As you know, Brett has gone off to Delaware/New Jersey to do contract work. He's been gone about two months now. I've seen him twice in that time, and we'll be spending a week together in Colorado soon. We've Skyped several times and call and text each other often. But I really miss the comfort and companionship of having him here in the house with me.

Yesterday I stripped the bed to wash the sheets and bumped a pillow which dislodged something hiding behind it on the headboard shelf. I looked at it thoughtfully. I pressed it in the right place, but nothing happened. I thought to myself, "You know, if you just put a couple of batteries in this thing, maybe you won't miss Brett so much." So I took it downstairs, put in a couple of fresh batteries, pressed it in the right place and it came to life. Brett had better watch out because this thing is giving me a lot of pleasure.

https://youtu.be/o2XeRBOKHzY

Oh, Mr. Perfect, don't stop!

Well, friends, my Xanga expiration date is looming - one week from today. I renewed two or three weeks ago, but haven't heard anything. I wonder if I used the right email address to contact Eugenia. Can those of you who have renewed recently tell me how you did it, so I can figure out if there's something I need to do differently? How did you contact Eugenia? My gut feeling is that she's the only person working on subscription updates and other "Help" issues and is overwhelmed. Anyway, I'll be leaving on vacation before my site expires, so I might disappear for awhile until my site is renewed. Don't worry about me; I'll be back once my subscription is straightened out and I'm home.

In other news, I feel like I'm expiring. The cherries are coming on like gangbusters, the raspberries are beginning to get ripe and  the strawberries are still putting out some fruit. I picked all three this morning. I've pitted and frozen some cherries, with a whole bunch more yet to do, and the trees are still loaded with ripening fruit. Once I was done picking all that fruit, I took Boo for a nice long walk, then came home and cleaned up the backyard. I mowed, and ran the weed-eater until the battery died. My left arm is all shaky now from holding the weed-eater for so long. By the time I finished all that, rode my bike to the post office, hosed off and dried the lawnmower and weed-eater and returned them and my bicycle to the shed, I needed another shower and shampoo and a lie-down in my cool, dark bedroom. Now I'm procrastinating; I should be in the kitchen pitting those cherries and making pie dough for homemade pop tarts to take with me on the road trip. There's also some wet towels that need to be washed, and supper to eat (thank heaven for leftovers).

I am already paying for all that work, and I've taken a pain pill to try to ward off the back, neck and arm pain. But the work needed to be done and I needed to do it a few days before I leave so I'm not paying for it at the beginning a thousand-mile drive. (Two thousand miles if you count the return trip.)

Okay, I suppose I've stalled long enough. The cherries are starting to heckle me from the kitchen. See you one of these days... hopefully soon.

It's been an eventful few days, with more eventfulness on the horizon. Joyouswind and I wanted to spend Father's Day with Bookmark61, so we left Michigan on Saturday morning, headed east and Brett left Delaware around the same time, headed west. I suspect Brett had the more interesting drive across Maryland and Pennsylvania. Krysten and I were mostly limited to the Ohio Turnpike. Bleh. We met up in Youngstown, Ohio, about as close to Pennsylvania as it's possible to get without actually being in Pennsylvania.

Krysten and I took a couple of detours along the way. We didn't go straight for the toll road, but took a small rural highway across southern Michigan at the beginning of our trip. We stopped in White Pigeon, Michigan to find a geocache where I could leave a couple of Travel Bugs, one of which was trying to get to Detroit. This awesome cache seemed like a good place to leave them.

It sits outside a cement factory and was built by the owner of the factory. The door is made of metal bars and is kept padlocked. There are clues to the combination of the padlock on the cache page, involving adding and subtracting numbers from a date etched onto the concrete floor. Inside the miniature tower is a large ammo can geocache sitting on a shelf. While Krysten was trying to get the combination right, a man came running out of the business shouting, "What are you doing here?" He startled Krysten, but I just laughed and replied, "We're trying to do math and failing." I correctly assumed he was the owner of the geocache (and the business). We had a nice conversation while Krysten got the door opened.

