.)

Kay Davies photo, 2016

I'm posting this for Our World Tuesday, brought to us by Lady Fi, whose beautiful Goldens would hardly recognize Lindy as one of their breed. Yes, she does look more like a sheep. Her hair always curls when it's wet.