From White Pigeon, we drove down to the Indiana Toll Road, taking it a few miles to where it ended at the state line and became the Ohio Turnpike. We stayed on the turnpike until about ten miles west of Toledo where we took another detour to Oak Openings Preserve to find the oldest geocache in Ohio. It was very hot, but there was very little underbrush, the bugs weren't too bad, and the trail was wide and clear. We hiked in on a fire road and intersected a horse trail, which we followed to within 20 feet of the cache. It was a very pleasant hike in a beautiful little forest.

I have sweaty hat hair in this photo. Krysten got silly with a roll of dog poop bags she found in the cache.

After this cache, we had to get serious about getting to the other side of Ohio. Well, I had to get serious... Krysten apparently had to catch up on her sleep. Brett beat us to Youngstown by a couple of hours. He helped us carry our stuff into the hotel room and opened his Father's Day gifts, then we walked down the road to a Ruby Tuesday for dinner. After eating, we walked back to the hotel, put on our swimsuits and spent some time playing in the pool before calling it a day.

The next morning we checked out of the hotel and went geocaching. I had four caches on my list and we found three of them, including one that the last signature on the log was four years ago. That one was in a little nature preserve. The one we didn't find should have been in the same nature preserve, but it also hadn't been found in four years and had several DNFs logged on the cache page so I'm pretty sure it's gone missing. We found the caches so quickly, we were left with about three hours to kill, so we found a nearby theater and watched Finding Dory. Cute movie and the scene at the end with the truck was very funny.  After the movie, we went back to the nature preserve for a tailgate picnic in the little parking area, a family selfie to commemorate the day, and then it was time to say goodbye and go our separate ways.

The drive home seemed to take a lot longer than the drive east, but I think it was just more boring because we didn't make any fun geocaching detours. We did get off the turnpike to grab some fast food drive-thru for supper and stayed on the back roads of western Ohio while we ate. That was a nice interlude; back roads are always more interesting than interstate driving. We got back on I-80 in the little stretch that's not toll, sort of a no-man's land between the westernmost toll booth in Ohio and the easternmost toll booth in Indiana. We rolled into The 'Duh around 8 PM - way too late to spring the dogs from the kennel where we'd boarded them. Krysten helped me unload the van, loaded her stuff into her car and took off for her apartment. The weekend was over.

The next morning, I picked up the dogs and dropped Jack off at Krysten's apartment. He likes to hang out on the balcony, so I left the sliding glass door opened wide enough for him to go in and out, gave him a treat and left. Boo was exhausted after two days of hard play with other dogs and passed out in his doggy bed while I was busy on my laptop logging the geocaches we'd found over the weekend. At some point I realized it was getting dark. A few minutes later, I heard a rumble of thunder and noticed that Boo was getting agitated. My mind flashed to that open balcony door at Krysten's apartment, and Jack free to roam out into the rain and back onto Krysten's furniture. As I was putting on my shoes, the rain started falling and the power went off for a moment. By the time I'd put on a jacket and grabbed my keys, the wind had picked up. About the time I stepped onto the back porch, the rain became a deluge and the wind became a gale. I sprinted for the van, slammed the door shut and looked up just in time to see our canopy and metal frame tumbling through the backyard headed right for the driveway and my van. I started the engine and was about to back further down the driveway when the canopy stopped just before reaching the driveway. Whew!

I could barely see when I backed out of my driveway, but by the time I'd driven four blocks to the edge of the village, the storm was nearly over. When I got to Krysten's apartment, the sun was shining and Jack was chillin' on the couch completely unconcerned with the weather. It seems The 'Duh got the brunt of the storm. I took Jack outside to pee, back up to the apartment, gave him a treat, closed the balcony door and went home. And that's when I discovered that when the power blinked, one of the silver maples in our backyard had been struck by lightning and a large limb was down in our side lot.

Our neighbors on the other side of the lot came to my rescue that evening, cutting the limb into smaller pieces and stacking them near the street, and twisting our canopy frame back into shape and putting it back over the patio.

I removed the canopy from the frame and haven't put it back on yet. There's more severe weather in the forecast for tonight - no sense in risking a repeat performance.

So, other than weekend road trips, geocaching and storm cleanup, I've been making some preparations for the big road trip to Denver for GeoWoodstock. I'll have to do the Michigan to Kansas stage by myself. Brett is flying from Philadelphia to Kansas City and I'll pick him up at the airport and we'll drive the rest of the way together. We'll be meeting up with murisopsis and Old Dog Sparky in Denver for a frenzy of geocaching and events.

I've also been trying to keep up with the cherries. I can't reach the tops of the trees anymore, so the birds will be feasting on those cherries.

I'm picking, rinsing, pitting and flash freezing. After GeoWoodstock, I'll be making jam. The raspberries are beginning to turn red, so I'll be busy picking them a couple of times a day after I get home. I'll be going from a frenzy of geocaching to a frenzy of picking and jamming.

And now you are caught up.

I haven't been very active on social media lately. I still scroll through Facebook and read my friends' and family's posts, but I rarely post anything there. I can't help feeling that social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, are part of the problem that led to Orlando... San Bernardino... Paris... Brussels... and all the other terrorist and would-be terrorist attacks around the world. It's just too easy for disturbed hatemongers to have their twisted ideologies affirmed and encouraged by other disturbed hatemongers. What began as a way to bring people together has evolved to a divisive virtual battleground.

That's not the only thing pushing me away from Facebook. I'm sick of the stupid memes (even the rare ones that have no spelling or grammatical errors) that have taken the place of thoughtful discourse. I'm sick of it being a forum for the public shaming of children and less than perfect adults. I'm sick of the click-bait. I'm sick of the uninformed, inaccurate crap that goes viral. I'm tired of being manipulated. I thought Facebook would be a way to keep up with my far-flung family and friends, but I rarely see their posts (if they ever even post anything personal) because of all the ads, suggested content, memes, shared videos and articles and other crap I have to wade through to even find my family and friends. I am once again seriously considering leaving Facebook. Sadly, I know it will be the end of communication with most of my loved ones, as few people seem to be willing to make an effort to keep in touch by old-fashioned means anymore.

Yes, I'm cranky today. I'm on Day 4 of no hot water and at the end of this day I will be more than a thousand dollars poorer (but will hopefully have hot water). For 35 years, my husband has taken care of all the plumbing problems in our various homes and the second he goes off to do contract work everything goes to hell. After four months of unemployment, he's finally making money and it's being funneled directly to plumbers. How's that for irony?

No way! I can't be 57! It feels like I was just 19, but that was officially THREE LIFETIMES AGO!!! What the heck happened? Oh yeah, Life. You know, everyone at some point in their life says, "If only I could go back to [some younger age] but know everything I know now..." Well, I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen unless a blue police box materializes on the front lawn, so instead I'm going to make an effort to use all of my hard-won knowledge, experience and cunning to make the next 30 or 40 years as physically, spiritually and financially profitable as possible so I can look back at my 57-year-old self when I'm undeniably old and say, "Hey, kid, you got it right!" All my younger readers can get a head start by reading my annual Life List. My contemporaries can nod in agreement and my elders can scoff at me. I've had a couple of different versions of this over the years and I try to add something new every year. This is the important stuff, folks, the stuff that really matters in life. It will never be a complete list, but there are a few pearls of wisdom that, if you follow the advice, you will grow to appreciate sometime down the line. Everyone has a life list, but not everyone writes it down. You should. No matter how old you are, no matter how young you are, you have learned something worth passing on to others. Feel free to add your own pearls of wisdom in the comments.

57 THINGS WORTH KNOWING

1. Start eating healthy while you’re still healthy.
2. Start wearing sensible shoes before your feet, knees and back get bad.
3. Dye your hair the color you always wished it was.
4. Drive with the windows down and don’t worry about your hair getting messy.
5. Take that road trip you’ve always dreamed of.
6. Learn a craft or develop a hobby that will engage you when you’re bored.
7. Keep in touch with aunts, uncles and cousins, no matter how busy your life becomes.
8. Get off the interstate and take the back roads.
9. Stop hiding from the camera.
10. Adopt a pet from an animal shelter.
11. Learn how to cook three things really well.
12. Do volunteer work, even if it’s only an hour a week.
13. Get all those digital photos printed.
14. Write letters using paper, stamps and envelopes.
15. Do something that frightens you.
16. Make a conscious effort to smile at people.
17. Walk with confidence.
18. Look for moments of beauty, joy and gratitude each day.
19. Keep a journal, even if it’s boring.
20. Appreciate a boring life; excitement is usually related to disaster.
21. Think before you speak.
22. Think before you blog.
23. Think before you post those photos online.
24. Never, ever send naked photos to anyone. Never…  Anyone.
25. Reuse what you can.
26. Recycle what you can’t reuse.
27. Send postcards to your friends when you travel.
28. Act silly in public.
29. Take selfies with children; you will be the coolest grownup in the room.
30. Walk in the woods.
31. Stargaze.
32. Mail funny birthday cards to your friends when it’s not their birthday.
33. Call your mother.
34. Listen when your parents or grandparents tell you stories about their lives.
35. Learn to play an instrument.
36. Taste new foods.
37. Retry foods you didn’t like when you were a kid.
38. Sing Christmas carols in June.
39. Buy yourself flowers for no particular reason.
40. Always keep a road atlas in your vehicle.
41. When you get lost, make it an adventure.
42. Learn to be alone without being lonely.
43. Sing in the shower.
44. Sing in the car.
45. Dance when the spirit moves you.
46. A good mattress is one of the best investments you can make.
47. Paint your toenails an outrageous color.
48. Watch as many sunsets as you can.
49. Play in the rain.
50. Eat chocolate without guilt.
51. Go to a movie at a drive-in theater. (Take lots of bug spray.)
52. Wear earplugs at concerts. You’ll thank me later.
53. Keep your cookie jar filled at all times.
54. Always keep Bandaids and ice packs on hand.
55. Look for the good in people.
56. You are allowed to eat cake for breakfast on your birthday.
57. Cut your toenails before going on an eleven mile hike.

I was checking my last few posts and realized it's been over a month since I posted anything on Xanga.  I'm a bad blogger.

Life has been busy, mostly in good ways. Brett is off in Delaware/New Jersey doing his contract work. He'll be there for several months. He made it home last weekend for a 36 hour visit. In that time, he fixed the toilet, weeded the garden, filled the bird feeder, bought a weed-eater, helped me find my 1,979th - 2,000th geocaches, grilled steaks, grilled hamburgers, gave me a birthday gift and assembled it, moved a dresser to the basement, gave Boo a bath, loaded his truck with boxes of stuff I'd packed for his apartment in Delaware, and forgot his pillow when he left. It was a full day-and-a-half. We tried to take a family selfie before Brett headed back east.

The weekend before last, I was in Arkansas for a mini-family reunion at Devil's Den State Park. I'd intended to go geocaching in the park and find enough caches that when Brett came home, we'd only need to find two or three to get me to my milestone. Instead, I found zero. All that family made it a little too chaotic for geocaching.

After the reunion, I went down to Fort Smith to see my mom before heading home to Michigan. I don't think she ever figured out who I was, but we still had a good visit. Mom's been eating better and has put on a little weight, so my sister bought her about ten pairs of pants that were labeled "petite" but were more than four inches too long. So my older sister brought all the new pants home and pinned all the legs up, I hand hemmed two pairs of pants and my younger sister hemmed the rest with her sewing machine. It was fun to work on a project for Mom with both of my sisters.

This past week, I went geocaching with murisopsis. We'd planned to grab some caches in a nearby nature preserve, but that morning there were eight new caches published in another nature preserve so we went after them instead. We found seven of the eight new ones and got First To Find on those seven, and one older one. Then we came back to my place, ate lunch, rested and went to the nature preserve we'd planned to go to originally. We found five of the six caches there that I hadn't found before, plus murisopsis got four more that I'd previously found. All told, I got 12 finds and Val got 17. According to my phone app, I was active for 212 minutes and walked 22,829 steps, which it calculated at 11.3 miles. That night, I realized my big toes were swollen and numb. My right toe is still numb three days later.

Other than all that, I've just been doing the usual; laundry, mowing, baking, cooking, barbershop chorus, learning French, water aerobics, painting, walking Boo, etc. It's about time for me and Boo to give up our walk through the woods. Last time we walked there, I discovered the giant hogweed has returned. Between that and the poison ivy and ticks, I think we'll have to admire the woods from outside their perimeter until sometime in the autumn.

This week is the start of Jam Season. The strawberries are ripening at local farms, so I'll be checking my supplies, buying what I need and getting a flat of strawberries in the next day or two. It'll take me at least two days to do strawberry jam. Next up after that will probably be cherries. The fruit on our trees ripens early - mid to late June. By the time I'm done with the cherries, the raspberries will be ripe, then peaches... the entire summer will go this way. It won't end with the end of summer, either; there's still apple butter, apple jelly, grape jelly, salsa and maybe pumpkin butter. I'm always so happy to pull out my canning pot in June, and even happier to put it away in October.

And that's what I've been up to lately. I'll try to be a better blogger this month.

... not because of a guilty conscience like MacBeth, but my "sleave of care" seems to be unraveling more each night instead of knitting itself back together. I haven't murdered a king, but I'm trying to kill a dependency on Ambien. I like that one little pill helps me get six or seven hours of rest without dreams. I hadn't slept well since I was about twelve years old until my doctor finally prescribed a sleeping pill for me 37 years later. I call it my miracle pill. After only one dose, I became addicted to sleeping at night.

I'm not addicted to Ambien, but I can't relax and fall asleep without it and every time I've tried not taking it, I've spent a restless night filled with cat naps and weird dreams. I've never been able to make a real effort at cutting back until now, with Brett in New Jersey doing contract work. Now my restless nights are not disturbing his sleep, so I've not taken my sleeping pill for three nights in a row. Those three nights have been just like I described above - awake for much of the night and weird dreams whenever I managed to doze off for a little while. Of my most vivid dreams last night, one involved me losing my van (not being able to find where I'd parked it) and the other was about a man falling off a bridge (the man wasn't anyone I know, but murisopsis was with me in the dream). Both were tied to upcoming events and might also have something to do with Brett being gone and the life changes that have taken place this year. Or, they might just be my brain short-circuiting due to lack of sleep and have no other meaning. All I know is I'm going to have to take an Ambien tonight or tomorrow night if I want to be able to function for the next few days.

I don't know why I'm wired this way. I can't seem to turn off my brain when I go to bed. I can't relax my body while my brain is going off in a dozen different directions. I would think it's just part of getting older if I hadn't been this way for almost as long as I can remember. When I was a teenager and finally had my own bedroom, I read until about 3:00 in the morning, then slept for about three hours before getting up and going to school. I'm not sure how I managed to graduate with honors. I used to fall asleep during Beta Club meetings after school. One time they actually passed a motion to wake me up. Ha! I was just there to get the curtain cord to go with my graduation robe. I honestly can't remember a single thing I ever did for Beta Club other than show up for meetings after I was told it was mandatory.

I seem to be rambling. Oh how I wish I could sleep that sleep the innocent sleep;
"Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,--"

... without taking my little miracle pill.

I have a weird fascination with mushrooms, toadstools and assorted fungi. I don't like to eat mushrooms; the texture grosses me out, but I think they look cool and I love how quickly they appear and the changes they go through. In early March, I spotted something on a cedar tree at the edge of the little woods near my house. I took a picture and googled it and discovered it's called Cedar Apple Rust. It's a fungus that requires two hosts: a cedar tree and an apple tree (or trees in the same families). Spores attach to the cedar tree, grow into a gall and sprout spiky protrusions that grow into something that looks like waxy orange tentacles. After the first warm rain in May or June, the spores are released and travel on the wind to the nearest apple tree, where they grow again, making rust colored splotches on the tree until the spores are once again released onto the wind to find the nearest cedar tree and the cycle begins again.

I've been keeping an eye on "my" fungus for about six weeks now and documenting its evolution with my camera.

How many lives are in a season?

How many seasons are there in life?

In the season of youth I was babe and child,

Teen, independent woman and wife.

During the Navy season;

Homemaker and mother,

Moral supporter, babysitter,

Packer-upper and every other

Job that needed done.

In the season of pursuing career;

Part-time worker, tutor,

Encourager and volunteer.

Now a new season is underway.

My new role is home-stayer,

Traveler, dog-walker,

Groundskeeper, bill payer…

Not such a new role, after all.

If seasons are like cats’ lives,

I’ve not quite reached the middle…

My seasons left are five.

Today is the beginning of a new phase of life for Bookmark61 and me. Today is also the last day of National Poetry Month. I thought I'd cover both occasions in one post. The poem has a small lie in it; the role of groundskeeper is mostly new to me. I haven't had to worry about mowing a lawn since before the joyous one was born 31 years ago. The equipment has changed a lot since those days, but I'll figure it out. And if I don't, I have one neighbor who will take pity on me and help out, and another who will not be able to stand seeing the grass get out of control and sneak over on his tractor while I'm away. One way or another, it'll get done.

It’s been a while since I posted an update on my life. I’m still alive, in case you were curious. I’ve been pulling back a bit from social media, probably, now that I think about it, because it’s an election year and I’m tired of being yelled at. That’s what it feels like when my Facebook feed is filled with political memes.

In other news, Brett quit his job in January – I think I mentioned that in a previous blog – and he has finally landed a contract. He’ll be working at a plant in New Jersey and probably living in Delaware. I’m sure next week will be filled with panicky last minute packing, errands, and Things That Must Be Done Before You Leave. Like installing the air conditioners, putting the canopy on the gazebo, and giving me tutorials on all the man stuff I’ve been too spoiled to have to learn until now (grilling, mowing, starting the generator, etc.).

It will be weird to be stepping back into deployment mode, like the old Navy days. Well, except for the part where Brett was on a submarine, in the middle of the ocean, with no way to communicate. Cell phones, email, Skype, land… all of that will make it easier than it was 30 years ago. The part where I’m 30 years older is what will make it harder. I’m sure I’ll be fine, though.

Spring has finally sprung here. It comes in degrees. A mild day here and there, the first crocuses blooming, the return of the robins, the daffodils blooming and then the explosion.  We have finally arrived at the part where the fruit trees are blooming, leaves are unfurling on maples, oaks and willows, the forest floor is green, tulips have bloomed, and boots have been replaced by sandals at the backdoor.  I’ll leave you with a few pictures of spring exploding in Michigan.

The cherry trees in our backyard have begun to bloom. We're looking forward to harvesting the cherries this year.

The plum trees in our backyard are also blooming. My heart is so happy!

This is where I walk Boo in the spring and fall. In a few weeks, poison ivy and ticks will be running rampant, although I should still be able to use the main paths.

Wild violets in the little woods where I walk Boo.

We ran into these ducks when we took the narrow path that runs down to the creek. The next day they were gone, but Boo spent a long time sniffing the area where they'd been hanging out.

A turtle family sunning themselves on a log. This was taken along the Van Buren Trail last weekend.

A bullfrog spying at us from the water along the Van Buren Trail.